For April 15

Tax Day. It calls for cookies!

Last night, Andrew Bodhi-Heart was working, so I was on my own. Luckily, I planned ahead and made one of my doughs the night before, so all I had to do was slice and bake on Wednesday ... and make the whole other set of cookies. Amazingly, all worked out OK, as I was pretty much done fairly early (as these things go). I am not quite sure how it happened.

Here's the lineup:

Hempseed Whole Wheat Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies, from....Nestle?

I have raved about Alice Medrich's sables before, and I am happy to have another chance to do so. These french butter cookies are really amazing. Her cookbook, Pure Dessert, tries to pare back ingredient lists to the bare minimum to let the intensity of the few remaining ingredients shine through. Here, the two "showcase" ingredients are whole wheat flour and hempseed. Yes, boys and girls, hempseed. Hempseed is a relatively obscure ingredient, but delicious. She likens it to a delicate version of a sunflower seed. Whatever the proper analogy, they are quite good. (At bld restaurant, here in Los Angeles, they have a hempseed-crusted tofu entree that Bodhi-Heart is a big fan of.) Anyway, sorry to disappoint you but there is no psychoactive ingredient in hempseed, so don't get too excited. The hempseeds not only give this a very delicate texture, but also an interesting visual appeal. Highly recommended!

I have also been hankering for good old fashioned chocolate chip cookies. So I grabbed the Toll House recipe off the web and went home and made them! Of course, I used Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate chips instead of the usual Nestle semi-sweets, but otherwise I hewed to the recipe. These turned out very nicely, so my craving is satisfied...for now.

Come enjoy!