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?