For December 3

This has been a rather hectic and disjointed 2 weeks. Last week I was in San Diego for work on Monday and Tuesday, then we went to Yosemite for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. On Sunday we came back, and on Monday I went to Las Vegas for work. Got back Tuesday afternoon, and baked on Tuesday night. I thought I was going to go to the Center on Wednesday night, but I got out of work late, so I ended up just going home and baking some more. But I have had some annoying head cold through it all, so I've been sleeping badly and a bit out of it (not that anyone could really tell). Anyway, so a bit out of sorts.

This week, for some reason, I ended up with 2 recipes from Maida Heatter, who was the doyenne of desserts in the United States a couple of decades ago. I don't know why I ended up with both recipes from her - the mysteries of the world are not revealed to us plainly. Or whatever. Anyway, here is this week's fare:

Chocolate Oatmeal Brownies, from Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts
Copa Cake, from Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts

The "brownies" are a rather unusual creation. The recipe is completely flourless, relying on oats instead of flour. It is a rather straightforward recipe - as I recall right now, the basic idea is to combine the melted chocolate and butter with some honey and brown sugar, add some oats, some eggs to hold it all together, stir and bake. I am not sure I love it, but it is certainly an interesting change. And no flour, for my gluten-free friends.

The cake is an unusual sheet cake. Andrew looked at it last night and asked if it was a cobbler. It isn't - not nearly so healthy, goodness - but I can understand why he asked. After making a relatively basic cake batter, it is divided, with about half being put on the bottom of the pan. This is covered with a layer of fruit preserves and then a layer of walnuts. The second half of the batter is combined with some cocoa powder etc. and then is dropped on top of the cake. It isn't spread out to cover the whole top, so you have portions that are dark from the chocolate, and then other portions that expose the lower layers of fruit preserves and walnuts. Anyway, not a good description, but it is an interesting cake - not like anything I can remember making before.

Next week the Center is in retreat, so no baking (although my firm pot luck is next Friday, so there will just be a different type of baking.)

Ciao.

For November 19

OK, a lot going on. Andrew received jukai last Saturday, and now has the name Bodhi-Heart. Very beautiful ceremony, and a gorgeous rakusu! As for me, Roshi gave me the OK this week to go ahead and begin gathering fabric for my okesa (priest robe), which means that I am going to be ordained as a Zen priest sometime in 2010. Wow. Overwhelming. More on that later.

This weekend is also the Zen Center's annual Day of Dana, as part of which the Zen Center buys and assembles baskets of food for needy local families. As part of that process, Bob Fisher, another Zen Center member who is also a professional pastry chef, and I are making homemade cookies to add to the baskets. We are each making 15 dozen cookies of two different varieties, so we will end up with around 60 dozen cookies. Since we are making 29 baskets, each family will receive 2 dozen cookies. I am glad it is Thanksgiving, so people at the supermarket don't look quite so askance when I buy 4 pounds of butter, 4 bags of chocolate chips, etc. etc. LA is so full of thin people, and they all seem to surround me in the checkout line on the days I am buying large quantities of butter and eggs. Sigh....

But I digress. In the midst of this, we still have a Thursday night talk, and Thursday night tea and cookies afterwards. For the cookies, there is nothing new, holiday-ish or particularly difficult this week, given the time I am devoting to other matters, but it is not to say that these are not worth, uh, sampling... And so:

Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

These are both repeats, and I realized a bit into the whole thing that this is really just two different versions of ch0colate chip cookies. Well, who doesn't love chocolate chips? Sherry Yard is the pastry chef at Spago, and this is the chocolate chip cookie recipe they serve there. (Although as someone recently pointed out to me, there they are warm from the oven and soft. If you pay me $150 for dinner, I will give you warm and soft, too.) These are a very thin, crisp cookie. Using a variation in the recipe, I added an extra egg to try to make them a bit cakier, but the dough seems to have just sneered at the extra egg. So thin and crisp it is.

The biscotti are one of my favorites. These involve lots of roasted, chopped hazelnuts and also chocolate. (For both the biscotti and chocolate chip cookies, I ended up hand cutting some Ghirardelli Semisweet Chocolate Bars. Hand cut chocolate is usually much better quality and more interesting than using store bought chips, which are usually made using a lower quality chocolate.) While, as with all biscotti, these would do better dipped in milk, hot cocoa or even (gasp) coffee than in the tea we serve at the Center, the chocolate and hazelnut combination is a very nice flavor. That is why the Italians came up with a special name for it: Gianduja.

Oh, and tomorrow I will be doing my baking for the Dana baskets. I am making this same chocolate chip cookie recipe from Sherry Yard (although I am using Ghirardelli 60% Bittersweet Chocolate Chips - which received the highest rating from Cook's Illustrated for chocolate chips - instead of hand cutting 42 oz. of chocolate, oof), and then the Nibby Pecan Butter Cookies, which have pecans and cacao nibs, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet.

Take care,
D-J

For November 12

Last week was a week with no cookies at all, just cakes large and diminutive. And no chocolate! After my car got keyed and my house tagged with demands for chocolate, I got the idea - please, I give up! No, really, just kidding.

Anyway, this week we return to traditional values by embracing our inner cookie-ness. To wit:

Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Butter Icing, from Martha Stewart's Cookies
Bittersweet Decadence Cookies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

I made the pumpkin cookies two years ago for the Honsaku Gyocha for Faith-Mind. I had planned to make them this year, and bought all the ingredients, but then changed my mind and made the Vermont Maple Cookies instead. But I really like these cookies, and with all the ingredients...it was time. The cookie here is closer to a little cake-let (oh, boy, already straying from my fundamentalist cookie path) - the cookbook refers to them as pillowy. (Is that a word? Well, it is making it past Google's spell checker.) Anyway, it is a soft, cake-like cookie redolent of pumpkin and spices, not very sweet. And then we throw on some icing to give it some excitement. Yin and Yang, you know? The icing here is a brown butter icing - you start it by cooking butter in a pot until the butter solids start to brown and it all turns a golden brown (not burned) and then pour it into the confectioners sugar, add a little more liquid and then STIR! Here, I was supposed to add condensed milk, but I didn't have as much as I thought I did, so it got an assist from some maple syrup. So these are a Maple Brown Butter Icing. The brown butter flavor really shines through.

OK, so the other cookies are being renamed the Enduring Chocolate Vow Special. Because, well, Oh My God. These come from a book that is nothing but chocolate recipes (called Bittersweet) and they still get called Bittersweet Decadence Cookies. And the name fits. The basic ingredients in this cookie are as follows: flour (1/4 cup), chopped pecans (2 cups), butter (6 T), bittersweet chocolate #1 (8 oz. Sharffen Berger 70% bittersweet, melted into the butter to form the basic batter), bittersweet chocolate #2 (6 oz. Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks). That's about it. So for those who missed it, there is 1 oz. of flour, 2 cups of pecans and 14 oz of chocolate in these cookies. Oh, and 2 eggs, to hold the whole crazy thing together. Alice Medrich describes these as "richer than sin" and she aint kidding. They are funny looking as anything - little bumpy mounds that are gooey inside and dry outside. They are yummy - but they make keep the entire Zen Center awake for the entire night, if Enduring-Vow doesn't get to them first.

For November 5

This week, we are taking a break from cookies and spending a week with their friends, the cakes. Two very different types of cakes, in fact:

All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Visitandines de Lorraine, Little "Visitation" Cakes from Lorraine, from Nick Malgieri

I believe I made the Bundt cake last year. It is chockablock full of stuff - pumpkin puree, diced apples, chopped fresh cranberries, chopped pecans, and loads of spices - with a maple icing. One of the reasons I made cakes this week was to try to cut down on the sheer labor involved, but my plan went awry - this cake has quite a bit of prep involved, and with Andrew working I did it all myself. It called for 2 cups of fresh cranberries, "sliced in half or coarsely chopped." Well, I don't know if you have ever worked with fresh cranberries, but those suckers really know how to roll! Anyway, the coarse chopping was not an option, so I ended up individually cutting each cranberry in half. I guess it is good practice - I saw my brain wandering around and developing a LOT of opinions during this process! Anyway, the cake seems quite good - it has so much moisture from the pumpkin puree that I am concerned it is undercooked, but as Andrew corrected me this morning, that just means it is "moist." Right, moist.

In contrast to the big Bundt cake, the other cakes are small and delicate, as you can expect for a recipe invented by nuns in France. Nick Malgieri has a funny history about these on his blog (click on the link to go there). This is a recipe that he has adapted from two old French cookbooks based on a small cake originally made by the Nuns of the Visitation in Lorraine. For some reason I was taken by the recipe (well, it is a cake and involves almonds, which probably explains it) so voila! as they say in France. The recipe includes a small amount (3T) of dark rum, so I am a bit nervous about how they will go over at the Center - they bake for quite a while at 375 degrees, so I am sure the alcohol bakes off, but there is an interesting flavor that the rum imparts.

For October 29

Dinner:

Corn, Bean and Pumpkin Stew, from Deborah Madison, The Greens Cookbook

Arugula with Pecorino Romano and Roasted Walnuts

Corn-Cheese Muffins
both from Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone

During the Practice Period, we have Thursday night Sangha dinners at ZCLA. I signed up to cook this week, and based on tonight's prep and cooking, I was obviously completely crazy at the time I did this - or was I just crazy in putting together this "simple" menu? All of the recipes are from Deborah Madison, who is wonderful, and whose cookbooks are my standard references. On the other hand, while she has a cookbook that is designed for simple and quick cooking, none of these recipes are from that book! Anyway, two of these are among our very favorite recipes. The Corn, Bean and Pumpkin Stew is an annual Thanksgiving weekend recipe that I make. It is a wonderful, low fat, high fiber stew brimming with good stuff - corn hand cut off the cob, pinto beans, chunks of sugar pie pumpkin cut and cooked, a home made spice melange...yum. I am making some cheese-corn muffins to go with it, which is a new recipe. And the arugula salad is a specialty of Andrew's - a really good salad with grated romano and roasted walnuts. The vinaigrette uses walnut oil, diced shallots, sherry vinegar and a little dijon mustard. Wonderful!

This was a labor intensive prep and cooking tonight, and it would not have been possible without Andrew being here to help. He is usually not at home now on Wednesday nights, but this week he was, and I am very lucky for that!

Now, on to the desserts....

Chocolate Cupcakes, from Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts via the New York Times food blogs

Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies, from Martha Stewart's Cookies

There is quite a difference between these two desserts this week. The cookies are very homey - you could almost call them homely. They are big, irregular, none too pretty. But they are very flavorful! They have very little fat in them - not much butter at all, with most of the moisture coming instead from the applesauce. This is an organic applesauce from a small producer. The recipe calls for the cookies to be iced, but that just wasn't happening this week. And I think we'll all survive.

The chocolate cupcakes are quite straightforward: chocolate cake, with a chocolate ganache for icing. The ganache is nice, because it has a lot of chocolate intensity, but is quite thin and doesn't pack a huge, overwhelming sugar wallop like you get on many cupcakes these days where an inch of buttercream frosting can leave you with a horrible sugar high. The recipe is from an old, 1970s classic cookbook, but was recently resurrected in a blog post at the New York Times web site.

Well, it's after 12:40 a.m., so time to sign off. Ciao!

For October 24

Vermont Maple Cookies, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

This week, ZCLA was engaged in the annual autumn sesshin or meditation retreat. So there were no cookies on Thursday night. However, on Saturday night we had a ceremony in the Zendo called Honsaku Gyocha, for which I made these cookies. The sesshin marks the end of a year of training for the Head Trainee at the Center. For the final six months of her training period, she works on a koan, and on the final day of the retreat she presents the koan, gives a talk on it, and then challenges those present to test her understanding in a ritual called Dharma Combat. Very dramatic and beautiful. That all occurred on Sunday morning, but on Saturday night, the night before, we have Honsaku Gyocha, which is a ceremony where the koan is presented, the abbot gives a few remarks, and then everyone has tea and a cookie. I was asked to make the cookies. In the end, since I was doing the sesshin, it proved a bit of a challenge time-wise, but Andrew jumped in and helped immeasurably by making the cookie dough on Friday afternoon. I baked the cookies late Friday night, was back in the Zendo at 6 a.m. Saturday morning, and iced them later on Saturday. Because the kitchen was full of people prepping for the lunch and dinner for the retreat participants, I iced in the library. The cookies and icing had a very intense maple flavor, and it lingered on long afterwards!

Anyway, this is a wonderful autumn cookie. It incarnates maple. There is a large amount of maple sugar and maple flavor in the cookie itself, and then they are iced with an icing that involves both maple syrup and maple flavor (and, of course, cream). Quite sweet, but wonderful. The cookies have a slightly crisp exterior, but a soft, almost cakey interior. The icing is not necessary, but really reinforces the maple flavor - these are a cookie where the flavors in the cooked cookie are significantly toned down from the uncooked dough, so the maple icing has a real function. Without the icing, they reminded me of a kind of maple snickerdoodle. King Arthur Flour is located in Vermont, and they know how to make a maple cookie! Kudos!

For October 15

Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Mary Bergin, Spago Desserts

Maple Walnut Bars, from The King Arthur Flour Baking Company

The chocolate chip cookies are a repeat. This is a nice recipe - very straightforward. This particular recipe calls for the dough to refrigerate for several hours before baking. From what I have been reading, this is now considered a better thing with many cookie recipes because it allows the fat from the butter to fully absorb with the flour. I hand cut the chocolate rather than use chips. I also used a natural brown sugar, which is much more rich and intense than the normal brown sugar, which is really just white sugar that has had molasses added back into it. The recipe calls for baking them a bit longer (apparently Wolfgang Puck likes his cookies crisp) but I shortened it because I prefer a softer, chewier cookie.

The second recipe is another nod to autumn. On the King Arthur Flour web site these are called maple walnut brownies, but that seemed such a misnomer I have changed it. More like blondies, since there is no chocolate to be found in the recipe. These have both maple syrup and maple flavoring in them, but when I baked them the maple flavor was a bit muted. Isn't it interesting how there can be these transformations between how it tastes as a dough versus as a cookie? Anyway, I then amped up the maple in the glaze, so I think that there will be no mistaking the maple aspect as a finished cookie.

It rained here in Los Angeles today - hurrah!

For October 8

Autumn has finally arrived in Los Angeles, hurrah!

This week's cookies:

Applesauce Spice Bars, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Cornmeal Thyme Cookies, from Martha Stewart's Cookies.

Both of these are repeats, but not for a while. The applesauce bars are an autumnal nod - they have lots of applesauce, raisins, chopped apples, pecans and spices, and are topped with a light brown sugar glaze. If you ate these anytime other than in the fall, your brain would have so much cognitive dissonance you would either go into shock or have an enlightenment experience. I'm afraid to see which it would be.

People have really enjoyed the cornmeal thyme cookies. They are a very interesting cookie, because they are quite simple and the flavors of the cornmeal, thyme and currants come through strongly. (There is not even any vanilla in them.) I am a bit ambivalent about them myself, because I often find the coarse cornmeal somewhat irritating. This time, I used 1/2 of the amount of cornmeal and then used corn flour - a very finely ground cornmeal - for the other half. This gives a more delicate consistency to the cookies, but they retain their flavor. Anyway, we'll see....

Roshi just emailed to say that I would have competition from her home grown watermelon. Harrumph. My applesauce bars sneer at her watermelon - respectfully, and bowing, of course, but sneer just the same.

As for the movie last week (benefit screening of Where The Wild Things Are), wow.

LET THE WILD RUMPUS START!!!!!

Publish Post

For October 1

Two recipes from an old source this week:

Chocolate Mint Snaps

Rosemary Pine Nut Currant Biscotti

both from/adapted from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

I won't be at the Center on Thursday, because Andrew and I are going to see a fundraiser screening of the new movie Where The Wild Things Are. I am looking forward to it a lot, but I am sorry I won't be able to hear Sensei Ryodo's talk. Happily it will at least be recorded!

Anyway, busy week this week, since Tuesday was my birthday and there was no baking that night. So a busy baking night tonight. For some reason I had it in my head that I wanted to do something with rosemary (I swear I had this idea before we had rosemary cookies at Pizzeria Mozza last night, really) so I have adapted a biscotti recipe that called for fennel and replaced it with rosemary. I think it is a subtle flavor, but Andrew's response to that was that it was subtle just like as if you were gnawing on a branch of rosemary. Ha ha. Anyway, it is an interesting flavor addition to the biscotti - I think it works.

I also for some reason think that the mint in the chocolate mint snaps is rather understated. I think Andrew actually snorted in response. Oh, well, maybe my taste buds are not working tonight. Anyway, I was amazed when I found this recipe tonight, since Andrew is a huge chocolate-mint fan, and I had no idea that I had not made all the chocolate mint recipes that were in this book. But noooo, at least one remained. ("No," said Yoda, "There is another." But I digress.) Anyway, these are a very thin, crisp cookie. They are really nice - they do cry out for a glass of milk, though. I don't know if tea will do. Oh, dear - but what do I care, I won't be there, anyway. Ha ha!

OK, it is midnight, and I am obviously overtired. Night night!

For September 24

Oh yeah, that was two days ago! Oops.

So Andy was out of town from Wed. through today, and I had a big brief due on Friday, so it has been a bit hectic. So I did do the baking, but the blogging has been delayed. But here it is, Saturday night, and I am lying in bed typing on a computer. Something is very, very wrong.

OK, anyway, on to this week's recipes:

Salt and Black Pepper Cocoa Shortbread Cookies

Bi-rownies (aka Chipster Topped Brownies)

Both from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

Who knew there were still a few cookie recipes that I hadn't made out of this cookbook of Dorie's, but here are two of them. These are very different recipes - the shortbread cookies are very delicate, and the salt and pepper cut the sugar quite effectively. The bi-rownies are just a bomb of chocolate and sugar.

Speaking of bombs - I had a bit of a problem making the shortbread cookies, and the next morning Andrew said it looked like a chocolate bomb had gone off in our kitchen. (Sheepish grin.) These were a bit more of a challenge than I was expecting. This is a recipe where you make your dough, then you collect it into a cylinder, and then refrigerate it for a few hours or more before slicing and baking. Well, I don't know if it was because of the heat spell we've been having or what, but when this dough was made, it was waaaaay too soft to form into a cylinder to refrigerate. I tried. (Chocolate bomb.) Anyway, so I just threw the bowl into the refrigerator, and went to bed. The next morning, I had a meeting downtown, so I got up extra early and marched into the kitchen for round 2 with this dough. I took it out of the refrigerator and eventually managed to form the cylinders from the now very hard dough. But this dough has a very high amount of butter in it, so that when you handle it, the outer parts soften up very quickly. So here I was, breaking portions of the hard dough off and then trying to form it into cylinders, but while the interior is this hard lump, the exterior was quickly softening up to goop. (Chocolate bomb #2.) Anyway, with a lot of chocolate on my hands (and other places), I finally managed to make my cylinders and shove it back into the refrigerator to firm up again. It ends up being a wonderful cookie - very delicate, and very sophisticated. Was it worth it? I'll try it again in the dead of winter and we'll see how that turns out....

The other recipe was one that I had seen and thought about a lot, because it is so decadent. Dorie's name for it is "chipster topped brownies" but I am not in love with the name. So I have rechristened them bi-rownies. Here's the deal. First, you make a brownie batter with walnuts, and spread it in a 9x13 pan. Then, you make a chocolate chip cookie (i.e., blondie) dough, and you cover the brownie matter with it and then bake it. So it is both a blondie and a brownie in one - hence my bi-rownie. Nothing particularly subtle about this recipe, just pure deliciousness.

OK, enough about last week. Now, on to next week....

Actually, next week I will be baking, but I won't be at the Center on Thursday. Andrew and I are going instead to a benefit screening of the new movie "Where The Wild Things Are" and then a party afterwards. I am excited to see the movie, and really looking forward to this event. But somehow we'll still figure out a way to get the cookies to those in need...

Take good care.

For September 17

Back from Tassajara! Sigh. We had some good food, and good desserts and cookies (and one that falls in the "really?" category, but never mind about that...) Anyway, this Thursday, David Green will be receiving jukai on Thursday night, so our usual schedule is set aside - except for the tea and cookies (uh, sweets) part. And tonight one of our members is giving a recital at USC, so I had to do all my baking last night, which explains why this is being written at 11:50 a.m. rather than 11:50 p.m. Anyway, enough chatter, here is this week's lineup:

Sugar Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My House to Yours
Almond Cake, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

I am not sure I have, from the beginning, made a cookie that was simply called a sugar cookie. And I have been feeling recently like I have neglected them and wanted to make some. So here is a simple sugar cookie. Well, since I had a lemon on hand, I did grate the zest and add it to the sugar to give it a subtle lemon flavor, but it was 1 lemon for around 85 cookies, so it is just there in the background. These are a simple cookie - a bit on the crunch side, not soft and chewy (I'll have to do those next, since that is my preference). For those who like simple sugar cookies, this one is a nice recipe.

The cake is a change of pace. This cake has been whispering to me since I bought this cookbook last year. There is a photo of it that is so beautiful....it just says "make me!" Since we are celebrating a jukai this week, I decided to take the plunge and make it. This is an intense cake, not a light and fluffy cake like the birthday cake of our childhood. This is like a torte - rather flat and just packed with almond flavor. This variation on the recipe involves a crunchy almond crust - this is spread on the bottom of the pan and, after the cake is baked, the pan is inverted and removed - leading to a moment of terror as it is inverted and the question of whether the cake is going to come out cleanly hangs there. This time, the cakes came out fairly cleanly. Phew!

For September 10

Andrew and I will be out of town again this week - going to Tassajara for the last weekend of guest season, which is an old tradition for us by now - so there has been a lot of busy baking in advance, amid a week where Andrew has been sick and I have been super busy at work. Anyway, here is this week's line-up:

Hazelnut whole wheat sables

New bittersweet brownies

both from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

I think that both of these are probably repeats at this point, but they are worth doing again. As I have said before, the cookbook these come from, Pure Dessert, is a wonderful book. The idea of the book is to pare back all the extra flavors and ingredients in desserts to allow intense flavors to shine through. So the recipes tend to have limited numbers of ingredients, and as a result they really do have an intensity of flavor that is great - very "Zen" baking!

The brownies are intense - two-thirds 70% Scharffen Berger chocolate mixed with one-third 66% Valrhona. In the basic recipe, it calls for 8 oz of chocolate and only 1.2 oz of flour, so while not flourless brownies, the flour is there just to hold it together. (With so little flour, do these qualify as low-carb? Probably not.) There are just 7 ingredients in this recipe, including the salt and vanilla. No nuts to get in the way of the chocolate. Very intense.

The sables are a contrast. These are a type of butter cookie. The focus here in on some earthiness, with whole wheat flour and roasted hazelnuts providing the flavor profile. Again, only 7 ingredients, including the salt and vanilla. Alice Medrich's sable recipes are just amazing, and these fully live up to those I have made before.

Enjoy!

For August 27

Back from Hawaii! Andrew and I were gone for 10 days on vacation. Now back. Sigh. A very hard landing on return. Anyway, amid the 100-degree heat, I was in the kitchen baking last night, and here are the items I made:

Cranberry Oatmeal Bars, from Nick Malgieri
Macademia Shortbread Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

Both bar-type cookies this week - I didn't get home until 8 p.m. last night, and we still haven't unpacked from our trip, which called for relatively simple recipes this week. The cranberry oatmeal bars are what they sound like - lots of oats, with some cranberries and pecans. The sweetness comes from a combination of dark brown sugar and unsweetened applesauce. Not much fat in these at all. While it is in the high 90s here today, these are clearing the way out for fall to arrive (please!).

The brownie recipe is rather interesting. First, you make a shortbread layer at the bottom of your pan, and add nuts to it - in this case, macadamia nuts, in a nod to the recent trip to Hawaii. After that bakes, you add pour a brownie batter on top, and then bake it again. So it ends up being a brownie on top of a thin macadamia shortbread crust. I made this recipe some time ago, except I used hazelnuts instead of macadamia nuts. There are also two different brownie recipes you can use for the brownie layer; I used the "Best Cocoa Brownies" recipe, which I made recently and was well received. This is a nice contrast of the intense, fudgy brownie atop the shortbread crust, with the macadamia adding an almost ethereal element to the mix.

Next week, the Center is on recess, so we will be taking the week off. However, I just received two dessert cookbooks from Flo Braker in the mail yesterday, so I will use the time off to peruse and plan...

Oh, and I have been doing the "blog" thing now for a year!!! Wow! Happy Birthday to me!

For August 13

Two interesting recipes this week, both involving almonds:

Lemony Almond Bars, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Chocolate Spice Quickies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

This is the second week in a row I am doing a chocolate cookie recipe from Dorie Greenspan. In terms of technique, these are rather similar to the World Peace Cookies that I did last week, but they are also quite different in result. Here, the cookies are a bit softer, and have a slightly elusive quality. They have both allspice and ground almonds in them, which is probably why. Dorie calls them quickies, and they are and aren't - they are because this is a fairly quick dough to make, and they aren't because the dough then needs to be refrigerated for at least 4 hours before slicing and baking. I like these a lot, and I think they are a bit more complex than the World Peace Cookies (I just asked Andrew, who says it is a close call but thinks the World Peace Cookies edge these out; so much for world peace).

The lemony almond bars are unusual. They won't win any awards for looks, but they are really good. Lemon and almond are not a natural flavor combination, but here it works nicely. These bars involve three steps. First, you make a crust layer, which you bake. While it is baking, you make a topping layer, which is basically eggs, brown sugar and almonds. Put the topping on, bake for 20 minutes. While that is baking, you make a glaze, which involves fresh lemon juice, lemon zest and powdered sugar; when the bars come out of the oven, while still hot you pour the glaze over them, and the glaze is absorbed into the bars. As I said, these are very plain bars, but that makes the big lemon flavor a real surprise. These are a really nice, interesting bar. As far as I know, I haven't made either of these recipes before, and both are good, solid recipes.

Andrew and I leave on vacation on Saturday, so no cookies from us next week - we will be playing in Hawaii for 10 days. But we'll be back for the 27th!

Dharma-Joy

For August 6

I was in San Diego today, so Andrew took care of the cookies. So now I turn it over to our guest blogger, Andrew!

World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

OK, Tom actually made these Wednesday night. They are the kind of cookies that you roll into logs and refrigerate, so all I had to do was slice them up and bake them. I am always a little worried about sizing cookies according to the recipe, so I confess that I actually pulled out the tape measure to be sure I was slicing in 1/2-inch segments. Yes, I know it's a little crazy. It was definitely worth it - these are really really good cookies - chocolatey and rich with an almost-melt-in-your-mouth texture. Quintessential cookies that should definitely bring about global harmony!

Blondies, adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Tom called on his way home from San Diego and jokingly suggested I shop for and bake the second cookie, and he said that he thought maybe brownies would be good but that he didn't want two chocolate cookies. I thought blondies sounded good, so I did some googling (why bother using the 40 million cookbooks we have when I can just google?) and came up with this recipe. It is really simple and has the advantage of having an ingredient list consisting of stuff we already had in the house. I did change it slightly based on other recipes and comments by other bakers by creaming the butter and sugar rather than melting the butter. I also added toasted walnuts and some chocolate chips. I am sending them into the world untested, so you will have to let me know how they turned out. The best part was that they were all done by the time Tom got home, so we had takeout for dinner and got to bed before midnight - hurray!

For July 30

Bittersweet Brownies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

Raisin, Pine Nut and Fennel Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Busy week, which means two relatively easy - but delicious - recipes. I am a big fan of Dorie Greenspan's; I don't think I have made one recipe of hers that has not turned out exceedingly well. This is a very straightforward brownie recipe. There are very few ingredients - no nuts! - so the flavor and texture are accentuated. These are made with Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate, with some espresso powder for an extra kick. While not cakey, they are not the ultra-dense, fudgy version of brownies that I generally prefer. But they are pretty close.

I wanted to do something different in contrast, and the biscotti fit the bill. These are chockablock with "stuff" - raisins, pine nuts and fennel seed. This flavor combination is based on an Italian sauce (except the sauce has anchovy, mercifully left out here). I am not a fan of the licorice type flavors such as fennel and anise, but I really like these biscotti. Certainly the large quantity of pine nuts helps - I was thinking last week that it has been a long time since I did a recipe with pine nuts, so I am happy to have come across this one while browsing through the King Arthur cookbook today. And unlike a number of my recent biscotti excursions, this one is not as long-baked, leaving it a more delicate set of flavors. So this week we have two good recipes that go in completely different directions.

For July 16

Two recipes from Alice Medrich this week:

Best Cocoa Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

Whole Wheat Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

This was a crazy week. I am blogging two days late! Work has been intense - I worked 10 hours a day last Saturday and Sunday, and pretty non-stop since. (Today, this crazy push came to an end when I got two briefs that I have been working on for weeks filed. Now I am going to collapse.)

Anyway, these were two really great recipes - they were great first, because the results tasted great and second, because they were pretty darn easy to make. The Whole Wheat Sables are from the Pure Dessert cookbook; in this book, Medrich cuts back the ingredients in recipes to allow purity of flavor to come through. There are like 5 or 6 ingredients total in the Whole Wheat Sables, which are a type of butter cookie. They have equal amounts of whole wheat and regular flour, and it gives a real nuttiness to the cookie, even though there are no nuts. I made the dough for these on Monday, and Andrew - bless him - sliced them and baked them for me on Wednesday before I got home. These are an exceedingly delicate cookie - they are almost ethereal, the edges just melt away. Medrich does a whole set of recipes that are variants of this cookie, and each is yummy. Not a kid's cookie, but wonderful.

The brownies, well, they ARE a kids cookie - they are brownies, after all. These are from Medrich's chocolate cookbook, Bittersweet. She has a series of brownie recipes. One that I did a few weeks ago relied on bittersweet chocolate; this one relies on cocoa powder. Very different results. These are an intense, fudgy, indulgent brownie. Not very difficult to make - which saved me this week - but a really good result. Alice Medrich is my hero!

OK, now I go collapse.

For July 9

This is another crazy week. Oof. Andy is back from Arizona, his mom's stuff has been moved (but unpacking is another thing). And work is crazy! Oy. But still, the cookies must go on. So this week....

Triple Chocolate Fudge Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking
Summer Berry Crumble Bars, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

After my small "oops" with the chocolate cookies last week, this week we make up for it with a lot of chocolate in the cookies. Sherry Yard is the pastry chef at Spago, and these are a very nice cookie, even if they have white chccolate in them. These are a chocolate cookie that has cocoa powder, dark chocolate chunks and white chocolate chunks included. I am not going to go on about the whole "white chocolate" thing, but will just say that these have enough "real" chocolate to permit me to overlook the indecency of the white chocolate. These are a crunchy cookie (I am told that Wolfgang likes his cookies crunchy, not chewy) with lots of flavor.

Speaking of flavor, the bars are full of flavor in a totally different way. These bars have a base of flours and oats (and a little sugar and flour, etc.) then a layer of blueberries and raspberries. This is topped by another layer of flour, oats and sunflower seeds (yeah, yeah, sugar, butter, etc.) then a very subtle glaze is applied after baking. They are a challenge to eat with all the fresh fruit and the crumbly top and bottom crusts, but they are a treat!

For July 2

Chocolate Sugar Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking

Our Favorite Pound Cake

This week, Andy is in Lake Havasu, Arizona, helping prepare his mom for her big move to Los Angeles. So I am handling both the cooking and clean up. Yuck!

Anyway, some fun stuff this week. The cookie is from Sherry Yard's book, the Secrets of Baking. Sherry is the pastry chef at Spago, and I think this is an excellent baking book. This cookie is a variation on her Master Sugar Cookie recipe - I have been planning to make a basic sugar cookie for a while. Well, not this week - I got sidetracked by my desire to have something chocolate, so I went with one of her variations rather than the basic recipe itself. Here, there is a very light addition of chocolate in the form of some melted bittersweet chocolate that is added at the beginning. Now, just as I am typing this, I realize I was supposed to add cocoa powder along with the flour, but, oops, I guess I forgot. So these are not an intense chocolate cookie, they are a lightly chocolated sugar cookie. So this is obviously "adapted from" Sherry Yard, rather than a recipe of hers. Anyway, the result is a very simple cookie. After a few weeks with some elaborations in the cookie department, this is a back to basics cookie.

And, speaking of back to basics, the pound cake is another recipe in that vein. I have been making this recipe for 20 years, and it is my favorite pound cake. For those that don't know, the name of the cake - pound cake - came from the fact that the basic recipe called for a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs, and a pound of flour. Here, that is basically what is in the cake, although it has a few other ingredients (vanilla, baking powder, and milk). Assuming the farmer's market cooperates tomorrow, my plan is to pick up some strawberries and blueberries and we can have berries and cream on pound cake. It seems a very July 4 kind of dessert to have.

Happy holiday!

D-J

For June 25

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Classic Unsweetened-Chocolate Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

This was the week where this whole baking thing veered towards the "are you insane?" side of the spectrum. Monday night I flew to Phoenix (where it was 85 degrees when I landed at 9:30 p.m.), took 2 depos in Phoenix on Tuesday, then flew back to LA; on Wed. morning, I was up at 5:45 to drive to San Diego, where I took two depos before driving back to LA. But the show must go on or whatever, so I had planned ahead and made the biscotti on Sunday night, and made the brownies tonight. And now I want to collapse into a heap.

The biscotti are yummy. As I have mentioned, I have had some hazelnuts sitting around, and originally I was going to experiment with a chocolate hazelnut cookie, but this was a week for relatively simple baking, so biscotti and bars it was. Anyway, I am a fan of the chocolate hazelnut combination, so I hope people like the biscotti.

The brownies are also very good. Maybe one of my favorites. These are dense, gooey brownies, not for the I-like-my-brownies- cakey crowd. These are very thin - there is no rising agent in them at all - and concentrated. They cook on a high temperature - 400 degrees - and tonight I inadvertently cooked them with my oven on the convection setting, so they are a bit dark around the edges, but I think we averted catastrophe. Anyway, I am a big fan of Alice Medrich's recipes, and this one does not disappoint. I have placed a link to the recipe at the top - the recipe is from the Scharffen Berger chocolate web site, which is appropriate since I used Scharffen Berger unsweetened chocolate to make these. And while Alice's book does not call for you to toast the nuts (pecans or walnuts, I used walnuts), the Scharffen Berger site suggests it, and I had done so and agree that it is always much better to toast your nuts before baking.

So chocolate fans, start your salivating....and we'll see you at the Center tomorrow night.

As for now, good night!!!

For June 18

Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, from David Lebovitz

Peppery Nibby Chocolate Sables, adapted from Nick Malgieri

Another crazy work week. Sigh. But two interesting cookies. Both of these come from noted bakers who have their own Web sites. The Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are from David Lebovitz' web site, but he is adapting a recipe from Nick Maglieri. These are good cookies and, even better, they are very low fat. This recipe made around 7 dozen cookies, but only used 4 tablespoons of butter. The secret is to use applesauce in place of some of what would otherwise be butter. This is a nice, chewy, very simple cookie reminiscent of childhood.

The other one, well, not so much. This is a recipe of Nick Malgieri (who is adapting someone else's recipe) for a chocolate sable, which is a type of butter cookie. This recipe calls for cinnamon, cayenne and fresh ground black pepper as part of the dough; I have slightly adapted it by adding some cacao nibs (what can I say, they were there, it seemed the right thing to do). Anyway, not your average childhood cookie! These are quite yummy - petite cookies, with a very complex flavor profile. They are quite a contrast to the oatmeal cookie!

For June 11

Luxury Brownies, from the blog Chocolateandzucchini.com

Benne Wafers, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Via David Lebovitz' blog, I found this brownie recipe at Chocolate & Zucchini, a cooking/baking blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier; she in turn had found it on the blog of a woman who sells baked goods at a market in East London. The chocolate in this is very intense - the recipe calls for both melted bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder (in my case, that would be Scharffen Berger chocolate and Valrhona cocoa powder, making these about equal to gold on an ounce for ounce basis - I now know why these are called "luxury" brownies); Clotilde also tinkered with the original recipe by reducing the amount of sugar (and I reduced it a tad more) and by replacing some of the butter with almond butter (like peanut butter but, well, with almonds). Oh, and a lot of nuts. I like the result, but, well, I am not in love with it - a bit more cakey than my favorite style of brownie. On the other hand, the pan that is going to the Zen Center is a bit thicker than the pan I was, er, testing from, so it may be a bit less cooked and less cakey. We'll see how it develops as it cools and sets.

Andrew and I spent four days at Tassajara for a poetry workshop this week. At Tassajara the guest lunch generally is soup, home made bread, salad and cookies. While we were there, one of the cookies was a sesame cookie. Now, a strong sesame flavor is for some people an acquired taste, but I am a big sesame fan, and I had made a sesame cookie some time ago, and this cookie reminded me of that one. So I decided to make it again this week to see, and if they are not the same recipe, they are certainly close! Apparently "benne" was a West African term for sesame and in the "low country" of South Carolina, as a result of slavery, sesame cookies are referred to as benne cookies. This is not a cookie for everyone, but I am fairly pleased with the result. It is a very simple cookie to make, and gives you a very interesting and fun result.

For June 4

Last week, we had a short sesshin begin on Thursday night, so there were no cookies. This week, I am going very early Thursday morning to Tassajara for a poetry workshop that begins on Thursday evening; however, while I will not be around to put out the cookies on Thursday, I (with a lot of help from Andrew) have baked them to leave behind. So for this Thursday, June 4:

Spago's Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking

Nibby Buckwheat Butter Cookies, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

Both of these are repeats - and rightly so, because they are both delicious cookies! I am a big fan of Sherry Yard's chocolate chip cookies. They are a bit more crisp than my ideal chocolate chip cookie, but they are very good nevertheless. These are very interesting cookies - rather than use chocolate chips, I hand cut the bittersweet chocolate, so they have a very dramatic appearance, with these big blotches of chocolate on the face of the cookie.

Alice Medrich's cookies go in a completely different direction. These are from her Pure Dessert cookbook, in which she strips down recipes to their very basics to bring out the essential flavors. Here, the flavors are three: butter, buckwheat and cacao nibs. The cacao nibs and the buckwheat both have very earthy flavors, while the butter provides a counterbalance. I realized last night that I made these in October as a "leave behind" when we went to China - I guess I am fated never to be around when these cookies are actually served. But I brought some of them for our China pilgrims, and we savored them for the first few days of the trip. Tasting it now, it did bring back some associations with China.

It is interesting to have these two cookies together, because they are so different. The powerful chocolate and brown sugar flavors from the chocolate chip cookies, and their crunchy texture contrast starkly with the flavors and textures of the butter cookies.

I had originally thought I was going to make a cookie with hazelnut this week, maybe a chocolate and hazelnut combination. But since my schedule is messed up, I decided to fall back on a couple of tried and true recipes that both involved making the dough and then refrigerating it, so that I could make the dough on Monday night and then bake it on Tuesday. So maybe next week we will resume our hunt for the perfect chocolate and hazelnut cookie.

For May 21

Midnight Crinkles

Lemon Almond Biscotti

both from Dorie Greenspan, Baking:  From My Home to Yours

It is late, and I have to get up early tomorrow for a 7:30 meeting, so this is a short entry.  The midnight crinkles are a very simple cookie, but they have some cinnamon and cloves in them which is a bit of a surprise as you bit into them.  Next time I should add a bit of pepper to wake things up.  The lemon almond biscotti are interesting - the dough has a lot of baking powder in it, and it really slumped and expanded in the baking, so these are flatter than many biscotti I have made.  The recipe in Dorie's book is for almond biscotti, but I added the lemon to add a contrasting flavor.  These baked quite a while for the second bake - maybe too long - so I am still trying to see how the lemon and almond flavors develop.

I am probably not going to be at the Center tomorrow night - I have a hearing in San Diego at 4 - so I am dropping these off in the morning.  We'll see how it goes.

For May 7

Nibby Pecan Cookies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

West Tenth Street Brownies, from Nick Malgieri

This week I am doing one repeat recipe, and one from a completely new source.  The repeat is the Nibby Pecan Cookies.  I am a big fan of Alice Medrich - her recipes are usually very simple and rely on the quality of the ingredients rather than complicated techniques or ingredients.  I made this recipe back in the fall, and I am as happy with it now as I think I was then.  This is a recipe that is essentially a buttery sable that has cacao nibs and roasted pecans added for punch.  These two flavors are very complementary and make this a really nice cookie.  This recipe makes small-ish cookies, so the danger is that if you had a tray of them around, you would (could) just keep popping them into your mouth, one after another.  But we wouldn't do that - would we, Enduring-Vow?

Nick Malgieri is a prominent cookbook author and pastry chef.  I don't have any of his books (yet), but he is often referred to as being one of the more authoritative bakers in the U.S. today.  I was browsing through brownie recipes in another cookbook, and the author referred to his brownie recipe as one of the modern standards.  I don't know if this recipe is the one she was referring to, but let's hope so.  He has an online website, and this recipe is found there.  He says he calls these the West 10th Street Brownies because he found the recipe on a card on the street on West 10th St.  With a provenance like that, I hope they turn out OK!

For April 30

Chocolate Peppermint Squares, from The King Arthur Flour Baking Companion (and online)

Flo Braker's Pain d'amande Cookies, from David Lebovitz

Sensei Kodo Boyd has returned to ZCLA to visit for a few weeks, and in honor of her return I am making one of her favorite recipes (which also happens to be one of Andrew's), the chocolate peppermint squares.  While these are a holiday favorite, the chocolate-peppermint combination is hardly reserved for the month of December!  Anyway, it has felt a lot like December this week here in Los Angeles, with cold nights and days that have not made it out of the 60s.  Brrrrr!  I can hear the sympathy from my family back East from here....

The other recipe is a bit of an experiment.  These are a very, very crispy almond cookie.  You begin by making a batter/dough that you put into a loaf pan and refrigerate until it is very firm.  You are then supposed to remove it from the pan and slice it very, very thinly.  According to the recipe, it makes 80-90 cookies.  Well, it is a 9" loaf pan, and 90 cookies into 9" means 10 per inch.  Sadly, I am not as much of a perfectionist as you apparently need to be, since I was not up to slicing 1/10" slices consistently.  So we got fewer - probably around 60.  But they are tasty!  It is worth trying again, and next time I will be prepared.

For April 16

Apricot-Cherry Bars, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Roasted Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies, from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher

That's the plan, anyway.  Due to a couple of snafus, the cookie dough is in the refrigerator tonight, to be baked in the early a.m.  But this is a very nice cookie dough - there is a substantial amount of roasted peans in this dough, and the flavor is great.  This is my first recipe from BakeWise, which was generally listed as one of the best baking books of 2008.  Shirley Corriher has a background as a chemist, and has a very scientific approach to baking.  The book has a lot of recipes, but is more about the science behind baking than anything.  But she is also from Georgia, and that shines through in many of her recipes.  Here, the ample amount of roasted pecans - a large percentage of which are ground into a meal and are just basically part of the flour base for the cookie - is a dead give-away that a Southern baker is at work.  I hope they bake up as tasty as the batter promises!

The apricot cherry bars are a continuation on my dried fruit theme.  Here, the recipe was for apricot bars, but there was a variation for cherry bars.  I decided to just combine them, so we have apricot-cherry bars.  These are a bit crumbly - unlike last week's recipe, which used something close to a pate sucree base, these are much more crumbly.  But the filling is nice.  If I had a lemon at hand, I think I would have added a bit of lemon zest at the end to give it a little treble note, the dried fruit puree needs a little acid to be set off against, but I didn't so I didn't, and we'll all survive.  Anyway, yum.

Next week, the Center is closed for spring recess, so no planned cookies.

For April 9

Very Chocolate Cookies, from David Lebovitz

Tangy-Chewy Fruit Nut Bars, from King Arthur Flour

Well, these are not kosher for Passover.  Sorry!  But neither recipe uses any eggs, if it is any consolation.

The chocolate cookies are interesting - they have a bit of a crumbly texture like shortbread.  They have cocoa powder, melted chocolate, hand cut chocolate chips and cacao nibs, so the "very" in the title is certainly appropriate!  These are small cookies, just a pop in the mouth and let the flavor explode variety.  They also each have a tiny bit of fleur de sel on top, so there is a sweet-salty thing going on.  Yum.  Betsy - these are for you!

The fruit-nut bars are round three of my exploration of the fruit-nut bar world.  People have been enjoying this change of pace, so onward and upwards and all that.  These are a completely different version than any of the previous ones - there is a pastry base, like a pate sucree, that is prebaked, and then the fruit/nut/sugar/butter mixture is spread on top and then baked again.  This week I have apricot, mango, apple, sour cherry, and raisins in my dried fruit mixture.  I bought some dried blueberries to add, but only found them on the counter too late!  Given the accumulation of dried fruit I have in my cupboard, I think we will be working through dried fruit-nut variants for a while, so I hope people like them.  They are really healthy - yeah, that's it, healthy.  Did I mention no eggs?

For April 2

Cheesecake Brownies, from David Lebovitz
Tea and Spice Bars, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

I am going to be out of town for work this week, so I had to do my cooking early. I am continuing to browse through the recipes on David Lebovitz' excellent blog, this time with a cheesecake brownie. Yum. These are rich, so cut small pieces if you make the recipe!

Two weeks ago, I made a fruit and nut bar recipe that was very well received, so I am doing a different variation on that theme again this week. The tea and spice bars have a lot more dried fruit in them than they have either tea or spice, but they don't get credit in the title - chalk it up to a bad agent, I guess. Anyway, in this bar, the dried fruits (I used raisins, apricots, sour cherries and cranberries) are steeped in tea, and then pureed before being added to the mixture. So the bars don't have the identifiable fruit in them that the last ones did. Many similar ingredients, very different result. These look more like cakey bars, with a very simple glaze on top.

Enjoy!

For March 19

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

Friendship Bars

both from David Lebovitz

David Lebovitz was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse for over 12 years.  He now lives in Paris (brat).  He has a wonderful, inspiring blog.  Anyway, this week I am making two recipes from the recipe list in his blog.  The chocolate hazelnut biscotti is an adaptation of his chocolate biscotti recipe - he calls for almonds, but I have had some hazelnuts in the house for a couple of weeks now, intending to use them in a recipe, so I have substituted hazelnut extract and hazelnuts instead of almonds in his recipe.

The Friendship Bars are a type of dried fruit and nut bar.  He calls for dates and apricots.  I have used a mixture of those, but with fewer dates and an addition of dried sour cherries and cranberries to add some additional flavors.

Astonishingly - and completely unintentionally on my part, I assure you - neither recipe calls for any added fat (butter, etc.)  So they are obviously healthy - yeah, that's it, healthy.

For March 12

Oatmeal Raisin Almond Cookies, from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

BLD Fudge Brownies, from the Los Angeles Times and BLD Restaurant

BLD is a wonderful restaurant on 3d Street here in Los Angeles.  It is the more casual sister to Grace.  Today's Los Angeles Times published the recipe for BLD's fudge brownie sundae; this is the fudge brownie part of the recipe.  It has to refrigerate overnight, so I haven't tried it yet, but the recipe is, uh, rather rich and intense.  Not a recipe for the chocolate lightweight!

The Magnolia Bakery is a famous bakery in NY.  This is an interesting twist on the usual oatmeal cookie recipe - it adds almond extract and toasted almonds to the dough.  Somehow it gives it a lighter flavor profile than the usual oatmeal raisin cookie.

For March 5

It is an act of pure faith that I am writing this now, before noon, on March 4. I made my batter and dough last night - both had to chill before baking - so, if everything goes right, and my oven complies (it has a malfunctioning control board that we are in the process of replacing, but it is not yet completed), here is the plan for tomorrow:

Madeleines (both plain and chocolate) from American Boulangerie by Rigo Pascal
Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Spago Desserts by Mary Bergin

I am continuing my search for a madeleine recipe I am happy with. (Everyone else has seemed happy with the recipes so far, but I have been unhappy, except with the one from Sherry Yard's Secrets of Baking.) Pascal's recipe has all the same basic ingredients as the others, but uses a very different technique in making the batter, so I am very interested to see how it turns out. One of his variations called for taking a portion of the basic batter out and combining it with some cocoa (oh, and just a teeny more butter), giving you some chocolate and some plain madeleines as a result. Needless to say, I have opted for this approach. I may add some hazelnuts to the plain ones, we will have to see how I am feeling by the time we get to the baking. This recipe also uses European-style (organic) butter rather than American-style butter, so it will be interesting to see if the extra $3 was worth it.

Mary Bergin's cookbook, from her days as the pastry chef at Spago in Hollywood (before she left to become the chef at Spago in Las Vegas and Sherry Yard took over as pastry chef at Spago) has a series of wonderful cookie recipes. Her peanut butter cookie recipe is our hand's-down favorite. Unfortunately, for almost all of her cookie recipes, she calls for the dough to chill for several hours or overnight before baking, and my schedule does not really allow me to do this usually. (This week, a cancellation gave me a free Tuesday night I otherwise wouldn't have.) As a general rule, from what I have been reading recently, allowing a cookie dough to sit overnight results in much better cookies. It allows the fat in the butter to emulsify with the flour more thoroughly (or something like that). Anyway, bottom line, her recipes are great, I wish I could make them more often. This week, we've got one with three types of chocolate (cocoa powder, melted bittersweet chocolate in the batter, and then dark chocolate chips) and two types of peanuts (peanut butter in the batter plus 2 cups of roasted peanuts). Luckily for us, this cookbook has no nutritional information.

My copy of Mary Bergin's Spago Desserts is signed. It was given to me in December 1994 by a dear friend, Chris Kennedy, who was a partner at Irell & Manella, and the person who recruited me out of law school and managed to charm me into coming to LA when it was not on my radar. Chris died around 18 months ago, at only 57. I was thinking fondly of him while I was making the dough last night.

For February 26

Peanuttiest Blondies

Chocolate Oatmeal Drops

Both from Dorie Greenspan, Baking:  From My Home To Yours

Last week, I made an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  This week, I am using most of the same ingredients, but in a different way, in the Chocolate Oatmeal Drops.  Here, instead of keeping the chocolate as chips stirred into the oatmeal cookie batter, it is melted with the chocolate and brown sugar to form the base batter, making these a very dark chocolaty cookie with light-colored oats peeking out here and there.  The blondies give a visual contrast, but they are also studded with chocolate, so in a way the two recipes are visual inverses.  The blondies are filled with salted peanuts and also with chunky peanut butter.  A bit rich, but it just means smaller squares.

I have made both of these recipes before.  They are not my personal favorites, but Andy reminds me that others are of a different opinion.

For February 19

Busy week at work.  My oven is broken.  Baking is crazy.

Anyway, in my prior life I must have been a postal carrier or something - neither rain, nor sleet, etc. etc. etc.

OK, so for this week:

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Chocolate Almond Espresso Biscotti

The biscotti are from Dorie Greenspan's Baking:  From my home to yours.

The cookies are a recipe given to me by Brenda Marsh.  Brenda is one of the kick-ass accountants that my firm uses to do its accounting work.  She is awesome.  She makes me laugh.  She says this is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever.  Well, we'll see.  With a claim like that, we certainly have to check it out!

Here's a shout out to Betsy, who can't be with us this week, having gone back to see her ailing dad in Kansas.  And one to Moon-Wheel, who is in my thoughts and prayers as she enters hospice.  Morning mind is Kanzeon!  Evening mind is Kanzeon! Nen nen arises from mind.  Nen nen is not separate from mind.

For February 12

Vanilla-Scented Madeleines, from the King Arthur Flour Web site

Olive Oil Cookies with Rosemary and Cacao Nibs, adapted from the New York Times food blog Bitten

The madeleines are a different recipe than last week's - not quite as delicate, but still quite good - and they are coming out a lot better this time!  This time the butter did not separate and sink to the bottom of the bowl, only to be discovered half-way through the baking.

The second cookie is a bit of an adventure.  The recipe on Mark Bittman's blog (I recommend this blog highly - he has lots of recipes, all designed for everyday cooking, so they are simple and yummy) is for sugar cookies with olive oil and rosemary.  When I was musing about them, I thought I would experiment and add cacao nibs, which I thought would complement some of the flavors in the olive oil.  They are still being made, so the jury is still out, but let's hope that my instincts point me in the right direction!

For February 5

We're baaaaaaack!

After a long hiatus during the gray days of January (actually, here in SoCal January was pretty fabulous, warm, blue skies, etc.), we resume the normal schedule and that means talks, tea and cookies!

Here is this week's lineup, selected specially for Gemmon and Betsy:

Traditional Madeleines

Dorie Greenspan's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Both from Dorie Greenspan, Baking:  From My Home to Yours

OK, so this madeleine recipe is the first recipe of Dorie's that I don't adore.  But that is because I think I messed it up.  These are not pretty madeleines, folks.  For the first batch, I overfilled the molds, so they are ugly.  In the second batch, the butter in the recipe had dropped to the bottom of the bowl and not fully incorporated into the dough, so these had too much butter and ended up looking funny, with pockets of butter amid the batter.  I think I am going to have to do madeleines again next week just to do a better job.  They don't taste too bad, but they aren't going to win any beauty contests!

But the chocolate chip cookies are awesome!

Recipe: Orange Berry Muffins

Here is a recipe for Orange Blueberry Muffins, which I have lightly adapted from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From my home to yours

Orange Berry Muffins (yield: about 12 muffins)

Grated zest and juice of 1 orange 
About 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons honey (preferably orange blossom)
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup blueberries - fresh, preferably, or frozen (not thawed)

Decorating sugar, for topping (optional)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey and melted butter.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange strong. (Alternately, and my strong recommendation, place the sugar and zest in a food processor (if you have an immersion blender with a small container attachment, this is the perfect size job for that container) and pulse the sugar and zest until the zest is incorporated into the sugar and the mixture is highly fragrant; transfer to a large bowl.) Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough - the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that’s just the way it should be. Do not overmix, or the muffins will be rubbery. Gently stir in the blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. If you want to top the muffins with decorating sugar, sprinkle on the sugar after the muffins have baked for 10 minutes. When fully baked, the tops of the muffins will be golden and springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Best eaten the day made, but I can say with some authority that they are good even a couple of days later.

For January 18 (!)

Tomorrow we make our annual visit to Evergreen Cemetery and the gravesite of Nyogen Senzaki Roshi, one of the first Zen pioneers in America, who died 51 years ago in 1958.  He recorded some "last words," which are now carved on his gravestone.  They read:

Friends in Dharma, be satisfied with your own head.  Do not put any false heads above your own. Then, minute after minute, watch your steps closely. Always keep your head cold and your feet warm. These are my last words to you.

It is wonderful to pay respect and gratitude to this early American ancestor.  Anyway, to keep us going for our visit, I am breaking my January "no baking" vacation to make some muffins to bring.  So....

For January 18:

Orange Blueberry Muffins

Pumpkin Muffins

Both from Dorie Greenspan, Baking:  From my home to yours