Yankee Doodle Yummies and Lemon Sponge Pudding

I'd sworn off baking for a while a couple days before the Fourth, but when my friend Rachel invited me to come with them for fireworks I decided I'd make an exception for some picnicky treats. After all, I wouldn't be eating them--mostly--and so they wouldn't go to MY hips, right? I'd had my eye on my roommate's cake decorating bag tips (don't worry, Joy, I washed them out afterward!) so I got on allrecipes.com for a cookie recipe and an icing recipe. I wasn't trying to get creative, since I was saving that for the decorating, so I didn't do anything daring with my picks. There were just two differences from the recipes as given: Since I didn't have any lemon extract, I used almond extract instead in the cookies, and since I wanted the icing to air-dry and allow the decorated cookies to stack afterward, I left out one of the tablespoons of milk. I didn't figure it would harm the icing that much, and indeed it didn't seem to negatively affect the stiffness while decorating at all, and the icing did dry nicely afterward. Oh, nearly forgot--I didn't have enough flour for a full batch of cookies, so I divided the recipe in half, and it STILL made way too many cookies! XD

The cookies were very crisp, especially the ones that didn't get iced, for the good reason that they were pretty dang greasy. They didn't taste greasy, but the ones I left drying out on a paper plate overnight left grease marks. I'm not really surprised; if you look at the recipe, it has both butter AND vegetable oil! Glah! Glad I gave most of those away, haha. The icing was delicious and not nearly as grease-laden. I divided it into three batches and colored two of them, and spent a while the night of the 3rd decorating a pie-plate full of them. THEY SO PURTY. x3





























I also made some meringue cookies as a low-cal alternative, but almost all of them collapsed or kind of melted except for one little batch, which I took over to Rachel's, and even those were pretty crumbly by the time we opened the tupperware tub. I expressed concern over my apparent inability to make a meringue, and Rachel's mom pointed out that it was because of the humidity. MAJOR FACEPALM. I feel much better about it now, but that hasn't kept the humidity from pretty much dissolving the leftover collapsed meringues back home until I finally had to throw them out.

Now that we're all caught up! So today I had a root canal, and they numbed my face all up, right? Well, after trying to eat a bowl of ramen and chomping all over my lips and tongue, I thought "You know what would be yummy? Some pudding!" But of course I have no pudding in the apartment, and no money to buy pudding mix with because my debit card STILL hasn't come. -_- So I looked up some recipes, and after flipping through a couple dozen on allrecipes.com, finally found one that didn't call for cornstarch or molasses or a dozen egg yolks or any number of other things I had no more of than pudding mix.

It was this recipe for lemon sponge pudding, and, well, long story short, although I tried very hard and believed in myself and even had half a fresh lemon still hanging around, something went wrong at some stage of adding the egg, I think, and I ended up with kind of a lumpy lemon soup. Also way too much zest. It was still tasty, though, despite the something to be desired in the texture, and I could eat it without chewing up my tingly face. It was just five minutes of prep time, and served two very nicely in individual mugs (I don't have custard cups, so I improvised), so I'm sure I'll have to try this again for my roommate and I.