No bake = NO GOOD, and other weekend catastrophes

So, I have a wedding coming up. Currently, Biscuit and I are "Fighting the Fat," a local weight loss competition that, initially, I was bound and determined to win. Oh right, then I remembered that I LOVED to bake.

My Mom has this uncanny ability that Kerri and I do not seem to possess. She can cook and bake up a storm and not eat a bite of it. I mean, not even the cookie batter (which to me is often better than the actual cookie!). So silly Dayna decides to search the interweb to find some healthful baking. Good luck with that, Mongelli...

And so I landed on Allrecipes.com, a personal favorite site of mine. Biscuit and I shirked the traditional American pasttime of watching the Superbowl, and instead joined in Roger Federer's dismay as he lost to butt clown (Biscuit's own term...slightly censored) Rafael Nadal. Since we were both upset, I baked.

Or did I bake? I guess I technically didn't. Using the Allrecipes advanced search, I looked for cookies that contained cocoa and shortening, two ingredients which I had in abundance after the holidays. I found a recipe that sounded quite good - chocolate coconut macaroons, however, they were no-bake. Everything was to be done on the stove top. I would give you the recipe if I didn't bake these first.

I melted down the shortening with some cocoa, coconut, and sugar. I brought it to a boil and added the oats. Once I allowed the mixture to cool slightly, I began rolling into balls. No sooner did I dive into the batter did I realize how dry the cookie mounds looked as they awaited the fridge. I tried to reshape that balls into flat cookies, realizing that the mounds were not going to bake down at all (hence the no-bake thing), and these puppies just crumbled before my eyes.

I added some good old H2O to the mixture and was able to shape the remainder of the batter into cookies, which Biscuit proceeded to consume. I did not take this as a compliment - it was the first real sugar he was eating in weeks! After sugar substitutes being used in everything from his coffee and tea to his ice cream, I think the real stuff was like a drug, attracting him to eat these dry cocoa ball creations. I was none too pleased with these results.

A second, slightly more successful attempt were the caramel oatmeal pudding cookies I tried. Once again I splurged on real sugar and combined it with butter, some dried buttermilk mixture, oats, and butterscotch pudding, making these REALLY butterscotch oatmeal cookies, but I digress... The recipe called for 2.5 cups of oats. I kept adding, and adding, and ADDING oats. I literally must have used 5 cups until the darn things could solidify into cookies. I made about 4 normal shaped cookies, and noticed I was getting baker's fatigue (more like FRUSTRATION). I decided to spread the mixture into a greased 13x9 glass tray, and chilled them overnight. The result were 30 delicious oat bars that Biscuit and his colleagues consumed nearly instanteously.

(the terrible pudding cookies, part II)

Wanting to try for a healthified version of these bars, I attempted them again tonight with some sugar substitute instead of the real stuff. These things didn't solidify worth a darn. I guess the real stuff is totally worth using if you are going to bake. I suppose I will just have to learn my Mom's virtue of self-control, something I clearly do not possess around goodies.

In addition to this major mistake, I tried to make cocoa applesauce cookies, once again, for the sole reason because I had all the ingredients this recipe required. This does not make for a good recipe. The batter tasted like NOTHING - I think this was the result of using sugar substitute (as the recipe calls for) and shortening. I will never, ever use shortening for anything other than pie crust and chocolate chip cookies. So, in a vain attempt to solve the issue of "no taste" I added toffee bits. I had these deep in the recesses of my freezer. Knowing they were there and being on a diet did not bode well for me, so I figured I would use them. These bits did nothing to enhance the taste nor the appearance of the cookie, save to give the cookie a bonbon look to the outside. Too bad it didn't taste as nicely.

Only after I took pictures with my very bleary camera (sad news; the elph camera which has brought you so many snaps of baked goods is slowly but surely dying) did I realize both the nasty macaroons and their cousin the applesauce cocoa cookie look very similar. Alas, here they are:
The No-Bake Disaster

The psuedo bonbons

I have learned a lesson: I will stick with baking (no more no-baking) and I will stick with sugar! Lesson LEARNED!