Monthly Archives: April 2012

Totoro Cookies

Last May, I saw a post by Anna the Red about making your own cookie cutters. Using this as inspiration, I bought a circle cookie cutter and tried to make my own totoro cookie cutter. It seemed to work okay, though my cookie dough was not the best. I just used store bought sugar cookie dough and mixed cocoa powder into some and matcha powder into others to make several different colored totoros, but I think the store dough is very greasy so the shapes spread and didn’t stay firm.

The occasion was my sister’s graduation from junior college (she’s now almost done with undergraduate, soon to start graduate school) — she’s as much of a totoro fan as I am! Another thing I didn’t take into consideration was the weather. I decorated these cookies with chocolate, but the hot May sun melted the totoros against the box and they ended up being all melted blobs.

 

Black Bean Burgers from Everyday Food


I recently made these burgers with my boyfriend in an effort to eat healthier and use up some breadcrumbs. The burger itself tasted pretty good, but didn’t hold up well in the pan when cooking. The outside was crispy and colored like a burger, but the outside was still mushy even after flattening the patty, cooking it longer than the recipe stated, and making smaller patties. This is a good base recipe, and it might taste better if refrigerated to firm up before cooking.

The original recipe is on Everyday Food’s website–I won’t post it here since we followed it line-by-line other than halving it. The original reason for the recipe in the magazine was to use up a big leftover pot of beans several different ways, so it’d be worth checking out the whole feature! We just used canned beans instead of the ones used in this recipe.

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