For August 27

Back from Hawaii! Andrew and I were gone for 10 days on vacation. Now back. Sigh. A very hard landing on return. Anyway, amid the 100-degree heat, I was in the kitchen baking last night, and here are the items I made:

Cranberry Oatmeal Bars, from Nick Malgieri
Macademia Shortbread Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

Both bar-type cookies this week - I didn't get home until 8 p.m. last night, and we still haven't unpacked from our trip, which called for relatively simple recipes this week. The cranberry oatmeal bars are what they sound like - lots of oats, with some cranberries and pecans. The sweetness comes from a combination of dark brown sugar and unsweetened applesauce. Not much fat in these at all. While it is in the high 90s here today, these are clearing the way out for fall to arrive (please!).

The brownie recipe is rather interesting. First, you make a shortbread layer at the bottom of your pan, and add nuts to it - in this case, macadamia nuts, in a nod to the recent trip to Hawaii. After that bakes, you add pour a brownie batter on top, and then bake it again. So it ends up being a brownie on top of a thin macadamia shortbread crust. I made this recipe some time ago, except I used hazelnuts instead of macadamia nuts. There are also two different brownie recipes you can use for the brownie layer; I used the "Best Cocoa Brownies" recipe, which I made recently and was well received. This is a nice contrast of the intense, fudgy brownie atop the shortbread crust, with the macadamia adding an almost ethereal element to the mix.

Next week, the Center is on recess, so we will be taking the week off. However, I just received two dessert cookbooks from Flo Braker in the mail yesterday, so I will use the time off to peruse and plan...

Oh, and I have been doing the "blog" thing now for a year!!! Wow! Happy Birthday to me!

For August 13

Two interesting recipes this week, both involving almonds:

Lemony Almond Bars, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Chocolate Spice Quickies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

This is the second week in a row I am doing a chocolate cookie recipe from Dorie Greenspan. In terms of technique, these are rather similar to the World Peace Cookies that I did last week, but they are also quite different in result. Here, the cookies are a bit softer, and have a slightly elusive quality. They have both allspice and ground almonds in them, which is probably why. Dorie calls them quickies, and they are and aren't - they are because this is a fairly quick dough to make, and they aren't because the dough then needs to be refrigerated for at least 4 hours before slicing and baking. I like these a lot, and I think they are a bit more complex than the World Peace Cookies (I just asked Andrew, who says it is a close call but thinks the World Peace Cookies edge these out; so much for world peace).

The lemony almond bars are unusual. They won't win any awards for looks, but they are really good. Lemon and almond are not a natural flavor combination, but here it works nicely. These bars involve three steps. First, you make a crust layer, which you bake. While it is baking, you make a topping layer, which is basically eggs, brown sugar and almonds. Put the topping on, bake for 20 minutes. While that is baking, you make a glaze, which involves fresh lemon juice, lemon zest and powdered sugar; when the bars come out of the oven, while still hot you pour the glaze over them, and the glaze is absorbed into the bars. As I said, these are very plain bars, but that makes the big lemon flavor a real surprise. These are a really nice, interesting bar. As far as I know, I haven't made either of these recipes before, and both are good, solid recipes.

Andrew and I leave on vacation on Saturday, so no cookies from us next week - we will be playing in Hawaii for 10 days. But we'll be back for the 27th!

Dharma-Joy

For August 6

I was in San Diego today, so Andrew took care of the cookies. So now I turn it over to our guest blogger, Andrew!

World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

OK, Tom actually made these Wednesday night. They are the kind of cookies that you roll into logs and refrigerate, so all I had to do was slice them up and bake them. I am always a little worried about sizing cookies according to the recipe, so I confess that I actually pulled out the tape measure to be sure I was slicing in 1/2-inch segments. Yes, I know it's a little crazy. It was definitely worth it - these are really really good cookies - chocolatey and rich with an almost-melt-in-your-mouth texture. Quintessential cookies that should definitely bring about global harmony!

Blondies, adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Tom called on his way home from San Diego and jokingly suggested I shop for and bake the second cookie, and he said that he thought maybe brownies would be good but that he didn't want two chocolate cookies. I thought blondies sounded good, so I did some googling (why bother using the 40 million cookbooks we have when I can just google?) and came up with this recipe. It is really simple and has the advantage of having an ingredient list consisting of stuff we already had in the house. I did change it slightly based on other recipes and comments by other bakers by creaming the butter and sugar rather than melting the butter. I also added toasted walnuts and some chocolate chips. I am sending them into the world untested, so you will have to let me know how they turned out. The best part was that they were all done by the time Tom got home, so we had takeout for dinner and got to bed before midnight - hurray!

For July 30

Bittersweet Brownies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

Raisin, Pine Nut and Fennel Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Busy week, which means two relatively easy - but delicious - recipes. I am a big fan of Dorie Greenspan's; I don't think I have made one recipe of hers that has not turned out exceedingly well. This is a very straightforward brownie recipe. There are very few ingredients - no nuts! - so the flavor and texture are accentuated. These are made with Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate, with some espresso powder for an extra kick. While not cakey, they are not the ultra-dense, fudgy version of brownies that I generally prefer. But they are pretty close.

I wanted to do something different in contrast, and the biscotti fit the bill. These are chockablock with "stuff" - raisins, pine nuts and fennel seed. This flavor combination is based on an Italian sauce (except the sauce has anchovy, mercifully left out here). I am not a fan of the licorice type flavors such as fennel and anise, but I really like these biscotti. Certainly the large quantity of pine nuts helps - I was thinking last week that it has been a long time since I did a recipe with pine nuts, so I am happy to have come across this one while browsing through the King Arthur cookbook today. And unlike a number of my recent biscotti excursions, this one is not as long-baked, leaving it a more delicate set of flavors. So this week we have two good recipes that go in completely different directions.

For July 16

Two recipes from Alice Medrich this week:

Best Cocoa Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

Whole Wheat Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

This was a crazy week. I am blogging two days late! Work has been intense - I worked 10 hours a day last Saturday and Sunday, and pretty non-stop since. (Today, this crazy push came to an end when I got two briefs that I have been working on for weeks filed. Now I am going to collapse.)

Anyway, these were two really great recipes - they were great first, because the results tasted great and second, because they were pretty darn easy to make. The Whole Wheat Sables are from the Pure Dessert cookbook; in this book, Medrich cuts back the ingredients in recipes to allow purity of flavor to come through. There are like 5 or 6 ingredients total in the Whole Wheat Sables, which are a type of butter cookie. They have equal amounts of whole wheat and regular flour, and it gives a real nuttiness to the cookie, even though there are no nuts. I made the dough for these on Monday, and Andrew - bless him - sliced them and baked them for me on Wednesday before I got home. These are an exceedingly delicate cookie - they are almost ethereal, the edges just melt away. Medrich does a whole set of recipes that are variants of this cookie, and each is yummy. Not a kid's cookie, but wonderful.

The brownies, well, they ARE a kids cookie - they are brownies, after all. These are from Medrich's chocolate cookbook, Bittersweet. She has a series of brownie recipes. One that I did a few weeks ago relied on bittersweet chocolate; this one relies on cocoa powder. Very different results. These are an intense, fudgy, indulgent brownie. Not very difficult to make - which saved me this week - but a really good result. Alice Medrich is my hero!

OK, now I go collapse.

For July 9

This is another crazy week. Oof. Andy is back from Arizona, his mom's stuff has been moved (but unpacking is another thing). And work is crazy! Oy. But still, the cookies must go on. So this week....

Triple Chocolate Fudge Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking
Summer Berry Crumble Bars, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

After my small "oops" with the chocolate cookies last week, this week we make up for it with a lot of chocolate in the cookies. Sherry Yard is the pastry chef at Spago, and these are a very nice cookie, even if they have white chccolate in them. These are a chocolate cookie that has cocoa powder, dark chocolate chunks and white chocolate chunks included. I am not going to go on about the whole "white chocolate" thing, but will just say that these have enough "real" chocolate to permit me to overlook the indecency of the white chocolate. These are a crunchy cookie (I am told that Wolfgang likes his cookies crunchy, not chewy) with lots of flavor.

Speaking of flavor, the bars are full of flavor in a totally different way. These bars have a base of flours and oats (and a little sugar and flour, etc.) then a layer of blueberries and raspberries. This is topped by another layer of flour, oats and sunflower seeds (yeah, yeah, sugar, butter, etc.) then a very subtle glaze is applied after baking. They are a challenge to eat with all the fresh fruit and the crumbly top and bottom crusts, but they are a treat!

For July 2

Chocolate Sugar Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking

Our Favorite Pound Cake

This week, Andy is in Lake Havasu, Arizona, helping prepare his mom for her big move to Los Angeles. So I am handling both the cooking and clean up. Yuck!

Anyway, some fun stuff this week. The cookie is from Sherry Yard's book, the Secrets of Baking. Sherry is the pastry chef at Spago, and I think this is an excellent baking book. This cookie is a variation on her Master Sugar Cookie recipe - I have been planning to make a basic sugar cookie for a while. Well, not this week - I got sidetracked by my desire to have something chocolate, so I went with one of her variations rather than the basic recipe itself. Here, there is a very light addition of chocolate in the form of some melted bittersweet chocolate that is added at the beginning. Now, just as I am typing this, I realize I was supposed to add cocoa powder along with the flour, but, oops, I guess I forgot. So these are not an intense chocolate cookie, they are a lightly chocolated sugar cookie. So this is obviously "adapted from" Sherry Yard, rather than a recipe of hers. Anyway, the result is a very simple cookie. After a few weeks with some elaborations in the cookie department, this is a back to basics cookie.

And, speaking of back to basics, the pound cake is another recipe in that vein. I have been making this recipe for 20 years, and it is my favorite pound cake. For those that don't know, the name of the cake - pound cake - came from the fact that the basic recipe called for a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of eggs, and a pound of flour. Here, that is basically what is in the cake, although it has a few other ingredients (vanilla, baking powder, and milk). Assuming the farmer's market cooperates tomorrow, my plan is to pick up some strawberries and blueberries and we can have berries and cream on pound cake. It seems a very July 4 kind of dessert to have.

Happy holiday!

D-J

For June 25

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Classic Unsweetened-Chocolate Brownies, from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

This was the week where this whole baking thing veered towards the "are you insane?" side of the spectrum. Monday night I flew to Phoenix (where it was 85 degrees when I landed at 9:30 p.m.), took 2 depos in Phoenix on Tuesday, then flew back to LA; on Wed. morning, I was up at 5:45 to drive to San Diego, where I took two depos before driving back to LA. But the show must go on or whatever, so I had planned ahead and made the biscotti on Sunday night, and made the brownies tonight. And now I want to collapse into a heap.

The biscotti are yummy. As I have mentioned, I have had some hazelnuts sitting around, and originally I was going to experiment with a chocolate hazelnut cookie, but this was a week for relatively simple baking, so biscotti and bars it was. Anyway, I am a fan of the chocolate hazelnut combination, so I hope people like the biscotti.

The brownies are also very good. Maybe one of my favorites. These are dense, gooey brownies, not for the I-like-my-brownies- cakey crowd. These are very thin - there is no rising agent in them at all - and concentrated. They cook on a high temperature - 400 degrees - and tonight I inadvertently cooked them with my oven on the convection setting, so they are a bit dark around the edges, but I think we averted catastrophe. Anyway, I am a big fan of Alice Medrich's recipes, and this one does not disappoint. I have placed a link to the recipe at the top - the recipe is from the Scharffen Berger chocolate web site, which is appropriate since I used Scharffen Berger unsweetened chocolate to make these. And while Alice's book does not call for you to toast the nuts (pecans or walnuts, I used walnuts), the Scharffen Berger site suggests it, and I had done so and agree that it is always much better to toast your nuts before baking.

So chocolate fans, start your salivating....and we'll see you at the Center tomorrow night.

As for now, good night!!!

For June 18

Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, from David Lebovitz

Peppery Nibby Chocolate Sables, adapted from Nick Malgieri

Another crazy work week. Sigh. But two interesting cookies. Both of these come from noted bakers who have their own Web sites. The Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are from David Lebovitz' web site, but he is adapting a recipe from Nick Maglieri. These are good cookies and, even better, they are very low fat. This recipe made around 7 dozen cookies, but only used 4 tablespoons of butter. The secret is to use applesauce in place of some of what would otherwise be butter. This is a nice, chewy, very simple cookie reminiscent of childhood.

The other one, well, not so much. This is a recipe of Nick Malgieri (who is adapting someone else's recipe) for a chocolate sable, which is a type of butter cookie. This recipe calls for cinnamon, cayenne and fresh ground black pepper as part of the dough; I have slightly adapted it by adding some cacao nibs (what can I say, they were there, it seemed the right thing to do). Anyway, not your average childhood cookie! These are quite yummy - petite cookies, with a very complex flavor profile. They are quite a contrast to the oatmeal cookie!

For June 11

Luxury Brownies, from the blog Chocolateandzucchini.com

Benne Wafers, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Via David Lebovitz' blog, I found this brownie recipe at Chocolate & Zucchini, a cooking/baking blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier; she in turn had found it on the blog of a woman who sells baked goods at a market in East London. The chocolate in this is very intense - the recipe calls for both melted bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder (in my case, that would be Scharffen Berger chocolate and Valrhona cocoa powder, making these about equal to gold on an ounce for ounce basis - I now know why these are called "luxury" brownies); Clotilde also tinkered with the original recipe by reducing the amount of sugar (and I reduced it a tad more) and by replacing some of the butter with almond butter (like peanut butter but, well, with almonds). Oh, and a lot of nuts. I like the result, but, well, I am not in love with it - a bit more cakey than my favorite style of brownie. On the other hand, the pan that is going to the Zen Center is a bit thicker than the pan I was, er, testing from, so it may be a bit less cooked and less cakey. We'll see how it develops as it cools and sets.

Andrew and I spent four days at Tassajara for a poetry workshop this week. At Tassajara the guest lunch generally is soup, home made bread, salad and cookies. While we were there, one of the cookies was a sesame cookie. Now, a strong sesame flavor is for some people an acquired taste, but I am a big sesame fan, and I had made a sesame cookie some time ago, and this cookie reminded me of that one. So I decided to make it again this week to see, and if they are not the same recipe, they are certainly close! Apparently "benne" was a West African term for sesame and in the "low country" of South Carolina, as a result of slavery, sesame cookies are referred to as benne cookies. This is not a cookie for everyone, but I am fairly pleased with the result. It is a very simple cookie to make, and gives you a very interesting and fun result.