ニッキーサンタ / Nikki Santa

It's already tomorrow in Japan, but I am on 100% Midwestern Uh-murr-ican time right now, and there are still about 50 minutes to go 'til Christmas day. Most of you probably already know I'm back in the States for the holidays, since the majority of people who read this blog are probably immediate family, or those whom I consider family by now.

Anywho, making a quick post, in the dark, waiting for my parents to zonk ou-- I mean, Santa to come to our house. So Happy Christmas, Merry Yule, Festive Saturnalia, and a belated happy birthday to Emperor Akihito, who turned 75 on Tuesday. An early X-mas present from one of my first-year students. Drawn on the back of a half-finished listening exam :b

Microwave Cookies, Ep. 2

Episode II: Shot Glass Cookies

So Tuesday was my last eikaiwa (English conversation) class of the year, 'cause when class meets again on Dec. 23, the Emperor's birthday, I will be on a plane to Minnesota. Because AJ & I were doing a Christmasy sorta lesson anyway, and because baking cookies is awesome, I decided to make more microven cookies. This time, cut-outs, of the sort Mom doesn't get to make with me this year 'cause I'll just barely be home in time for X-mas.

I went to Jusco to try and find cut-out cookie fixins, such as colored frosting and little cookie shapes. Unfortunately I couldn't find so much as a pack of food coloring, and there were no holiday-themed cut-out patterns, just a bunch of wonky hearts that curved in to one side for some reason.

Not to be discouraged, I picked up some powdered sugar anyway and headed home to mix up the dough. I decided I'd make snowmen, that being about the only Christmasy thing I could think of with just white frosting. I ended up using a shot glass to cut out the cookies and arranged them in columns of three to make the bodies, thusly --->
Their faces and buttons are made of crushed chocolate bar. You wouldn't believe the price of sprinkles in this country.

(Sorry it's all sideways, my photo software is dumb)

They were a big hit with the class - everybody wanted a second helping, and it was a good thing there were only 10 people there, because I barely managed to squeeze 24 cookies out of this recipe and I gave a few out between Sunday, when I made them, and Tuesday night. Anyway, here is the very simple recipe (again, unless you alter it, this will only yield MAYBE 24 cookies, and that's only if you use a shot glass or something of equivalent size to cut 'em out. Bigger means fewer):

6 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
* cream these together until smooth & approaching mousse-like consistency *

1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* stir these in next *

1 & 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
* stir these in SLOWLY *
~ oh yeah, should prob'ly tell you at this point to pre-heat the oven, if you have one, to 350 F. I just set my microven for 170 C (approximately the same) and let it run for a bit right before I started baking.
~ put the dough in saran wrap & let it sit in the fridge for about an hour. Alternately, if you have no central heating or insulation like me, turn off the heat and set it on the kitchen counter. Works just as well.
~ roll it out to about 1/4 inch thickness, and using your shot glass or whatever punch out the shapes you fancy
~put 'em on a baking sheet, pop 'em in, and hey-presto in 8 - 10 minutes you've got cookies! Let them cool for a bit, then you can frost them using a mixture of 1 cup powdered sugar and juuuuuust enough hot water to make it good 'n pasty. Like rubber cement. Rubber cement you can put on cookies without poisoning them.

Bravo, Deutschland

(I swear I'm not blogging at work . . . >__>)
Kudos go out to Germany this morning, for breaking down the institution of fallacious gender divides, one prison at a time.

I'm sure there were safety concerns at play amongst the people opposed to this reform, under the assumption that the rowdy and wily boys will figure out a way to jerry-rig an explosive or something out of moisturizer bottles and eyebrow-tweezers.

But let's be serious here - how much can those poor flaky-skinned, unibrow-plagued buggers really know about the chemical and physical properties of these things? Again, no thanks to gender discrimination, the women's ward has the unfair advantage of expertise.