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.