For November 18

Hermit Bars
Chocolate Gingerbread Squares

both from Martha Stewart

A couple of weeks ago, I spotted a new, seasonal magazine in the grocery store - a Holiday Cookies magazine from Martha Stewart. While there was an older magazine of the same type - which eventually was turned into the Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook - this had lots of new recipes that I had not seen before. So I happily scooped it up, and this week we break it in with two recipes. (I now see that both are older recipes available on her Web site, but the magazine is very pretty and has all the great design elements that her print materials feature). There are a lot of other promising recipes in the magazine, so this is, I am sure, only the beginning....

Anyway, this also seems to be the week for molasses and ginger, since both recipes feature these ingredients. These ingredients are official harbingers of winter and holidays. Here, they are used in rather interesting ways.

The hermit bars are a variation on the usual hermits. Hermits are an old New England recipe that rely on a variety of spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves), molasses, brown sugar and raisins. They are often made in a pan and then sliced into squares. Here, the technique is closer to that of biscotti, except they are only baked once, not twice. After the dough is made, you cool it a little to make it easier to handle, then it is formed into logs and baked. Once it is cooked, the logs are sliced. The resulting "bar" looks just like a biscotti, but is quite a bit softer. There is nothing elegant about this cookie, but it is very flavorful.

The chocolate gingerbread is another variation on a familiar favorite. I love gingerbread (at least if it is made well). Here, the gingerbread had cocoa powder and chocolate chips added, and the pan is dusted with cocoa powder. The chocoate-ginger combination is not a usual pairing, so it pulls your attention. It screams for whipped cream (or to be dunked in milk). A fun variation.

Next week is Thanksgiving, an d then the Center begins Rohatsu sesshin, which will extend over two Thursdays, so there are no formal cookie obligations again until December 16, a month from now. Until then, take good care!

For November 11

This week, my niece and her daughter were arriving on Thursday, and I was really busy at work, so it was time to fall back on old friends. Well, more or less.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard
Honey Nut Brownies, from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan

Sherry Yard's chocolate chip cookies are a welcome standby. One of the things I like about them is that you can make the dough and refrigerate it overnight, and then make the cookies. Actually, it seems that 24 hours of refrigeration is becoming the new favored technique for chocolate chip cookies, as it allows the fat in the butter to be absorbed better by the flour and leads to a better cookie. When you make the recipe in this way, you form it into logs and refrigerate it. But the dough never gets very solid, and you can't really just slice it and bake it; it is a bit of a messy process to form the cookies, but they are so good that it is worth the effort!

Although I made these brownies before, it was a long time ago. There is enough chocolate in them to justify the "brownie" in the name, but the overwhelming flavor comes from the honey - almost all of the sweetener is honey, and the recipe calls for using something more interesting than the normal clover honey. (I used sage.) The chocolate, honey, pecan combination (probably not in that order) is interesting. Honey is not my favorite flavor, so these are not my favorite brownies, but they are certainly an interesting and unusual variation on a favorite that can often become a bit too boring.

For November 4 (catching up)

Spicy Cherry Chocolate Brownies, from the LA Times
Mapledoodles, from the King Arthur Flour Recipe Site

Recently, the Los Angeles Times did an article on interesting cookie flavors involving combinations of sugar and spice. One of the recipes was for the spicy cherry chocolate brownies that I made this week. The recipe calls for a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. And the "spicy" in the name is not a case of overpromising - these are quite spicy. It is an interesting recipe, because the chocolate flavor is quite strong when you first bite into the brownie, but then over time it gives way to the spiciness of the cayenne. The dried sweet cherries add an extra, unusual flavor to the combination. This was an interesting and different take on brownies. While you have to like spicy food to enjoy it, it is very good!

Mapledoodles - well, the name says it all. Snickerdoodles, but with maple. Oh, autumn! This recipe uses a mixture of plain and maple sugar in making the dough, and then when you form balls of dough you roll them in a mixture of regular and maple sugar as well. Although the recipe calls for an icing in addition, I omitted it, and these were really nice - good maple flavor, but not overwhelming, and a nice texture as well. Recommended!