So now, after the long wait, we are on the second cookie in the 1001 Cookies cookbook: The Afghan Cookie.
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Since my husband Zach is temporarily unemployed, he is sometimes prone to the kinds of frenzied attacks of cleanliness that once assailed 50's housewives and caused them to scrub banisters with old toothbrushes. Yesterday, he spent about four hours cleaning the kitchen. Not just wiping the old food off the counters and picking up the beer bottles from the floor (which is what I mean by "clean the kitchen"), but he actually scrubbed the oven, got the collection of crumbs and twist-ties and pieces of torn-up junk mail from under the coils of the burners (so now the house doesn't fill with smoke when I make tea!), and even moved our shelving, which hid a petrified potato and a sponge from last January, which might have been the last time I actually scrubbed the floor. It was amazing.
After Zach's wonderful job of creating one clean room in the house, I pretty much want to be in the kitchen all of the time. So on a Sunday night, after six hours of work (and no nap!), at 9:30 PM, I started on my Afghan Cookies.
Afghan cookies have one of the weirdest combination of ingredients that I've seen yet: dates, corn flakes, cocoa. Being a budget shopper, I bough both generic cocoa and cornflakes, those kinds of awful industrial cornflakes that somehow taste even worse than their branded counterpart.
Since I haven't baked in almost a year, and since the kitchen looks completely different than I remember from the last time I actually did anything in it besides make a pop-tart, I spent the first 20 minutes trying to find measuring cups. I figured Zach had put them in some mysterious place (like a drawer instead of jumbled in a big mixing bowl), but I found them eventually in the mountain of dirty dishes.
Before I get to the recipe, let's learn some history, shall we?
Ok, after about fifteen minutes of hardcore research (google), I find that Afghan cookies originated in New Zealand, not Afghanistan as the name might lead you to believe, and the name is, as the Wikipedia entry puts it, "mysterious". Some recipes have minor variations on the one I used--some do not use dates, some use dark chocolate instead of cocoa powder, and some use a product called "wheatabix" instead of cornflakes. I bet they are a non-US version of cornflakes, but the name makes me think of something one might take for digestive issues. I'm sure they are wonderful, though! Please don't sue me, Wheatabix!
Here we go:
First off, you'll need about 1/3 cup finely-chopped dates. Boil some water in a teakettle and pour the boiling water over the dates until they are covered. Leave the dates for about ten minutes and then drain them of water. Preheat your oven for 350 degrees while waiting for the date mixture. Also, feel free to listen to Beyonce's B'day album throughout this entire process, just like I did.
Next, cream a 3/4 cup of softened butter with a 1/3 cup of sugar. The recipe called for vegetable shortening, which I didn't have, and which I never use for anything if I can help it. Add the mushy, drained dates and then a teaspoon of vanilla extract:
Next, I mixed one cup of flour, 1/3 cup of unsweetened cocoa, and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Then, I gradually mixed the dry ingredients into the wet ones until combined. Then, I folded in two cups of cornflakes:
If you used butter, as I did, you might want to chill the dough for a while before spooning walnut-sized pieces of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake on 350 degrees for about 10 to 13 minutes, depending on your oven.
Here is what my finished products looked like:
Verdict:
So, Zach liked these, but they came out not nearly sweet enough for my taste and far too soft. The butter might have been a bad choice, or perhaps the dates weren't drained enough and added too much liquid--either way, they were sort of fudgey in texture. Next time, I'm going to use slightly more corn flakes and more sugar.
