...and we're back!

For February 2, 2012

OK, well, I guess we fell off the blogging wagon there for a while.  I DID actually make cookies after mid-September, and I even took pictures of most of them!  But getting the pictures and the info on the cookies onto the blog, well...it didn't happen.  Alas.  I thought for a while that I would go back, organize the photos, use them to remind me of which recipes I made, and clean it all up.  It was a nice thought...

Anyway, new year, and time to get back up in the saddle and start blogging again.  So here are this week's recipes:

Sweet and Salty Brownies, adapted from Baked, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, from Flour, by Joanne Chang

This week marks the resumption of our normal schedule at Zen Center after the Bare Bones January schedule in which we had no Thursday night talks and no accompanying tea and cookies.  I wanted to kick off the year with some good stuff that was also somewhat classic.  So oatmeal cookies and brownies.

A tray of sweet and salty brownies - don't think about the nutritional ingredients and all will be fine.

The brownies are a twist on the classic.  I made these a couple of times last year.  The original recipe is from Baked, a bakery in Brooklyn that was opened by two refugees from the advertising industry.  I hope to go there some time, because they seem like a very interesting and fun couple of guys.  Anyway, their first cookbook, Baked, included a recipe for brownies that was really great - rich, dense but not too fudgy, just overall good.  Their follow-up cookbook, Baked Explorations, included a variation on that brownie recipe.  It included the addition of a layer of homemade salted caramel between two layers of brownie batter, and then adds a sprinkling coarse sugar and sea salt on top of the cooked brownies.  This week, I made the brownie, omitted the salted caramel, but added the salt and sugar on top.  So sweet and salty.  Yum.

Oatmeal raisin cookies from Flour

For my second recipe this week, I used a new cookbook that I got for Christmas.  It is called Flour (what is it with one syllable titles?) and it is the cookbook from Boston bakery of the same name.  This came out a couple of years ago, but it made it to me just this year.  It is a nice cookbook with a lot of interesting side notes and good photos.  It also looks like a fun bakery that would be nice to visit!

I made these cookies because I know that oatmeal raisin cookies are Roshi's favorite.  Most of the cookie recipes in this book adopt the "make the dough and then let it rest for 12-24 hours in the refrigerator before baking" technique that has become popular recently (particularly with chocolate chip cookies).  Since I am trying to space out my baking across multiple nights to accommodate the rest of my so-called life, I was happy to oblige.  This is a pretty straightforward recipe, and it made a very nice cookie - a little crispy at the edges and chewy in the middle.  The recipe calls for spooning the dough out in 1/4 cup sized amounts, but that is way too big for my purposes, so I reduced it to 1 tablespoon (1/4 cup is 4 tablespoons) and reduced the baking time.  Oatmeal raisin cookies will never win awards for beauty, but they were quite good.  And I will note that while I took 52 to Zen Center for Thursday night, only 1 was left by the end of the evening - they proved more popular than the brownies, which really knocked me over.

OK, enough for now.  Welcome back!