Swedish Raspberry Cave Cookies and the Evolution of Life

Swedish Dessert

SWEDISH RASPBERRY CAVE COOKIES
(Hallongrottor)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ cups butter, softened
⅔ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups flour
½ cup potato starch or corn starch
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup raspberry jam (or your choice of jam)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

24 paper cookie cups
baking sheet
cooling rack

Makes 24 cookies. Takes 1 hour plus 30 minutes to cool..

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add butter and sugar to 1st large mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set at medium until soft and well blended. Add baking powder, flour, potato starch. and vanilla to 2nd large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended.

Gradually add baking powder/flour/potato starch mixture to bowl with butter/sugar. Mix with electric beater set at medium until you get a fluffy dough.. Roll out dough until becomes a 12″-long log. Cut dough log every ½” to get 24 even circles.

Place dough circles into paper cookie cups. Press finger in middle of each dough circle to make a little indentation. Carefully fill each indentation with 1 teaspoon raspberry jam. Place filled paper cups on baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until the cookies just begin to turn golden brown. (These cookies should remain fairly pale.)

TIDBITS

1) Billions of year ago, the Earth was just seething seas and voluminous volcanoes. Yes, the elements of life existed, but nothing actually came into being, not even the simplest of telemarketers. There was just no animating catalyst.

2) The week after that, microscopic cave cookies appeared. These microscops were themselves inert, but any element of life attaching itself to a cave cookie became alive. Hooray for life! As the cookie micrcoscops naturally enlarged, so did the number of life elements that could attach to it. So, life forms became bigger and bigger. Eventually we would we would have life on Earth as we know it.