Pfeffernusse (Page 670)

RECIPE #761

• Date: Sunday, June 8, 2008 -- 10pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty and Mike
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

I put off all the anise-scented cookies until now because I have a generally bad attitude about anise. But I am running low on cookie options, so I have started to bust out the batches of anisey cookies. Despite my skepticism, these cookies were quite good. Labor intensive? Yes. Delicious? Also yes. The cookies had many stages -- the dough was made then had to chill. Then the cookies were formed and baked. Then they got cooled, then dipped in a sugar syrup. Then they were dried, then rolled in powdered sugar. My special gentleman kept eating cookies after each stage, so by the time we got to the end there were many fewer than I started with. But they were good! They had a nice chewy texture, and a good spiciness to them. I would have preferred them sans anise, but it wasn't as offensive as it might have been. The sugar syrup coating and powdered sugar roll provided a bit of sweetness to these otherwise not-so-sweet cookies. Overall, these were tasty. The recipe made a ton of little cookies, but they had all disappeared after a day or two!

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I made it to Bonn for week two of my European mathematics adventure. The trip from Copenhagen to Bonn was one of the strangest travel experiences of my life. We had a very tight schedule. We were supposed to fly out at 9:30pm, arriving in Dusseldorf at 11pm to catch a midnight train to Bonn. This whole adventure would land us at our hotel around 1:30am, just in time to catch a little sleep before a 9:30am talk. BUT, our flight was delayed and didn't leave until 11:30pm. Our only train option was to take a 3am train from Dusseldorf, arriving in Bonn at 5:30am. That would suck. We had resigned ourselves to this fate, and got on the airplane. About halfway through the flight the pilot gets on the intercom and starts talking in German. Clueless, we wait for the translation, but he is going on and on and on. Finally, he repeats in English. Turns out the Dusseldorf airport denied our plane the right to land (why is still unclear to me) so they had to divert us... to Bonn. Half the plane started cheering (there were a lot of mathematicians on the plane). It was definitely the most fortuitous airline mix-up I have ever been a part of. We landed in Bonn, took a cab, and were at the hotel before 2am! Whoo hoo!