[Mike Nolan]

My photos of the progression of the eclipse came out pretty good, but not the shots at totality, I probably needed to change some camera settings after taking off the solar filter. I got one that appears to show some of the diamond ring. Oh well, it was still exciting to experience it, and unless I travel it's likely the only total solar eclipse I'll ever witness, certainly the only one that will pass directly over my house. And there are likely going to be millions of shots of the total eclipse posted on the Internet within the next few days.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

Totality was pretty exciting, a little cloudy/hazy but we could see corona and the diamond ring, possibly even Bailey's Beads. Watching the darkened sky progress from west to east was fascinating.

[Mike Nolan]

The eclipse has started, I've got my first shot with just a small nibble out of the sun. It's still a bit hazy but it looks like it may actually clear up somewhat as the eclipse progresses.

My wife says the eclipse cookies are a big hit.

[Mike Nolan]

It's a little hazy here, the start of the eclipse is in about 8 minutes, not sure how much it will clear up by totality, which is at about 1:08 PM.

:fingers crossed:

[Mike Nolan]

Honey is a combination of several sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, but not in the same ratio as table sugar (sucrose.) The more glucose there is in honey, the more it is prone to crystallize.

Fructose has a sweetness index a bit higher than sucrose, glucose is a bit lower than sucrose, so most sources will say that pound for pound sugar and honey have the same amount of sweetness. A honey that is high in fructose will taste just a bit sweeter, though.

Honey is denser than sucrose, which is why it has slightly more calories by dry measure, 64 calories/tablespoon compared to 48 calories/tablespoon for sugar. But by weight, honey is not quite as caloric, 304 calories per 100 grams, as compared to 387 for sucrose. (However, some sources report the caloric numbers differently, and there's an inconsistency in them that I haven't reconciled, that's a project for another day and thread.)

Honey is also about 17% water, which may or may not impact a recipe.

For a small amount like a tablespoon of honey, I'd just take out a tablespoon of sugar, I don't know that I'd bother adjusting the amount of water.

[Mike Nolan]

Here are some pictures of the assembled cookies. I added a link to the sugar cookie recipe we used to the lead post in this thread.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife (a certified HS math teacher) completely agrees with her. She has a 'Math is Fun' T-shirt that she got at a regional math conference.

[Mike Nolan]

Baked the eclipse cookies yesterday and today.

[Mike Nolan]

Yesterday was our test day, today was production day, I baked 5 pans full of cookies and one partial. Assembly is next, then I'll take and post some good pictures. We did take a plate of cookies across the street to our new neighbors who have 3 young kids (the oldest girl is 11, about the age of our granddaughter.)

Most of the cookies will be going in to my wife's office in the morning. Some will be in her office for faculty and staff, the rest will be on the snack table that they set up every fall to welcome students back on the first day of classes.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't ordered the powdered cheese at nuts.com, because I find their prices not very appealing, but I have ordered the powdered cheese at bulkfoods.com, it's very similar to the cheese powder you got in Kraft Mac & Cheese before they reformulated it a few months ago to get rid of the artificial food colors. (I would order it again, too.)

[Mike Nolan]

They were selling giant eclipse cookies at the grocery store, just a big circular cookie with chocolate covering like 7/8 of it.

I wish I'd thought of these a few weeks ago, I might have entered them in the 'sandwich cookie' category at the Lancaster County Fair.

[Mike Nolan]

Be VERY careful looking at the eclipse on Monday, there's a story in today's Lincoln paper about someone who used a welder's helmet during a partial eclipse in 1963 and suffered some permanent vision loss.

Even with ISO-certified glasses, limit the time you're viewing it. I have a 100K solar filter for my camera, I did some test shots today, it looks it'll do a pretty good job showing the progress of the eclipse. I'll take the filter off for some shots during totality, which will last about 80 seconds here.

Of course this all assumes the weather cooperates on Monday. Our current forecast is 'partly cloudy'.

[Mike Nolan]

Our first test batch is out. We tried a few different methods, in the next batch we will be baking the sun and various degrees of eclipsing moon cookies separately, gluing them together with some yellow lemon icing. (I have some KAF powdered lemon extract that works very well for this.) That has the advantage that we can do a tray of one then a tray of the other, the sugar cookie recipe we're using gets soft really fast. My wife also wants to try dipping the chocolate cookies in icing to create the eclipse effect, I'm skeptical of that.

We're tried a fluted round cookie cutter for the first batch of suns, but the flutings are so small that you can't really see them under the icing, so we're going to try some scalloped edge cookies in the next batch.

I'll try to include some photos later today.

[Mike Nolan]

I have used the pasta roller attachment for my KA mixer once or twice to make cracker dough, it worked reasonably well. It isn't very wide but for crackers that's not an issue.

[Mike Nolan]

I have made crackers a few times, never thought they were worth the effort it took. A sourdough cracker sounds interesting, but with my wife's problems with sourdough, I don't have a starter to work with.

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