For September 9

The Center was closed for summer recess so there were no cookies on Sept. 2. For September 9, it was back to school, with two cookies:

Chocolate Sparkle Cookies, via the Los Angeles Times
Oatmeal Current Cookies, from Mary Bergin, Spago Desserts

The chocolate sparkle cookies were a happy byproduct - I have an ancient, bulging folder of recipes I have printed out or cut out of newspapers, etc. over the years, and I was looking through it for my favorite chocolate cake recipe over Labor Day weekend, when I stumbled upon this recipe, which was first printed in the LA Times almost 10 years ago. The recipe itself is from a bakery in Victoria, British Columbia. I apparently printed this out years ago, threw it in the folder, and never made it. Well, now I have, and it is wonderful! This is a gluten-free recipe - there is no flour. Instead, it relies on almond meal. While the recipe calls for grinding almonds, I took the lazy way out and bought a bag of almond meal at Whole Foods. Almond meal has become fairly easy to find these days, so it is a nice timesaver over grinding the almonds, etc. Regardless, this recipe makes small but powerful cookies - there are only 5 ingredients (butter, sugar, eggs, almonds, chocolate). It looks a lot like the fairly common chocolate crackle cookie - the outside will crack during baking, particularly if you use a convection oven - but more intense. They are fairly straightforward to make, and the reward at the end is great. And, as I mentioned, they are gluten free, to boot!

The second cookie was a repeat of an old favorite. Mary Bergin was the original pastry chef at Spago when it was in West Hollywood, and then went to Las Vegas to help open the first Spago offshoot there in 1992. I received her cookbook, Spago Desserts, from my friend Chris Kennedy, a partner at Irell who recruited me out of law school and who was singularly responsible for me coming to Los Angeles. Chris had a lot of health issues and died far too young. The copy of the cookbook has both Mary's autograph as well as Chris', so it is a treasure. Anyway, this oatmeal currant cookie recipe is very good. If the chocolate sparkle cookies have only a few ingredients, this recipe makes up for it. While it is an oatmeal currant cookie, it has almost as many walnuts as currants, and lots of spices, particularly cinnamon and allspice. These are very flavorful, interesting cookies, and every time I make them I am reminded how much I like them. The recipes in this book all seem very good. (The peanut butter cookie recipe, which also has currants in it, is one of Andrew's signature recipes, and one of the only peanut butter cookies we will eat.)