For August 12

Last week was all Martha, this week is all Sherry Yard, the pastry chef at Spago Beverly Hills:

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Butterscotch Cookies

both from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking

I am a big fan of this book, and I think both of these are repeats. I know that the chocolate chip cookies are, and although I thought the Butterscotch cookies were a newbie, seeing them cook they looked very familiar.

The chocolate chip cookies are good - crisp. (Apparently Wolfgang Puck likes his chocolate chip cookies crisp.) I like a little chewier than this, but these are still wonderful. These use hand-chopped chocolate instead of store-bought chips, and they end up looking beautiful as a result - almost marbled! No nuts, very simple ingredients. They are great dipped in milk!

The butterscotch cookies are very similar to the chocolate chip cookies in technique and ingredients, with a few key exceptions (like no chocolate). This uses dark brown sugar (and I use a great dark brown sugar, not the standard stuff) and butter to get the butterscotch flavor. There are not a lot of ingredients other than those - some flour, some eggs, a little vanilla, salt, and that's about it. After making the dough, you chill it, but this one never got firm - after 24 hours, it was still a mess to work with! It must be the amount of butter. Anyway, after "slicing" them (good luck), you sprinkle them with demerara sugar before baking. Very simple, very pure flavors.

Enjoy!

For August 5

Another catch-up (not katsup) post. Last week was all about Martha:

Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread
Double Chocolate Brownies

both from Martha Stewart's Cookies

Both yummy - this week, in a first (or first in my limited memory), I came out liking the chocolate item less then the others. I really liked the shortbread cookies - they were buttery but also had a good dose of salt, so there was a sweet and salty aspect. The recipe called for including orange zest, but I ended up with a 2/3 orange zest-1/3 lemon zest combination to try to give it a little more character. The shortbread also includes a small amount of cornmeal (I used a very fine cornmeal, not the usual coarse, stone-ground variety) and then the dough logs are rolled in cornmeal to give an edging to each cookie. All in all, I liked them a lot, and since these are slice and bake cookies, as long as you prepare the dough ahead and refrigerate it, you have a really nice cookie available with very little immediate effort.

The brownies were, well brownies. These were "double chocolate" because they used both cocoa powder as well as bittersweet chocolate. These are apparently one of the most popular recipes from the Martha Stewart web site or whatever, and I can see why - they are most but not super dense, and not cakey (yuck). A very good, solid, respectable brownie.

For July 29

Last week was sesshin, so no cookies, just sitting. This week, back to the normal schedule.

Two items, both from Dorie Greenspan, one new, one a repeat:

World Peace Cookies
Almond-Currant Teacakes

both by Dorie Greenspan

As any reader knows, I am in love with this woman. Her recipes are just consistently great. I have made the world peace cookie a couple of times before. Andrew Bodhi-Heart says it is one of his favorites. I didn't remember it until I, uh, sampled one last night. One of the distinctive things about it is that it is quite salty - a mix of chocolate and salty. Dorie credits Pierre Herme as the creator of this cookie, and she is apparently herself a rabid fan of it, since she says that it should rank up there with the invention of the Toll House cookie in the annals of baking. Apparently it got its current name because a neighbor of hers told her that if everyone could have a regular supply of these cookies, they would be so happy that world peace would break out. So let's get cookin'!

The second recipe was a very last minute item. I had originally thought that, in honor of the opening of a Magnolia Bakery here in LA, I would do something out of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. But, to be honest, their first cookbook is not very tempting. (I hear the second one is better, but I don't have it.) Everything in it is too over the top. Everything seems a little bit frenetic, and crazy sweet. So I closed that book and moved on.

While getting something out of my laptop case, I opened a side pocket and found two recipes in there that I had printed from the web a long time ago and forgotten. One of them was for these teacakes, which I must have found through Dorie's web site. (The recipe itself is published on the AARP web site which, by the way, seems to have a really amazing recipe section - who knew!) Anything that involves almond is a winner in my book, and this looked really good - little mini-cupcake sized cakes filled with almond and currant flavors. Making them was quite straightforward, and they are really yummy, and a nice contrast to the chocolate and salt of the world peace cookies. And I think that the mini size is just right - having a regular sized version would be too much, but this is juuuuust right.

I was very lucky last night, because when I got home I found Bodhi-Heart already had done the slicing and started the baking on the cookies (I had made the dough the night before), so I handled the tea cakes. That gave me a little time at the end of the night to work on my sewing. My ordination is now less than 3 weeks away, and I am still busy sewing! Yikes! It will all be done, but the push is on.

OK, back to work now. Enjoy!

For July 15

Lemon Cookies, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion
Chewy Fudge Brownies, from the New York Times

For July 8

Nibby cocoa sables
Self-icing nutella mini cupcakes.

For July 1

Last week, Andrew and I left for Tassajara on Thursday morning, but I made cookies to leave behind before heading out. Both cookies were from one of my favorite cooks, Alice Medrich:

Nibby Pecan Sables
Real Chocolate Wafers

both from Alice Medrich, Bittersweet

The chocolate wafer cookie was a new recipe for me. The cookie is exactly what it says it is - a chocolate wafer. Probably quite good with milk, and as Alice says in her notes, crushed up they would make an excellent pie crust. Not my favorite cookie on its own, but it has very good flavor. (Mini ice-cream sandwiches would be amazing with this.)

The sables are an old favorite. I'll write more later.

For June 24...

For June 24, I was just back in town from a week away. We had a guest baker this week, Bob Gido Fisher. He made two ridiculously good items:

Chocolate Crinkles, from Martha Stewart Cookies
Oatmeal Lace Cookies

The oatmeal lace cookies were amazing. Lucky for me, Gido even gave me the recipe, so I will get to try it after a suitable break.

Thanks, Gido!

For June 17

What did we bake way back then? Hmmm.....

For June 10

Quick post, very tired. Two very different cookies this week:

Double Chocolate Cookies, from Milk

Orange Cashew Biscotti, from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Milk is an amazing ice cream shop and bakery on Beverly Boulevard. While people go mostly for the ice cream, their baked goods are, IMHO, even better. This recipe for double chocolate cookies was printed about 18 months ago in the LA Times, and I am happy to finally be making it. It is a hedonist's cookie - a lot of chocolate with a bit of egg and flour to hold it all together. Very intense, very wonderful. Just be sure to use good chocolate!

The biscotti were a response to my "challenge" from Andrew, who asked me to make a recipe with orange. (I just mentioned this to him, and he had forgotten.) Anyway, I am not a huge fan of orange in cookies, but I thought that I would browse my biscotti variations, and I came across this recipe that involves both orange as well as salted, roasted cashews, one of Andrew's major food groups. Well, how could I resist? (A rhetorical question.) Anyway, the orange in these is from our tree - we have a Valencia orange tree in our front yard and it makes the sweetest and juciest oranges that we rarely take advantage of. So today I got to use zest and juice to make these biscotti. They are a nice, delicate flavor - the cashews are not nearly as strong a flavor as I expected them to be, and the orange is a predominant flavor. They are a nice cookie and a good contrast to the intensity of the chocolate cookies. We'll see as they cool and settle down how the flavor develops.

I should add that I was helped greatly by Andrew Bodhi-Heart this week. I made the dough for the double chocolate cookies on Tuesday night because it had to chill a bit before portioning out. He got home early on Wednesday and decided to surprise me by baking the cookies for me, so when I got home around 7:30, the chocolate cookies were all done and cooling on racks or already packed up for delivery. Hurray! It made the rest of the evening much more enjoyable. Thanks!

OK, night night!

For June3

OK, back on track, even if exhausted. This week, two rather experimental cookies - which is probably kinda silly, probably should have done only ONE experimental cookie in a week. But noooooo...... So here is the lineup:

Iced Multigrain Oatmeal Cookies, adapted from Kim Boyce, Good to the Grain

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Buckwheat Groats, from The Wednesday Chef blog

Two interesting cookies. Now, neither of them is going to come in as "healthy," believe me, but they are both whole grain based cookies. The oatmeal cookies are VERY whole grain. The recipe involved whole oats (which you grind into a coarse meal), whole wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, millet flour and rye flour. Andrew was agog at all the little flour bags that were strewn over the counter at the end of this process; the only reason he forgave me was that we managed to reduce the rolled oat containers in our cupboard in making the recipe, and somehow the oats seem to be breeding in there in the dark or something, we have so many of them. Anyway, these are a very nice cookie - the cookie has all these amazing whole grains, and then most of the sweetener is the good, dark brown muscovado sugar that I have been using recently, which is so much better than the normal dark brown sugar (albeit a wee bit more expensive - or maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit). After they cool, they are iced to give them a little extra flavor (there is a boatload of cinnamon in the icing, which is why it is BROWN) and a kick of sweetness. I have to admit, I was a bit guarded about this "whole grain" recipe, but this one is really yummy. I am sure that the butter and the brown sugar may have something to do with that. But now, what do I do with 4 cups of millet flour?

The other recipe was one of those spur of the moment moves. I have never been to this woman's blog before, but I was browsing around looking for a different recipe and landed on her wonderful food blog - I recommend it highly, and it is quite entertaining and enjoyable. Anyway, looking at her index of cookie recipes, I saw this one for chocolate chip cookies with buckwheat groats. Huh??? Buckwheat groats? In chocolate chip cookies? What are buckwheat groats, anyway?

Well, Whole Foods being, well, Whole Foods, it had multiple choices of buckwheat groats. The recipe calls for "buckwheat groats (kasha)" but it seems clear after my Whole Foods shopping experience that buckwheat groats are not the same as kasha - kasha is a roasted version of buckwheat groats. (Some of the brands did not make this distinction, either, so I may be just making this all up, but it's just too late and I'm too tired to research this to a resolution.) So I was left with the question of buying the roasted version (kasha) or the raw version (groats). I went for the roasted version, thinking that it would give a nutty, richer flavor to the cookie. Anyway, the recipe is a pretty straightforward chocolate chip cookie recipe, except that instead of adding nuts or whatever with the chips, you add the buckwheat groats. (Oh, and it calls for whole wheat pastry flour instead of the usual white flour, so this was truly a whole grain cooking night.) And it does indeed give the cookies a very interesting, unusual twist - there is both an interesting texture from the crunchiness of the groats, and also an interesting flavor. The cookies came out on the crisp/crunch side to begin with, and the groats add further crunch, so not for those of you who like your cookies chewy or soft.

Anyway, my concerns about doing two experimental, whole grain cookies in one week seem to be allayed. We have survived another baking adventure!