NIgella's Chocolate Christmas Cookies

 Nigella Lawson is a worldwide respected cook and cookbook author. You'd think her recipes were perfect. Unfortunately that was not the case with her chocolate Christmas cookies.

I had high hopes for this recipe. It came to me in her daily newsletter. It looked simple and yummy. 

These are some of the ingredients along with my new super big cookie spatula from Wilton. It was an easy enough recipe.I followed it to the letter.They're a chocolate shortbread, made with two and a quarter sticks of butter, two cups of flour , 1/3 cup of unsweetened cocoa and1/2 teaspoon baking soda and one teaspoon baking powder.  I made them vegan and I wonder if this could have been the factor in them not turning out the way they recipe had them?

I used my beloved Melt plant butter , not thinking that it would make a difference but maybe the cookies needed animal fat to get that finished cracked look.

                                                       The dough looked OK, when I was making it.

The texture was how she described it , slightly sticky. I took off walnut sized pieces of dough , roilled them and then flattened them.

To me they baked , well- OK  Maybe I made them too big -  my fault , maybe they needed more time in the oven .

The tasted pretty perfect - sort of like Nabisco's once famed chocollate snap cookies. It was time to make the e icing for them.

 This was a mix of confectioner's sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla  cooked with already boiled water.

It was supposed to be a thick glaze with two tablespoons of the cocoa, 1 and a half cups of the confectioner's sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract mixed with 1/4 boiling water. It turned out to be a chocolate syrup.

It was a runny mess on the cookies. however I now have the recipe for a great homemade chocolate syrup(which was mixed with Bubly strawberry seltzer and almond milk for an over the top strawberry egg cream. YUM!!!!)

This is the end result.A syrupy mess that slid off the cookies and puddled underneath them.The Wilton decorations just rolled off. Some hardier ones stayed , fortunately.

And a day later 

It's funny I followed everything to the letter and they came out wrong. Tasty but wrong. 

Is it worth following  a Nigella Lawson recipe again? It's an iffy answer. 

I think I'll stick with American recipes now instead of going with the British - sorry to say.