Independently of one another, last Wednesday and Saturday respectively, two friends of mine suggested I make maple syrup cookies. Coincidences like this demand action: so tonight, I embarked with the mobile cookie unit in tow, supplemented for the occasion with a bottle of maple syrup. I also brought a bottle of Jim Beam that had been a prop in a movie I made two years ago and which I realized would make a great mobile vanilla container if the original contents could be properly disposed of; I don’t drink and hoped my friends would help me out. They did, not only drinking it themselves, but suggesting I add a few capfuls to the dough. However, after 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup white sugar, tbsp molasses, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 3 capfuls Jim Beam and 1 egg, a measly 1 1/4 cups flour wasn’t enough to stiffen the dough almost at all, but it sure tasted good (someone used extra dough to frost a finished cookie). I added chopped pecans but no chocolate, as per another friend’s request. The finished products spread out and ran together, but cut into squares they were enthusiastically received, nicely chewy and cakey enough. Chocolate chips were surreptitiously added to the third ovenful (it takes four rounds to cook one half batch because I use a tiny, dented, six-cookie pan that fits in my backpack). I am not sure if the Jim Beam added anything and the bottle was purloined, I hope it will be returned so I can finally start using my homemade vanilla. I am going to visit Stewart at his homestead in Vermont this weekend and maybe I will buy a bottle of local maple syrup to continue experimenting.
