Good morning and welcome back to Sunday Gravy.

Surviving the first few weeks of the offseason OK?

For me it’s the time of year to catch up on all of the nominated movies and so far I’ve seen 6 of the ten best picture nominees. Hope to catch another one or two this weekend. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen anything that qualifies as the best picture yet. Most of the films have been OK? Maybe one of the last 4 will do the job.

Wanted to drop a reminder out there that we are going to be having DFOCAN in Toronto Canada this coming April. The nights of April 15th and 16th, all day on the 17th and sort of for the 18th. If you’re interested in a day trip to Niagara Falls from Toronto on April 18th, let me know in the comments and I’ll give you the details.

Wednesday April 16th some of us will be attending the Blue Jays v Braves game but it’s a 1:00 PM local start which means there is plenty of fuck around time afterwards. The day of the 17th is wide open for any and all frivolity.

I’ve never been to Toronto so any and all local recommendations are appreciated.

Logistics are Brother TAJ and I have an apartment rental right next to the CN Tower and the Rogers Center so downtown will be the focus.

Come join us! I hear they do kick ass Indian and Jamaican food in Toronto and I’m ALL about that!

I digress.

Now back to this one.

A few months back I read a super fucking cool article on Slate magazine’s website. It was called “The 25 Most Important Recipes of the last 100 Years.”

Reader? With a title like that you know my ass was reading!

It was superb too. There was also a companion piece where one of their writers attempted every listed recipe. Excellent, excellent stuff.

Of course there were some of their choices that I didn’t think made the cut, in my opinion. Green bean casserole from the can? Really gonna do that shit?

But I found several recipes in there that you WILL be seeing during this season of Sunday Gravy.

BULLEE DAT!

And that begins right here.

I’ve got a life changing recipe for you today. Seriously.

Yes it’s a bit unusual to have cookies as the featured dish for Sunday Gravy but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Why we did these lovely items back in July of 2023.

White chocolate macadamia nut cookies and they were outstanding.

Also from 2023 we had our own Game Time Decision fill in as a guest when my lazy ass took a week off and he made these!

And then fancied up the presentation by doing this.

Despite having featuring cookies before, and even if I never had, I would have abso-fucking-lutely featured the cookies we are making today.

I’ve never had anything like them.

Let’s make the motherfuckers first then I’ll explain the outcome when we wrap it up.

Gochujang Caramel Cookies!

Recipe courtesy of Beyondkimchee.com because fuck the “cooking NYTimes” paywall.

8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened, divided

2 tbsp light brown sugar

1 heaping tbsp Gochujang

1 cup white sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract – homemade would be awesome

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon – freshly grated if possible

3/4 tsp kosher salt

Let’s do the damn thing.

Always start with softened butter. Just take the shit out of your fridge when you wake up and it will be fine when you get around to baking time.

Vanilla will be needed. Remember this stuff?

HomeMADE vanilla that eldest right made. That was from when DJ TAJ “made ice cream.”

I KNOW you remember this stuff.

Shit man! We’ve used gochujang to make wings…

And ribs…

and whole baked chicken!

Goddamn I fucking LOVE that shit!

Now you get the idea! Let’s see how it works with these fucking cookies.

Let’s start by making a paste from the brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of the butter and the gochujang.

Fuck it man, you could just make this shit and frost a cake with it or serve it with ice cream. It’s stupid delicious.

The cookie recipe calls for cinnamon. Let’s ratchet this fucker up a notch…

And grate this shit ourselves.

Yeah, you’re going to want to get the bark and shit out of there and just keep the fine stuff.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Add the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla to a bowl.

Beat the piss out of them if you don’t have a mixer.

While I obviously very much have my stand mixer, this volume of ingredients doesn’t work well in it. It’s not enough for the paddle attachment or the whisk attachment to reach it in the mixing bowl.

Hope you have a handheld mixer or you’re gonna be whipping this shit up in a bowl just like me.

Add the now whipped butter/sugar mix to the dry ingredients to make the cookie dough.

Now drop this shit into the fridge for 15 minutes to rest.

After the dough has chilled we will then add the gochujang in “dollops.”

The reason being we can get those super fucking awesome swirl patterns in the finished cookies. And you do want that don’t you!?!

Stir gently with a plastic spatula. Try not to over-stir and make the entire dough ball into a generic pink color.

We’re going for swirls here dammit.

Drop a good wad of the dough onto the parchment lined cookie sheet. I guess it was about a tablespoon or two per cookie wad.

These make bigger than average cookies.

Bake the motherfuckers in a 350 degree oven for 11-13 minutes. They should look something like this.

Lookit the swirls! That’s the shit I was on about!

Put them on a cooling rack to cool down a bit.

Cook and cool them all.

Fuck you waiting for?

You really have to make these and try them yourselves to get the full effect. These fuckers hit EVERY type of flavor node in your mouth at once. They’re sweet, and there’s a little salt and there’s some funk, now wait for it…

Wait for it!

There it is!

There’s that backend heat that you knew was coming.

Trust me it is not too much heat. Just enough for every taste bud in your mouth to explode in a cookie orgasm.

Mother.

FUCKER!

Never had anything like this shit. They are absolutely fucking perfect.

I took the leftovers (which I really had to battle myself to ensure would exist) into work and everybody loved them. Including 3 or so people who said they don’t normally fuck with spicy. It’s the balance.

Perfect synchronicity.

Fuck it, I’ll make these an assignment. Bake them, try them and be prepared to have your cookie world turned onto its goddamn head.

I’ve already made these twice and I’m plotting a third time as we speak!

Now.

We really need to talk about this cookie’s exact polar opposite.

It is time for me to do the unthinkable!

I’m going to bash the shit out of a type of Girl Scout cookie.

I know!

See this nasty fucking thing right here?

If you can’t quite read the cookie, it says “Girl Scout Smores.”

This nasty motherfucker was supposed to be a Smore?

Here’s a look from the side.

This cookie is BULLSHIT!

That’s not a Smore, man! First of all it’s sickeningly, cloyingly sweet. To the point of strangulation almost.

And that is most definitely NOT marshmallow in the middle. It’s just horseshit vanilla cookie filling. Think Oreo filling.

Sacrilege alert! I don’t like Oreos either. Eh, sue me.

So with this fucking cookie you’ve got sweet and sweet wrapped in sweet.

Fuck ALL the way off.

My biggest issue though is the actual “cookie” part itself.

That’s supposed to be a graham cracker motherfucker! This crap is just a bleached, white, over-processed flour abomination. You could have been almost forgiven if you mixed just the tiniest bit of graham flour in here but you couldn’t even do THAT right.

Fuck this cookie!

The good news? This is its last year and it’s going away forever.

Well, Sayonara Girl Scout Smores cookie! And don’t forget to go fuck yourself on your way out the goddamn door!

The former Missus Right used to be a Girl Scout cookie mom and BOTH of my daughters were in Girl Scouts and I personally distributed thousands and thousands of boxes of cookies so my justifiable anger at this abomination is not only allowed, it’s earned goddammit!

Required even!

End rant.

Before signing off I decided to bring a bit of light-heartedness to this here blog today and maybe going forward. Still a new idea in progress.

I recently subscribed to a Substack called “A Bit of Good News” because we all need that shit right now and they were the inspiration for this. 

For your enjoyment and edification: Today, 2-22-25 IS: National Chili Day, National Supermarket Employee Day, National Walk Your Dog Day, Be Humble Day and Wildlife Conservationists Day.

Dammit! And chili sounds delicious too.

Adjust your day accordingly.

Guess I need to work on that “Be Humble” shit.

Love you folks!

See you again next week?

Cool.

See you next week.