Germ-y

Finally, after two weeks, I think I'm over the illness I caught from Brianna.  Of course, now Jamie has it. He's about a week behind me, so he's pretty miserable right now.  Gillian's take on the whole thing is interesting.  We were in the car one day last week, and she struck up a conversation with me.
"Mommy?"  "Yes, Gillian?"  "Did you get Brianna's germs and that's why you're sick?"  "Yes."  "You need some germs lotion."  "Germs lotion?"  "Yeah, so you can get rid of the germs you got and make sure you don't get any more.  But it's not the same as the lotion for the dry skin."  (The fun of 3-year-olds--all I hear about lately is how she needs Chapstick because her lips hurt and lotion because she has "the dry skin.")  I never did get an answer as to where I could find some of this magic "germs lotion" but it sure would be nice... =)

It didn't help that through all this, work has been totally crazy.  It's a lot harder to get better when you don't really get time to rest.  Since I was seizing any rest time I could get, baking and blogging have definitely been on the back burner.  I never did get as far as baking last week's chocolate chip cookies for TWD.  So I knew I needed to be sure to make this week's recipe.  Even so, it almost got lost in the shuffle over the weekend.  Sunday was my birthday, and I celebrated by doing lots of baking.  I made crumb cake for breakfast and hamburger buns for dinner, not to mention baking myself a birthday cake.  Then Sunday evening, I realized that it might be good to look at this week's recipe.

Michelle of Flourchild picked another cookie for us this week, Honey-Wheat Cookies.  Going along with our germ theme for the week, the wheat mentioned in the title is wheat germ, and I actually remembered to pick some up from the bulk department at Central Market.  I did end up making a couple changes with the other ingredients, though.  For starters, I didn't have much honey on hand.  I don't usually have a lot, since I don't like it all that much.  And then Jamie's been using lots of what I did have in his tea (as I mentioned, he's still suffering from the cold that we're all sharing).    So I decided to substitute golden syrup for the honey.  The next thing to go was the lemon zest.  I wasn't sure that it would taste as good with the syrup as with honey, and I was being lazy and didn't want to zest anything.  Golden syrup has a brown sugary sort of taste, so I thought that some sort of spice might be nice.  I ended up using about half a teaspoon of ground ginger.  I mixed up the dough Sunday night, stuck it in the fridge overnight, and baked the cookies before work on Monday.

The verdict?  I liked these cookies more than I expected to.  The dough is really tasty. =)  The cookies don't quite live up to the promise of the dough, but they're pretty good.  I took some to work and they got  a positive response there as well.  If I make them again, I'll increase the amount of spice, though.  The ginger got somewhat lost under the wheat germ.

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find them in the book, of course.  Or head on over to Michelle's blog for the recipe.  And be sure to check out the rest of the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers!