I’m in love with these cookies and originally, I had little else to say in this post beyond “they’re fabulous! They’re delicious! Go make them now!”.
Something’s been happening in the world of food blogging that I wanted to comment on.
Cyber bullying.
This isn’t just a problem for kids and teenagers. Adults are just as nasty and venomous, cloaked by the false bravado that alleged internet anonymity provides them. Bullying has always existed – it’s simply worse now that you don’t have to do it face to face. Now you can upload deeply personal photos of people where it will stay on the internet basically forever for the entire world to gawk at. You can nonchalantly grab your smartphone from your back pocket and type offensive, insulting, and sometimes threatening messages within a matter of seconds. You can rally other like-minded trolls and make someone the victim of a vicious smear campaign, often for no good reason.
Case in point: the fabulous Carrie of Bakeaholic Mama is currently being victimized by a large number of these hateful creatures. She wrote an extremely eloquent, honest, thought-provoking article about her experience here. Please do go and read her post (she takes the high road and offers up Amish friendship muffins to the haters. I would’ve posted a giant photo of my middle finger if this happened to me).
Basically, Carrie found a Facebook page that was straight up stealing content from her blog and from a number of other bloggers. She very politely asked the page owner to respect copyright and to share properly. What happened next is a complete nightmare.
Content theft is bad enough – it’s a problem that’s been around for a while and I’m sure it won’t go away. What makes it so much worse is the misplaced self-righteousness of those doing the stealing and their warped sense of entitlement in bullying those who call them out on it.
I had to write this post because I’m just so livid over the people out there who are intent on spreading their misery and completely callous in their disregard for how their words affect others. Here are some excellent posts by other bloggers who are far more well-versed and eloquent about these issues than I am:
The Hungry Mouse had her entire blog purloined.
I Am Baker wrote an extremely informative article on “What Every Facebook User Needs to Know” regarding the proper sharing of content.
The Decorated Cookie has gone through this herself – you really need to read her amazing post titled “Cyber-bullying…a trend that’s changing everything“.
I’m going to leave you with cookies that are so freaking good, they’ll make all your cares fade away (at least in the moment you’re chewing them). My friend Jen of Juanita’s Cocina recently made the famous Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies. This is a recipe I’ve been wanting to make for a while. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly so this might not be the best representation of that cookie. I didn’t regret my variations for a second – these are amazeballs. For the original recipe, see here.
They look like punctured eyeballs with the liquid innards spilling out. Or like a Facebook friend said – deformed nipples. Just the look I was going for.
My changes:
- I decreased the sugar – I used 3/4 cup light brown sugar and 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- I used 1/3 cup chopped dark chocolate, 8 chopped individual Twix bars and 3 rolls of Rolos
- I sprinkled sea salt over the top of each cookie, some of which I pressed a Rolo into before baking
Oh yeah I did.
There’s so much goodness in this here batter, I can barely contain myself.
I used a large ice cream scoop to portion each cookie. Go big or go home, baby.
She’s a beauty!
The caramel from the Rolos melted everywhere and made these cookies a hot mess but that didn’t affect the taste. Something exquisite happens to caramel when it’s baked – the flavour is deep, buttery, slightly salty, and intensely rich. The bites of cookie that yielded bits of Twix were my favourite. Indescribably delicious.
Make these, you won’t be sorry.
And be civil, people. Let’s be kind to each other. There are too few minutes in a day to waste on negativity.
You can’t face a cookie this ooey gooey with caramel and NOT want to hand out hugs, rainbows ‘n puppies.
And most importantly, have a cookie.
