Baking Cookies

Last week's news on CNN International was all about the  Mediterranean Diet.  Well, that's basically what it is here in Ankara.  We have a nice salad bar everyday at school, but no dressings.  They have lime juice, lots of olive oil, a pomegranate sauce, and vinegar for the international folks.  Most meals are vegetarian or chicken.  We have some type of meat-lamb or beef-about once every 5-7 meals and chicken maybe once a week.  So, they eat very healthy with little red meat.  

Their regular kek (unfrosted cake) and pasta (frosted cakes) are not very sweet and sometimes a little tasteless.  So, baking and making things to satisfy the sweet tooth is a must if you don't want baklava all the time.  Peggy has made crepes, and bars, and yesterday it was the first time attempting cookies.  

Ingredients are somewhat different here.  The brown sugar is exactly like our white sugar, except brown,  so a recipe that says "a cup of packed brown sugar," just doesn't know that moist brown sugar isn't available.  So, we make do.  

Karbonat is baking soda, kabartma tozu is baking powder, maya is yeast, and vanilin is--yes vanilla,but in a powdered form-think strong vanilla flavored powdered sugar!  All are about a teaspoon in measure.

We don't own a mixer, so it's a strong stir in the bowl.  We haven't found shortening, but lard is everywhere, so extra butter in this recipe.  The brown sugar just doesn't "cream" like it's supposed to.  And, chocolate chips are eluding us, so M & Ms have to do.  

We have one cookie sheet, and one broiler pan-a cooling area since there is no cooling rack.  Our timer is 2.95 TL from IKea, and the recipe book was downloaded on the IPad.

The end result was actually pretty tasty considering the swap for some ingredients and adjusting to others.  These were actually for Peggy's class and another 1st grade room, plus we're trying to butter up the housing guys who clean and manage the lojman, in case we need something, so the rest went to them.