Still catching up! OK, this was what we had LAST week.
Bittersweet Decadence Cookies, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey (you know the rest by now...)
Maple Crisps, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
A couple of highly divergent cookies this week. First, chocolate. I made the bittersweet decadence cookies - how about that for a name? - some time ago, but it was out of a different one of Alice Medrich's cookbooks, and I think some of the technique was different. I haven't gone back to check, but while I was making them I had the distinct feeling that I had never before done a few of the things it requires as part of the recipe. Anyway, the two major ingredients are chocolate and pecans (or walnuts). This recipe involves a lot of chocolate - some as cocoa powder, a lot as melted chocolate, and then some as chocolate chunks stirred in at the end. There is not a whole lot of flour holding these cookies together, and the quality of the chocolate you use is KEY, because that is ultimately just about all you taste. While it also uses a large amount of pecans, I think they largely lend texture rather than much in the way of flavor to this recipe. Somewhat surprisingly, the recipe doesn't call for roasting the pecans first, which would bring more flavor to the recipe, and if I make them again I think I might do that to see how it comes out. But in the end, you get a higgledy-piggledy cookie that is dark dark dark. It is quite an interesting cookie. Of course, if you don't like chocolate, it is definitely not for you!
The maple crisps were, well, not my cup of tea (or cookie), although lots of other people seemed to like them. Indeed, I was so unhappy with them that I almost threw them out and just made a different recipe. But it was late, and Andrew dissuaded me, for better or worse.
We made these because it is autumn and time for maple! Maple is a flavor that both Andrew and I love, and he asked for a maple cookie this week. So I looked through some books and found this one, which is an adaptation of a "brandy crisp" recipe that takes out the brandy and adds in maple syrup instead. This recipe is made on the stove, and then the mixture cools and is scooped into tiny (teaspoon) balls and placed on the cookie sheet. Each teaspoon ball flattens out to a very thin, lacy cookie that is something like 3 inches in diameter. (As a result, the first tray, which had my usual 13 cookies on it, ended up as a giant, undifferentiated blob.) Anyway, these are closer to a candy than a cookie, and I was not in love with the texture or flavor. So it was a disappointment. On the other hand, a variety of people said they really liked them, so go figure. As for me, these can be checked off the bucket list with no need to make them again.
This next week I am taking off because it is my birthday and also because I have been down in Orange County on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with no time to bake. So we will continue our maple excursion next week, and hopefully our weather will make it seem more like fall than we are experiencing right now!
TTFN.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
For September 15
OK, trial and summer travel are over, so it is back to the oven for me!
This week two repeats (more or less):
Sweet and Salty Brownies, adapted from Baked: New Adventures In Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito
Whole Wheat Sables with Hazelnuts, Currants and Cacao Nibs, from Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies, by Alice Medrich
The brownies are adapted from an amazing recipe from the Brooklyn bakery called Baked, which was founded by two recovering advertising executives. They have two cookbooks. In the first, they have a great brownie recipe, which I made a few months ago. In the second, they have a variation on that recipe in which they add a middle layer of salted caramel and then add salt and sugar on top, which I also made a few months ago. For this week, I went half-way between the two - I omitted the salted caramel, but added the salt and sugar on top. So these are the basic brownie, but finished like the salted caramel brownie. Whatever. These are really good. There is a lot of chocolate, a good amount of butter, a lot of eggs, and it all adds up to yum! The salt is a coarse sea salt, and the finishing sugar is a coarse sugar, so it is quite pretty, and the sweet and salty, along with the deep chocolate, are a really nice combination.
I made the sables back in March. As with Alice Medrich's other sables recipes, they involve few ingredients, so quality is really important. Here, there are more "add-ins" than usual, with roasted hazelnuts, currants and then cacao nibs. They are called "whole wheat" but while there is whole wheat flour in the recipe, there is also the standard white flour as well. Oh, well. Anyway, even with the abundance of additions, these are a fairly adult cookie. I suppose the brownies are "adult" also, given the salt, but it is hard to really think of brownies as adult, whatever form or variation they take. Alice's sables, on the other hand, have an adult feel from beginning to end. I am sure kids would like them, but there is some quality that is hard to pin down that says these are not a cookie parents are making with or for their kids. Unless they live in, say, Berkeley.
Photos to follow!
This week two repeats (more or less):
Sweet and Salty Brownies, adapted from Baked: New Adventures In Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito
Whole Wheat Sables with Hazelnuts, Currants and Cacao Nibs, from Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies, by Alice Medrich
The brownies are adapted from an amazing recipe from the Brooklyn bakery called Baked, which was founded by two recovering advertising executives. They have two cookbooks. In the first, they have a great brownie recipe, which I made a few months ago. In the second, they have a variation on that recipe in which they add a middle layer of salted caramel and then add salt and sugar on top, which I also made a few months ago. For this week, I went half-way between the two - I omitted the salted caramel, but added the salt and sugar on top. So these are the basic brownie, but finished like the salted caramel brownie. Whatever. These are really good. There is a lot of chocolate, a good amount of butter, a lot of eggs, and it all adds up to yum! The salt is a coarse sea salt, and the finishing sugar is a coarse sugar, so it is quite pretty, and the sweet and salty, along with the deep chocolate, are a really nice combination.
I made the sables back in March. As with Alice Medrich's other sables recipes, they involve few ingredients, so quality is really important. Here, there are more "add-ins" than usual, with roasted hazelnuts, currants and then cacao nibs. They are called "whole wheat" but while there is whole wheat flour in the recipe, there is also the standard white flour as well. Oh, well. Anyway, even with the abundance of additions, these are a fairly adult cookie. I suppose the brownies are "adult" also, given the salt, but it is hard to really think of brownies as adult, whatever form or variation they take. Alice's sables, on the other hand, have an adult feel from beginning to end. I am sure kids would like them, but there is some quality that is hard to pin down that says these are not a cookie parents are making with or for their kids. Unless they live in, say, Berkeley.
Photos to follow!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
For August 11
OK, well, how was YOUR July? I just got my time records back, and it looks like I billed over 240 hours of time at work in July. Which would explain why there were no cookies. But now, things are settling down, and we are back to butter, flour, chocolate (LOTS of chocolate) and other good things. Oh, and of course, a 400 degree oven during the summer. Well, you can't win them all...
This week, one old and one new recipe, i.e.:
World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking
Old: I have made the World Peace Cookies before, and using the magic of the search function from Google I see that, strangely, I made them in both 2009 and 2010 at almost exactly the same time each year as I am making them this year. Who knew that world peace was a season-specific thing! Anyway, these are one of Andrew's favorite cookies and really one of mine, too. They were originally developed by Paris baker Pierre Herme, and have been included in two of Dorie Greenspan's cookbooks over time. While they had a different name when originally created, a friend of hers told her that, if the whole world could have these cookies, world peace would break out because of the happiness they engender, and hence the name they have now. They are a relative of the sable, which is the sandy, shortbread-style cookie from France that I so love in the baking of Alice Medrich. Here, however, they get a big dose of cocoa powder, so they are intensely dark. And they get hand chopped chocolate (really good chocolate). And then they get salt - not a tiny amount, but a good amount of a nice fleur de sel that is very discernible in the flavor profile of the cookie - to give them sweet, chocolate and salt. The result is a dark and wondrous creation. (Photos by the weekend, if any are left to photograph.)
New: I have made a few recipes from the two cookbooks by the guys behind the Brooklyn bakery called Baked. The brownies and then the salted caramel brownies were both nearly revelatory. And I decided I wanted to do a chocolate chip cookie recipe this week as part of my baking return, a "back to basics" kind of approach. So I decided to make the chocolate chip cookie recipe from their first cookbook.
Well, I am not sure how I feel about the result. The cookie is good, don't get me wrong - I mean, with butter, high quality dark brown sugar, eggs and a whole lotta chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet), you can't go TOO wrong, after all - but not what I was hoping for. These use dark brown sugar, and a lot of it, which is quite unusual in chocolate chip cookies - most use light brown sugar - and it makes them quite dark. The recipe called for scooping out 2 tablespoon-sized cookies, but that is too big for my purposes, so we used the 1 tablespoon scoop and reduced the cooking time a bit. They turned out quite soft, and while I like a soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie, I prefer it to be as they described it in the recipe, which is a bit crispy at the edges and soft in the center. I don't know if we undercooked them or if the change in portion size affected the texture, but these do not have the crispy edge. Alas. But they are still chocolate chip cookies, and I am sure that they will be happily eaten. And now I know at least one recipe that I will be making next week as I start the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie....
This week, one old and one new recipe, i.e.:
World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking
Old: I have made the World Peace Cookies before, and using the magic of the search function from Google I see that, strangely, I made them in both 2009 and 2010 at almost exactly the same time each year as I am making them this year. Who knew that world peace was a season-specific thing! Anyway, these are one of Andrew's favorite cookies and really one of mine, too. They were originally developed by Paris baker Pierre Herme, and have been included in two of Dorie Greenspan's cookbooks over time. While they had a different name when originally created, a friend of hers told her that, if the whole world could have these cookies, world peace would break out because of the happiness they engender, and hence the name they have now. They are a relative of the sable, which is the sandy, shortbread-style cookie from France that I so love in the baking of Alice Medrich. Here, however, they get a big dose of cocoa powder, so they are intensely dark. And they get hand chopped chocolate (really good chocolate). And then they get salt - not a tiny amount, but a good amount of a nice fleur de sel that is very discernible in the flavor profile of the cookie - to give them sweet, chocolate and salt. The result is a dark and wondrous creation. (Photos by the weekend, if any are left to photograph.)
New: I have made a few recipes from the two cookbooks by the guys behind the Brooklyn bakery called Baked. The brownies and then the salted caramel brownies were both nearly revelatory. And I decided I wanted to do a chocolate chip cookie recipe this week as part of my baking return, a "back to basics" kind of approach. So I decided to make the chocolate chip cookie recipe from their first cookbook.
Well, I am not sure how I feel about the result. The cookie is good, don't get me wrong - I mean, with butter, high quality dark brown sugar, eggs and a whole lotta chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet), you can't go TOO wrong, after all - but not what I was hoping for. These use dark brown sugar, and a lot of it, which is quite unusual in chocolate chip cookies - most use light brown sugar - and it makes them quite dark. The recipe called for scooping out 2 tablespoon-sized cookies, but that is too big for my purposes, so we used the 1 tablespoon scoop and reduced the cooking time a bit. They turned out quite soft, and while I like a soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie, I prefer it to be as they described it in the recipe, which is a bit crispy at the edges and soft in the center. I don't know if we undercooked them or if the change in portion size affected the texture, but these do not have the crispy edge. Alas. But they are still chocolate chip cookies, and I am sure that they will be happily eaten. And now I know at least one recipe that I will be making next week as I start the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie....
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Back from the dead....
Hi everyone,
My trial is over, and I am back to baking this week: Something old, something new. More to follow later.
My trial is over, and I am back to baking this week: Something old, something new. More to follow later.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
For June 30
This is the last day of June. It is also the last day of baking for me for a month or so. I have a trial coming up on July 19, as well as an appellate brief due next Thursday, and I need to pull back from various responsibilities for July in order to take care of my clients and their needs. Lucky for the Zen Center, Bob Gido Fisher has agreed to step in for me for a month while my attention is elsewhere. You are all very lucky!
The time demands did not just kick in as of July 1, so this was another week with limited baking time. I was, again, incredibly lucky to have Andrew Bodhi-Heart available to help me with the baking. The late nights would have been even later, otherwise.
This week:
Almond Rochers, from Tartine
Pecan Cocoa Sables, adapted from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet
The first recipe is a meringue variation that I have made before. The recipe comes from Tartine, a bakery in San Francisco. It is quite interesting and, like all things that rely on beaten egg whites as a key ingredient, rather scary. That you have to heat the egg whites over boiling water until a certain temperature and then quickly remove them and whisk them only makes it even scarier! But it all worked out OK in the end. The base recipe has so few ingredients, including only two egg whites and a cup of sugar, yet it says it makes 30 cookies. The magic of egg whites and air is truly amazing. Anyway, this recipe has you toast sliced almonds and, when they are cooled, you then just crush them up in your hands to get a coarse almond meal. After making the meringue base, you fold the almonds in and then spoon them out (or use a pastry bag if you want, which I do not) and bake them. The result in a higgledy-piggledy "cookie" that is crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside, and redolent of almond. Oh, and these have the advantage of being both fat free (except for the fat in the almonds, so I guess we should say "no added fat") and gluten free. I love this recipe and when, as was the case this week, I know that someone who can't have cookies with gluten is coming to the Zen Center, I use this as my stand-by gluten-free recipe. It is a good one to have at hand!
The second recipe is gluten-full to make up for the first. Again, a sable variation from Alice Medrich. This one is a variation of my own to two of her recipes. She has a pecan sable recipe, and then a cocoa-cacao nib sable recipe. Here, I kept the pecans and then added the cocoa powder to get a chocolate pecan cookie recipe. These are full of butter and the nice flavor of Valrhona cocoa powder and roasted pecans. They last a long time and they are easy to make. A nice way to bow out for a little bit.
The time demands did not just kick in as of July 1, so this was another week with limited baking time. I was, again, incredibly lucky to have Andrew Bodhi-Heart available to help me with the baking. The late nights would have been even later, otherwise.
This week:
Almond Rochers, from Tartine
Pecan Cocoa Sables, adapted from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet
The first recipe is a meringue variation that I have made before. The recipe comes from Tartine, a bakery in San Francisco. It is quite interesting and, like all things that rely on beaten egg whites as a key ingredient, rather scary. That you have to heat the egg whites over boiling water until a certain temperature and then quickly remove them and whisk them only makes it even scarier! But it all worked out OK in the end. The base recipe has so few ingredients, including only two egg whites and a cup of sugar, yet it says it makes 30 cookies. The magic of egg whites and air is truly amazing. Anyway, this recipe has you toast sliced almonds and, when they are cooled, you then just crush them up in your hands to get a coarse almond meal. After making the meringue base, you fold the almonds in and then spoon them out (or use a pastry bag if you want, which I do not) and bake them. The result in a higgledy-piggledy "cookie" that is crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside, and redolent of almond. Oh, and these have the advantage of being both fat free (except for the fat in the almonds, so I guess we should say "no added fat") and gluten free. I love this recipe and when, as was the case this week, I know that someone who can't have cookies with gluten is coming to the Zen Center, I use this as my stand-by gluten-free recipe. It is a good one to have at hand!
The second recipe is gluten-full to make up for the first. Again, a sable variation from Alice Medrich. This one is a variation of my own to two of her recipes. She has a pecan sable recipe, and then a cocoa-cacao nib sable recipe. Here, I kept the pecans and then added the cocoa powder to get a chocolate pecan cookie recipe. These are full of butter and the nice flavor of Valrhona cocoa powder and roasted pecans. They last a long time and they are easy to make. A nice way to bow out for a little bit.
For June 23
These last two weeks were ones where time was extremely limited, and I was incredibly lucky to have Andrew Bodhi-Heart helping me out in the cookie-making department. This week, it was two old favorites, both from Alice Medrich:
Buckwheat Cacao Nib Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Classic Unsweetened-Chocolate Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet
Sables are a French version of a shortbread - few ingredients other than flour and butter, but unlike the shortbread, here the ingredients are rolled into a cylinder, refrigerated, then sliced and baked. These could not be easier to make, and it is easy to make a cylinder and freeze it so that you always have cookies available. Anyway, this variation uses two interesting ingredients in the form of buckwheat flour in addition to the usual wheat flour, and also cacao nibs, which are a precursor to chocolate and a favorite baking ingredient of mine. The buckwheat makes the cookies a bit gray, just like Soba noodles, which is certainly an unusual cookie color. It also makes them quite delicate. The cacao nibs, in contrast, are always earthy without being sweet. I like this recipe a lot. It is a bit of an adult cookie, overall, but it is easy to make and very flavorful and enjoyable.
In her book Bittersweet, which is all about chocolate, Alice Medrich gives a variety of brownie recipes that are all tailored to the type of chocolate you are using (i.e., there is a recipe for unsweetened chocolate, a different one for cocoa powder, etc. etc.) The point is that different chocolates have different amounts of fat from different sources (fat from butter, fat from the cocoa butter, etc.) and that these, along with the type of sugar, result in very different flavor and texture profiles for your brownies. It is a really interesting way to learn about different types of chocolate and their characteristics for baking, and I recommend it highly. Last year I did around 4 or 5 of the brownie recipes in a row and it was very instructive to see how each recipe produced a different result.
Anyway, this week I made the recipe that uses unsweetened chocolate as the base. You bake it at a high temperature for a short amount of time, and then cool it quickly in an ice bath. It results in a brownie with a crusty top and gooey interior. Because of that gooey interior, the baking process requires a certain leap of faith, since you can't stick a toothpick in and know they're done. And for me, it is quite anxiety-inducing, because I multiply the recipe and use a 13x9 inch pan rather than the 8x8 called for in the recipe, and changing the pan size can alter the baking time quite significantly. But the end result is a very good brownie (as long as you are not one of those people who likes cakey brownies, in which case you have come to the wrong blog). These are not spectacular like some brownies, but they are, as the name indicates, a classic version of a brownie.
Buckwheat Cacao Nib Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Classic Unsweetened-Chocolate Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet
In her book Bittersweet, which is all about chocolate, Alice Medrich gives a variety of brownie recipes that are all tailored to the type of chocolate you are using (i.e., there is a recipe for unsweetened chocolate, a different one for cocoa powder, etc. etc.) The point is that different chocolates have different amounts of fat from different sources (fat from butter, fat from the cocoa butter, etc.) and that these, along with the type of sugar, result in very different flavor and texture profiles for your brownies. It is a really interesting way to learn about different types of chocolate and their characteristics for baking, and I recommend it highly. Last year I did around 4 or 5 of the brownie recipes in a row and it was very instructive to see how each recipe produced a different result.Anyway, this week I made the recipe that uses unsweetened chocolate as the base. You bake it at a high temperature for a short amount of time, and then cool it quickly in an ice bath. It results in a brownie with a crusty top and gooey interior. Because of that gooey interior, the baking process requires a certain leap of faith, since you can't stick a toothpick in and know they're done. And for me, it is quite anxiety-inducing, because I multiply the recipe and use a 13x9 inch pan rather than the 8x8 called for in the recipe, and changing the pan size can alter the baking time quite significantly. But the end result is a very good brownie (as long as you are not one of those people who likes cakey brownies, in which case you have come to the wrong blog). These are not spectacular like some brownies, but they are, as the name indicates, a classic version of a brownie.
For June 16
This was a week with no chocolate. I don't know how that happened, exactly, but it did. We survived - luckily these non-chocolate cookies managed to suffice:
Cherry Pistachio Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
Cornmeal Thyme Cookies, from Martha Stewart Cookies
This is the first time I have made this particular biscotti recipe, and it was really great. The recipe comes from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, which has an entire chapter on biscotti. The way they set the chapter up, there are two basic recipes, an Italian biscotti recipe, and then an American biscotti recipe. They are similar, except the American recipe makes a biscotti that is not quite as, well, hard and demanding that it be dunked in order to be eaten. (I always make my biscotti using the American base recipe, which I find much more enjoyable and, since we have them without milk, coffee or vin santo to dunk them in, it is good that they are easier to eat.) After those two base recipes, there are lots of variations in the form of flavorings and ingredients that you can add to them. For anyone interested in playing around with recipes, this is a great chapter, since it talks about variations using nut flours, nuts, flavorings, and all sorts of other things, each of which gives you a slightly different result but almost always delicious.Anyway, as a general rule, I am not a huge fan of either pistachio or cherry as flavors, which explains why this is one of the last recipe variations that I have not made. But it goes to show me that having a not-knowing mind can be a good thing, because it ended up being a wonderful flavor combination, and the actual texture of the biscotti was very nice. In the end, I think this is one of my favorite biscotti recipes! These are a perfect biscotti for eating on their own, but even better (like so many biscotti) dipped in milk or coffee. And the red cherries and green pistachios give them some unusual visual appeal, as the photo may show.
The second recipe was one I have made before, but not for a while (a search of the blog tells me it was October 2009). I originally found this recipe in a Martha Stewart holiday baking magazine that I picked up on the way to Yosemite for Thanksgiving the first year I started this baking thing - 2005. They are an interesting cookie because these two main ingredients are so interesting. The cornmeal gives the cookies an unusual texture, while the thyme gives them an unusual flavor. There is not a huge amount of thyme in them, so it is a somewhat subtle flavor, but the savory is definitely there along with the sweet, so it is a cookie that asks you for some attention.These cookies also have currants in them - quite a few, actually. This is the second week in a row that I have made cookies that prominently include currants, but where the currants are not included in the cookie name. Last week it was the peanut butter (and currant) cookies, this week it is the cornmeal thyme (and currant) cookies. Obviously, currants do not have a good agent, the poor things. In both of these recipes, they are a key ingredient, so it is funny that they don't get mentioned. I think we need an "ode to the currant" to make things right. Volunteers?
Friday, June 10, 2011
For June 9
One new and one old recipe this week:
Peanut Butter (and Currant) Cookies, from Mary Bergin, Spago Desserts
Girl Scout Thin Mint Brownies, from The Food Librarian
I have previously made the peanut butter cookie recipe. Mary Bergin was the pastry chef at the original Spago in Hollywood. She then went to Las Vegas to oversee the Spago there, and I don't know where she has ended up since then. This cookbook was originally published in 1994, and my copy is signed by her, as well as by the friends who gave it to me. One of those people, Chris Kennedy, was an attorney at Irell & Manella who recruited me from the University of Virginia Law School. Chris was completely responsible for us ending up in Los Angeles, since Irell was the only firm in LA that I talked to. At the time, we were much more interested in living in San Francisco or Seattle, but when I visited Los Angeles to interview at Irell, I was taken by the firm and by the city - the smell of black sage along the PCH in the spring is a magical thing - and ended up coming here, instead. Sadly, Chris died four years ago, when he was only 57 years old. Chris was a large personality and I owe him much gratitude, even if I left Irell only a year after arriving and our ties loosened over the intervening years. From even our short time spent together, many great stories remain, most of which involve him, restaurants, and wine, lots of wine, all brought by him in shopping bags. I will never forget the time, in Ojai, when he was told that, while the restaurant was happy to open wines he brought, they could not do it for wines that they had on their wine list. He looked at the waiter, coolly, and said that, while they probably had the wine (it was Opus One), they certainly did not have the year (1983). When the waiter saw the year on the label (and at the time of the story, it must have been 1996), he hurriedly agreed that they did not have a 1983 and that they would be happy to open the wine.
Anyway, while I don't normally like peanut butter cookies, which I generally find too sandy and dry, I love this version, which is neither. They are great - moist, a bit soft, interesting flavor, and currants! The title of the recipe doesn't mention it, but the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of currants, and the cookies are liberally studded with them. They give a nice flavor complement to the peanut butter and probably help keep them moist.
This has become one of Andrew Bodhi-Heart's signature recipes - he makes them much more often than I do. And I am indebted to him this week because, although I made the dough, which requires overnight refrigeration, he actually formed the balls (the recipe calls for each to be 1 ounce, and he tells me he weighed each one - OCD, anyone?) and baked them. That is a long and tedious process. I was very fortunate that he had cleared his schedule for that day in order to study for his licensing exam, and that he was home to bake them in a time-out from studying. Thanks!
I also promised I would thank him for his generous contribution to the second recipe. Andrew is a Girl Scout Thin Mint fanatic - each year he orders not a box, but a case, from some lucky Girl Scout somewhere. This recipe required that I triple it to make the volume necessary to feed the Zen Center and the many others for whom we are baking these days, and that meant using 3 sleeves - a box and a half - of Girl Scout cookies. He tried to convince me that doubling the recipe would be sufficient, but in the end he acceded. So three sleeves it is - indeed, not only did he agree, but he even chopped them up. (Actually, I didn't weigh them to confirm that it was, in fact, three sleeves of cookies that ended up in the bowl and not two. In light of my comments in the next paragraph, well, hmmm......)
As for the finished result - meh. The idea sounds so great - I mean, thin mints and brownies, right? What could possibly be better? The recipe is apparently an adaptation of a Martha Stewart brownie recipe, which replaces chocolate chips with chopped Thin Mint cookies. But I found the brownies a bit too dry, and the Thin Mint flavor a bit too diluted. And given the amount of very good chocolate and cocoa powder that went into these, this was quite a surprise. Now, others seemed to think they were good, and they seemed to notice the Thin Mint flavor OK, but my expectations were not met. If I were to do this again - which, given the above, will not be until another case of cookies arrives next year - I think I may use a different brownie recipe for my base. Then again, David Lebovitz has a brownie recipe that use peppermint creme candy, and Dorie Greenspan has one that includes a middle layer of mini-peppermint patties, so there are lots of other ways to get my chocolate-peppermint fix if I can't wait a year.
In any event, happy baking and eating!
Peanut Butter (and Currant) Cookies, from Mary Bergin, Spago Desserts
Girl Scout Thin Mint Brownies, from The Food Librarian
I have previously made the peanut butter cookie recipe. Mary Bergin was the pastry chef at the original Spago in Hollywood. She then went to Las Vegas to oversee the Spago there, and I don't know where she has ended up since then. This cookbook was originally published in 1994, and my copy is signed by her, as well as by the friends who gave it to me. One of those people, Chris Kennedy, was an attorney at Irell & Manella who recruited me from the University of Virginia Law School. Chris was completely responsible for us ending up in Los Angeles, since Irell was the only firm in LA that I talked to. At the time, we were much more interested in living in San Francisco or Seattle, but when I visited Los Angeles to interview at Irell, I was taken by the firm and by the city - the smell of black sage along the PCH in the spring is a magical thing - and ended up coming here, instead. Sadly, Chris died four years ago, when he was only 57 years old. Chris was a large personality and I owe him much gratitude, even if I left Irell only a year after arriving and our ties loosened over the intervening years. From even our short time spent together, many great stories remain, most of which involve him, restaurants, and wine, lots of wine, all brought by him in shopping bags. I will never forget the time, in Ojai, when he was told that, while the restaurant was happy to open wines he brought, they could not do it for wines that they had on their wine list. He looked at the waiter, coolly, and said that, while they probably had the wine (it was Opus One), they certainly did not have the year (1983). When the waiter saw the year on the label (and at the time of the story, it must have been 1996), he hurriedly agreed that they did not have a 1983 and that they would be happy to open the wine.
Anyway, while I don't normally like peanut butter cookies, which I generally find too sandy and dry, I love this version, which is neither. They are great - moist, a bit soft, interesting flavor, and currants! The title of the recipe doesn't mention it, but the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of currants, and the cookies are liberally studded with them. They give a nice flavor complement to the peanut butter and probably help keep them moist.This has become one of Andrew Bodhi-Heart's signature recipes - he makes them much more often than I do. And I am indebted to him this week because, although I made the dough, which requires overnight refrigeration, he actually formed the balls (the recipe calls for each to be 1 ounce, and he tells me he weighed each one - OCD, anyone?) and baked them. That is a long and tedious process. I was very fortunate that he had cleared his schedule for that day in order to study for his licensing exam, and that he was home to bake them in a time-out from studying. Thanks!
I also promised I would thank him for his generous contribution to the second recipe. Andrew is a Girl Scout Thin Mint fanatic - each year he orders not a box, but a case, from some lucky Girl Scout somewhere. This recipe required that I triple it to make the volume necessary to feed the Zen Center and the many others for whom we are baking these days, and that meant using 3 sleeves - a box and a half - of Girl Scout cookies. He tried to convince me that doubling the recipe would be sufficient, but in the end he acceded. So three sleeves it is - indeed, not only did he agree, but he even chopped them up. (Actually, I didn't weigh them to confirm that it was, in fact, three sleeves of cookies that ended up in the bowl and not two. In light of my comments in the next paragraph, well, hmmm......)As for the finished result - meh. The idea sounds so great - I mean, thin mints and brownies, right? What could possibly be better? The recipe is apparently an adaptation of a Martha Stewart brownie recipe, which replaces chocolate chips with chopped Thin Mint cookies. But I found the brownies a bit too dry, and the Thin Mint flavor a bit too diluted. And given the amount of very good chocolate and cocoa powder that went into these, this was quite a surprise. Now, others seemed to think they were good, and they seemed to notice the Thin Mint flavor OK, but my expectations were not met. If I were to do this again - which, given the above, will not be until another case of cookies arrives next year - I think I may use a different brownie recipe for my base. Then again, David Lebovitz has a brownie recipe that use peppermint creme candy, and Dorie Greenspan has one that includes a middle layer of mini-peppermint patties, so there are lots of other ways to get my chocolate-peppermint fix if I can't wait a year.
In any event, happy baking and eating!
Monday, June 6, 2011
For June 2
A couple of new recipes this week:
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies, from Martha Stewart
Blondies, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
I first encountered the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies in a Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies magazine that I picked up in the grocery store last fall. There are a lot of good recipes in there, but somehow I didn't really make much out of that volume before my Christmas (and then my post-Christmas "buy what you wanted but didn't get") cookbook avalanche began. But I have to say, from the first minute I read the title for this cookie, I knew I had to make it. This is a very nice chocolate cookie that is quite nice but a bit boring and traditional up until the point you roll it in a cinnamon-sugar-chile powder mixture before placing each mound on the baking sheet. The Martha Stewart link I have given you says that this chile powder is "optional" but go for it - it really isn't optional, and these would be very nice, but not very interesting, cookies if you omitted it. The version that I have recommends using a chile powder that is not the usual blend (when you buy chile powder in the store, it is a blend) but instead to get a chile powder that shows that it is arbol, chipotle or pasilla chile powder. We used the chipotle, because that was what we could find. Smoky, yum. With different chile powders, your results will vary.
Anyway, our experience of these was that they were really nice - the cookie has a bit of a crusty exterior, but a soft and wonderful interior. A great texture, probably my favorite style of cookie. And the chile powder was definitely a flavor, but a subtle one - you notice it more when you are done with the cookie than when you are eating it. One person told me I could have upped the chile content for more of a kick. On the other hand, this is a very individual issue, and I was taking the middle road. But I think I probably would add a bit more, maybe to the cookie dough, next time....
As for the blondies, well, they were blondies. This was a nice recipe from Alice Medrich (whose Chewy Gooey cookbook by the way, just won the baking cookbook of the year from the IACP), and I was looking for a bar cookie for this week. These are good. Again, ingredients are key - I used the best brown sugar I can get, and since, in a blondie, brown sugar is the major flavor ingredient, I encourage you to look for and use good quality brown sugar if you make these. At the end, you sprinkle the top with chocolate chips and some reserved walnuts. As regular readers know, I usually eschew chocolate chips in favor of hand cutting chocolate. Here, though, I used chips. The Cook's Illustrated magazine did a taste test a few years ago and pronounced the Ghirardelli 60% Bittersweet chocolate chips the best (or among the best that are easily available) and that is what I used here. Two people said they would like to try this recipe without any chocolate. I looked at them sympathetically and nodded, but, well, really? Actually, it would be good w/o the chocolate, so maybe next time I will try it that way.
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies, from Martha Stewart
Blondies, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
I first encountered the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies in a Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies magazine that I picked up in the grocery store last fall. There are a lot of good recipes in there, but somehow I didn't really make much out of that volume before my Christmas (and then my post-Christmas "buy what you wanted but didn't get") cookbook avalanche began. But I have to say, from the first minute I read the title for this cookie, I knew I had to make it. This is a very nice chocolate cookie that is quite nice but a bit boring and traditional up until the point you roll it in a cinnamon-sugar-chile powder mixture before placing each mound on the baking sheet. The Martha Stewart link I have given you says that this chile powder is "optional" but go for it - it really isn't optional, and these would be very nice, but not very interesting, cookies if you omitted it. The version that I have recommends using a chile powder that is not the usual blend (when you buy chile powder in the store, it is a blend) but instead to get a chile powder that shows that it is arbol, chipotle or pasilla chile powder. We used the chipotle, because that was what we could find. Smoky, yum. With different chile powders, your results will vary.Anyway, our experience of these was that they were really nice - the cookie has a bit of a crusty exterior, but a soft and wonderful interior. A great texture, probably my favorite style of cookie. And the chile powder was definitely a flavor, but a subtle one - you notice it more when you are done with the cookie than when you are eating it. One person told me I could have upped the chile content for more of a kick. On the other hand, this is a very individual issue, and I was taking the middle road. But I think I probably would add a bit more, maybe to the cookie dough, next time....
As for the blondies, well, they were blondies. This was a nice recipe from Alice Medrich (whose Chewy Gooey cookbook by the way, just won the baking cookbook of the year from the IACP), and I was looking for a bar cookie for this week. These are good. Again, ingredients are key - I used the best brown sugar I can get, and since, in a blondie, brown sugar is the major flavor ingredient, I encourage you to look for and use good quality brown sugar if you make these. At the end, you sprinkle the top with chocolate chips and some reserved walnuts. As regular readers know, I usually eschew chocolate chips in favor of hand cutting chocolate. Here, though, I used chips. The Cook's Illustrated magazine did a taste test a few years ago and pronounced the Ghirardelli 60% Bittersweet chocolate chips the best (or among the best that are easily available) and that is what I used here. Two people said they would like to try this recipe without any chocolate. I looked at them sympathetically and nodded, but, well, really? Actually, it would be good w/o the chocolate, so maybe next time I will try it that way.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
For May 26
Best Cocoa Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Sherry Yard, Desserts By The Yard
This week, as we near the unofficial beginning of summer with the Memorial Day weekend, it was time for two classic cookies. Oh, and they don't taste too bad, either. To accommodate my crazy schedule, each week I try to do one "bar" type cookie (which includes biscotti) and one more traditional drop cookie. Since I was having a hankering for brownies, I went back to Alice Medrich's Bittersweet, an amazing cookbook of chocolate desserts. She has a series of brownie recipes, one based on each type of chocolate. As it turns out, the different type of chocolate will result in a different type of brownie, because as the cacao % increases, the amount of fat in the brownie that comes from butter will also increase, and this substantially affects the texture of the finished product. Who really knew this stuff? Alice Medrich did, and thanks to her, we all do now! This is a tremendously informational book that I recommend hightly.
Anyway, I opted for the brownie made with 100% cocoa powder, which is to say that all of the fat in the cookies comes from butter, and not from the cacao itself. Here, I used Valrhona 100% cocoa powder, and it makes a brownie that is so dark it is amazing! It is almost like a little confectionary black hole - if only that was true about the fat not being able to escape, but alas... Anyway, this is a delicious and simple brownie to make - really, all brownies are easy to make, and if you want to just stick your toe in the baking world, brownies are a great place to start, because the effort-reward ratio is so favorable. The one interesting think about brownies is that the recipes tell you to let them cool before serving, and it is very good advice. These came out of the oven fairly late, but we wanted to, uh, conduct come quality control on them, so we had a wee tiny sample the same evening, while still warm. They were good, but were surprisingly cakey, and that was not how they were intended. What was that about? Well, by the next day, they had completely transformed - much more dense and intense, a bit fudgy, and not cakey at all. So unless you are going to make them to put under a scoop of ice cream, I encourage you to practice patience and let them full set before cutting into them.
The chocolate chip cookie recipes are a favorite of mine. Now, they make a cookie that is a bit more crisp and crunchy than I would usually choose, but they are quite easy to make and are delicious. This recipe is from Sherry Yard, the pastry chef at Spago, and I have made this recipe quite a few times before. One thing that I like is that one option with it - an option I use regularly - is that you can make the dough, form it into cylinders, then refrigerate it, then slice and bake it the next day. For time management, this is a great boon, and since the current thinking on cookies - especially, for some reason, chocolate chip cookies - is to let the dough sit for 24 hours before baking, this works out doubly well. Anyway, as the pictures show, for these I do not use chocolate chips, instead I hand cut my chocolate, which gives the cookies a beautiful and unusual look. And most chocolate chips are made with a lower quality chocolate. Here, I used a new chocolate that I was not familiar with, and I didn't keep the label, but it was a 70% chocolate, which is quite intense and made these cookies quite delicious.
Both of these were delicious recipes from tremendously talented pastry chefs. Bon appetit!
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Sherry Yard, Desserts By The Yard
This week, as we near the unofficial beginning of summer with the Memorial Day weekend, it was time for two classic cookies. Oh, and they don't taste too bad, either. To accommodate my crazy schedule, each week I try to do one "bar" type cookie (which includes biscotti) and one more traditional drop cookie. Since I was having a hankering for brownies, I went back to Alice Medrich's Bittersweet, an amazing cookbook of chocolate desserts. She has a series of brownie recipes, one based on each type of chocolate. As it turns out, the different type of chocolate will result in a different type of brownie, because as the cacao % increases, the amount of fat in the brownie that comes from butter will also increase, and this substantially affects the texture of the finished product. Who really knew this stuff? Alice Medrich did, and thanks to her, we all do now! This is a tremendously informational book that I recommend hightly.
Anyway, I opted for the brownie made with 100% cocoa powder, which is to say that all of the fat in the cookies comes from butter, and not from the cacao itself. Here, I used Valrhona 100% cocoa powder, and it makes a brownie that is so dark it is amazing! It is almost like a little confectionary black hole - if only that was true about the fat not being able to escape, but alas... Anyway, this is a delicious and simple brownie to make - really, all brownies are easy to make, and if you want to just stick your toe in the baking world, brownies are a great place to start, because the effort-reward ratio is so favorable. The one interesting think about brownies is that the recipes tell you to let them cool before serving, and it is very good advice. These came out of the oven fairly late, but we wanted to, uh, conduct come quality control on them, so we had a wee tiny sample the same evening, while still warm. They were good, but were surprisingly cakey, and that was not how they were intended. What was that about? Well, by the next day, they had completely transformed - much more dense and intense, a bit fudgy, and not cakey at all. So unless you are going to make them to put under a scoop of ice cream, I encourage you to practice patience and let them full set before cutting into them.
The chocolate chip cookie recipes are a favorite of mine. Now, they make a cookie that is a bit more crisp and crunchy than I would usually choose, but they are quite easy to make and are delicious. This recipe is from Sherry Yard, the pastry chef at Spago, and I have made this recipe quite a few times before. One thing that I like is that one option with it - an option I use regularly - is that you can make the dough, form it into cylinders, then refrigerate it, then slice and bake it the next day. For time management, this is a great boon, and since the current thinking on cookies - especially, for some reason, chocolate chip cookies - is to let the dough sit for 24 hours before baking, this works out doubly well. Anyway, as the pictures show, for these I do not use chocolate chips, instead I hand cut my chocolate, which gives the cookies a beautiful and unusual look. And most chocolate chips are made with a lower quality chocolate. Here, I used a new chocolate that I was not familiar with, and I didn't keep the label, but it was a 70% chocolate, which is quite intense and made these cookies quite delicious.Both of these were delicious recipes from tremendously talented pastry chefs. Bon appetit!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
For May 19
Slowly catching up....
This week, a new recipe and an old one. Very different, both delicious:
Linzer Cookie Bars
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
The Linzer Cookie Bars are, well, bars that are an adaptation of Linzer cookies (which, I guess, are themselves an adaptation of Linzertorte). Anyway, a shortbread style crust, a raspberry-lemon layer, and then some crumbled topping. Good stuff! I have never made anything in the linzer family before, so this was a fun recipe to make. They ended up looking quite pretty, and the flavors are quite nice - almond (quite a bit of almond meal in the crust), raspberry and lemon (quite a bit of zest in the raspberry layer). A nice change of pace.
The second recipe this week was an old friend. I am very fond of the combination of chocolate and hazelnut, that addiction of the Europeans. Maybe it is genetically coded? I don't know, but I do know that these are a standout biscotti - Andrew says that they are, along with a gingerbread biscotti recipe I made years ago and have not been able to replicate ever since, the best biscotti I have ever made. I may have to agree with him on this one - I really liked these a lot - good thing I tripled the recipe!
This recipe comes out of the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, a wonderful and enormous cookie baking book. In the book, they have two different basic biscotti recipes, one for "European" style biscotti (read: hardtack) and one for "American" style biscotti (read: this is the one I use). The American one is less dense and includes some butter. While most commercial American biscotti are largely nasty, overly sweet monstrosities, this recipe is great. After the base recipes, there are pages and pages of variations, as well as important and useful tips to make your biscotti even better. One tip: replace some portion of your flour with nut flours or meals. That is what I did with this recipe, replacing 1/3 of the flour with hazelnut meal. It adds tremendous richness of flavor to the biscotti. According to the King Arthur Flour folks, you can replace up to about 50% of your flour with nut flour. While they tend to be pricey (and you need to store them in the refrigerator if you have extra), they are great at adding flavor to your biscotti. I recommend them highly. Oh, and it always helps to use good quality chocolate - preferably, hand cut your chocolate from blocks, instead of using chocolate chips. Chocolate chips tend to be made with low quality chocolate. I much prefer to hand cut my chocolate, which leads to lots of shards and uneven sizes, which gives the finished biscotti (as well as chocolate chip cookies, for which I do the same thing) a lot of visual interest. Try it!
And one final note about making biscotti - biscotti means "twice baked", and describes how they are made. First, you make the dough, and then spread it as a log on your cookie sheet and bake it for aroune 25 minutes. Then you remove it, let it cool, slice the log into 1" slices or so, separate them to the heat can reach the sliced surfaces, then bake them again. In making the initial logs, you basically dump spoonfuls of dough onto the cookie sheet, and then you need to form it into a log. Here is my tip to you: if you run your hands under cold water, you can then easily form the log using your hands directly. Otherwise, it is a terrible mess. But through the miracle of cold, wet hands, it is easy!
Now that you have my secrets "in hand," so to speak, go forth and bake!
This week, a new recipe and an old one. Very different, both delicious:
Linzer Cookie Bars
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
The Linzer Cookie Bars are, well, bars that are an adaptation of Linzer cookies (which, I guess, are themselves an adaptation of Linzertorte). Anyway, a shortbread style crust, a raspberry-lemon layer, and then some crumbled topping. Good stuff! I have never made anything in the linzer family before, so this was a fun recipe to make. They ended up looking quite pretty, and the flavors are quite nice - almond (quite a bit of almond meal in the crust), raspberry and lemon (quite a bit of zest in the raspberry layer). A nice change of pace.The second recipe this week was an old friend. I am very fond of the combination of chocolate and hazelnut, that addiction of the Europeans. Maybe it is genetically coded? I don't know, but I do know that these are a standout biscotti - Andrew says that they are, along with a gingerbread biscotti recipe I made years ago and have not been able to replicate ever since, the best biscotti I have ever made. I may have to agree with him on this one - I really liked these a lot - good thing I tripled the recipe!
This recipe comes out of the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, a wonderful and enormous cookie baking book. In the book, they have two different basic biscotti recipes, one for "European" style biscotti (read: hardtack) and one for "American" style biscotti (read: this is the one I use). The American one is less dense and includes some butter. While most commercial American biscotti are largely nasty, overly sweet monstrosities, this recipe is great. After the base recipes, there are pages and pages of variations, as well as important and useful tips to make your biscotti even better. One tip: replace some portion of your flour with nut flours or meals. That is what I did with this recipe, replacing 1/3 of the flour with hazelnut meal. It adds tremendous richness of flavor to the biscotti. According to the King Arthur Flour folks, you can replace up to about 50% of your flour with nut flour. While they tend to be pricey (and you need to store them in the refrigerator if you have extra), they are great at adding flavor to your biscotti. I recommend them highly. Oh, and it always helps to use good quality chocolate - preferably, hand cut your chocolate from blocks, instead of using chocolate chips. Chocolate chips tend to be made with low quality chocolate. I much prefer to hand cut my chocolate, which leads to lots of shards and uneven sizes, which gives the finished biscotti (as well as chocolate chip cookies, for which I do the same thing) a lot of visual interest. Try it!
Now that you have my secrets "in hand," so to speak, go forth and bake!
For May 12
I am so behind! Yuck. OK, well, even though I am posting this 3 weeks late, we did take pictures of the cookies at the time (see, no green spots anywhere) so I can report, to the best of my memory, on what we did:
Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Pleyels, from Nick Malgieri
This was the week of the failed recipe. On Tuesday night, I made ginger macadamia nut biscotti. Seven dozen of them. When we tried them on Wednesday night - at 11:30 p.m.! - we realized that the macadamia nuts had gone bad and that the entire output had to be tossed. So the almond sables were a late addition based on the fact that I had the needed ingredients (butter and almonds) and that they are quite simple to make (and delicious to boot). So I made the dough at midnight, and then Andrew sliced and baked them the next day. As I have said, I love Alice Medrich's sables recipes, and this one is one of my favorites - particularly since it got me out of a tough spot!
I am pretty sure I made the Pleyels before, but I can't find them in a search of the blog, so maybe it was a lot longer ago than I remembered it being. Anyway, the recipe is at the link, and I encourage you to check it out. Pleyels are a small, french-pedigree chocolate cake. Nick Malgieri calls for them to be baked in muffin pans, but I used mini-muffin pans for my purposes. You have to really watch them in such small pans to make sure they don't dry out too quickly. These are like little brownie bites, except the chocolate flavor is a bit more refined (these are really exquisite) and the texture is a little bit lighter. All in all, these are a very nice item. At some point, I should try them in the full muffin tins; I am sure that they are exceedingly moist when made that way.
Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Pleyels, from Nick Malgieri
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
For May 5
Back from our "spring break," which means it's time to get baking. This week, we had two more Alice Medrich creations:
Brown Sugar Butter Cookies
Black Bottomed Pecan Praline Bars
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
Another yin and yang kind of week - a simple, understated cookie and one that's well, not so much. First, I have been looking for a while for a really good butter cookie/sugar cookie recipe, and so far I have not quite found it. This week, I continued my quest in that direction and, well, I'm still looking. I guess this is what they call dukkha.
So the butter cookies are a very simple recipe with a bunch of variations. I took one of the variations which called for replacing all the regular sugar with brown sugar. I used mostly light brown sugar, but added a little dark brown as well. They are good but, well, a bit boring. I don't know if they needed a little more time in the oven, to be sliced a little more thinly or what, but they didn't have the right texture that I am looking for. They were pretty good, but the search continues....
A couple of weeks ago, I made a brownie that had a macadamia nut shortbread bottom, then a brownie layer on top. This week, I kinda flipped it around - these bars have a brownie layer on the bottom, and then a pecan praline (is that redundant? can you have praline without pecans? I hope not, it would be like pesto without basil, but don't get me started...) layer on top. Which, in this case, means a lot of pecans mixed with brown sugar and butter and a few eggs to hold it all together. Except for the omission of chocolate, it is really the perfect food combination, and the brownie layer adds the chocolate - Yum! Anyway, I really enjoyed these. There is nothing particularly challenging about them, and they emphasize flavor, not subtlety, but they are fun and really good tasting. I recommend these. And Bodhi-Heart has placed them on his list of "top" baked goods, which is a rarefied assembly. So go forth and bake!
Brown Sugar Butter Cookies
Black Bottomed Pecan Praline Bars
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
 | |
| Brown Sugar Butter Cookies |
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| Black Bottom Pecan Praline Bars |
A couple of weeks ago, I made a brownie that had a macadamia nut shortbread bottom, then a brownie layer on top. This week, I kinda flipped it around - these bars have a brownie layer on the bottom, and then a pecan praline (is that redundant? can you have praline without pecans? I hope not, it would be like pesto without basil, but don't get me started...) layer on top. Which, in this case, means a lot of pecans mixed with brown sugar and butter and a few eggs to hold it all together. Except for the omission of chocolate, it is really the perfect food combination, and the brownie layer adds the chocolate - Yum! Anyway, I really enjoyed these. There is nothing particularly challenging about them, and they emphasize flavor, not subtlety, but they are fun and really good tasting. I recommend these. And Bodhi-Heart has placed them on his list of "top" baked goods, which is a rarefied assembly. So go forth and bake!
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| Since Roshi wanted to see a photo of the baker, well, here he is! |
Monday, May 9, 2011
For April 21
OK, this is a rather late, but since I want to get back on schedule, I have to clean out the backlog first!
April 21 was the last Thursday night before Zen Center went on "spring break"; we have a more official name, but you get the idea. I don't think anyone went to Key West or Lake Havasu, though, or if they did, they certainly weren't saying.
Here are the cookies from that week:
Macadamia Shortbread Brownies
Melting Chocolate Meringues
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
Are we getting tired of this Alice Medrich book? I hope not, since there are probably 300 more recipes to go!
OK, first the brownies. These are a two-layer brownie. First, you make a macadamia shortbread dough, which you put on the bottom of your pan, and pre-bake it like a tart crust. Then, you remove it, put the brownie batter on top while the shortbread is still warm, return it to the oven and then bake until done.
There were some scheduling challenges this week, so I ended up baking these on Wednesday morning, rather than Wednesday evening. The recipe calls for you to bake them until the top cracks. Unfortunately, the top never cracked, and they baked a bit longer than they should have, resulting in a, uh, well-done shortbread on the bottom. My friend and amazing pastry chef Bob Gido Fisher tells me that he always places baking sheets under pans of bars and that this helps to keep them from burning. I know that Dorie Greenspan recommends the same, and in the future I am going to have to adopt that smart technique. Anyway, these were still quite good, with the rich buttery shortbread and then the dense fudginess of the brownie.
And then there are the meringues. My friend Frank really enjoyed the meringues I made a few weeks ago, and I had seen this recipe in Alice's book and have been planning on making it for a bit. With a name like Melting Chocolate Meringues, can you resist? I didn't think so. Now, until very recently I have not made meringues, because I am hard-wired to believe that something that does not include either flour or butter cannot be thought of as a cookie - or, for that matter, edible. But being a good Zen student (or something like that) I have decided to expand my horizons and take a bigger view, and thus I have begun making thinks like meringues.
Now, if you, like me, gentle reader, have such prejudices enslaving you, I encourage you to make these meringues as a step into the light. Because they are in taste and texture a lot closer to a fluffy truffle than they are to a dessert based largely on air beaten into egg whites until they can hold a little sweetener as well. Like many of my baking projects these days, this recipe calls for very little in the way of ingredients, so it is important to use the best you can, and in this case that means using really good chocolate. Here, the recipe is fairly straightforward. The only "trick" is with folding a lot of melted chocolate into the whipped egg whites. But it is something I do very badly, and I can assure you, it all works out OK in the end, so don't let it hold you back. After making the batter, you scoop it out in small scoops onto the pans and bake and let cool. You are left with, well, what you see above - little higgeldy-piggeldy (amazing, the Blogger dictionary doesn't have suggestions for that one) mounds filled with nuts and lots of chocolate. And since the base is fat free, well....these are positively healthy! At least in comparison to the macadamia shortbread brownies!
P.S. Thanks to Andrew Bodhi-Heart for the pictures this week!
April 21 was the last Thursday night before Zen Center went on "spring break"; we have a more official name, but you get the idea. I don't think anyone went to Key West or Lake Havasu, though, or if they did, they certainly weren't saying.
Here are the cookies from that week:
Macadamia Shortbread Brownies
Melting Chocolate Meringues
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
Are we getting tired of this Alice Medrich book? I hope not, since there are probably 300 more recipes to go!
OK, first the brownies. These are a two-layer brownie. First, you make a macadamia shortbread dough, which you put on the bottom of your pan, and pre-bake it like a tart crust. Then, you remove it, put the brownie batter on top while the shortbread is still warm, return it to the oven and then bake until done.
And then there are the meringues. My friend Frank really enjoyed the meringues I made a few weeks ago, and I had seen this recipe in Alice's book and have been planning on making it for a bit. With a name like Melting Chocolate Meringues, can you resist? I didn't think so. Now, until very recently I have not made meringues, because I am hard-wired to believe that something that does not include either flour or butter cannot be thought of as a cookie - or, for that matter, edible. But being a good Zen student (or something like that) I have decided to expand my horizons and take a bigger view, and thus I have begun making thinks like meringues.Now, if you, like me, gentle reader, have such prejudices enslaving you, I encourage you to make these meringues as a step into the light. Because they are in taste and texture a lot closer to a fluffy truffle than they are to a dessert based largely on air beaten into egg whites until they can hold a little sweetener as well. Like many of my baking projects these days, this recipe calls for very little in the way of ingredients, so it is important to use the best you can, and in this case that means using really good chocolate. Here, the recipe is fairly straightforward. The only "trick" is with folding a lot of melted chocolate into the whipped egg whites. But it is something I do very badly, and I can assure you, it all works out OK in the end, so don't let it hold you back. After making the batter, you scoop it out in small scoops onto the pans and bake and let cool. You are left with, well, what you see above - little higgeldy-piggeldy (amazing, the Blogger dictionary doesn't have suggestions for that one) mounds filled with nuts and lots of chocolate. And since the base is fat free, well....these are positively healthy! At least in comparison to the macadamia shortbread brownies!
P.S. Thanks to Andrew Bodhi-Heart for the pictures this week!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
For April 14
The last few weeks, there has been some defensible virtue to at least one of the cookies I've baked. Not this week! I will say, in my defense, however, that the second recipe was a "stumble upon" accident - I was actually browsing the book looking for a particular chocolate meringue recipe to make, but before finding it I found this other chocolate recipe and, well, uh, why make a meringue with no fat when you can make mini-cakes with lots and lots of it? Oy.
Clementine's Butterscotch Brownies
Lucy's Chocolate Minis, from Alice Medrich, Chewy, Gooey, Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
OK. First, the "brownies." This recipe was recently published in the LA Times, and it comes from Clementine, an amazingly wonderful bakery/cafe near my office in Century City. Clementine is famous for its baked goods, which are truly great, as well as for its elaborate annual Grilled Cheese Month celebrations (April is National Grilled Cheese Month, and Clementine's 10th annual celebration is going on now). We often get food from Clementine for our Friday lunch in the office, and these butterscotch brownies are a regular in the dessert trays that come along with their sandwiches and salads. These are called butterscotch brownies, but it is a bit of a misnomer, because there is no chocolate in them, which makes me feel that the "brownie" part of the name is undeserved. On the other hand, they have a lot of dark brown sugar - the good, real stuff, not the faux, imitation dark brown sugar we normally find in the store these days - and they are, well, brown; indeed, they are a deep caramel color and have a chewy texture that makes them wonderful. These also have a good amount of salt, which is intentional. These have a very high reward to effort ratio, as do many bar cookies - there is not too much involved in making these, and they are a great way to make a pan of delicious goodies for a potluck or to bring for an event. Highly recommended even for the beginning baker!
The second item, well, the name is not very revealing, is it? Who is Lucy? Mini what? Well, these are little chocolate "cakes," somewhat richer than a cupcake, but not as dense as a brownie. They are made in mini-cupcake pans, and so you will think of them as mini-cupcakes. That is OK, let's not get too hung up on the "this-or-that" taxonomy, better to just enjoy them. They are small, bite-sized chocolate cakes. Mmmmm....
Now, the recipe does not call for them to be iced or anything, but does have an option to ice them with one of two different recommended icings. I have made one of them - a mint-infused white chocolate ganache, and it is delicious! - but so far it is too liquid to frost them properly. I don't think that is going to change, or I am going to have the time available to frost them even if it does, between now and tonight, but we'll see. The ganache is so good (and, since I am not a white chocolate fan, that is saying something coming from me) that I would like to figure out how to use it. Andrew loves mint, and I think he probably spent the day at home cradling the bowl, given how he reacted after tasting the icing last night. So maybe there won't be any left and my problem will be solved. I hope so? Or I hope not? So confusing....
Clementine's Butterscotch Brownies
Lucy's Chocolate Minis, from Alice Medrich, Chewy, Gooey, Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
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| All that dark coloring comes from brown sugar, not chocolate! |
 |
| As you can see, the mint-infused white chocolate ganache was a little too thin! |
Now, the recipe does not call for them to be iced or anything, but does have an option to ice them with one of two different recommended icings. I have made one of them - a mint-infused white chocolate ganache, and it is delicious! - but so far it is too liquid to frost them properly. I don't think that is going to change, or I am going to have the time available to frost them even if it does, between now and tonight, but we'll see. The ganache is so good (and, since I am not a white chocolate fan, that is saying something coming from me) that I would like to figure out how to use it. Andrew loves mint, and I think he probably spent the day at home cradling the bowl, given how he reacted after tasting the icing last night. So maybe there won't be any left and my problem will be solved. I hope so? Or I hope not? So confusing....
Thursday, April 7, 2011
For April 7
OK, a couple of new recipes this week, very yin and yang:
Whole Wheat Biscotti
Robert's Brownies My Way
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
Let's start with the biscotti. This is an interesting recipe. It calls for 100% whole wheat pastry flour. Many recipes use a mix of white and whole wheat flours, but here we go all the way. The only other major element to the recipe is nuts - in this case, a fairly large quantity of toasted almonds. And while it includes a good amount of dark brown sugar, these are probably the least sweet cookie/bar/biscotti/etc. that I have ever made - Myosen, you will like these for a breakfast food! Anyway, these are a very interesting recipe and cookie, but not my favorite. The nuttiness of the wheat flour and of the almonds is very close; it could use a little pop! I think if I made them again I would throw in some chopped dried cherries of something to give a contrasting flavor. Overall, they are a nice dipping cookie, not too sweet, lots of whole grains and roasted nuts, very virtuous - I just wish they had a tad more flavor.
OK, well, and then there are the brownies. I had been browsing through David Lebovitz' Ready for Dessert as well as Alice Medrich's Chewy Gooey for ideas, and both of them include this recipe! The recipe was originally from Robert Steinberg, the co-founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate, and it was made to showcase their first chocolate, the 70% bittersweet. David and Alice have both made a few adjustments to the original recipe, but both give credit to Robert for the base recipe. I used the Scharffen Berger 70% in the recipe (which means the chocolate alone for this cost around $20), and added pecans and also some cacao nibs. This is a dense, fudgy brownie, not for those who like cakey brownies. It is intense - a lot of chocolate goes into these babies - the basic recipe (I triple it) calls for 8 oz. of chocolate and only 1.75 oz. of flour, so you can see how this plays out. Whatever virtue you feel from eating the biscotti will be quickly dashed when you bite into a brownie. But, well, you know, the middle way and all that.
And since Roshi asked for a photo of the tester, how can we say no?
Whole Wheat Biscotti
Robert's Brownies My Way
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies
Let's start with the biscotti. This is an interesting recipe. It calls for 100% whole wheat pastry flour. Many recipes use a mix of white and whole wheat flours, but here we go all the way. The only other major element to the recipe is nuts - in this case, a fairly large quantity of toasted almonds. And while it includes a good amount of dark brown sugar, these are probably the least sweet cookie/bar/biscotti/etc. that I have ever made - Myosen, you will like these for a breakfast food! Anyway, these are a very interesting recipe and cookie, but not my favorite. The nuttiness of the wheat flour and of the almonds is very close; it could use a little pop! I think if I made them again I would throw in some chopped dried cherries of something to give a contrasting flavor. Overall, they are a nice dipping cookie, not too sweet, lots of whole grains and roasted nuts, very virtuous - I just wish they had a tad more flavor.
And since Roshi asked for a photo of the tester, how can we say no?
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| Bodhi-Heart fulfilling his function. |
Thursday, March 31, 2011
For March 31
Last week, Zen Center was in a short sesshin that began on Thursday evening, so there were no cookies. That was OK, it was a busy, crazy work week for me, and I was working late every night, so adding cookie baking to the mix may have pushed me over the top!
Anyway, this week we have two new cookies, both from the new Alice Medrich book:
Whole Wheat Hazelnut Cookies With Currants And Cacao Nibs
Apricot Lemon Bars With Hazelnut Crust
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Wow, a lot of hazelnuts this week! That's OK, they are a great flavor and in these cookies they play a supporting role.
This week, the cacao nib cookies are dedicated to my friend Adam. I met Adam through Frank, and it has been a pleasure to get to know him. I learned to my great delight that he is extremely knowledgeable about chocolate; we went out to dinner recently and we had a bonding experience talking about cacao nibs. He has had some amazing life experiences, is smart, funny, and really fun (oh, and did I mention how good-looking he is?). Which is why he has a boyfriend; sorry! Anyway, this week Frank delivered a care package to me at the gym from Adam that was filled with different and interesting chocolates, as well as a canister of cacao nibs. Now, dear reader, if you have been following this blog for any time, you will know that I love cacao nibs - they are a precursor to chocolate, and they have a very earthy flavor but little of the sweetness of chocolate. I love to add them to various recipes. Fortunately for me, Alice Medrich is equally a fan, and has lots of recipes that use them. So I used some of my gift to make these cookies, and the whole wheat cookies this week are thus dedicated to Adam, with thanks.
The whole wheat cookies are interesting - in a good way. They are a variant on the sables recipes that I like so much. When I first started making the sables (French for "sandy") it was from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert book, in which she pares back the ingredients in each recipe to just have the few remaining ingredients shine intensely. Here, the recipe goes the other way - there is a riot of flavors going on in this little cookie. There is the basic cookie, which is that sandy, buttery cookie that is the classic sables. Then we have a mixture of white and wheat flours, to give it some nuttiness. Then there are the hazelnuts, which are roasted and finely chopped. Finally we have both the currants and the cacao nibs - in the cookie, they cook very similar, both these small dark spots against the golden cookie. This is a cookie where you can taste all of these different things - not a case where they all blend in to a single flavor, but instead in each bite you get just a variety of different things going on. (And even better, they look exactly like the full-page picture in the cookbook - hurrah!)
The apricot lemon bars are a bounce back from the bar disaster of 2 weeks ago. At that time, I tried to make lime bars, but I used some "sweet limes" I got at the Farmer's Market, and they had no flavor at all, and the bars were a total dud - I ended up throwing away 2 entire pans of them. Sigh. So this week, we seem to have recovered. For these bars, you start with a hazelnut shortbread crust, which is baked until golden. Then the "filling" is added, which is largely eggs, fresh lemon juice and apricot preserves, and baked again. Here, the lemons are tart and tangy, and the apricot is sweet and tangy-smooth, so while they are still cooling and I have not tasted the end product, they seem a far cry from where we were 2 weeks ago.
OK, it is 12:30 and I have to do my workout tomorrow at 7:15, so time to go to bed. Night night!
Anyway, this week we have two new cookies, both from the new Alice Medrich book:
Whole Wheat Hazelnut Cookies With Currants And Cacao Nibs
Apricot Lemon Bars With Hazelnut Crust
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Wow, a lot of hazelnuts this week! That's OK, they are a great flavor and in these cookies they play a supporting role.
This week, the cacao nib cookies are dedicated to my friend Adam. I met Adam through Frank, and it has been a pleasure to get to know him. I learned to my great delight that he is extremely knowledgeable about chocolate; we went out to dinner recently and we had a bonding experience talking about cacao nibs. He has had some amazing life experiences, is smart, funny, and really fun (oh, and did I mention how good-looking he is?). Which is why he has a boyfriend; sorry! Anyway, this week Frank delivered a care package to me at the gym from Adam that was filled with different and interesting chocolates, as well as a canister of cacao nibs. Now, dear reader, if you have been following this blog for any time, you will know that I love cacao nibs - they are a precursor to chocolate, and they have a very earthy flavor but little of the sweetness of chocolate. I love to add them to various recipes. Fortunately for me, Alice Medrich is equally a fan, and has lots of recipes that use them. So I used some of my gift to make these cookies, and the whole wheat cookies this week are thus dedicated to Adam, with thanks.
The whole wheat cookies are interesting - in a good way. They are a variant on the sables recipes that I like so much. When I first started making the sables (French for "sandy") it was from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert book, in which she pares back the ingredients in each recipe to just have the few remaining ingredients shine intensely. Here, the recipe goes the other way - there is a riot of flavors going on in this little cookie. There is the basic cookie, which is that sandy, buttery cookie that is the classic sables. Then we have a mixture of white and wheat flours, to give it some nuttiness. Then there are the hazelnuts, which are roasted and finely chopped. Finally we have both the currants and the cacao nibs - in the cookie, they cook very similar, both these small dark spots against the golden cookie. This is a cookie where you can taste all of these different things - not a case where they all blend in to a single flavor, but instead in each bite you get just a variety of different things going on. (And even better, they look exactly like the full-page picture in the cookbook - hurrah!)
The apricot lemon bars are a bounce back from the bar disaster of 2 weeks ago. At that time, I tried to make lime bars, but I used some "sweet limes" I got at the Farmer's Market, and they had no flavor at all, and the bars were a total dud - I ended up throwing away 2 entire pans of them. Sigh. So this week, we seem to have recovered. For these bars, you start with a hazelnut shortbread crust, which is baked until golden. Then the "filling" is added, which is largely eggs, fresh lemon juice and apricot preserves, and baked again. Here, the lemons are tart and tangy, and the apricot is sweet and tangy-smooth, so while they are still cooling and I have not tasted the end product, they seem a far cry from where we were 2 weeks ago.
OK, it is 12:30 and I have to do my workout tomorrow at 7:15, so time to go to bed. Night night!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
For March 17
Hmmm, well, Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!! I guess I should say that up front, because it doesn't show up in this weeks recipes. I totally forgot about the holiday, and didn't even wear anything green today! (sad face here)
Let's start with what we're NOT having this week: Very Tangy Lime Bars, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert. This week, for the first time, I had a recipe failure. It wasn't me (really!) it was the ingredients. I was at the farmer's market late last week, and I saw something I'd never seen before, called "sweet limes." Hmmmm, I thought, interesting. I had made the very tangy lemon bars a while back and liked them, and had intended to circle back to them to make a recipe variant using limes, and this made me think the time was right. So I got some (like a dozen of them, and each is the size of a small orange), and had one item for this week on its way. Well, I don't know if this is the nature of "sweet limes" or what, but they were basically FLAVORLESS, a condition that we really only found out about after baking 2 pans of these bars. Since I am trying to be all organized these days and to allow me to get to the gym on my regular schedule, I have begun doing either 1 whole cookie or the dough for 1 or 2 cookies on Tuesday night, finishing on Wednesday night. So we made these Tuesday night, but they had to cool, so we didn't taste them until Wednesday morning (after around 6 hours sleep). When I cut them and tasted them, they were completely tasteless - great crust, a flavor of a custard topping, but no citrus flavor to be found anywhere, even though we used 4+ teaspoons of zest and 1 1/2 cups of lime juice! Ack. So they are going bye-bye.
This left me having to do both cookies on Wednesday night, which I haven't done in quite a while, and I only got home from the gym at 8:45. So it was a scramble, involving two old favorites, but I think it all worked out in the end (as long as a sleep deficit doesn't bother you too much). To wit:
Almond Rochers, from Elizabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, Tartine
Lenox Hill Cornmeal Lemon Almond Biscotti, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Both of these are almond recipes - surprise! It was a bit of a surprise to me - I must have been thinking of a different meringue recipe when I started down this road, because I had Andrew buy lots of chopped walnuts when he was kind enough to do my shopping, but when I went to start cooking, I realized neither recipe called for them. Doh! I was so thrown off by the lime bars fiasco I lost track of my recipe plan. Anyway, I don't know about your world, but in my world this is National Almond Week. Let's celebrate!
I first made the Almond Rochers (which means "little rocks") almost exactly a year ago, for March 11, 2010. These are a gluten-free, almost fat-free meringue, and are apparently very popular at the San Francisco bakery from which the book gets its name. Here, you toast sliced almonds and then crush them, make a meringue, add the almonds and bake. Based on a variant in the book, I added a few cacao nibs to the recipe, but I didn't have many in the house so it is not a noticeable amount. The roasted nuts give this a very rich flavor, even though it is fat free aside from whatever fat is in the nuts - and Andrew's trainer says that almonds are the best nut health-wise, so woohoo. Anyway, I like this recipe a lot for something that is both fat- and chocolate-free.
I usually make biscotti out of the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, but I have also made different variations on Dorie Greenspan's biscotti recipe over time. The basic recipe uses almonds and cornmeal, and this one adds a good dose of lemon zest (and yes, you can actually taste the citrus in these, sigh). Since this was a last minute add to the list, it had to be relatively easy, and biscotti are a great answer. My friend Frank told me yesterday that he has never had biscotti he liked. I hope I'm up to the challenge! I think that a lot of commercially sold biscotti are way too sweet and have too much fat added to soften the texture up a little. But generally, biscotti now seem to be a way to add white chocolate or weird flavors to something you put in your mouth but might otherwise not. (Don't go there!) Good biscotti are true to their tradition, which comes from the idea of a traveling biscuit that would last for long periods without spoiling. (Biscotti means "twice baked" in Italian, which is how these are made, and are a relative to the "biscuit" of the English-speaking world.) Here, the lemon and almond add some flavor and the cornmeal adds some texture. These are best dunked in something (Andrew recommends hot liquid like coffee), but they are not so hard that they need dunking to "rehydrate" them or anything. You can just grab one and eat it on its own, and the relatively low fat content means you don't have to feel guilty until the second or third one. This is a nice recipe with a good flavor!
A note to any of you (hi nephew Dan in Brazil) who may actually try to bake any of these recipes - when making biscotti, this recipe makes a very, very soft dough. The best way to work with it is to plop large spoonfuls out in a line on the baking sheet. Then, you can form them together into a log. The only way to work successfully with this dough is to have your hands wet and cold - get them wet in cold water, and then quickly work to shape your log, which should be compact and tall (it will slump and spread as it bakes). The difference between dry and wet hands is the difference between a mess on the sheet with half the dough between your fingers and a nicely formed log of biscotti.
Happy eating! Happy baking!
Let's start with what we're NOT having this week: Very Tangy Lime Bars, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert. This week, for the first time, I had a recipe failure. It wasn't me (really!) it was the ingredients. I was at the farmer's market late last week, and I saw something I'd never seen before, called "sweet limes." Hmmmm, I thought, interesting. I had made the very tangy lemon bars a while back and liked them, and had intended to circle back to them to make a recipe variant using limes, and this made me think the time was right. So I got some (like a dozen of them, and each is the size of a small orange), and had one item for this week on its way. Well, I don't know if this is the nature of "sweet limes" or what, but they were basically FLAVORLESS, a condition that we really only found out about after baking 2 pans of these bars. Since I am trying to be all organized these days and to allow me to get to the gym on my regular schedule, I have begun doing either 1 whole cookie or the dough for 1 or 2 cookies on Tuesday night, finishing on Wednesday night. So we made these Tuesday night, but they had to cool, so we didn't taste them until Wednesday morning (after around 6 hours sleep). When I cut them and tasted them, they were completely tasteless - great crust, a flavor of a custard topping, but no citrus flavor to be found anywhere, even though we used 4+ teaspoons of zest and 1 1/2 cups of lime juice! Ack. So they are going bye-bye.
This left me having to do both cookies on Wednesday night, which I haven't done in quite a while, and I only got home from the gym at 8:45. So it was a scramble, involving two old favorites, but I think it all worked out in the end (as long as a sleep deficit doesn't bother you too much). To wit:
Almond Rochers, from Elizabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, Tartine
Lenox Hill Cornmeal Lemon Almond Biscotti, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours
Both of these are almond recipes - surprise! It was a bit of a surprise to me - I must have been thinking of a different meringue recipe when I started down this road, because I had Andrew buy lots of chopped walnuts when he was kind enough to do my shopping, but when I went to start cooking, I realized neither recipe called for them. Doh! I was so thrown off by the lime bars fiasco I lost track of my recipe plan. Anyway, I don't know about your world, but in my world this is National Almond Week. Let's celebrate!
I first made the Almond Rochers (which means "little rocks") almost exactly a year ago, for March 11, 2010. These are a gluten-free, almost fat-free meringue, and are apparently very popular at the San Francisco bakery from which the book gets its name. Here, you toast sliced almonds and then crush them, make a meringue, add the almonds and bake. Based on a variant in the book, I added a few cacao nibs to the recipe, but I didn't have many in the house so it is not a noticeable amount. The roasted nuts give this a very rich flavor, even though it is fat free aside from whatever fat is in the nuts - and Andrew's trainer says that almonds are the best nut health-wise, so woohoo. Anyway, I like this recipe a lot for something that is both fat- and chocolate-free.
I usually make biscotti out of the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, but I have also made different variations on Dorie Greenspan's biscotti recipe over time. The basic recipe uses almonds and cornmeal, and this one adds a good dose of lemon zest (and yes, you can actually taste the citrus in these, sigh). Since this was a last minute add to the list, it had to be relatively easy, and biscotti are a great answer. My friend Frank told me yesterday that he has never had biscotti he liked. I hope I'm up to the challenge! I think that a lot of commercially sold biscotti are way too sweet and have too much fat added to soften the texture up a little. But generally, biscotti now seem to be a way to add white chocolate or weird flavors to something you put in your mouth but might otherwise not. (Don't go there!) Good biscotti are true to their tradition, which comes from the idea of a traveling biscuit that would last for long periods without spoiling. (Biscotti means "twice baked" in Italian, which is how these are made, and are a relative to the "biscuit" of the English-speaking world.) Here, the lemon and almond add some flavor and the cornmeal adds some texture. These are best dunked in something (Andrew recommends hot liquid like coffee), but they are not so hard that they need dunking to "rehydrate" them or anything. You can just grab one and eat it on its own, and the relatively low fat content means you don't have to feel guilty until the second or third one. This is a nice recipe with a good flavor!
A note to any of you (hi nephew Dan in Brazil) who may actually try to bake any of these recipes - when making biscotti, this recipe makes a very, very soft dough. The best way to work with it is to plop large spoonfuls out in a line on the baking sheet. Then, you can form them together into a log. The only way to work successfully with this dough is to have your hands wet and cold - get them wet in cold water, and then quickly work to shape your log, which should be compact and tall (it will slump and spread as it bakes). The difference between dry and wet hands is the difference between a mess on the sheet with half the dough between your fingers and a nicely formed log of biscotti.
Happy eating! Happy baking!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
For March 10
Why does it seem that the gap between baking sessions is collapsing into no-time? Am I falling into a black hole and not noticing? Or if I was falling into a black hole, would time elongate, rather than collapse? Maybe I'm falling out of one, not into one? Or is it simply that, having added gym time 6-7 days a week to my schedule (on top of everything else), the rhythm of my life has increased - I've moved from a trot into something more like that rapidly thumping music that comes out of the spinning class. I dunno.
Anyway, this week, two more Alice Medrich cookies. I know, how boring, you say - unless you have tasted.
Coconut Sticks
Chocolate Espresso Cookies
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Alice Medrich's new book begins with various recipes for "sticks", which are basically a dough that is formed into a rectangle, chilled then sliced into thin "sticks." This week, I am making the coconut sticks, which rely on a good amount of shredded unsweetened coconut as the main flavor element. According to Alice, this particular recipe is, in her opinion, one of the real treasures of this whole cookbook. Andy is not a huge fan of the "sticks" - he seems to think if you are going to make something with this technique, you should just go ahead and make biscotti. I am a big fan of biscotti, but I am also enjoying these cookies quite a bit on their own - they are not very visually attractive, but they have a nice flavor. But in making that comment last night, he did remind me that I haven't made any biscotti, one of my favorite things, in quite a while now, so I think that we will try to make some biscotti next week.
For the past few weeks, I have been trying to do one recipe that is a fairly subtle cookie, emphasizing limited ingredients and pure flavors, and then one that is just a flavor explosion. This week continues that trend, which is to say that the chocolate espresso cookie is largely everything the coconut stick is not. There is no delicacy going on here - it is just a chocolate-coffee bomb! Alice says in her comments that this cookie was inspired by Maida Heatter, the doyenne of American baking a generation ago. This cookie is not particularly sweet - it uses a large amount of unsweetened chocolate and not a huge amount of sugar, almost no flour (less than 1/2 cup), and then a very bittersweet (70%) chocolate for the chunks in it. It is a very dark, gooey, rich mess of a cookie. It also calls for adding some freshly and finely ground coffee. What is interesting is that I only used 2 1/4 teaspoons of coffee (Peets Major Dickason's Blend, in case you were wondering) in a recipe that made 65 cookies, but the coffee flavor is really big even though such a small amount is used. As I said, a chocolate coffee bomb!
Anyway, this week, two more Alice Medrich cookies. I know, how boring, you say - unless you have tasted.
Coconut Sticks
Chocolate Espresso Cookies
both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Alice Medrich's new book begins with various recipes for "sticks", which are basically a dough that is formed into a rectangle, chilled then sliced into thin "sticks." This week, I am making the coconut sticks, which rely on a good amount of shredded unsweetened coconut as the main flavor element. According to Alice, this particular recipe is, in her opinion, one of the real treasures of this whole cookbook. Andy is not a huge fan of the "sticks" - he seems to think if you are going to make something with this technique, you should just go ahead and make biscotti. I am a big fan of biscotti, but I am also enjoying these cookies quite a bit on their own - they are not very visually attractive, but they have a nice flavor. But in making that comment last night, he did remind me that I haven't made any biscotti, one of my favorite things, in quite a while now, so I think that we will try to make some biscotti next week.
For the past few weeks, I have been trying to do one recipe that is a fairly subtle cookie, emphasizing limited ingredients and pure flavors, and then one that is just a flavor explosion. This week continues that trend, which is to say that the chocolate espresso cookie is largely everything the coconut stick is not. There is no delicacy going on here - it is just a chocolate-coffee bomb! Alice says in her comments that this cookie was inspired by Maida Heatter, the doyenne of American baking a generation ago. This cookie is not particularly sweet - it uses a large amount of unsweetened chocolate and not a huge amount of sugar, almost no flour (less than 1/2 cup), and then a very bittersweet (70%) chocolate for the chunks in it. It is a very dark, gooey, rich mess of a cookie. It also calls for adding some freshly and finely ground coffee. What is interesting is that I only used 2 1/4 teaspoons of coffee (Peets Major Dickason's Blend, in case you were wondering) in a recipe that made 65 cookies, but the coffee flavor is really big even though such a small amount is used. As I said, a chocolate coffee bomb!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
For March 3
Two new recipes this week, both from new Christmas/post-Christmas cookbooks:
Sweet and Salty Brownies, from Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito, Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented
Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
A few weeks ago I made a recipe for brownies from the original Baked cookbook. Baked is a bakery in Brooklyn founded by two guys who had been in advertising and quit to open this bakery. I have not been there, but it is apparently very popular, and if their recipes are any indication, must be just a heavenly place. They now have two cookbooks, the original Baked and the newer Baked Explorations. In the original cookbook, they have a brownie recipe that is one of the very best brownies I have ever made, hands down - and I have made quite a few at this point! It is a great recipe and really very straightforward to make. One of the things I love about brownie recipes is that the techniques are very simple and the results you get are usually great. The work/reward ratio is very favorable!
Well, in Baked Explorations they take that recipe and tweak it by (1) adding a layer of homemade caramel and (2) adding salt to the caramel and to the brownies. I know that salty desserts are a big thing right now, and who knows how long this will last, but for some reason this week I was compelled to make this recipe. Well, this doesn't fall in the favorable work/reward ratio, because you have to make your own caramel as part of the deal on this recipe. I had never made caramel before, and having done so I expect that the next time it will be easy breezy, but the first time through, it was pretty terrifying! It involves cooking water, sugar and corn syrup to a precise temperature - 350 degrees - and then quickly removing from heat and adding other things. But wait too long, or let it get too hot, and it goes from "not yet" to "oh sh-t" really quickly - from dark amber to black and burned. So there is a lot of careful pot-watching involved, and a digitial instant-read thermometer is a recommended utensil for this one. Anyway, after you pull it off at just the right moment, you then stir in heavy cream. The recipe warns it will bubble up, but man, the pot looks like a witch's cauldron for a couple of minutes in that process. Assuming all goes well, you end up with a nice, salty caramel - and more than you need for the recipe, so you get some for your ice cream sundaes as a side benefit (assuming, again, that it is not black and ruined).
After making the caramel sauce, you make the brownie batter, spoon half of it in the prepared pan, carefully add caramel sauce, then add dollops of the remaining batter, and then carefully spread it to cover the caramel. I can't really say that this was as easy as it sounds here, but in the end it seems we got it mostly covered, and then into the oven it went. Now, I love these guys and I love the book, but when you have a recipe with a layer of caramel in the middle, an instruction that the brownies are done when a tester inserted in the center comes out with "a few crumbs" is not a very helpful guide - with the caramel, you will never get to the promised land. So it requires a good eye.
OK, now, having said all of the above - am I whining? - I will say this. These are amazing. Amazing! According to the cookbook, they were featured on the Food Network as one of the best salty foods in America, and I can understand the accolade. They have so much going on - the chocolate, the caramel, the salt - it is a flavor explosion. The effort is, in the end, definitely worth the result!
Playing yang to the brownies' yin, we had almond sables as the other baked good this week. I think that Alice Medrich's various sables recipes are just inspired, and are right now among my most favorite cookies. Sable is French for "sandy" and these are a form of shortbread/sugar cookie from France. In Alice's hands, they are characterized by limiting the number ingredients, to allow the purity of flavor shine through. Here, you grind almonds into a meal as part of the cookie - the additional ingredients are very few, and you are left with a very delicate cookie that is marked more by its texture than by any overwhelming flavor. This is a wonderful cookie. It is also the first of the sables that I am making from her new cookie cookbook, and one thing that is interesting is that this recipe was made entirely in a food processor - until now, her sables recipes have all relied on a stand mixer. It was interesting to see this new technique incorporated. Since it reduced the amount of bowls etc for cleanup, it was great!!!
Sweet and Salty Brownies, from Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito, Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented
Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
A few weeks ago I made a recipe for brownies from the original Baked cookbook. Baked is a bakery in Brooklyn founded by two guys who had been in advertising and quit to open this bakery. I have not been there, but it is apparently very popular, and if their recipes are any indication, must be just a heavenly place. They now have two cookbooks, the original Baked and the newer Baked Explorations. In the original cookbook, they have a brownie recipe that is one of the very best brownies I have ever made, hands down - and I have made quite a few at this point! It is a great recipe and really very straightforward to make. One of the things I love about brownie recipes is that the techniques are very simple and the results you get are usually great. The work/reward ratio is very favorable!
Well, in Baked Explorations they take that recipe and tweak it by (1) adding a layer of homemade caramel and (2) adding salt to the caramel and to the brownies. I know that salty desserts are a big thing right now, and who knows how long this will last, but for some reason this week I was compelled to make this recipe. Well, this doesn't fall in the favorable work/reward ratio, because you have to make your own caramel as part of the deal on this recipe. I had never made caramel before, and having done so I expect that the next time it will be easy breezy, but the first time through, it was pretty terrifying! It involves cooking water, sugar and corn syrup to a precise temperature - 350 degrees - and then quickly removing from heat and adding other things. But wait too long, or let it get too hot, and it goes from "not yet" to "oh sh-t" really quickly - from dark amber to black and burned. So there is a lot of careful pot-watching involved, and a digitial instant-read thermometer is a recommended utensil for this one. Anyway, after you pull it off at just the right moment, you then stir in heavy cream. The recipe warns it will bubble up, but man, the pot looks like a witch's cauldron for a couple of minutes in that process. Assuming all goes well, you end up with a nice, salty caramel - and more than you need for the recipe, so you get some for your ice cream sundaes as a side benefit (assuming, again, that it is not black and ruined).
After making the caramel sauce, you make the brownie batter, spoon half of it in the prepared pan, carefully add caramel sauce, then add dollops of the remaining batter, and then carefully spread it to cover the caramel. I can't really say that this was as easy as it sounds here, but in the end it seems we got it mostly covered, and then into the oven it went. Now, I love these guys and I love the book, but when you have a recipe with a layer of caramel in the middle, an instruction that the brownies are done when a tester inserted in the center comes out with "a few crumbs" is not a very helpful guide - with the caramel, you will never get to the promised land. So it requires a good eye.
OK, now, having said all of the above - am I whining? - I will say this. These are amazing. Amazing! According to the cookbook, they were featured on the Food Network as one of the best salty foods in America, and I can understand the accolade. They have so much going on - the chocolate, the caramel, the salt - it is a flavor explosion. The effort is, in the end, definitely worth the result!
Playing yang to the brownies' yin, we had almond sables as the other baked good this week. I think that Alice Medrich's various sables recipes are just inspired, and are right now among my most favorite cookies. Sable is French for "sandy" and these are a form of shortbread/sugar cookie from France. In Alice's hands, they are characterized by limiting the number ingredients, to allow the purity of flavor shine through. Here, you grind almonds into a meal as part of the cookie - the additional ingredients are very few, and you are left with a very delicate cookie that is marked more by its texture than by any overwhelming flavor. This is a wonderful cookie. It is also the first of the sables that I am making from her new cookie cookbook, and one thing that is interesting is that this recipe was made entirely in a food processor - until now, her sables recipes have all relied on a stand mixer. It was interesting to see this new technique incorporated. Since it reduced the amount of bowls etc for cleanup, it was great!!!
Thursday, February 24, 2011
For February 24
Hi everyone,
mostly well again - I guess this is what a chest cold is like - I don't like it. I am mostly better, although particularly at the gym (while gasping for air) I am finding I still have gunk in my lungs. Poco a poco.
Anyway, this week, we are in a back to basics week: fairly simple round(ish) cookies, one chocolate, one sugar. Both are Alice Medrich cookies:
Spicy Chocolate Wafers 3.0
Sugar Crunch Cookies
From Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
The "3.0" reference in the chocolate wafer's title refers to the fact that Alice is constantly reinventing her recipes. A year or two ago I made the "2.0" version (it was probably closer to "2.5" given the recipe similarities) of the chocolate wafer, which was in an earlier cookbook. The cookie is very basic - a chocolate wafer, with lots of flavor and good crispy texture. Good for munching on with a glass of milk, or to crush and turn into a pie crust. This is a very unpretentious cookie - a round, dark wafer of a cookie, no decoration, no filling. I have, however, used a variation from the book to add cinnamon, cayenne and black peppers to the dough, and so it does have quite a bit more of a flavor complexion than it appears to on first glance. It reminds me of some other spicy chocolate cookies I have made in flavor, but the texture of this one is quite different. You do have to like crispy to like this cookie.
If you don't like crispy/crunchy cookies, then this is not your week, because the other cookie, as its name - Sugar Crunch Cookies - suggests, is, well, crunchy! This one is a definite highlight cookie - very simple, and soooooo good. It is basically just a simple sugar cookie, but one that is crunchy, not soft and chewy. Like the chocolate wafer, it is the product of a lot of work and reinvention - neither of these two recipes has any eggs in them - and uses just the simplest ingredients to make a spectacular cookie. It is quite simple to make, and I highly recommend it. While a sugar cookie does not sound like a very exciting item, this week it is the star!
mostly well again - I guess this is what a chest cold is like - I don't like it. I am mostly better, although particularly at the gym (while gasping for air) I am finding I still have gunk in my lungs. Poco a poco.
Anyway, this week, we are in a back to basics week: fairly simple round(ish) cookies, one chocolate, one sugar. Both are Alice Medrich cookies:
Spicy Chocolate Wafers 3.0
Sugar Crunch Cookies
From Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
The "3.0" reference in the chocolate wafer's title refers to the fact that Alice is constantly reinventing her recipes. A year or two ago I made the "2.0" version (it was probably closer to "2.5" given the recipe similarities) of the chocolate wafer, which was in an earlier cookbook. The cookie is very basic - a chocolate wafer, with lots of flavor and good crispy texture. Good for munching on with a glass of milk, or to crush and turn into a pie crust. This is a very unpretentious cookie - a round, dark wafer of a cookie, no decoration, no filling. I have, however, used a variation from the book to add cinnamon, cayenne and black peppers to the dough, and so it does have quite a bit more of a flavor complexion than it appears to on first glance. It reminds me of some other spicy chocolate cookies I have made in flavor, but the texture of this one is quite different. You do have to like crispy to like this cookie.
If you don't like crispy/crunchy cookies, then this is not your week, because the other cookie, as its name - Sugar Crunch Cookies - suggests, is, well, crunchy! This one is a definite highlight cookie - very simple, and soooooo good. It is basically just a simple sugar cookie, but one that is crunchy, not soft and chewy. Like the chocolate wafer, it is the product of a lot of work and reinvention - neither of these two recipes has any eggs in them - and uses just the simplest ingredients to make a spectacular cookie. It is quite simple to make, and I highly recommend it. While a sugar cookie does not sound like a very exciting item, this week it is the star!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
For February 17
OK, well, I am sick. And not in the "mental' way, just the physical way. Which I hate. I get sick so rarely, I think I am out of practice or something, so it just makes me more grumpy. Today, I had to cancel a training at Zen Center, a workout with my personal trainer, and a dinner with some of the partners from my law firm. Just so I could sit at home and drink liquids, then more liquids, then more liquids.....well, you get the picture.
Nevertheless, the cookies must go on.
More from the new cookbooks, including one that just arrived two days ago.
Lemon Goldies, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
The Baked Brownie, from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking
Well, I am still working my way, almost a page at a time, through Alice Medrich's new cookbook of just cookie recipes. I am still in the first chapter - "Crispy" - which is what these little cookies are. The basic recipe is for "Goldies", but it has a variation for Lemon Goldies, which is what I made this week (basically the Goldies recipe with the zest of two Meyer lemons added). The picture of these cookies was so inviting - a full page photo of a stack of golden sugar cookies - it was a complete marketing success! The cookies are a nice, simple crispy lemon cookie, with a pale center and a deep golden edge. There is nothing fancy or sublime about them, just good simplicity.
And then there's The Baked Brownie. It is called that in the cookbook, because the authors own and run a bakery in Brooklyn called "Baked." And now they have two cookbooks (this was their first). Besides being totally adorable, they have made a huge name for themselves and if this brownie recipe - my first experience with them - is any guide, it is very well deserved! Apparently this brownie was named best brownie on America's Test Kitchen, and it is really good. Very simple - not too many ingredients, no nuts, just intense flavor and a dedication to a non-cakey brownie - and very good. It is giving some of my Alice Medrich brownies a run for their money. While the lemon goldies are like the angel on your left shoulder, these brownies are the itsy-bitsy devil whispering in your right ear that you should forgo those "healthy" pale things and just pig out on this chocolate intensity. Of course, if you don't like chocolate...more for the rest of us.
Happy eating!
Nevertheless, the cookies must go on.
More from the new cookbooks, including one that just arrived two days ago.
Lemon Goldies, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
The Baked Brownie, from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking
Well, I am still working my way, almost a page at a time, through Alice Medrich's new cookbook of just cookie recipes. I am still in the first chapter - "Crispy" - which is what these little cookies are. The basic recipe is for "Goldies", but it has a variation for Lemon Goldies, which is what I made this week (basically the Goldies recipe with the zest of two Meyer lemons added). The picture of these cookies was so inviting - a full page photo of a stack of golden sugar cookies - it was a complete marketing success! The cookies are a nice, simple crispy lemon cookie, with a pale center and a deep golden edge. There is nothing fancy or sublime about them, just good simplicity.
And then there's The Baked Brownie. It is called that in the cookbook, because the authors own and run a bakery in Brooklyn called "Baked." And now they have two cookbooks (this was their first). Besides being totally adorable, they have made a huge name for themselves and if this brownie recipe - my first experience with them - is any guide, it is very well deserved! Apparently this brownie was named best brownie on America's Test Kitchen, and it is really good. Very simple - not too many ingredients, no nuts, just intense flavor and a dedication to a non-cakey brownie - and very good. It is giving some of my Alice Medrich brownies a run for their money. While the lemon goldies are like the angel on your left shoulder, these brownies are the itsy-bitsy devil whispering in your right ear that you should forgo those "healthy" pale things and just pig out on this chocolate intensity. Of course, if you don't like chocolate...more for the rest of us.
Happy eating!
For February 10
One week in, and already behind. Sigh. Oh, well.
Last week was another week of cooking out of my new cookbooks. I was not there for the talk (we went to see Kodo, the Japanese taiko group instead), but I saw the next day the paltry remains, so I guess people liked the cookies! Here is what they were:
Hazelnut Sticks, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from David Lebovitz, Ready for Dessert
Alice Medrich kicks off her new book of cookie recipes with a series of "stick" recipes - basically you make a very simple dough, form it into a rectangle, refrigerate it, then slice it very thinly (around 1/6" thick, if you can do it - I got to 1/5", but the 1/6" was beyond me) into sticks which you then bake. She has a series of these recipes and they have the advantage of being easy AND look delicious! Certainly the hazelnut recipe was; she says that the tropical version (using coconut) is one of the highlights of the book, so I will circle back this way quickly.
I have mentioned David Lebovitz before, because I am a huge fan of his blog. David was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse, then he left and moved to Paris, where he now lives, writing cookbooks, leading culinary tours, and just being fabulous. Wow, how jealous am I! Anyway, his blog is a treat - beautiful photos, and wonderfully written - and I have made a number of his recipes before, and all were quite good. He just published his newest cookbook, Ready for Dessert, subtitled "My Best Recipes," and I am looking forward to cooking quite a bit out of it - although there are a lot of non-cookie recipes, so I will have to figure that part out. Anyway, I was browsing through it last week, saw his recipe for chocolate chip cookies and decided to add it to my repertoire. It is a good cookie, and has the advantage (like Sherry Yard's) of requiring you to form a log and refrigerate it before slicing it. This is helpful because it allows me to make the dough in advance, and then just slice and bake the cookies when needed. Since I have started going to the gym quite regularly and this has kinda messed up my schedule, it is very helpful to be able to break up the cookie enterprise into a multi-day affair with smaller bites each day.
Anyway, the chocolate chip cookies were good - not my favorite recipe, but a good variation on a traditional favorite. And, as I said, although I sent around 50 of them to the Center, only 2 made it to the next morning - so the audience approved!
Last week was another week of cooking out of my new cookbooks. I was not there for the talk (we went to see Kodo, the Japanese taiko group instead), but I saw the next day the paltry remains, so I guess people liked the cookies! Here is what they were:
Hazelnut Sticks, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies, from David Lebovitz, Ready for Dessert
Alice Medrich kicks off her new book of cookie recipes with a series of "stick" recipes - basically you make a very simple dough, form it into a rectangle, refrigerate it, then slice it very thinly (around 1/6" thick, if you can do it - I got to 1/5", but the 1/6" was beyond me) into sticks which you then bake. She has a series of these recipes and they have the advantage of being easy AND look delicious! Certainly the hazelnut recipe was; she says that the tropical version (using coconut) is one of the highlights of the book, so I will circle back this way quickly.
I have mentioned David Lebovitz before, because I am a huge fan of his blog. David was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse, then he left and moved to Paris, where he now lives, writing cookbooks, leading culinary tours, and just being fabulous. Wow, how jealous am I! Anyway, his blog is a treat - beautiful photos, and wonderfully written - and I have made a number of his recipes before, and all were quite good. He just published his newest cookbook, Ready for Dessert, subtitled "My Best Recipes," and I am looking forward to cooking quite a bit out of it - although there are a lot of non-cookie recipes, so I will have to figure that part out. Anyway, I was browsing through it last week, saw his recipe for chocolate chip cookies and decided to add it to my repertoire. It is a good cookie, and has the advantage (like Sherry Yard's) of requiring you to form a log and refrigerate it before slicing it. This is helpful because it allows me to make the dough in advance, and then just slice and bake the cookies when needed. Since I have started going to the gym quite regularly and this has kinda messed up my schedule, it is very helpful to be able to break up the cookie enterprise into a multi-day affair with smaller bites each day.
Anyway, the chocolate chip cookies were good - not my favorite recipe, but a good variation on a traditional favorite. And, as I said, although I sent around 50 of them to the Center, only 2 made it to the next morning - so the audience approved!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
For February 3, 2011
OK, back in the saddle again...
I am trying to juggle a new (and LASTING) commitment to exercise and being more healthy with the job thing, the Zen thing, the baking thing...oof. I think most of the weight I put on in the last 5 years can be attributed to (1) slowing metabolism once I hit 40 and (2) baking cookies and not giving all of them away. It is basic Zen training that you have to give everything away, and now I am going to be giving away all my cookies and all my extra pounds. Yay! On my personal workout page through my gym, it asks me to put down a mantra - I want to XXXX. Suggestions welcome - be a buff baker? I welcome input!
OK, enough rambling. On to this week's recipes from one of my new cookbooks, from my wonderful sister, Phyllis, who is experiencing a lot of snow right now.
Less-Is-More Overnight Brownies
Hazelnut Molasses Cookies
both from Alice Medrich's newest book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies
The brownie recipe is an experiment. It is a reduced fat (not low fat) brownie. It uses around half the butter of a "normal" brownie recipe, and also uses 1 egg and 2 egg whites, whereas many recipes would use 3 or 4 regular eggs. There are a couple of techniques to compensate - first, you really heat the butter in a pan to sizzling and then dump in the cocoa powder, which helps to bring out an intense chocolate flavor. Second, you let it sit overnight (or, in my case, 24 hours), which allows the cocoa powder and flour to really absorb the butterfat fully. (This is a new hot technique, particularly with chocolate chip cookies - flour does not hydrolyze very easily, so the thing now is to let the batter sit at least 24 hours (in the refrigerator) to let the flour absorb the butterfat. It gives a richer flavor when it has hydrolyzed properly.) Anyway, we tested them last night - Andrew was not in love with them, and they are definitely not the best brownies I have ever had, but I thought that by reducing the butter it let the flavor of the cocoa come through more - I definitely got a more fruity, interesting flavor profile than I do with some of the brownies I have made that look like they are sweating butter while they are baking.
The second recipe was also interesting. I am always interested in recipes where one of the key ingredients doesn't even show up in the title of the recipe. My almond pine nut tart is one of them - it fails to even mention the raspberry layer, which is a key element. This is another. The hazelnuts are interesting, yes, but the key to this recipe is that it includes orange zest. Now, I am not a creative baker, I just take directions pretty well, so until I read and then tasted this cookie dough, I would not have told you that molasses and orange zest are a natural flavor combination, but wow is it true. In this recipe, it is almost impossible to see where the molasses flavor ends and the orange zest takes over - it is like a seamless transition. These are a simple cookie (I like simple cookies), and there are a few elements I would do differently in the preparation, but the key ingredients here are finely chopped hazelnuts, molasses and orange zest. The hazelnuts are a fairly subtle flavor element, but give the cookie an interesting visual appeal, since the cookies darken quite a bit while cooking, but the chopped hazelnuts do not, leaving a flecked appearance to the cookie. These are not your grandmother's molasses cookie at all - indeed, they are in a different category altogether, not better or worse, but the fact that they share a core ingredient does not mean they end up in the same place (well, except in your belly).
There are a lot of fun recipes in this book, and then in the others that I got from Phyl or that I broke down and got for myself. This morning I was at the gym at 8 a.m. for 50 minutes of cardio, and so I think I will be OK eating one - well, ONE of each - cookie tonight.
I am trying to juggle a new (and LASTING) commitment to exercise and being more healthy with the job thing, the Zen thing, the baking thing...oof. I think most of the weight I put on in the last 5 years can be attributed to (1) slowing metabolism once I hit 40 and (2) baking cookies and not giving all of them away. It is basic Zen training that you have to give everything away, and now I am going to be giving away all my cookies and all my extra pounds. Yay! On my personal workout page through my gym, it asks me to put down a mantra - I want to XXXX. Suggestions welcome - be a buff baker? I welcome input!
OK, enough rambling. On to this week's recipes from one of my new cookbooks, from my wonderful sister, Phyllis, who is experiencing a lot of snow right now.
Less-Is-More Overnight Brownies
Hazelnut Molasses Cookies
both from Alice Medrich's newest book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies
The brownie recipe is an experiment. It is a reduced fat (not low fat) brownie. It uses around half the butter of a "normal" brownie recipe, and also uses 1 egg and 2 egg whites, whereas many recipes would use 3 or 4 regular eggs. There are a couple of techniques to compensate - first, you really heat the butter in a pan to sizzling and then dump in the cocoa powder, which helps to bring out an intense chocolate flavor. Second, you let it sit overnight (or, in my case, 24 hours), which allows the cocoa powder and flour to really absorb the butterfat fully. (This is a new hot technique, particularly with chocolate chip cookies - flour does not hydrolyze very easily, so the thing now is to let the batter sit at least 24 hours (in the refrigerator) to let the flour absorb the butterfat. It gives a richer flavor when it has hydrolyzed properly.) Anyway, we tested them last night - Andrew was not in love with them, and they are definitely not the best brownies I have ever had, but I thought that by reducing the butter it let the flavor of the cocoa come through more - I definitely got a more fruity, interesting flavor profile than I do with some of the brownies I have made that look like they are sweating butter while they are baking.
The second recipe was also interesting. I am always interested in recipes where one of the key ingredients doesn't even show up in the title of the recipe. My almond pine nut tart is one of them - it fails to even mention the raspberry layer, which is a key element. This is another. The hazelnuts are interesting, yes, but the key to this recipe is that it includes orange zest. Now, I am not a creative baker, I just take directions pretty well, so until I read and then tasted this cookie dough, I would not have told you that molasses and orange zest are a natural flavor combination, but wow is it true. In this recipe, it is almost impossible to see where the molasses flavor ends and the orange zest takes over - it is like a seamless transition. These are a simple cookie (I like simple cookies), and there are a few elements I would do differently in the preparation, but the key ingredients here are finely chopped hazelnuts, molasses and orange zest. The hazelnuts are a fairly subtle flavor element, but give the cookie an interesting visual appeal, since the cookies darken quite a bit while cooking, but the chopped hazelnuts do not, leaving a flecked appearance to the cookie. These are not your grandmother's molasses cookie at all - indeed, they are in a different category altogether, not better or worse, but the fact that they share a core ingredient does not mean they end up in the same place (well, except in your belly).
There are a lot of fun recipes in this book, and then in the others that I got from Phyl or that I broke down and got for myself. This morning I was at the gym at 8 a.m. for 50 minutes of cardio, and so I think I will be OK eating one - well, ONE of each - cookie tonight.
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