For September 22

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.

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!