Beer and Cookies? I Dunno...

I am there, in the trenches, with all the rest of you when I say this:  I hate admitting when ideas - amazing as they are in theory - crash and burn, hold me to shame - whatever it is.

It seemed to me - in some moment of what should have been brilliant innovation - that if my 2 favorite vices, sweets and beer, were worth a regular routine of indulgence - why was I experiencing them apart?  We should all be fairly aware of the beauty that is melding stout and chocolate.  So there it is - beer and sweets.

My boyfriend throws a ridiculous Oktoberfest party every year.  The brewery boys brew 100 gallons, slaughter pigs for brats, grow potatoes and cabbage - the whole 9 yards (and about 900 more).  Of this hundred gallons, is roughly 20 gallons of a personal favorite of mine - hefeweizen, or unfiltered wheat beer.  Its hearty without being heavy, cloudy like any good mystery, and smells like clove and banana.  Thus, sending me off on a mental tangent.

After days of storms brewing in my mind, the skies cleared and the, fingers crossed, greatest idea of my life came to light.  A hefeweizen cookie.  If all went the way it was supposed to, it could be the next great afternoon treat.  If delicious beer had a flavor profile like a delicious cookie, they must be married into one.

Or not so much.  In defense of this recipe, I may have possibly (maybe) taken a few too many liberties in substitutions - but here is where I jumped off.  I should be honest and admit that I began with taking out the oats - I wasn't sure that was a texture I wanted - and replaced that with half the amount of flour (totally pulled that one out of the air), added brewers' malt powder, left out the walnuts, added ground cloves, and replaced the chocolate chips with Whoppers - whafers (just like the Christopher Walken "whafer thin mint" sketch) according to a dear friend's dear, sweet child.

In the end, what I ended up with was a banana muffin top with the addition of Whoppers - nothing of the chewy, malty, just a bit spicy, banana laden - without tasting like Laffy Taffy - hand-held face melter I was hoping for.  Its not that it wasn't delicious, it was just unimpressive.  They said nothing of OHMYGODCOOKIELADYPLEASEDON'TEVERSTOPMAKINGTHESE!!  Part of me feels a bit guilty for the trays that went into the trash, but with so many cookies to eat in the near future - we have to save our expanding waistlines for the top notch stuff.

Back to the drawing board.  I like it here though - its quiet and smells like home.