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!

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!

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!

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!!!