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!