a little zaftig » Cookies

Midnight {triple chocolate} Cookies

Laura — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:55 +0000

This triple chocolate, slice-and-bake cookie is made with black cocoa, raw cacao nibs, and ground dark chocolate. It’s chewy with just a little crunch from a roll in turbinado sugar. The ultra-Dutched cocoa, dark chocolate, and raw cacao give the cookie great depth. If you don’t want to hunt down or special order ingredients, substitute conventional or dark cocoa and any kind of chocolate, and skip the cacao nibs and the turbinado sugar. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Midnight {triple chocolate} Cookies
Yield: about 30 cookies

Ingredients:
½ c. plus 3 T. unsalted butter, soft but cool
1/3 c. sugar
2/3 c. brown sugar
2 t. good vanilla extract
1 1/3 c. all purpose flour
1/3 c. black cocoa*
½ t. baking soda
2 T. raw cacao nibs
4 oz. 70% cocoa dark chocolate, ground in a food processor
3 T. heavy cream

*Black cocoa, and other baking supplies, may be ordered here.

Method:

In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until they are creamy.

Add the vanilla and mix until well combined.

Add the flour, cocoa, baking soda, cacao nibs, and ground chocolate and mix gently only until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Do not overmix.

Add the cream and mix until the dough begins to come together. Do not overmix.

Divide the dough in half and place each half on a large piece of cellophane. Wrap the cellophane over the dough and roll the dough into cylinders about 2” in diameter. Wrap the ends and refrigerate the dough until it is cold, at least one hour. The dough may be refrigerated for a couple of days at this point if you would like to bake the cookies later.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.

Place some turbinado or other coarse sugar onto a cutting board. Roll the log in the sugar, pressing the sugar into the dough.

With a sharp knife, cut the dough into ½“ slices and place them 2” apart onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The cookies spread quite a bit.

Bake the cookies in the center of your oven until they appear dry at the edges, about 12 to 15 minutes. As this is a chewy cookie, the middles should be soft but not liquid.

Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookies

Laura — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:48:14 +0000

Can three weeks really have passed? My goodness. I have been busy building a twenty by eight foot hen house and coop in the backyard, walking several hours a day in preparation for the Susan G. Komen 3-day 60 mile walk, and, well, I’ll spare you the rest of the dizzying list. After I finish painting, hanging window boxes, planting perennials, building and mounting a roof structure, and hauling in another 600 pounds of pea gravel, the hen house will be finished and I will have a lot more time for cooking (and posting). It has been a labor of love and, aside from moments when I’m aching and an unusually stubborn douglas fir board won’t take a nail for all my strength, it has been a pleasure to plan and build. In truth, as it’s come together and I’ve moved my growing hens into it, it’s like the biggest outdoor fishbowl I could have imagined: endlessly entertaining and relaxing. There is now a row of chairs along its front, and in groups of two or three we have taken to wandering out to watch the chickens with morning coffee, afternoon tea, or, recently, one of Jacques Torres’ beautiful big cookies in hand. Beatrice, Clementine, Edna, Edith, and Florence seem to be very happy in their new home. They are grazing and scratching and, with a little coaxing and demonstration, learning to use the ladder up to the coop, and to roost on the bars inside. Edna and Clementine march down first in the morning, surefooted and confident. Edith follows next, a little timid but steady. Then comes Beatrice, careful with each step and rather wobbly. And last is Florence, who inevitably falls off the ladder as she trembles her way down. Sweetest of all is that they know me, something I didn’t expect. They all run over when I enter the house and peep and cluck at my feet, gathering and vying for some time to be petted. “Hello, chickens,” I call as I approach. And they perk up and walk over, some scuttering, others dawdling, all heads bobbing. It’s quite endearing. Eggs or not, I’m hooked.

Amongst all of the hen house work, I have been making quick suppers with our farm share and the herbs from the new garden box my Dear Husband bought for me this spring. They are thriving in the cool, damp weather we’ve had, and I am thrilled. The cornmeal pizzas I made tonight with a quick red sauce, some sausage, and pearls of fresh mozzarella were so much more delicious with handfuls of fresh oregano and basil. I haven’t had much time to bake, but on Fathers’ Day I baked these cookies. I resolved some months ago now to only post original recipes on the blog, but this recipe merits an exception. Leave it to charming and ever cheerful Frenchman and master pastry chef and chocolatier Jacques Torres to create the most heavenly version of the all-American chocolate chip cookie. (I adore Jacques and, to be perfectly cheeky, think that if Fred Rogers and Willy Wonka had a love child, he would be Jacques Torres.) I knew my Dear Husband had printed his recipe for chocolate chip cookies a few years ago and I had stashed it somewhere. A little digging produced the 2008 printout from the New York Times. My body-as-temple mate has one true weakness: a great chocolate chip cookie. So I thought I would try Jacques’ version, if a few years behind schedule. Oh my. Just make them. We’ve made our way through three batches in under a week. And don’t skip the resting step. We rushed into baking a tray of five cookies immediately, and have returned to quiet restraint. This is deferred gratification worth every hour of waiting. I think descriptions will fall short here, so I’ll just say that a kind of magic happens during the resting period. All of that creamy butter absorbs the flours to create a fantastic texture. Jacques’ recipe calls for discs of bittersweet chocolate. We’ve done that: Amen! And also made a version with discs and chips. And a version with both bittersweet and milk chocolate discs of single origin chocolate. All were stellar. But we’ve settled on Jacques’ original suggestion as our favorite. The discs are spendy, but worth a splurge here; if that’s not possible, they are wonderful with plain old chips, too. Bake some and send a love note to Jacques. He’s some kind of genius. I’m off to settle into a chair to watch the hens for a few minutes with one of his homey cookies, a perfect way to enjoy the last minutes of this perfect summer day. I’ll tuck into the cookie, and then tuck the hens snugly into their coop.

Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookies
By Jacques Torres, adapted from the New York Times
Yield: 20 5-inch cookies

Ingredients:
1 ¼ c. unsalted butter at room temperature
1 c. plus 2 T. sugar
1 ¼ c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1 ¼ t. baking soda
1 ½ t. baking powder
1 ½ t. coarse salt (or half the amount if you only have conventional salt)
2 c. less 2 T. cake flour
1 2/3 c. bread flour
1 pound bittersweet chocolate discs or feves or 1 12 ounce bag of bittersweet chocolate morsels*

*I like Belgian Belcolade chocolate discs or Valrhona chocolate fèves, both available here. Belcolade discs are also sold through King Arthur Flour should you wish to place a baking order, as well.

*Here is a link to Jacques’ site, mrchocolate.com.

Method:

In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugars until they are light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between additions.

Add the vanilla and mix well.

Sprinkle the baking soda, baking powder, and salt across the mixture, distributing them as evenly as possible. Mix them into the dough.

Add the flours and mix slowly until just combined.

Gently stir in the chocolate so as not to break the pieces.

Scrape down the dough neatly down into the mixing bowl and press cellophane directly onto it. Refrigerate the dough for 24 hours.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Scoop the dough into balls just between the size of golf and tennis balls, righting any protruding chocolate discs so that they are horizontal in orientation.

Bake them until they are pale golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Pour a tall glass of milk and enjoy.

Date Balls and Lessons from Merriam Park

Laura — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:10:51 +0000

Even if you’re the kind of person who thinks there could be nothing less appetizing than a humble date ball, I hope you’ll consider making these. Brown sugar and butter caramelize in a pan while whole dates melt slowly into the mix, and you stir them together with toasted almonds, a little crunchy salt and vanilla, plus a few ingredients that fall into the background to create texture–pretty heady stuff. My Dear Husband tried politely to dissuade me from making them this morning. I was on my way to a family luncheon, the annual gathering of the female descendants of the Sheridan sisters, and he was seriously doubtful about any recipe involving dates, but especially wary, it seemed, of something called date balls. The name does have a certain thud about it, and they definitely won’t be entering any Sexiest Dessert competitions. But they are my favorite kind of recipe to make, the kind of cookie that is a genuine surprise, unassuming and homey and packed with flavor, a bygone or lost recipe, nearly forgotten. My great aunt’s recipe calls for dates and sugar, nuts, Rice Krispies cereal, and sweetened angel flake coconut. I opted to up the caramel flavor by swapping in brown sugar, chose almonds and toasted them in the oven, added puffed brown rice in place of the Krispies, and rolled them in unsweetened coconut.

These cookies are special to me for other reasons, too, though. Whenever I eat one I am back in her kitchen reliving an important memory. We never did have a conversation about it; we didn’t need to. My great aunt, whom we called grandma, was someone who tried to do twice as much listening as she did talking, and she lived her faith in the least flag-waving and conspicuous way possible. Her neighborhood, the Merriam Park section of St. Paul, was a rough, mixed race place that saw its share of petty violence and worse in the early 1970s. I often played at the park nearest her house and knew when I saw a knife come out of a pocket that it was time to scurry home. The boys at the park scared me, but it was a place to play on a hot summer day, and it had a rusty slide and a swing set where I could pretty much keep to myself. In my imagination the boys there had wild lives to match their tempers, and perhaps they did, but I met them properly as they walked past my grandma’s house one afternoon when I was on the front steps, and called to her to tell her they had passed. She dashed to the door to invite them in for date balls and a cold glass of milk, and they accepted. Into the kitchen they piled, contraband and all, concealed behind big grins. I wanted to take her aside, to tell her that they were dangerous, to warn her about what might happen should they come in, to make it all stop and rewind to the moment where I could have just shut my mouth, and since I couldn’t, to tell her, for goodness sake, that I was on tenterhooks and that she was most definitely out of her mind. But the boys were as sweet as could be, polite, gracious, and funny. When they left my grandma gave me a knowing look. I got it. They were just like me. And her kindness meant so much to them. Under all that bravado were boys who loved to talk to my grandma, who were so happy to be invited in and to chat with her. I never saw them or anyone quite the same way after that. They stopped in now and then over their growing up years, in groups of two or three or four, for more date balls or crackers with peanut butter or a glass of lemonade. They were short visits, always jovial. And I carried that idea of hospitality with me into adulthood.

When my children were small I made it a point to always have something baked in the house to offer to whatever neighborhood kids might pass by. By then, our American culture, and the outdoor habits of children, had changed, though. Kids didn’t play unattended anymore as we once did, wandering on long summer days, and getting up to fun and mischief. I saw the good in that, especially as a parent. But I grieved the idea of a community of kids, of the freedom that we enjoyed, and the lessons we learned from each other, from being forced as a group to figure it out—the rules to a game or who was up first, how to climb back down from a billboard, or how to divide the candy bar you all pitched in for—and the idea of the grownup figures in our neighborhoods and in our lives. I miss the idea of kids being part of a neighborhood game interrupted by mothers calling them home for supper or again as dusk is approaching. I’ve found other ways, more organized ways, to be a welcoming home. Whenever I am, I think of my grandma and these date balls, and of the afternoon I first understood how important one small date ball could really be. Here is her original recipe, in her words, and my adaptation.

My Date Balls
Adapted from Grandma Sherry’s Date Balls
Yield: about three dozen balls

Ingredients:
1 c. whole almonds
½ c. unsalted butter
¾ c. brown sugar
one pound dates, sliced open and pitted (I used these and they were excellent.)
1 egg, beaten
1 T. milk
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. puffed brown rice
1 t. Celtic, or other coarse salt
1 c. unsweetened desiccated coconut

Method:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Place the almonds on a sheet pan and bake them for ten minutes, giving them a shake about halfway through the baking time. Allow them to cool a bit and then chop them into medium pieces.

While you are waiting for the nuts to cool, in a medium saucepan over low heat, combine the butter, sugar, and dates. Cook them, stirring periodically, until the dates have broken down and the butter and brown sugar are smelling toasted and caramel-y. Remove from the heat.

In a small bowl, beat together the egg, milk, and vanilla.

Beat the egg mixture into the date mixture madly with a wooden spoon, so as to avoid scrambled egg forming.

Stir in the almonds, the puffed brown rice, and the salt.

Place the coconut in a shallow dish or bowl and drop tablespoonfuls of the date mixture into the coconut. Roll them in the coconut and into balls using the palms of your hands.

Grandma Sherry’s Date Balls

Ingredients:
1 pound pitted dates
½ c. butter
¾ c. sugar
1 beaten egg
1 T. milk
1 t. vanilla
½ t. salt
2 c. Rice Krispies
1 c. chopped nuts

Method:

Cut the dates in half. Boil dates, butter, sugar in shallow frying pan and stir until mushy on low heat. Set aside. Cool slightly. Add other ingredients except Rice Krispies to date mixture slowly. Pour date mixture into large bowl with Rice Krispies. Take one small package angel flake coconut and put it in a glass pie plate. Take a heaping teaspoon of date mix. Plop into coconut. Turn around to coat. Make balls with your hands. 3 dozen.

Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Cookies

Laura — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:01:58 +0000

These crispy-at-the-edges, moist-and-chewy-in-the-center cookies are a staple in our cookie jar and a snap to make.

Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Cookies
Adapted from Quaker Oats
Yield: about two dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1 c. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 c. brown sugar
½ c. sugar
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla extract
1 ½ c. all purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur.)
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
3 c. old fashioned oats
1 ½ c. chocolate chips
1 ½ c. flaked coconut

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars.

Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Add the baking soda, salt, and flour and mix only until combined. Do not overmix.

Add the oats and mix briefly.

Add the chocolate chips and coconut and mix briefly. Do not overmix.

Scoop out cookies of about 2 T. each onto ungreased cookies sheets.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown at the edges. Do not overbake.

Cinnamon Cream Caramel Surprise Coconut Macaroons

Laura — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:28:59 +0000

I’ve been spending a good bit of time in the car recently, making trips down to St. Olaf College, my alma mater, in Northfield, Minnesota, which is about an hour away. Barbara Kingsolver has been my companion. (Books on tape, I love you.) I’m about ten hours into The Lacuna. It’s hard to imagine being distracted from Barbara’s prose, but the roads have been so bad this year, the worst in memory. I find myself distracted by images of horse and buggy. And then by memories of my Norwegian grandfather and his last car, a Lincoln Continental, which would make this trip so much smoother. Even in the late 1980s, it was a boat. How nice this drive would be with him. We’d wash over the soft waves of the potholes. And we could share a little box of the coconut macaroons that I just made. He would like that. We’d chat, the car bobbing, as we used to—about fishing and antacids and the wisdom of ordering a malt with dinner at the kind of place that you can do that, the usual nothings that meant so much. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise, if we could conjure such things, if only for a few minutes? The surprise of my distracted thoughts got me thinking about culinary surprises, and about those macaroons sitting at home on my kitchen counter. Wouldn’t they be nice with their own surprise? An injection of caramel, maybe cinnamon cream caramel? This is how my brain works. Like a cat. (Pretty yarn. Pretty yarn.) The good news is that my little distractions lead to recipes like this. Not too bad for daydreaming.

Music for making Cinnamon Cream Caramel Coconut Macaroons:
A crooner my grandpa would approve of: Andy Williams’ Moon River

Cinnamon Cream Caramel Surprise Coconut Macaroons
Yield: four dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1 batch coconut macaroons (recipe below)
1 batch cinnamon cream caramel (recipe below)

Method:

When you caramel is cool enough to work with, fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip. Be careful. The trick here is waiting until you won’t get burned, but not so long that the caramel is thickening too much.

Take out an egg carton, place your eggs in a basket or bowl, and place a sheet of waxed paper or parchment over the carton. You’re going to nest your macaroons in the egg carton. Place them into the carton tops facing down, so that you can put a little caramel into the bottom of each cookie.

Inject a little squirt of caramel into the center of each one and allow the caramel to cool.

Remove the macaroons from their temporary nest, return your eggs to the carton, and enjoy!

Macaroon Tips
To separate an egg white, crack an egg in half. Pour the egg white out of one half of the shell and discard that half shell. Then, holding your hand over the measuring cup, gently pour the yolk into your hand. Allow the white to run through your hand and into the measuring cup below. Reserve the yolk for making custard or another yolk-rich dessert.

Coconut Macaroons
Yield: four dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1 c. egg whites
2 c. sugar
16 ounces unsweetened desiccated coconut

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment.

Separate the whites from about seven eggs into a one-cup measure until you have one cup of egg whites.

In a large bowl, mix the egg whites and the sugar well.

Add the coconut and stir to mix.

Scoop out little macaroons using a tablespoon or a small scoop and place them on the baking sheet with ½“ between each cookie.

Bake for 12 minutes.

Rotate the trays from top to bottom and 180 degrees.

Bake for another 12 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool to room temperature.

Store them between layers of waxed paper in a tin or other container. They will keep about one week.

Caramel Tips
Use a very large pan for this recipe in case it boils up.

I use a candy thermometer for this recipe, but you don’t have to purchase one to make it. In fact, I made it for many years without one. Have a saucer or small bowl of cold water ready at your side. When the caramel begins to thicken and darken a bit, begin dropping a dab of caramel onto the saucer. Give it a little pinch with your fingers. It’s ready when it forms a defined but very soft ball that you can squish easily.

If you’re using a candy thermometer, have a hot pad ready. The thermometer can become quite hot. And if your candy thermometer isn’t very tall, hold it rather than clipping it to the pan. If the caramel burbles up over the numbers you’ll be in a pickle.

If you’re using a digital thermometer, do not clip it to the side of the pan. The constant heat is hot a happy partner for its delicate innards, and mine have gone on the fritz and then died. Conventional candy thermometers are perfectly happy clipped to the side of the pan, and I recommend them over their high tech counterparts.

Use the best cream you can for this recipe. A higher butterfat content is better. I love Cedar Summit Farms’ luxurious cream.

Do not scrape the pan with a spatula when you pour the caramel. The caramel against the bottom and sides of the pan are hotter and will form a hard sheet in your caramel.

To fill a pastry bag, fold down the top of the bag a few inches. This will keep the top clean so that it will be easy to fold or twist the bag closed without a mess. Then fold the tip up against the bag. This will prevent the bag from leaking when you fill it. Place the bag, tip folded up, into a glass. Then fill, remove from the glass, and fold up or twist the top closed. Use gentle pressure at the top to pipe.

Store leftover caramel in a jar in the refrigerator, warm it, and drizzle over ice cream.

Cinnamon Cream Caramel

Ingredients:
2 c. sugar
1 T. ground cinnamon
¾ c. light corn syrup
½ c. unsalted butter
1 pint (2 c.) heavy cream

Method:

In a large pan, mix together all of the ingredients except one cup of the cream.

Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.

Gradually add the remaining one cup of cream.

Continue stirring. It will thicken significantly and darken a bit.

Cook almost to the soft ball stage, or to 230 degrees F, or until a dab dropped onto a saucer filled with cold water forms a very soft but defined ball. (See caramel tips above.)

Allow the caramel to cool at room temperature until it is cool enough to work with. Don’t wait too long or it will begin to solidify.

Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies

Laura — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:32:00 +0000

This is a recipe coup like I haven’t celebrated in years. The last two really whoop-worthy were a particular restaurant chocolate soufflé cake that my Dear Husband adored around 1998, and my ikebana-sensei’s daughter-in-law Nori-chan’s goma dare (now that’s a mouthful) around 1989 in Osaka. Every once in a while I really can’t figure out how to recreate something at home. I get twitchy about it and can’t let it go, have to putter in the kitchen with a proverbial bee in my bonnet until it’s as good as the real McCoy. These bittersweet chocolate cookies, which are our current obsession at Rustica bakery in Minneapolis, took some guesswork and tinkering, but here they are, ready for their glass case moment (and, dare I say, even better than the originals—especially when you get to eat one straight from the oven).

These coal black cookies are seriously good. They defy description, really. They’re definitely a cookie, but they’re somehow more than a cookie. They’re intensely dark with black cocoa, and layered with large discs of Belgian dark chocolate. They’re also soft and moist in a distinctly non-cookie way, almost cookie meets flourless chocolate cake.

One Sunday morning when my Honey Girl was in Kindergarten, we were at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Tokyo at a post-service coffee. Up she marched to a woman we didn’t know but whom she had decided was rather out of sorts to reveal that if she needed some emergency chocolate, her mother always had some in her purse. If you love chocolate like I do, drop everything and bake a batch of these cookies. (Maybe even keep one or two in your purse.)

Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Tips
Black cocoa is ultra Dutched, or alkalized. It is used to make Oreo cookies. It is available here.

Measure the cocoa powder by packing it into a cup measure and leveling it.

Measure the all purpose flour by running a whisk or fork through the flour, scooping it gently into a cup measure, and leveling it with a knife.

Cream of tartar acts to activate the baking soda in this recipe. Look for it in the spice aisle.

Belgian Belcolade bittersweet chocolate discs are available here.

Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies
Yield: about three dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1 ¼ c. European-style butter, softened
1 2/3 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 ¼ c. sour cream
1 t. vanilla
1 1/3 c. black cocoa
2 c. all purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur.)
½ t. coarse salt
¼ t. baking soda
¼ t. cream of tartar
½ pound Belcolade chocolate discs or other high quality bittersweet chocolate pieces

Method:

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar.

Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Add the sour cream and mix well.

Scrape down the bowl.

Add the cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar and mix until incorporated.

Stir in the chocolate discs.

Cover the bowl with cellophane and chill it in the refrigerator, at least several hours or overnight.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line three baking sheets with parchment paper.

Roll the dough into balls about the size of a ping pong ball, dip them in sugar, and place them on a baking sheet about three inches apart.

One sheet at a time, bake them for five minutes. Then rotate the baking sheet 180 degrees and bake an additional five minutes.

Rose Water, Hibiscus, & Dark Cocoa Macarons with Rose Water and Hibiscus White Chocolate Ganaches

Laura — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:04:03 +0000

My Sweet Boy’s lovely girlfriend Taylor is over to bake today, and we are taking on macarons. We’ve had to hearten ourselves along through a string of failures—macarons are notoriously temperamental—but we are having fun, and spending six hours together on them has been an unexpected and happy surprise. We’re on batch four now this afternoon, with fingers crossed. They may not be camera perfect, but they are tasty, and I think that’s what matters most. I think after a few more batches, we’ll be macaron pros. I’m including recipes for three of the variations we made, plus all of the little tricks that helped us transition from total failure to pretty-as-a-picture. If you have to pick just one to make, my favorite are the dark cocoa with hibiscus white chocolate ganache.

Macaron Tips
Former pastry chef, blogger, and macaron guru Helene Dujardin of tarteletteblog.com was kind enough to email to me her authoritative article on the art of macarons. I missed a few hints skimming the article (yes, haste makes waste), so here they are in a bullet form, which I hope will be helpful. You may link to a macaron tutorial on her site here.

Ageing your egg whites seems to be an important step. Separate your eggs three to four days before baking and keep them in the refrigerator. Alternately, microwave your egg whites for about 15 to 20 seconds before using them. We had relative success without taking this step, and I imagine our macarons will be that much closer to perfection if we use this tip when we next make them.

You can pick up an inexpensive scale for under twenty dollars at convenience stores like Target. Link

If you purchase blanched almonds rather than almond flour for this recipe, grind them in a food processor and then add the confectioners’ sugar. Sift the mixture to ensure that there aren’t any almond pieces.

Helene recommends avoiding bargain brands of confectioners’ sugar, as they may contain higher percentages of cornstarch.

The folding is the key step in this recipe, and the challenging part. Over mix and your macarons will flop. Under mix and they will puff and crack and be unsightly. Helene suggests that you begin folding rather quickly to begin to break down the mixture. In our most successful batch, I gave perhaps ten quick strokes and then slowed dramatically. The batter should remain fairly lofty. As soon as it is beginning to yield and soften slightly, slow down to a stroke-by-stroke evaluation. Helene’s test is to place a small amount on a plate, and if the top flattens by itself, it’s ready. I found that I was still overbeating. The tops will remain in a soft peak, but will appear like they will fall with resting. Err on the side of under folding, and coax any little peaks down with a finger.

If you don’t have piping bags, simply use a large plastic storage bag. Fill it, seal it, and snip off the tip. When you use it, twist the bag at the top and hold it tightly. Use a little pressure at the top of the batter or ganache to pipe.

If you’re using a proper piping bag, a large tip about ½ inch in diameter is perfect for the macarons. A small round tip works well for piping the ganache.

The macarons should peel easily from the parchment. If they are sticking, pop them into the oven for another minute.

Macarons
From Helene Dujardin’s tarteletteblog.com
Yield: about 16 macarons

Ingredients:
100 grams aged egg whites, or about 3 ½ egg whites from large eggs
50 grams white sugar
200 grams confectioners’ sugar
110 grams almond flour or ground blanched almonds

Method:

Place the egg whites into the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until they are foamy.

Gradually add the sugar.

Beat until you have a glossy meringue and until the meringue doesn’t move when you invert the bowl.

In a small bowl, stir together the confectioner’s sugar and the almond flour or ground almonds.

Fold the almond sugar mixture into the meringue. See tips above.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pipe the batter into small rounds about 1 ½ inches in diameter about 1 to 2 inches apart.

Tap the sheets a few times to release any air bubbles in the cookies.

Allow the macarons to dry for an hour. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

Bake the macarons for ten to twelve minutes.

Allow them to cool for about 10 to 15 minutes. Then remove them from the parchment.

When they are completely cool, pipe ganache filling onto half of the macarons and sandwich them together with the remaining macarons.

For Rose Water Macarons, add a small dribble of rose water and two drops pink food coloring to the egg whites.
For Hibiscus Macarons, add about 1 t. of ground, dried hibiscus flowers to the almond flour mixture. You may grind the flowers using a mortar and pestle or in a dedicated coffee grinder.
For Dark Cocoa Macarons, add 3 heaping T. double Dutch dark cocoa powder to the almond flour mixture.

White Chocolate Ganache
From Helene Dujardin’s tarteletteblog.com
Yield: about enough to fill two batches of macarons

Ingredients:
1 ½ c. white chocolate (I used E. Guittard pure white chocolate.)
½ c. heavy cream (I love Cedar Summit Farms.)

Method:

Heat the cream in a small saucepan over low heat.

Add the chocolate and stir until it is melted and smooth.

Allow the ganache to cool in the refrigerator until it is a piping consistency.

For Rose Water White Chocolate Ganache add a small dribble of rose water and one drop pink food coloring to the cream.
For Hibiscus White Chocolate Ganache add about 1 t. ground dried hibiscus flowers to the cream.

Sugar Cakes

Laura — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:44:24 +0000

I first made these big, delicate sugar cookies for a candidate meet-and-greet a few years ago. The event was a success, but from the cookies’ perspective it was kind of a disaster. My wonderfully feisty friend Bonnie had asked if I would make some cookies for the event, so I made ten kinds. I delivered the cookies early in the day and came back toward the end of the event. There sat the enormous cookie tray, as big as a wagon wheel, virtually untouched. I was happy that the political chatter was so engaging that they had gone unnoticed, but I was a little disappointed for the cookies’ sake. As I began packing them all up, a few people asked about them—first about where I had bought them, and then about how I had gotten them to look so perfect It’s that kind of recipe. And they are rather perfect looking—perfectly round, perfectly puffed and sugared, and pretty in a prim way with their dainty little raisin. Among the ten kinds I made, these were a standout. They are a truly soft sugar cookie, with just a little crackle from their sugar tops, the slightest toasty edge, and a lovely flavor with plenty of vanilla, a hint of bright lemon zest, and rich sour cream. I shared these with my Kaffeeklatch this afterrnoon. Make them, share them—or keep them for yourself—and add them to your list of keepers.

Music for baking sugar cakes
Where the Earth is Round by Minnesota native Ann Reed

Sugar Cakes Tips
Making this recipe has reminded me of an important lesson, namely, the importance of recipe notes. I usually scribble notes whenever I cook or bake so that I’ll remember what I did. I think that since I was in a baking frenzy when I made these the first time, I didn’t make my usual notes, except to dash “delicious and pretty” at the top of the page. The second time around was not quite as perfect. So…I don’t recommend buttering your baking sheets. I believe I used parchment the first time around and I followed the recipe this time. The butter browned and spattered all over many of the cookies. They still taste nice, in fact they have a little brown butter thing going on, but they aren’t very pretty.

I found that there is no need to continue to chill the dough between rolling batches and no need to grease your hands when you roll them.

Sugar Cakes
From Nancy Baggett’s excellent The All American Cookie Book
Yield: two dozen saucer-sized cookies

Ingredients:
3 1/3 c. all purpose flour
½ t. baking soda
½ t. cream of tartar
½ t. salt
1 ¼ c. (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 2/3 c. sugar
1 ½ t. finely grated lemon zest
2 large eggs
2 ½ t. vanilla extract
1 c. sour cream
3 to 4 T. sugar for topping the cookies
about 20 raisins for topping the cookies

Method:

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt; set aside.

In another large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat together the butter, sugar, and lemon zest until light and well blended.

Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until very smooth and fluffy.

Beat in the sour cream, then the dry ingredients, until evenly incorporated. It’s all right if the dough seems too sticky; it will firm up when chilled.

Freeze the dough until thoroughly chilled and firm, and least three hours or overnight. If necessary, allow the dough to warm up slightly before using, but it is easier to work with when very cold.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease several baking sheets.

Working with about a third of the dough at a time and keeping the remaining dough chilled, divide into seven or eight portions.

With well greased hands, shape and roll the portions into balls.

Transfer the balls to baking sheets, spacing about three to 3 ¼ inches apart.

Let the balls stand to soften just slightly. Then grease the bottom of a large, flat, wide-bottomed glass with vegetable oil.

Dip the glass bottom into a shallow saucer containing the sugar, shaking off the excess. One at a time, press down on the balls with the glass until they are about three inches in diameter, dipping into the sugar before flattening each cookie. (If necessary, wipe buildup from the glass bottom, oil again, dip into the sugar, and continue.)

Press a raisin into the center of each cookie.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time, in the upper third of the oven for eight to 11 minutes, until just tinged with brown at the edges and barely firm in the centers; for very moist cookies, be careful not to overbake.

Reverse the sheet from front to back halfway through baking to ensure even browning.

Transfer the sheet to a wire rack and let stand until the cookies firm up slightly, one to two minutes.

Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to a wire racks. Let stand until completely cooled.

Store in an airtight container for up to one week or freeze for up to one month.

Coconut Macaroons

Laura — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:24:54 +0000

If you like coconut and you’ve never made macaroons, you must make some. One bowl, one spoon, three ingredients—and 30 minutes from start to finish, including baking time, dishes, and wiping down the kitchen. They are crispy at the edges where the coconut is toasty, and tender chewy on the inside. Many macaroon recipes call for sweetened condensed milk, but I think this makes for an overly sweet cookie. Pared down, these are pure coconut flavor.

Music for baking coconut macaroons for Christmas
A sweet, pure voice for a sweet, pure cookie: Doris Day, The Complete Christmas Collection

This recipe is part of the Cookie Baking and Candy Making Plan for Christmas 2010 (here).

Coconut Macaroons
Yield: four dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1 c. egg whites
2 c. sugar
16 ounces unsweetened desiccated coconut

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment.

Separate the whites from about seven eggs into a one-cup measure until you have one cup of egg whites.

In a large bowl, mix the egg whites and the sugar well.

Add the coconut and stir to mix.

Scoop out little macaroons using a tablespoon or a small scoop and place them on the baking sheet with ½“ between each cookie.

Bake for 12 minutes.

Rotate the trays from top to bottom and 180 degrees.

Bake for another 12 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool to room temperature.

Store them between layers of waxed paper in a tin or other container. They will keep about one week.

Storage tips here.

Tangerine-scented Cranberry Pistachio Tiles

Laura — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:57:21 +0000

The whole house smells of tangerines this morning. When my Dear Husband staggered into the kitchen in his bathrobe for a first cup of coffee, his eyes widened and he asked me how I’d managed to make the house smell so good so early. I had gotten up before the sun to bake, and the fragrance of these tangerine-laced cookies had perfumed the air. Even before I started baking, I could smell the dough through its cellophane in the refrigerator. I adapted this recipe from the December, 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine, swapping tangerine zest for the teaspoon of orange zest, dramatically increasing the quantity of the zest and of the fruit, and omitting the cinnamon called for to highlight the bright flavors of tangerine and cranberry in the cookie. I added a couple of eggs and made a few other tweaks, too. They have a sandy texture, a little crunch from the sparkling sugar they’re rolled in and from the pistachios, and they’re fragrant and tart from the cranberries and tangerine zest. They’re rather Christmas-y, too, with their red and green color palette. This recipe makes about eight dozen cookies, but they are rather Lilliputian, and quick to slice and bake. Eat the ragged ends you trim and bake for breakfast, and pack away the beauties to enjoy at Christmas.

This recipe is part of the Cookie Baking and Candy Making Plan for Christmas 2010 (here).

Cookie Tips
When you zest any citrus fruit, plane only across the bright skin of the fruit. If you grate the white pith below, your zest will be rather bitter. There is a tremendous amount of flavor in the essential oils in the zest, so you don’t need to add the juice of the fruit.

You don’t need to chop the pistachios and the cranberries, but it’s easier to cut the cookies if you do. If the nuts and fruit are whole, the dough sometimes pulls away from them as you slice. Chop them finely before adding them to the dough unless you have a very sharp kitchen knife which will slice through them with ease.

To coat the logs in sparkling sugar, pour some sugar on a sheet of waxed paper or parchment. Press each side of the log firmly into the sugar. Gather up some sugar with your fingers and press it into any bare spots.

Rotating the logs after each slice will help to maintain an even shape, especially if your dough is not well chilled. If your dough is brick hard, this isn’t necessary.

Tangerine-scented Cranberry Pistachio Tiles
Adapted from Gourmet magazine
Yield: about eight dozen little cookies

Ingredients:
1 ½ c. unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ c. sugar
2 eggs
2 T. fine tangerine zest
3 c. all purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur.)
½ t. salt
1 c. shelled pistachios, chopped finely
¾ c. dried cranberries, chopped finely
…
sparkling sugar

Method:

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter, zest, and sugar until they are light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time and beat well between additions.

Add the salt and the flour and mix until just incorporated.

Add the pistachios and cranberries and mix briefly.

Divide the dough into four equal portions and place each portion onto a sheet of cellophane. Pinch the dough roughly into a log shape and wrap it in the cellophane. Then, using the cellophane, roll and shape the dough into logs about 1 ½ “ in diameter. Square them off by running your hands down them on parallel sides.

Place them in the refrigerator to chill for a minimum of two hours and up to three days. The logs may be frozen at this point, too, for baking at a later date. Thaw them in the refrigerator if you have frozen them.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Remove one log from the refrigerator and coat it in sparkling sugar on each side. Slice the log into ¼ “ slices and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Repeat with the remaining logs.

Bake the cookies for eight minutes. Then rotate the trays 180 degrees, and from top to bottom if you have multiple sheets in the oven, and bake them for an additional eight minutes, or until they are pale golden brown.

Storage tips here.

Grandma Fladeboe’s Ginger Cookies

Laura — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 14:53:15 +0000

My grandparents’ kitchen was the happiest place in my childhood. I spent a lot of time there, especially the year my parents were busy building a house themselves. Cousins from Ireland, Hillary and Camilla, were staying, too, and they taught me Gaelic, words and phrases and childhood rhymes, which I still remember. We had lots of Sunday dinners together, usually the pheasant or fish my grandpa had caught and cooked with plenty of butter and gravy. I loved everything about being in the kitchen and at the table with them. My grandpa always sat at the head of the table with a stick of butter at his side to smear onto farmhouse rolls. I always sat next to my grandma, and felt very lucky. She was a dainty eater with impeccable manners and a quiet manner. We’d eat and then my grandpa would head to his den to watch Benny Hill and enjoy a pipe while my grandma did the dishes by hand and wiped them dry. Sometimes I helped.
In my grandparents’ kitchen, 1971

Since my Norwegian grandfather did the lion’s share of the cooking, I can only remember my grandma making a handful of things: potato salad, lemon meringue pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and these ginger cookies. Oh, they were all so good! This is the only recipe I have of hers, and I still get a little teary every time I bake these cookies. She was so very dear to me.

These cookies are chewy and soft and very flavorful. They are a simple, homey cookie—they aren’t the fanciest girl at the party—but they have a little sparkle. And unlike Pfeffernusse and Lebkuchen, which can be an acquired ginger cookie taste, these cookies seem to appeal to everyone. (One of my son’s friends mistook a Pfeffernusse for a brownie last year and now, I fear, suffers from a case of cookie apprehension.)

Sweet sweet Rachel came to bake with me and have tea, and stayed to help with the pictures, too. Lucky me.

Rachel through the window

Music for baking my Irish Grandma’s Ginger Cookies:
The Chieftain’s The Bells of Dublin

This recipe is part of the Cookie Baking and Candy Making Plan for Christmas 2010 (here).

Ginger Cookie Tips
I would usually substitute butter for a cookie that called for shortening, but I make these exactly the way my grandma did. The shortening acts to keep the cookies’ dainty shape. Substituting butter would produce a richer cookie with nice flavor that spreads rather than puffs.

You may also make larger cookies. Simply increase your oven temperature to 375 degrees and your baking time by about two minutes.

Grandma Fladeboe’s Ginger Cookies
Yield: about 70 small cookies

Ingredients:
1 ½ c. shortening
2 c. sugar
2 eggs, beaten
½ c. molasses
4 large t. baking soda
4 c. all purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur.)
2 scant t. ground cloves
2 t. cinnamon
2 t. ground ginger

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In an electric mixer, cream the shortening and the sugar.

Add the eggs and molasses and beat.

Sift together the dry ingredients and add them, mixing only until they are incorporated.

Roll the dough in the palms of your hands into balls the diameter of a quarter.

Dip them into sugar and place them, sugar side up on a baking sheet.

Bake nine to ten minutes and take them out of the oven while they are still puffy.

*Storage tips here.

Nollaig Shona duit. Siochan leat. Oiche mhaith, codladh samh. Mo mhíle grá.