Accidents can often lead to really tasty things. I went to make some chocolate chip cookies the other night, and found I was almost out of vanilla. While this is a problem that needs dealing with for other reasons (I tend to go through a lot of vanilla when I cook) it left me with something of a quandary--I had a partially mixed batch of cookie dough and no vanilla to speak of. That left me with two options, either pitch the dough or try something else. Since pitching was a distasteful thing, that left me digging through the cabinets to see what else was handy.
I've normally got a good supply of spices and flavorings on hand and, besides the odd thing I'm out of, I can put together pretty much anything I need to. A search turned up a few different mint extracts, some citrus (orange and tangerine) extracts, and some raspberry extract. Mint didn't seem right for what I was feeling, though it would've been OK with some extra chocolate in the batter, and the citrus just wasn't right.
So, it was off to finish with the raspberry extract. I threw some cocoa in the batter to add a light chocolate counterpoint and a little while later I had a damn good batch of cookies. Mmmm!
Next time, I think I'll give the mint a shot. That ought to be pretty tasty too.
Posted by Dan at August 4, 2002 01:12 AM