Christmas Cache Cookies: An Ode to Bruno

Christmas Cache Cookies

My sourdough starter died. Well, actually, that's not entirely true.

I killed my sourdough starter. 

Specifically, I baked it.

My original sourdough starter, Bruno (may he rest in peace), was a good, faithful friend. We met once a week when I fed him, kept him warm, and he produced lots of yummy sour activity to flavor and rise our weekly bread. Thing is, Bruno, like me, only really thrived when he was warm. REAL warm. And, like me, he didn't appreciate Rochester winters. So on Bruno Days I would nestle him safely in the place I secretly yearn for myself.

The oven.

Bruno loved the oven light. He would cozy right up to it, like me with my weighted blanket. But, also like my weighted blanket, sometimes the oven light still wasn't enough to get warm. In these extreme cases I turn the oven on the WARM setting, count to 30, and then shut it off. Kind of like my mattress warmer.

It's not safe to keep your mattress warmer on all night. There are tags with big, bad warning signs to not do this because you could light your bed on fire or kill your sperm or other unspeakable horrors. I kept a similar warning sign on the oven (minus the sperm part), next to the clock, that read: "Is the starter in the oven?!?" This served as a heads-up to Roy that he ought not preheat the oven to 500 for coffee roasting without taking a peek inside to make sure Bruno hadn't already set up camp.

Roy didn't bake Bruno.

I did.

It was really cold on Thursday. Bruno wasn't producing at his normal pace, so I hit the WARM button. And then Felix had to go to the potty or Owen ran into a wall or James needed to know what was for dinner so he could start dreading it. I don't know which thing happened--probably all three. But thirty minutes later I finally noticed the oven clock was ticking down slowly and realized that I had cooked my best friend. 

I tried CPR. I scraped off his crusty, withered top, added some water and a little flour, and prayed that there was life under the surface. Nada.

I'm so sorry Bruno. I blame the kids.

So Bruno 2.0 is in process. And this means I have scads of sourdough discard to use. Some days this isn't a bad thing--sourdough starter added to pancake batter makes...more pancakes. But man cannot live on pancakes alone. (Unless that man is James.)

In addition to all of this sourdough starter, there's a basket up high, next to the fridge, that's been bothering me. It's the basket of the Christmas cache. You know what I'm talking about. People feel the need to gift each other things like boxed chocolates, bagged candies, and sugared nuts around the holidays. This is always a lovely gesture, but it's also overwhelming to be given so much bounty in a single week. So you tuck a bunch of the less perishable things away and try to forget about their existence until such time has passed that you can justify consuming dessert again.

That basket was full. It was taking up precious space. But I didn't want to pitch such sweet sentiments.

Insert Christmas Cache Cookies.

Did we need cookies in the house? We absolutely did not. Do I regret making the cookies after having consumed half a dozen of them in 24 hours? A bit. However, it is so JUSTIFIED because we did not WASTE the things. And there are few activities that provide sweeter satisfaction than using up a bunch of odds and ends that otherwise would get pitched. (This is also why we make Japanese Vegetable Pancakes, which James definitely would NOT live on alone...)

Anyway, inside the Christmas Cache Cookies we have:

• Browned Irish butter. This wasn't exactly needing to be used, but Irish butter is best used in baked goods such as these. I couldn't believe how much foamier this type of butter gets compared to normal stick butter.
• Reeses Pieces. When Roy noticed I was putting these in he started trying to sneak them out of the batter and I got real mad because I needed HALF A KILO of add-ins for the recipe. Get yer hands out!
• Chopped bittersweet chocolate. Leftover Aldi chocolate works real nice here.
• Girl Scout chocolate covered caramels. Thank you Lucas and Melissa--these were my favorite add-ins of all the add-ins.
• White chocolate chips. Because I still wasn't at half a kilo and there was a third of a bag left over from Cookiepalooza 2020.
• Sourdough discard. YES. YES! Waste not want not. And it's actually a real good thing I used it, because there was so much sweet in these cookies that the tang and complexity of the starter really tempered the tone of the cookie. Highly recommend.
• Flake salt. Flake salt on cookies is becoming my signature.

(We also have boring things like flour, sugar, and eggs.)

These cookies were the bomb.

And hopefully next week our sourdough bread will be the bomb thanks to Bruno 2.0. In the meantime though, I'm going to make a bigger sign to hang on the oven.