Recipe success!

During yesterday's Saturday on Tuesday (to now be known as "day of sanity"), I attempted my first 2 recipes from the Flour bakery cookbook my college roomate gave me for Christmas. 

The first recipe was the previously mentioned dog biscuits.  And the result is, She likes them!  She really likes them!  In fact, my dog deemed them hide-in-the-couch worthy, which means I'll be breaking these apart and making them in much smaller sizes in the future.  The first ones turned out pretty large, but the recipe intended them for special treats for folks that bring their dogs by - not for the day-to-day reward life of the average dog owner.  They might not look pretty, but they are Mathilda approved:

*The recipe made many more than this.

The second recipe I attempted was for Ginger Molasses cookies.  I have a very special weakness for such things.  As I always seem to do, I did not follow the recipe exactly.  My first substitution was Golden Eagle Table Syrup for the molasses.  You must know about this stuff.  It is made in my home town and the original factory was just a couple of miles from our farm (which is next-door in farm world).  Last I heard, you can only buy it in Alabama stores, but you can mail order here: http://www.goldeneaglesyrup.com/.  Then you will no longer be mocked by West Alabama women for daring to put Karo in your pecan pie.

I also substituted part of the butter with applesauce (chunky - because I already had an open jar in the frig), and half of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour.  I was also out of clove, so I used 1/4 tsp allspice.
This dough had to chill for at least 3 hours or overnight - which was fine with me because the dog biscuits need to remain in the oven for 8-12 hours so I couldn't bake the cookies until morning anyhow.

At first I was perplexed that the recipe said it made 16 cookies, then I read that you make the cookies 1/4 cup in size. These are big cookies.  Here they are rolled in sugar and on the cookie sheet:

These did not bake flat like regular ginger cookies.  Instead, they are beautiful clouds of spice.  Crunchy on the outside, cakey on the inside.  Delightful!  This could have been because of the added applesauce and wheat flour or because of the baking soda in the recipe. 

I brought them to work for sharing, but labeled them as "ginger apple cookies" in order to make the occasional chunks of apple seem totally purposeful.  People went crazy for them.  They were gone in an hour and I have a few recipe requests. 

I will post the recipe later.  I figure you'd appreciate my not posting it from memory just in case I leave out some really important ingredient that makes the cookie edible.

And I promise that if I ever get for reals about this blogging thing, then I will take better pictures :).