Game Day Goodies

New Message, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

What is it about going to a baseball game that just makes you want to shovel junk food into your face? I remember reading, somewhere healthy, that you can eat all the junk food you want...as long as you make it yourself. I will accept that as true...in moderation of course.
I decided to make cookies and White Bean Spread with Baked Wonton Chips. My new favorite version of hummus is now a Little Kitchen staple. It couldn't be easier to prepare and it tastes gorgeous.

Part two of the goodie basket wanted to be cookies, but what started as a simple adaption, morphed mildly out of control.
It started a couple of weeks ago as I was tooling around the Ferry Building Farmers Market and the surrounding chichi fooderies, looking for inspiration and basically killing time.  I always end up at my favorite store Sur la Table. I can waste hours in there looking at EVERY thing and end up buying a $5 spatula. For what ever reason I was drawn to a hideous looking display, a big battleship grey metal multi-level lazy-susan the size and shape of a Christmas tree, generously offering up piles and piles of cookie cutters, and at only $1 each?!  Wheeeeee! I started off looking for hearts, though I loved the little lopsided hand shaped heart Sables I made up after Valentines Day, yet I'm thinking something a little more symetrical might have a place too. Then I saw the baseball mitt and the mind starts churning...yes! a special ballgame butter/sugar bomb would be just the ticket... and well once the OCD kicked in the rest was history.
What I didn't plan on was going all fondant & food coloring crazy. Everyone would have been perfectly happy with some ATK sables topped with a dusting of coarse orange sugar...yet I end up spending countless hours procrastinating researching recipes for sugar cookies, icings, fondants and decorating techniques then I'm downloading pictures of baseball mitt cakes and cookies and Giants logos. I even did sketches....Sheesh! Then there's the half dozen stores I'm pedaling around to looking for pastry bags and tips and black food coloring and colored sugars...Geez it's a miracle I actually had the energy and time left to make the damn cookies. It took me half the day but it was worth it. Crazy?! Most definitely. They were pretty cute. Taste wise? well...
..they didn't suck. I would like to find a base that was a little crumblier and a fondant that didn't make my teeth ache. At the end of the day it's just a cookie.