Inventive Baking Ideas Sought for Imaginary Cookies (A Mostly Nonsense Post)

[radiantfracture]

Do you anxiety bake? Does stirring batter induce a soothing flow state in you? Me too!

I also love autogenerated and random language poetry. I don't know what the connection might be. Anyway, here's a mostly nonsensical project.

I'd really quite like to derive real recipes for the imaginary cookies generated by the AI in the latest AI Weirdness post, particularly the following:

• Lord's Honey Fight (which sounds DELICIOUS)
• Fluffin Coffee Drops
• Quitterbread Bars (v. Harry Pottery)
• Merry Hunga Poppers
• Hand Buttersacks
• Hallowy Maples (also delicious)
• Apricot Dream Moles

If a recipe arises that seems workable, I will undertake to make it over the winter break and post the results.

Any thoughts or inspirations? How do the names work for you as prompts for sense-images and baking algorithms?






(All images originally from AI Weirdness)

First Reflections on Imaginary Cookies

The drawing in the post for Lord's Honey Fight shows a sort of cinnamon-roll-esque device. I think that's clever, but I'm not sure it's grand enough for a Lord's Honey Fight. Might that be a big pan of bars like a delicious, delicious field of mediaeval battle?

I'm thinking Fluffin Coffee Drops could be whipped shortbread with coffee flavouring. (I don't love whipped shortbread, but with coffee and a flurky name, maybe.)

Hallowy maples I see more or less as just a dish of cookie full of maple syrup. Maybe maple butter tarts (a real thing I had once and have never forgotten).

I was actually given a jar of homemade apricot jam that seems ideal for Apricot Dream Moles.

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Comments

[wendelah1]

I have the 1990 edition, revised by Marion Cunningham, which doesn't have your family's recipe, I am sad to say.

[radiantfracture]

I think the edition was my grandmother's, originally, and dates from the mid-fifties. I'll check when I visit later this month. It's a hardback with a softly gleaming gold cover.

I covet it -- I have a later edition, but it's not at all the same.

It's very simple -- my mom and I have a standing joke where I ask her for the recipe again every year.

Shortbread

1 c butter
1/2 c brown sugar
2 c flour (give or take)
1 egg yolk

Do the usual things, but add the flour gradually until the consistency is "like putty" and don't let any other liquid get in. Roll out about 1/4" thick and cut with a cookie cutter into rustic seasonal shapes. Bake at 325 F.

Don't overhandle and don't add too much flour.

* * * * * *

I can see the point of the cornstarch, but I've never liked the soft whippy shortbread compared to the solid slabs of my youth.