It used to be that if I added butter to a too hot pan and subsequently it turned brown that as far as I was concerned I had burnt the butter and it was no good to be baked with.  Now we call it 'browned butter'.
Granted, in this case I didn't put the butter into a pan that was too hot.  It cooked in there for a good 10 minutes.  But still, it's now something that I want to do.  It's a thing.  Browned Butter.
It's quite an amazing thing.  All dark brown and flecked with stuff (I don't know what the flecks are - fat maybe).  The taste intensifies as well.  All in all it's pretty amazing stuff... that I used to think was a dumb mistake.


I'm now at the tail end of the March Break and I'll be honest with you, I can't wait to get back to work.  I love me kids, don't get me wrong.  But we're all about ready to put each other through a wall.  It's that whole 'You-need-to-entertain-and-feed-me-all-day-every-day' kinda thing.  I'm done.  Plus, kid #1 is quickly approaching the age when things can become weird and volatile fast.  Ugh.  It's exhausting.  I get 'mommied-out' pretty fast admittedly and I've never been the go-to-the-park type.  Adult space is pretty important for me.  And it's been a good while since I've had any serious amount of it.  Now, here I am bawling about my lack of 'adult space' when I know full well that some of you never get it.  I don't know how you manage.  My heart goes out to you.  You deserve an award.  And now I will stop.


The highlight of our week was definitely D getting his Canadian citizenship.  We all hauled ourselves out to east Toronto (Scarborough) early (for a March Break) Friday morning and sat through the ceremony that will finally give D voting rights in this country and a passport which requires significantly fewer visa applications than his Trinidadian one.  Best part:  he can hold dual citizenship.  We celebrated with some of this, hung out with a friend for a while and then generally had a quiet (aka boring, if you're 11 yrs old) day.  We still have a couple of things planned - a library trip (provided it's open on a Saturday - thank you budget cuts) and a trip to see friends in Orillia.  Outside Orillia really... on 40 acres of trees and animals and insects and blackberries (oh the blackberries).  My friend C is always so inspiring.  She inspired me to get into canning last year.  She encouraged me to start getting an organic food box delivery and educated me about CSA's.  She's pretty cool.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  I'm going to be making something to take with us when we go because I think it's pretty lame to show up empty handed but in the meantime we've been munching on these guys throughout the week.


I'm just about done with the canned cherries from last year and the combination here was perfect.  The chewy browned butter cookie dough went well with the cherries too.  I thought of using white chocolate here but then I thought it might be just too sweet and went for the dark.  I'm glad I did.  I'm going to get a little picky here and tell you that using maraschino cherries will get you a completely different result.  Not necessarily a bad one but definitely a different one.  If you try it please let me know how it turns out.  Generally though, this managed to stay in the not-too-sweet-and-therefor-Wanda-pleasing category.  I would totally use this dough for plain old chocolate chip cookies too.  Dang, I would use this dough in ice cream.  I would use this dough in...


Browned Butter Cookies with dark chocolate and cherries adapted from 'Completely Delicious'
makes

1 cup unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup cherries dried or preserved (I used my home canned cherries)
1 1/4 cup dark chocolate chunks or chips

Over low heat, melt the butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan.  Continue cooking the butter over low heat until it turns brown and gets little dark brown flecks in it.  Remove from heat and cool.  Continue cooling until the butter begins to solidify again.  It shouldn't be hard though.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment or a silicon liner.  Set aside.
Combine the flour, baking soda and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
Cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.  Add in the eggs and vanilla and continue to whisk until completely incorporated and smooth and fluffy.  Mix in the flour into the butter mixture and until completely combined.
Add the chocolate chips and cherries and stir just until they're evenly distributed.
Spoon by large tablespoons onto the cookie sheet, leaving some space between the mounds.  Bake 10 - 12 minutes.  Remove the cookies from the cookie sheet onto a cooling rack.  Cool and eat.