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!