Cookie Failure

I've been looking at this recipe for almost a year now, waiting for the annual neighborhood cookie fest to try them out. "Why," you ask, "why didn't you test the recipe?" Well, because that would be like cheating somehow. And way too much work. I'm not going to test a recipe when making them just in the nick of time for the party is much more exciting. Anyway, things started out simple enough. Chocolate sugar cookies rolled out and 1 1/2" coins stamped out. I don't have a biscuit cutter, but the martini shaker top worked great. Bake the rounds and let them cool. The sandwich part of the cookie is next. Caramel, yummmm. Sugar, heavy cream, a little vanilla, a little corn syrup. Instructions said to cook this until the candy thermometer reached 250. My first hint of impending doom should have been reading that my thermometer calls this 'hard crack.' I cooked and cooked, then I added the butter per the instructions and let the whole mess cool for a bit. By the time I sat down to cut the rounds of caramel to be sandwiched between the chocolate cookies, the caramel wouldn't even peel off the waxed paper. I managed to make little caramel balls by rolling a piece between my palms, then squooshing that between the chocolate cookies. They looked pretty good, but it was slow going. Then Nora came over with a sample plate of what she'd made and I offered her one of the caramel cookies. It took her nearly five minutes to finally chew the damn thing into submission. When she could speak again, we agreed it was a good thing she didn't have any fillings because they would have been pulled out. Part of me wondered if I could cook the caramel less, but then I just wadded up the recipe and chucked it.

I just piled the chocolate coins in the middle of a ring of pecan bars (my second offering that turned out great) and headed over for John's killer eggnog.

So now I have this disk of caramel. Do you think I could melt it on the stove, add peanuts, and call it peanut brittle? I think I'll give it a try, but I think I'd need to cook it a bit more for the crunchy sort of brittle. The recipes I saw for brittle also included baking soda, so I'd have to add that too.

Nora made Earl Gray tea cookes, some chocolate wafers that had a gingery flavor, and my favorites were a savory kinda cheezy spicy salty wafer. I'll have to get that recipe from her.