Yeah, you read that right.
Beer... is there anything it can't improve? Digestion, sleep, interpersonal relationships, weight, beer impacts all of these in a healthy and positive way. Wait... unless I'm thinking about masturbation. I get the two confused sometimes.
Don't worry. I'm 74% sure I've got the right one for this recipe. Just in case, though, you may want to make a copy of this recipe and substitute every instance of "beer" in this post with "masturbation." That way, if you make these and they don't turn out right, you'll know I fucked up, and you can make it again with masturbation.
Phew, glad we got that one cleared up!
Take note that these are not especially sweet cookies, not the way most people are used to thinking of. There is a tiny, subtle sweetness to them, but the real kickassitude behind these cookies is their texture and lightness. These are excellent cookies for eating alongside bittersweet beverages like tea and coffee.
Or, you know, beer.
(Did you make your substitution yet? Remember, it could be important later one)
Point being, if you're looking to stuff your face with sugar and stickiness, these ain't the cookies for you. Go buy some fucking box mix and you know what, don't even bother baking it, just put it in a mixing bowl, pour some milk over it, and it eat with a spoon while you watch bad reruns of crappy shows from your childhood that you still insist are good because you can't bear the thought of having wasted all those hours you could have spent running outside and playing and learning on stupid cop shows and fuck-ugly MTV beach parties.
Ahem. Ingredients:
-Some flour. Like, I dunno, a cup and a half or something.
-Little bit of baking soda. Little bit. Jussaweebit.
-Quarta cuppa butta. Microwave that in the mixing bowl for a minute.
-Hazelnuts, a whole fucking cup of delicious, expensive hazelnuts.
-Quarta cuppa sesame seeds. For extra credit, heat these in an un-oiled skillet for just a minute until theyget kinda golden brown.
-An egg. White, brown, speckled, Bald Eagle, Velociraptor, doesn't fucking matter. Stop asking me so many goddamn stupid questions.
-A cup of sugar. Whatever kind of sugar you like. I used grainy turbinado sugar, the stuff with the molasses still in it, but the texture of the sugar didn't show up at all, so I seriously doubt it matters what kind you use.
-Two cupsa good beer*
Here's where it gets fun. What kinda beer are you gonna use? ANY FUCKING KIND YOU LIKE. Normal alcohol rules apply - don't cook with anything you wouldn't happily drink, with the exception being if you didn't like something, but you can tell it was still good-quality, just not to you fancy-schmancy, namby-pampy tastes. For my first outing with this, I used New Belgium's "Shift" Pale Lager, which had a very light body and a respectable amount of hop bitterness and aroma. Not a bad beer, and I'm glad I tried it, but not exactly my favorite. I did realize that it would be awesome to use for cooking if I needed just a slight hint of bittersweetness, though, so I kept half a can in a water bottle for purposes of CULINARY NECROMANCY. I can see this working amazing with a nut brown or a honey brown ale, a sweet marzen or doppelbock, or (as The Thirsty Wench herself pointed out) an oatmeal stout. On the other hand, you could go the complete opposite direction, and get out your IPAs* or CDAs* or anything that's not PBR,* and ramp up the bitterness and dryness. I could see that working extremely well, actually, and now I wish I had a bottle of Arrogant Bastard to try this out with. Try it a couple of different ways, so what turns out delicious, then report back to me so I can make it myself.
*(India Pale Ale, Cascadian Dark Ale, and Utterly Disgusting Horse Piss, for those unfamiliar with the nuances of beer geek language)
Alright, preheat your oven to 350, and just leave it to do its thing while you work. In a mixing bowl (a different one than you use to entertain your sorrows and wasted formative years) pour in the melted butter and all the sugar, and stir that in. Once it's looking nice and mixed, crack yer egg and drop it in, then mix some more. This is called creaming, because you'll cream your pants when you smell how delicious this mixture is. Seriously, you won't even need to resort to beer to reach a state of fundamental rapture and then immediately have to do laundry. Dissolve your baking soda in about half a cup of warm water, then dump that in, too, and stir it up. Then mix in the nuts and seeds and, yeah, you guessed it, stir.
Add one cup of flour, and mix that in. Add enough beer to turn your suddenly-dry-and-powdery mixture back into something more like proper batter. Repeat until all the flour has been used. If you used too much beer for the last time, just add a little extra flour, no biggie. That just means you'll get more cookies. OH THE HUMANITY.
Lick the batter off your mixing spoon, like a proper fucking baker, and then, maybe with a different spoon if you're worried about diseases and shit (but who cares, right, you're the only one who's going to be eating these, right, I mean why else would you even bake cookies unless you're depressed and alone JUST LIKE ME), scoop up some batter and drop it onto an un-oiled cooking sheet. I made drops about the size of the ring my thumb and middle finger make, but your hands might not be caveman hands like mine, so make yours a little smaller. You and your normal-sized fingers. Think that makes you special, don't you? Long-fingered freak. In the good old days, we would have put your kind in manacles and forced you to play the piano for us at parties. A piano SOAKED IN GASOLINE HANGING OVER A PIT OF FLAMES.
Speaking of flames, go ahead and put your cookies in the oven now, for ten minutes. That may seem short for cookies, but trust me, you really don't want to overcook these babies. Not like your neighbor's babies. Doesn't really matter how much you cook them. Unless you're going to eat them. In which case, you want to go about 45 minutes in a 450 degree oven, because otherwise you'll end up with their toesees and fingers charred, but the heart and other nutritious organs not even rare, and that's just a damn shame and after those ten minutes, take the cookies out and let them cool for about a minute. When you scrape them off with your spatula, you may notice these slide around more than most cookies. This is a good thing. Despite their apparent size, the beer you used to make these has made them light and spongy and sproingy like you won't believe. Seriously, pick up one of the cookies, and drop it on the baking sheet. That little fucker with BOUNCE. So fucking cool.
The hazelnuts and sesame seeds add this wonderful crunchy texture to what is otherwise a delightfully soft, light treat that you'd have to be a fat, disgusting pig that no one wants to take to the prom who'll die alone in their bed at age fifty of a pie-induced heart attack to feel bad about eating them. Like I said before, these are absolutely fantastic for teatime, especially if you dip them in the tea.
What's that? Tea's not badass enough for you? Well, Rambo, you know who drinks tea? HOMICIDE DETECTIVES. It gives them energy and alertness without all the stomach problems of coffee, and when you're staring at the body of the teenage girl who came to you for help just the other night, whose case your commanding Lieutenant ordered you to drop because of bullshit political reasons, and now she's dead, she's fly-food, because you didn't have the courage to stand up to your El-Tee, but don't worry, because as soon as you finish your cup of over-steeped Earl Gray and the delicious Beer Cookie that you baked that morning, you're gonna find out who did this, and oh, you'll make them pay in ways that the law can't even imagine, you really don't want to have to deal with unprofessional stomach problems.
That's who drinks tea. And eats beer cookies. And now, so can you.
Enjoy, my delightful little cranberry fuck-muffins.
