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....

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.