Cookie Dough
I'm not really much of a cook. I do enjoy baking, but as for cooking a proper meal, there are very few things in my repertoire, so my friends and guests tend to end up with the same meals when they come around. I am not an expert in the kitchen, so substituting ingredients is something I rarely feel comfortable with.
All that being said, when I have really wanted to make something here, shopping can be a bit stressful. I'm looking for ingredients that I know at home, and while I'm finding most of them, many have different names I'm not accustomed to, they are sold in different amounts and of course they are not always on the isle where I would expect to find them at home.
Earlier this week, I made a big trip to Tesco, my local grocery store, which is similar to a Super Wal-Mart and has everything you could want from yoga mats to scarves to bananas to shampoo to freshly baked muffins. It is a blessing to have everything in one place, but often times, it is overwhelming. Thankfully, grocery stores here deliver, which has been a huge blessing, but when I'm shopping for things that I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for, I have a harder time ordering online.
I went to the store with the intention of buying ingredients for four main things that I'll be putting in the freezer or preparing for some bits of Thanksgiving celebrations: sweet potato casserole, sausage balls, sausage biscuits and sugar cookies (to use with my turkey cookie cutter!). I assumed none of this would be all too difficult to find.
We know what assuming does, right? I thought the ingredients for the sweet potato casserole would be the most difficult, but that was the easy bit. However, marshmallows here are very different and only come in a pink and white combination bag, so the topping on the casserole may look a little funny. Sausage is an abundant meat here in the UK, but I am used to buying Jimmy Dean's 1 pound of sausage meat and they don't seem to know about Jimmy here (I won't tell you what I learned while researching what I should be looking for). I was able to find sausage meat after speaking with a helpful attendant before, but there was none when I went this week. I went to the butcher who could not have been more helpful, but told me she was fairly certain they had been out of it for quite sometime, so she helped me find some sausage where the casing would be easy to take off.... I'll let you know how it turns out! (When I got home, I tried another grocery store online and they did have sausage meat, so now I have a mix!)
Then, the cookie dough. I love baking cookies: butterscotch-chocolate chip, white chocolate blueberry, snickerdoodles, and peanut butter are some of my favorite! But when the holidays roll around, my favorite thing is actually to buy that blue tube of cookie dough that that lovely chubby dough boy makes, cut out shapes and decorate them with bright, colorful designs. I realized that that little dough boy may not be easily found here, but I assumed there might be a box or bag mix. Again with the assuming... I found gingerbread, shortbread, white-chocolate macadamia nut, chocolate chip and brownie mixes and refrigerated packs of dough, but no sugar cookie dough in either store.
"That's ok!" seems to be my new motto and I decided making my own dough could be a fun new part of the experiment. So tonight, for what I believe may be the first time in my life, I made plain sugar cookie dough. And I must admit, it is delicious! I do believe that the best thing about making cookies is the cookie dough, or perhaps the smell of fresh cookies that seems to linger in the house for hours, but as the cookies are not yet baked, I enjoyed quite a bit of the first reason.
Tonight, I made the dough, chilled it, rolled it out and then put it in the freezer so it will be ready to be cut up into turkeys tomorrow! Things here are different, not necessarily better or worse, just different, cookie dough included, but from where I'm sitting right now, it's pretty delicious!
All that being said, when I have really wanted to make something here, shopping can be a bit stressful. I'm looking for ingredients that I know at home, and while I'm finding most of them, many have different names I'm not accustomed to, they are sold in different amounts and of course they are not always on the isle where I would expect to find them at home.
Earlier this week, I made a big trip to Tesco, my local grocery store, which is similar to a Super Wal-Mart and has everything you could want from yoga mats to scarves to bananas to shampoo to freshly baked muffins. It is a blessing to have everything in one place, but often times, it is overwhelming. Thankfully, grocery stores here deliver, which has been a huge blessing, but when I'm shopping for things that I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for, I have a harder time ordering online.
I went to the store with the intention of buying ingredients for four main things that I'll be putting in the freezer or preparing for some bits of Thanksgiving celebrations: sweet potato casserole, sausage balls, sausage biscuits and sugar cookies (to use with my turkey cookie cutter!). I assumed none of this would be all too difficult to find.
We know what assuming does, right? I thought the ingredients for the sweet potato casserole would be the most difficult, but that was the easy bit. However, marshmallows here are very different and only come in a pink and white combination bag, so the topping on the casserole may look a little funny. Sausage is an abundant meat here in the UK, but I am used to buying Jimmy Dean's 1 pound of sausage meat and they don't seem to know about Jimmy here (I won't tell you what I learned while researching what I should be looking for). I was able to find sausage meat after speaking with a helpful attendant before, but there was none when I went this week. I went to the butcher who could not have been more helpful, but told me she was fairly certain they had been out of it for quite sometime, so she helped me find some sausage where the casing would be easy to take off.... I'll let you know how it turns out! (When I got home, I tried another grocery store online and they did have sausage meat, so now I have a mix!)
Then, the cookie dough. I love baking cookies: butterscotch-chocolate chip, white chocolate blueberry, snickerdoodles, and peanut butter are some of my favorite! But when the holidays roll around, my favorite thing is actually to buy that blue tube of cookie dough that that lovely chubby dough boy makes, cut out shapes and decorate them with bright, colorful designs. I realized that that little dough boy may not be easily found here, but I assumed there might be a box or bag mix. Again with the assuming... I found gingerbread, shortbread, white-chocolate macadamia nut, chocolate chip and brownie mixes and refrigerated packs of dough, but no sugar cookie dough in either store.
"That's ok!" seems to be my new motto and I decided making my own dough could be a fun new part of the experiment. So tonight, for what I believe may be the first time in my life, I made plain sugar cookie dough. And I must admit, it is delicious! I do believe that the best thing about making cookies is the cookie dough, or perhaps the smell of fresh cookies that seems to linger in the house for hours, but as the cookies are not yet baked, I enjoyed quite a bit of the first reason.
Tonight, I made the dough, chilled it, rolled it out and then put it in the freezer so it will be ready to be cut up into turkeys tomorrow! Things here are different, not necessarily better or worse, just different, cookie dough included, but from where I'm sitting right now, it's pretty delicious!
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