For August 21

Hazelnut Whole Wheat Sables

Very Tangy Lime Bars

Both from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert.

Dreaming Lemons

Last week, one of the recipes was for some really wonderful toasted almond lemon bars. I have recently bought a few new baking books, and last week's recipes were from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book; both were very good, and I am looking forward to making more and sharing my results. (This week's recipes are coming from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert, which conceptually has me totally jazzed.) While many people liked the brownie recipe (which was adapted from Julia Child, so come on...) the lemon bars were a big hit - they had toasted almonds in the crust and then a very tart lemon filling, so the complementary flavors of lemon and almond came through nicely. I usually don't like lemon bars because they are too much, the filling has a gummy texture, etc., but these had a focused intensity that really worked.

Anyway, on Monday night I had a dream in which I was composing poetry. I guess the lemon bars had an impact on me, because here is the poem that I composed in the dream:

Mouth filling with lemon-
Where did the thoughts go?
Thwack!

The first brownie recipe

Here is the brownie recipe I used for that first, eventful Thursday night back in October 2005.  I have modified it slightly, but the results should be much more reliable.  As you will see, brownies from scratch are very simple - one of the wonders of brownies is that the results can be so wonderful with so little effort required to get there.  It is a shame that people use a boxed mix so full of chemicals and preservatives when there is so little added work needed to make brownies from scratch.

Our Basic Brownie Recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate (quality matters; if you are going to cook from scratch, don't get cheap with your core ingredient)

2 cups sugar

4 eggs (room temperature if you have planned in advance, but don't fret it)

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans, preferably toasted - see the note below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 13x9x2 inch baking pan.

Put the butter and chocolate in a metal bowl, and place it over a pot of simmering water to melt.  Stir occasionally until the mixture is smooth.  Remove it from the heat.  Let cool slightly. Stir in the sugar, then add the eggs one at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each before adding the next.  Stir in the flour, vanilla and salt.  Add the nuts, if desired.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan.  Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.  Do not overbake!  Remove from oven, and cool completely before cutting.  Brownies are MUCH easier to cut at room temperature than not - my impatience to test the results has taught me this repeatedly!

NOTE:  I am a strong advocate for toasting nuts.  It adds little to the overall time needed and the added benefit is well worth the effort.  For walnuts or pecans, place the nuts on a baking sheet, and place them in a preheated oven (important that it is preheated) on 325 degrees for 10-15 minutes.  Given the pan a shake mid-way through to allow them to toast evenly.  They should be highly fragrant when you remove them; if they aren't, have faith and let them go a little longer.  (Just make sure you have a timer going to remind you to take them out; burnt nuts have a distinctive (read:  unpleasant and permeating) taste.)

A little background to start off...

Back in October 2005, I received an email indicating that Zen Center of Los Angeles, where I am a member, was looking for someone to take over the job of providing the cookies that we have after the talks that are usually offered on Thursday evenings.  Having nothing else to do with myself (lol), I volunteered to take over this responsibility.  Either because I sit at a computer all day and was the first to respond, or because no one else wanted to come within 50 feet of this kind of responsibility, I was the lucky winner...

Now, historically, this job has consisted of bringing a couple of tubs of cookies from Trader Joe's.  For that first week, though, I decided to make some brownies from scratch.  And, being concerned about people perhaps having nut allergies, I decided to make two pans, one with nuts, and the other without.  Well, people really liked having home-cooked treats, which I guess have become a rarity nowadays - at least for many people living in Los Angeles.  People were amazed that, not only had I baked them myself, but they had been made from scratch, and not from a box.

Anyway, after that first week, I decided to continue with the baking, and I have been baking cookies or other types of treats weekly since then.  For the first two years, I was following a rule that I would not repeat any recipe (although, when pressed for time, variations were OK); in the last year, I have relaxed that rule and now repeat a recipe now and again (when I can remember which ones I've made before).  At this point, I'm probably up past 200+ recipes.

Not being the most organized person, I did not track what recipes I was cooking, how they came out, what people thought, etc.  I mean, after all, who knew where this was going?  Now, almost three years in, I thought maybe it was time to start a blog to track the cookie baking craziness of my life (I can't tell you how many people have asked where I find the time for this; it helps to have no life) and whatever else comes up.  So let's start this exploration together.

As for the title, Dogen writes, in his "Instructions to the Cook" of the three minds a mature person, those being vast mind, caring mind, and joyful mind.  I like to think that cookie baking falls within the joyful mind part of the equation.  Where would blogging fit?

Dharma-Joy