Domestic Tuesdays - My Jewish Cookies (wink wink)

I want to say I have a "sweet tooth", but the reality is, it's more of a "hungry tooth". Granted, I always crave a little something sweet after a meal, but I would be just as happy with sour cream and onion chips as I would be with ice cream. As the Descendents once fittingly put it in the song by the same name, "I like food, food tastes good".*

*sidenote: did you know that there's a cookbook by the same name that features recipes from various indie rock bands?? weird shit, dude.

But it's true that when one is craving something truly sweet, nothing savory will suffice. For those times, the following two recipes are cheap and easy fixes.

Lets start with my favorite. I made this for my weekly Lost pot luck night, but then gave it to everyone who came near me in the next couple days in hopes of getting it out of my house. This is because it is dangerous. I think I may have made chocolate-covered caramelized crack cocaine, instead of what the recipe said it was:

Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzo

Start by laying out sheets of matzo (I like the salted variety), breaking up pieces to fill the tin foil covered baking sheet. I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, who got it from someone else, who got it from someone else, but I'm crediting Smitten because I adore her.

While the oven is preheating to 350, toss two sticks of butter and a cup of brown sugar into a saucepan (did I mention that this is NOT a lowfat recipe??) with the heat on medium-high.

Whisk until that shit starts to bubble. At this point you're going to be tempted to dip your entire hand in the caramel mixture, but I'd advise against that unless you like a little burning with your yummy. After letting it bubble for about three more minutes, while stirring, add a half a teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt off the heat.

After pouring the caramel over the matzo and spreading it around to coat (do this quickly, as it begins to set right away), the mixture should be cool enough for you to pwn the unused caramel directly into your yumhole.

Keepin' it classy. Also, hard evidence as to why I ALWAYS have bangs.

The recipe calls for 15 minutes in the oven, but this ended up almost burning my precious candy, so I lowered the heat to about 325. Keep an eye on it to make sure you don't burn that shizz.

Out of the oven, pour the chocolate chips onto the hot matzo(I used semi sweet dark chocolate) (also, who wants to start a band called Hot Matzo??). It's going to seem like not enough chocolate, but once it melts, it'll be fine. I disregarded the recipe and put on too many chocolate chips...although, can there really ever be too many chocolate chips?? (no, there can not) After five minutes, you should be able to spread the melting chocolate over the carmel layer.

This is the closest shot of an "end result" you're going to get. Even though I displayed the finished candy (brake up into pieces once it's cooled, like "bark") in one of my beautiful vintage crystal bowls, every time I'd start eating it my brain would go into some sort of drugged coma and I'd forget to snap a photo. Yeah, it's that good. Find the more-coherent Smitten Kitchen recipe here.

This next recipe was ordained upon me by my mother for the occasion of my family Passover dinner over the weekend. Happy to get an assignment more grown-up than "pick up a bottle of red wine", I didn't want to fuck this up. To ensure that I didn't leave out one of the five ingredients (yes! just five ingredients!) I trekked to my grandma's house early to be supervised (and photographed) by my domestically-abled older sister, who was busy with her own (way more grown-up) dinner assignments.

My sister: the mature one in the family (no seriously. I actually told her to hold them up like that.)

Macaroons!

This recipe is incredibly easy, as you can probably surmise from the minuscule ingredient list, yet I still managed to fuck them up a little. The first thing I did wrong was that the eggs were too cold. They're supposed to be at room temperature and I didn't remember that till an hour before I had to start baking. Sue me.

The second fail is that I refuse to buy parchment paper because it seems like a stupid and unnecessary purchase...until I decide to bake something that calls for it to be put on the baking sheet lest you want all the cookies you put so much hard work into stick stubbornly to the baking sheet, even though you coated that mother fucker with butter, dammit.

But when have you known me to be the type of person to let a little stress get in the way of looking cute? Never, that's when.

Take those two room temp (ha!) egg whites and, using an electric mixer because there's no way to sufficiently whisk them into firm peaks by hand, beat the shit out of them.

Oh wait. Did I say I made two mistakes?? What I meant by "two", was "three". That third mistake was returning my hand-held mixer the previous week because it kinda sucked.

Again with the non stressed-out cuteness! Damn I'm good at this "domestic" thing. And so modest, too!

God this is getting to be a long post. Lets shorten it up, shall we?

Do this with the batter.

Until it looks like this.

Let your sister eat the leftover batter because she helped you, but also cause she's your big sister so you have to do what she says.

Put them in the oven at 325 until they look like this.

If, for some reason, you can't follow directions, you can find a recipe that's more "thorough" and "easy to follow" here. You can also impress your friends (IE. cover up the burnt bottoms) by dipping them in melted chocolate and letting them cool on parchme...oh fuck it, just eat em.