For August 26

ZCLA is now on summer break, so there will be no cookies for Sept. 2. This gives me a chance to do a little catch-up, since I didn't post for last week. The cookies for Aug. 26 were:

Palm Beach Brownies, from Maida Heatter, Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts
Chewy Orange-Almond Cookies, from Martha Stewart

This was week of opposites. The brownies are a legendary recipe from the great doyenne of desserts, Maida Heatter. Heatter was a giant of the dessert/baking world in the 1970s and 1980s, and fortunately some of her books are still available. I have three, including her Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, Book of Great Desserts, and Cookies. But I first found the recipe for these brownies on an electronic BBS system when I was a grad student in Boston in the early spring of 1988. I still have the dot-matrix printed recipe in my recipe folder. It didn't include the name of the chef, or the name of the brownies; it was called "obscenely good brownies" and that is how I have always referred to them. A long time later I traced it back to Maida Heatter. Anyway, this recipe makes an intense, flavor-bomb, fudgy brownie that is really different than any other I have experienced. It uses a lot of everything - chocolate, butter, espresso powder, sugar, etc etc. It is also a recipe that is best made by those with a stand mixer, because it calls for you to beat the butter/sugar etc. set of ingredients on high speed for 10 minutes. There were literally two decades where I did this, and almost willingly, so good are these brownies. But this recipe is one of the best reasons to own a stand mixer if you can - put the ingredients in, turn to high, set the timer, do other stuff. I love you, KitchenAid! Anyway, the only downside on this recipe is that, if you do it correctly, you end up with a burned crust - this is a sign you have done it correctly! Now, with brownies, as long as it is not too burned, you can get away with not cutting it off, but usually you have to take a bread knife and gently cut off the edges and shave a bit of the bottom. I don't know if we could get the same results in a way that would give us less burned outside, but it would be worth investigating. And these brownies are best if you can give them around 24 hours before you eat them. Good luck!

In contrast, the other cookie is almost ethereal. I stumbled across the Chewy Orange-Almond Cookies on the Martha Stewart web site (which has a cookie a day page, wow). These are almost meringues - they have no added fat and use lots and lots of egg whites. The flavor comes from the almonds (which are ground and comprise most of the dry ingredients) and the orange zest. I had to triple the recipe, which meant zesting 6 oranges - the best reason to own a microplane grater! They are awesome (as long as you give them the respect they deserve, otherwise they can really grate your fingers quite efficiently). Anyway, the resulting cookie is light, and intensely orangey. They are a stark contrast to the brownies.

As I said, no cookies this week, so back at ya' next week!