brownie roll-out cookies.

I wanted to post these on or before Valentine's Day so you'd have a little sumpin' to make for your honey, but it just didn't happen, folks. The good news is, you can make these anyway, in any shape you like and still for your honey any day of the year. The bad news is (you wanted the good news first, right?) that I started graduate school four weeks ago and I no longer have any semblance of a normal life. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the learning part, but I'm not diggin' the living out of my car which is now littered with granola bar wrappers and textbooks part of the deal.

 

I'm also not too hip on spending such copious amounts of time with men that are not Justin, namely Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and a number of other rhetoric-lovin' pansies that just don't do it for me like he does. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for men with a mind, but that's kind of where it stops for the Greeks for me. They probably can't benchpress a drachma, and overall spend entirely too much time thinking rather than doing. I'm not impressed that they were single guys, the way they never shut up and spend more time babbling on and on about oh my gracious what is it possible that we might know!?

  

My degree is in Professional Writing so I knew there would be a hefty amount of writing going on, but I'm taking a beating over here. The 20 hours a week of reading aside, I have written in excess of 16,000 words in the past four weeks for school alone. It's madeness, I tell you, madness! It made me miss this blog, my little foodie sanctuary where I can write about what I want, what I like to eat and it's a pleasurable thing. It's a welcomed relief from text books and the bizzaro written ramblings of feminist authors that make absolutely no sense and just fuels the idea that feminists can be pretty crazy. Well, at least it fuels my idea.

  

My valentine was working on the big day, which didn't really matter so much to me because Valentine's Day is more like happy commercially forced now's the day to make a move for someone you think you might like and to spend excessive amounts of cash even thought you don't love that person any less today than you did any other day plus i think the colors are tacky and you're working anyway so i'll pass on the candy that tastes like chalk day. But I couldn't resist the tackiness of it all, being in love in Love Day, as much as I hated to be a yuppie participant in the festivities.

  

So I made these cookies: chocolate brownie roll-out cookies cut into sickeningly sweet shapes of I Love You's and hearts and other sugar signs of my undying affection. Or something like that. The point is, they're delicious. They're chewy and chocolaty and rich, not at all sandy or crumbly like shortbread or sugar cookies. I decorated them with silver and white sprinkles and pink royal icing and in a way, it felt a little silly to be giving such a feminine display of affection to such a burly man, but he dove right in, no holds barred. He didn't stop to debate the moral implications of eating cookies, nor did he ponder himself into insanity contemplating the production of the cocoa that went into these cookies and if was an ethical transaction that I would end up with such a box of cocoa. No, he just ate. Finally.

  

Brownie Roll-Out Cookies
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Whisk dry flour, salt and baking powder in bowl and set aside. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa in mixer. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least one hour.

Roll out cookie dough on floured counter. Cut into desired shapes, brushing extra deposits of flour off the top. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 8 to 11 minutes (the former for 1/8-inch thick cookies, the latter for 1/4-inch cookies) until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly soft and puffed.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool.