Salted butter cookies, chocolate postscript

 Since handsome Son is visiting tomorrow bringing groceries, I baked a little something to go with tea.

This is the recipe, half a recipe, to be exact, enough for now.

I used whole wheat pastry flour, which always seems to need more liquid. So I added in a couple of teaspoons of plain whole milk yogurt to enable the dough to hold together.

I shaped it a bit before cooling, just for a  change. Then 350° f oven for what ended up being nearly 20 minutes, rather than 12-15, because of the yogurt.

The shapes are interesting. I was aiming for fancy langues de chat, cats' tongues. They're more like dog biscuits now I study them. I might drizzle a bit of melted chocolate over. 

I sprinkled coarse seasalt over, really cool contrast, which put me in mind of the chocolate drizzling idea. Seasalt and chocolate are friends.

Don't go away...

Here's what happened next

Chocolate chips melting over hot water

Piping bag being made. Tiny corner clipped off baggie. No need for fancy equipment.

My Mom, the professional cake decorator, made her piping bags from parchment paper she made into a cone, dropped a piping tip into it, filled with royal icing, and decorated like Raphael.  Such hands. Such control.

My own piping is more modest.

Here's the piping bag, loaded, and I'm squeezing down the chocolate to that tip, ready to wave about to make drawings.

Since the chocolate has just come off the hot water, this is a sizzling job for your hand, but it's in a good cause.

And here are chocolate hieroglyphs or something. Hoping I haven't committed some obscene mistake in a language I'm not familiar with..

Testing, testing.

In other news, the lovely yarn from dear C arrived and was instantly employed in brightening up the dark colors I had on hand. 

After this, and before baking, I fitted in getting dressed.