This is a bit of a follow up to the previous post about shortbread. Kind of old news if you’ve been keeping up with me on Twitter or Facebook, but I think it’s still worthwhile talking about it here. So, in the last post I was wondering whether to glaze the cookies or not. I ended up doing so. I did use Bailey’s. The past few times I’ve iced shortbread cookies I just did a simple glaze. It was basically a cup of icing sugar well blended with 2-3 tablespoons of some flavouring. Lemon was awesome. Coffee and pomegranate were mild. I did some more searching online for an icing recipe and found one that used light corn syrup. I made the assumption that using it probably made for a harder and shinier coating. I gave it a shot. In place of milk I used Bailey’s, and in place of almond extract I used vanilla. The result was rather good. The smell of Irish cream was pretty strong. I was actually afraid the alcohol might overpower the whole thing, but over time the smell got weaker. Being that the glaze was brown, it was a bit tough seeing which parts of the cookies weren’t coated. The end product had a few spots that were missed. I think next time I’ll probably throw in a few drops of colouring to make the coating stand out.

In the end, they looked awesome. They were well received. I think one guy marvelled at how the cookies seemed to melt in his mouth. I guess I owe it to a good recipe. Shortbread is pretty simple too. It’s a good recipe to keep on hand.

Still riding on the urge to bake, I decided to give Food Network’s cooking challenge a shot. This month it’s craggy chocolate cake. Four ingredients to a flourless chocolate cake. That’s crazy! Assembling was interesting. The tricky part for me was mixing the three other ingredients to the meringue. I wanted to make sure it was all mixed, but not to the point where I was killing all of the air I’d just beaten into the egg whites. The batter seemed to have chunks of meringue when I poured it out, but I hoped that they’d just get incorporated somehow. In the end, the results looked pretty cool. The cake cracked and sank just like the recipe said it would. Frankly, I think the cake looks awesome.

I made this cake for a get together tomorrow, so I haven’t yet cut into it. I’m a little bit nervous about bringing it. It doesn’t look like a standard chocolate cake, and the cracked and craggy look may be off-putting. Well, if no one eats it then it means more for me. I know that it’s going to taste bloody awesome. So there. I’ll let you all know what happened with this cake.