![]() by Nan Jan and I estimate that we baked up more than 100 dozen cookies in the process of coming up with 20 recipes for the GadgetGals Holiday Cookie Cookbook. To help us decide what worked, we called on family and friends to critique our creations. Friends Shirley and Larry had this to say when asked about their cookie-taster experiences. What made you agree to be a cookie taster? Shirley: I knew you would come up with wonderful ideas, and I thought it would be fun to try them. You said you were going to use some different ingredients, so I also thought it would be fun to see if I could figure out what was in the cookies. Larry: Trying new cookies I hadn't the foggiest idea existed, and trying to figure out what the taste was, what the ingredients were, new things. What did you find most fun or surprising about tasting? S: Well, probably when you also chose to make fresh hot cocoa, which probably wasn't the best palate cleanser! Ha! I really liked the surprise cookies [Surprise Chocolate Crinkles] with bacon because Larry was totally baffled, and we had a contest to figure it out. I enjoyed the great variety of flavors and shapes as well as many different cookie textures. L: Olive oil in the biscotti. That was kind of out there for me. And how much work you went to to create these cookies; that was my biggest surprise. Were there any down sides to tasting? S: Because we tasted recipes at different stages of their development, the recipes sometimes still needed to be refined. So we didn't always get to taste the final version as it is printed. L: I had a hard time making negative comments about any of the cookies knowing you had tried so hard. I tried to come up with diplomatic ways of saying "this cookie isn't as good as that one." One more thing: There weren't enough cookies to test! Ha, ha! What is your favorite cookie in the book? S: It's a toss-up between the gingerbread cookies that contain chipotle [Fire-and-Spice Gingerbread Cookies] and the bacon ones with the chocolate [Surprise Chocolate Crinkles]. L. At each tasting event, I found a favorite. The chocolate macaroons are really good. And the lingonberry thumbprints; I like the crunchy cookie with the soft jam. And the chipotle gingerbread cookies.
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