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.