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.