Tea and Sympathy

I saw these yumyum-looking cookies, chocolate Early Grey sandwich cookies with white chocolate filling, a few months ago and I thought 3 things, 1. I love chocolate. 2. I love Earl Grey tea and 3. I love fillings/icings/frostings, and then my mind conjured up all the lovely desserts that I love to consume.

I had several goals for these cookies, and maybe I set my expectations too high, but let's just say that the goals were not satisfied. I should preface why the goals were not completed with the following statement: I have been feeling very experimental in the kitchen and a wee bit too adventurous, so needless to say, these cookies were a humbling experience. I took the MacGuyver approach to these cookies: I had all the necessary ingredients to make them, but I kind of made up the recipe using elements from a bunch of different ones. Bad Idea. I even bought a cute duck shaped cookie cutter for the occasion (I don't even like ducks, but the cuteness of this cookie cutter overcame me.). I wanted the cookies to be a crunchy shortbread, not chewy, and I wanted the white chocolate filling to be creamy and fluffy, but I also wanted it to harden a little bit in between the cookies. The cookie dough was a disaster. I couldn't even use the cookie cutter because it was so gooey. The cookies tasted fine, they actually had a pretty nice flavor. I loved the integration of the chocolate and bergamot (from the Earl Grey). I think my disheartened mood had to do with my little duckie cookie cutter ultimately getting excluded from the project. A quick word on the filling. I was really amped about the filling because I thought it would blend well with the cookies and be absolutely delicious. However, I did not use a double boiler to melt the white chocolate. Bad Idea. I scalded the chocolate, it separated from the butter and it was a hot mess. I didn't have enough white chocolate to try to remake it (and I was snowed in), so I got aggravated and was overcome with disappointment. The chocolate Earl Grey sandwich cookies with white chocolate filling defeated me on Saturday night. The only encouraging thing about this story is that they tasted better the next day, go figure. On Monday night, I wanted to prove to myself that I could make other cookies without botching them up. Well, I made chocolate chocolate chip cookies (I'd venture to call chocolate an obsession...), and now I'm running out my ears in cookies. Luckily everybody at my office likes my confections enough to humor me; hopefully they'll gobble them all up! Chocolate Cakery Shenanigans Update: The latest cakes I have made in the past week are some spicy molten chocolate cakes (recipe compliments of Niknak); they are delectable. I bought some little red ramekins to bake them in, and when you cut into them, chocolate lava runs out of them. They are seriously fancy restaurant quality, just because of the lava. Perfect with a light dusting of confectioner's sugar and a little scoop of vanilla ice cream. MMMMMmm.