All the Systems In One Place

In my family there are a set of traditional Christmas cookies (which probably aren't normally associated with Christmas in other families) that my mom makes every year. And they're mostly awesome, but also a lot of work, so I only get them once a year.

I decided last week to try making the chocolate bars. Now I know these are a pain to make because they require grating a bar of German chocolate, and that's difficult because it tends to melt. My mom goes through a whole process that involves freezing the blender and it's still a pain. I can't be bothered to do that, so I just bought sweet cocoa powder. Because I'm lazy that way.

Anyhow, here's the original (*) recipe:

Cookies:

• 1 egg white
• 1 whole egg
• 1 cup superfine sugar
• 90 grams grated chocolate
• 1/2 lb grated almonds

Icing:

• 1 egg white
• 5 Tbsp powdered sugar

(*) Original = the way I got it from my mom. She has modified it over the years based on a recipe from her mother-in-law who, I think, translated the recipe from German.

Anyhow, the first thing to notice here is that things are in both English and metric units as well as weights and volumes. That's pretty impressive for a recipe that really only has five different ingredients.

So I made the cookies pretty quickly, not having to freeze my blender and all. It's supposed to make 8 dozen and I ended up with maybe 3 dozen, so I guess I'm supposed to make them smaller next time, but honestly, who has time for that?

Then I had to bake them. The front of the card says 240 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The back of the card has all of the different things my mom has tried over the years, from modifying the baking time and temperature, to alternating the racks during baking and level of violence ("2006  Break choc into small pieces with meat hammer or the like before adding to blender").

I'll just say right now that 300 degrees for 35 minutes burned them.

Did I eat them anyway? Of course I did.