When I was in Portland, I spent some time at the library. One afternoon, I happened upon a recipe in a magazine for “Blueberries & Cream Cookies.” I thought to myself: Wow. And so I scribbled the ingredients down into my journal and ran up Munjoy Hill to bake with Ben. This is what came of the BCC’s:
I know. Amazing. And in this photo, you can see that the edges of the cookies became kind of caramelized, adding this crunchy-toffee kick. I ranted and raved: these were the best cookies I had ever made! And it was all thanks to these “Milk Crumbs” that go into the dough.Milk crumbs are made of dry milk powder, corn starch, sugar, flour, butter, salt and melted butter. You bake them ahead of time, and they keep for about a week. So there ya go. Milk Crumbs. Interesting.
Last night, I set to work recreating MCC’s. (Since dried blueberries are so expensive, I’m changing the name of the cookies to plain old Milk Crumb Cookies. Leaves the door open for experimentation.) As you can see by the image above, baking cookies sometimes collides with apéro’s. Not a bad thing. As I’m fluffing my milk crumbs with a fork, I’m noting all of the autumn decor around the house. It snuck up on me this year. The random acorn cornucopia shrines should’ve prepped me.
So here we tumble into a new season. Working in a coffee shop, you talk about the weather with every other customer, yet it never really sinks in. The trees are props on screens, in windows. The leaves are filler. Fluff. I think I’m just now, today, realizing that my favorite season has ambushed me. Is everywhere. I ought to have made pumpkin bread the topic of this blog entry. That’s more fall-ish. However, I gotta say–these cookies totally trump the last loaf of pum’kin bread I baked. I thought they turned out a little crunchier than the Portland variety, however this batch was a little smaller than the others. Also, I changed up the ingredients. I did more dried fruits: figs, raisins, dried cranberries, and some chocolate chips, too.
It might sound funny, but I want this recipe to be my signature recipe. You know how some people have their specialty dish? I want to be the gal who makes killer Milk Crumb Cookies. Once I make a few batches and get the name out there, then maybe I can move on to the acronym that makes them sound like electronic equipment or something. For now, I bake. I distribute. I rant and rave. And soon I’ll have the whole block moony over Milk Crumb Cookies. Ahem, Kelli’s Milk Crumb Cookies.
