SOLS: The Andes Project

So, two weeks ago we pulled "The Andes" out of our magical hat of topics. "Great!" I thought. Machu Pichu (spelling?), Peru, llamas, bright, knit shawls, hats, and ponchos here I come!


I did dash off a sketch of Amanda and I cum llamas and authentic garb during a spare moment at work last week, but my final project was a little less inside the box. I stopped by Maceys to replenish my stock of vitamin C (if it weren't orange and grapefruit season, winter really wouldn't be worth it), and, lo and behold, Andes Mints were on sale. "Ha!" I thought, "Andes, spelled just like the mountain range, with some simplified peaks for a logo, I wonder why I never made the connection before...I wonder if the mints originated in South America?" Needless to say, I bought a package.


I didn't find much time for research, but the internet is so very handy. From the Andes website I learned that the mints are owned by Tootsie, which really surprised me. I don't know, tootsie rolls, tootsie pops, dots, and the rest seem so middle class--you know, my kind of candy. But Andes Mints? Those are high class! My kind of after dinner mint are the hard, starlight kind Sonic drops in with your chili cheese fries, or the bad butter-mints Grease Monkey leaves on your seat (except they didn't last time I got my oil changed...I feel cheated).

Another surprise, the mints are not actually christened after the mountains. A man named Andrew Kanelos first started making the mints (or something like them) in the 1920s and selling them as Andy's Candies. Where was he selling them, you may ask. Not in Peru, not anywhere in South America. Chicago. They changed the name to Andes in the 1950s--I guess snow-capped peaks, ancient ruins, and llama herders seemed like a better marketing tool than some guy from Chicago.

Despite these disappointments, the website did give me a great final project--Andes Mint Pillow Cookies. Don't think I was completely lazy, though, relying on the website to do all the work for me. I did have to do some experimentation. For starters, I only had 28 mints, not the called-for 49. So I halved everything, minus the egg (it didn't seem right to put in half an egg). Then, I don't like to eat butter, but I learned during our project on cuisine that applesauce makes a good substitute for butter/shortening/etc in baking. So, applesauce. This, however, made the dough far too wet to roll. At this point I gave up on independence and called on the culinary prowess of my Mom. She seconded my plan to add more flower. Although this resulted in a thicker dough it was still too wet to roll out. But we didn't want the cookie dough to become paste, so instead of adding even more flower, we used spoons to mold the dough around the mints.





If you check out the picture included with the official recipe, you'll note that my "pillows" look much more comfortable.





Like magic, Kate and McKell turned up just in time to help me eat the first batch--a warm, but not-too-sweet cookie outside surounding a piping hot, ooey-gooey, mint-chocolatey center. Perfect (despite being disparraged for being low-fat, even though I still insist that nothing that has an Andes Mint center can be counted as low-fat).