Cookies, Treasures and Sunshine

Yes, you know what time it is. 

It's Cookie time.  When the urge to bake something sweet strikes.. ..When your better judgement breathes it's last breath and the hounds of hunger for something sweet and sinful ride across your landscape of resolve.... It's time to bake cookies.

This happens to me frequently. It's a weakness in my DNA.  I did listen to my long ago Weight Watcher lecturer who said...."If you don't have the bad stuff in the house, you won't have it around to eat." ... but that doesn't stop me when I really want something like Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream . The store is only 10-15 minutes away, so I usually fabricate a list of things that I need (to make the trip worthwhile), including Ben and Jerry's and then I drive down the hill and into town. NOTHING stops me from my craving for the sensual delight of really good ice cream. Well, I'm sure there is something that would stop me but last Thursday I couldn't remember what it was. So, on this very lovely California dreamin' day, I got the urge for something sweet and went looking into the cupboard and online for anything I could make without getting into the car and driving somewhere

I was alone because the Prospector was treasure hunting with friends... spending the day digging in old outhouses, foundations and chimneys in the gold camps around this area for the elusive hidden gold treasure he thinks is still waiting for him in the ruins of yesteryear.

I found treasure too. I found a bag of Heath Toffee Bits in the cupboard. I have no idea how it got there. HA! It was glowing with light and shinning in it's beautiful bag. There must be a connection here. Heath Bar Chips and Coffee Heath Bar Crunch Ice Cream?? It must have been a sign from my inner child saying..." This will satisfy your craving but you will have to work for the pleasure." 

So I did. First I went out to the chicken house for some fresh, unrefrigerated eggs. That's so I can eat the raw cookie dough without fear of some horrible ailment that they say hides in store bought eggs. I really wonder about that.

 Then, I found a better recipe online than the one on the back of the toffee bits package ...

 Adapted some ingredients and ...

And baked some cookies.....

These cookies are delicious. You must let them stay on the pan for a minute or two and then remove them fast. The toffee bits want to stick to the cookie pan. It says to grease the pan but they still seem to stick. I used my mother's old metal spatula. It works better than a Teflon one does.

Eight or nine minutes at 350 degrees seems to be just about right.

This is a very sweet cookie. I think that you could reduce the sugar even more than I did.  Also they tend to stick to each other in the cookie jar and I found they don't stick if you put them in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator.

The Prospector came home with some muddy broken pieces of ironstone, which I cleaned up and a really cool little, twelve sided  bottle that still has something inside of it and a cork in it.

This little bottle reminds me of Alice In Wonderland..... the bottle that said "Drink me." Remember? Only we thought it might have Nitroglycerin left in it because it was found near an old mine so we didn't want to move it around very much. I don't think that's what is in it. The Prospector had to dig it up and move it around a lot and it hasn't exploded yet. OK, I tested it. I carefully rolled it across a slab of quartzite outside and it didn't explode.Maybe it's just water. We don't know and we don't want to dig the cork out... Better to leave it as it is.
It's been in a  fire. The glass is so beautiful because of this. The glass has a rainbow effect, almost a mother of pearl look to it. I love these little treasures that we find around here. It's almost better than panning for gold and you find more of it. I will put it in the window with the other little bottle that my friend "C" gave me last year.

So we had dinner and ate cookies. It was a very satisfying day.