almond biscotti

01/30/2011 By

When faced with three bowls of Bolognese and a spoon, Dave declared them all good. “Different, but good.” Which is better? “I don’t know. They’re all good.” Carne adovada? “They all taste the same.” Sugar cookies? “They need frosting.”

I can’t really complain about having someone to cook for who appreciates everything I make (unless it has olives), but feedback isn’t Dave’s strongpoint. He used to tell me that he could only give a good opinion if he was served similar dishes side-by-side, which started this whole thing, but not even that always works.

Unless it concerns almond biscotti. I have made at least four almond biscotti recipes, over the course of well over a year, and Dave has unequivocally identified his favorite. It was the first I tried, and nothing else has ever lived up. He loves these because they’re just crunchy enough to dip into his coffee without getting soggy, but not so crisp that they’re a challenge to bite into.

I like them because the recipe is simple to mix up and is easily adaptable. Usually I use slivered blanched almonds, but if I need to use up sliced almonds, those work just fine as well. If I’m in the mood for variety, I can add different nuts and dried fruit, although if I do, Dave will be disappointed. Pure, unadulterated almond biscotti is one of Dave’s favorites, up there with banana cream pie and salmon pesto pasta. At least this recipe is.

One year ago: Tartine’s Banana Cream Pie
Two years ago: Crispy Baked Chicken Strips
Three years ago: Mu Shu Pancakes

Printer Friendly Recipe
Almond Biscotti (adapted from Bon Appetit via Smitten Kitchen)

There’s no need to toast the nuts before mixing the dough; they’ll brown in the oven.

You’ll only use a bit of the egg white, plus I dislike using only one part of an egg. Instead, I steal just a bit of egg white from one of the eggs that gets mixed into the dough to use for the egg wash instead of using a separate egg white.

1 large egg white
3¼ cups (15.6 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 large eggs
10 tablespoons (1¼ sticks) unsalted butter, melted
1/3 teaspoon salt
1½ cups (10.5 ounces) sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier or orange liqueur
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 cup slivered or sliced almonds

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Whisk the single egg white until frothy. In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, mix the flour and baking powder.

2. In a large pot over medium-low heat, heat the butter just until melted. Remove the pot from the heat; stir in the sugar and salt. Stir in the eggs, one at time; add the extract, liqueur, and zest. Slowly mix in the flour mixture, then the almonds.

3. Divide the dough in half. On the prepared baking sheet, shape each half into a log 2-inches across and ¾-inch high. Brush with the egg white. Bake for 30 minutes, until puffed and golden.

4. Carefully transfer the logs to a cooling rack (I use two large spatulas for this); cool for 30 minutes.

5. Slice each log on the diagonal into ½-inch thick cookies. Lay half of the cookies cut side down on the baking sheet. Bake 11 minutes; remove the pan from the oven and, using tongs, turn each cookie over onto its other cut side. Bake 7 minutes, until the edges are browned. Transfer to a cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining cookies.

I have blogged about this recipe before. At the time, I could only tell you that they were good. Now I can tell you that they are the best.

Filed Under: alcohol, citrus, cookies, dessert, favorites, italian, nuts, recipe comparisons

chocolate madeleines

01/11/2011 By

These madeleines made me crave chocolate mousse. If you aren’t a batter eater, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t know how chocolately and fluffy and rich this batter was.  And if you aren’t a batter eater, I’m jealous, truly. I’d be a size smaller if I didn’t love cookie dough.

But I’m glad they were baked, because it gave me a chance to finally use the madeleine pan I got for Christmas – two years ago. I do feel silly having a pan I’ve never used for so long, but at least it’s easy to store and relatively cheap.  And honestly, seeing it in the cabinet every time I reached for my mini-muffin pan has made me happy.

And now I’m using it. For chocolate! You just can’t go wrong with little clam-shaped chocolate cakes, and dipping them in ganache is even better. Probably I should use the pan again a little sooner than two years from now. But first I need to make chocolate mousse.

Margo chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has it posted on her site. I halved the recipe (and ate about 2 madeleines worth of batter).  I “filled” the madeleines with strained cherry jam instead of marshmallow fluff; however, I found that the amount of jam I was able to stuff into each little cake was negligible.

One year ago: Mrs. Vogel’s Sherben
 Two years ago: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

Filed Under: cake, chocolate, cookies, dessert, french, tuesdays with dorie

midnight crackles

01/03/2011 By

My holidays were full of family and gifts and food and fun. Also travel and snow and a bit of a cold at the end. Overall, it was wonderful. And very, very tiring.

I’m glad to be home. I’m looking forward to waking up and going to work, coming home and making dinner. Routine is tedious after too long, but it’s comforting after being away.

I’m extra appreciative of my own bed, with my perfectly squishy huggy pillow; of my favorite spot on the couch next to a pile of new books; of my tea and bagel each morning; of more than one serving of vegetables per day.

These cookies were made last month, during that manic period two weeks before Christmas when cookies seem to explode out of kitchens. One more batch of cookies brought to work right before Christmas blends in and disappears quickly; chocolate cookies the week after New Year’s might not be as welcome. Instead, I’m treating my coworkers to bran muffins today, just in case I’m not the only one craving a break from holiday excess.  We’ll eat cookies again soon enough.

Laurie and Julie chose these cookies for Tuesdays with Dorie’s third anniversary (birthday?), and the recipe is posted on the group’s website. Dorie recommends a long chilling step, but most members of the group found the cold dough was too hard to form into balls. A shorter chill time is probably sufficient.

One year ago: Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake
Two years ago: French Pear Tart

Filed Under: chocolate, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

quintuple chocolate brownies

12/27/2010 By

Back when we lived in a city with stores and restaurants and all of that, we used to go to the bookstore every Saturday afternoon to browse and drink fancy coffee. From there we’d head over to the huge grocery store for a sushi snack and whatever ingredients I’d forgotten on my main grocery trip. The whole outing – low-key but full of treats – was one of my favorite parts of the week.

These days, we adapt that routine for our trips up to Albuquerque, where we seem to end up once every couple of months to visit my family. We take a portion of a day to head to the bookstore, and then while Dave sits and reads a book, I go next door to Whole Foods to stock up on coffee, loose-leaf tea, chocolate, and cheese. The coffee, tea, and chocolate keep well, but we eat a lot of cheese in the week after those trips.

That’s why it isn’t unusual for me to have five different types of chocolate lying around. It is unusual that one of those will be milk or white chocolate, which is how these ended up being quadruple chocolate brownies instead of quintuple. Similarly, it’s how the tiny bit of white chocolate that was all I had got added as chunks instead of melted as a glaze.

Whether quintuple or quadruple, these are some of the best brownies I’ve ever had. They certainly weren’t cakey, and yet they weren’t really chewy either. They were melt-in-your-mouth tender, and with four types of chocolate, you know they had great flavor.

One year ago: Low and Lush Chocolate Cheesecake
Two years ago: Tall and Creamy Cheesecake

Printer Friendly Recipe
Quintuple Chocolate Brownies (from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours)

I skipped the nuts and glaze and stirred the white chocolate chunks into the batter.

For the Brownies:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons strong coffee
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
6 ounces premium-quality milk chocolate, chopped into chips, or 1 cup store-bought milk chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

For the Glaze:
6 ounces premium-quality white chocolate, finely chopped, or 1 cup store-bought white chocolate chips
⅓ cup heavy cream

Getting Ready:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil and place the pan on a baking sheet.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, and salt.

To Make the Brownies:
Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and add, in the following order, the butter, the two chocolates and the coffee. Keeping the pan over low heat, warm just until the butter and chocolates are melted – you don’t want the ingredients to get so hot they separate, so keep an eye on the bowl. Stir gently, and when the mixture is smooth, set it aside for 5 minutes.

Using a whisk or a rubber spatula, beat the sugar into the chocolate mixture. Don’t beat too vigorously – you don’t want to add air to the batter – and don’t be concerned about any graininess. Next, stir in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla. You should have a smooth, glossy batter. If you’re not already using a rubber spatula, switch to one now and gently stir in the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated. Finally, stir in the milk chocolate chips and the nuts. Scrape the batter into the pan.

Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center comes out streaked but not thickly coated. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let the brownies rest undisturbed for at least 30 minutes. (You can wait longer, if you’d like.)

Turn the brownies out onto a rack, peel away the foil and place it under another rack – it will be the drip catcher for the glaze. Invert the brownies onto the rack and let cool completely.

To Make the Glaze:
Put the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Bring the heavy cream to a boil and pour it over the chocolate. Wait 30 seconds, then, using a rubber spatula, gently stir until the chocolate is melted and the glaze is smooth.

Hold a long metal icing spatula in one hand and the bowl of glaze in the other. Pour the glaze onto the center of the brownies and use the spatula to nudge it evenly over the surface. Don’t worry if it dribbles over the edges, you can trim the sides later (or not). Refrigerate the brownies for about 20 minutes to dry the glaze.

Cut into 16 squares, each roughly 2¼ inches on a side.

Note: These brownies can be frozen (even with the glaze) for up to two months. They can be stored at room temperature or enjoyed cold from the refrigerator.

Filed Under: chocolate, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

oreo cheesecake cookies

12/12/2010 By

I was feeling a bit crabby last week. I’ve been teaching in the evenings after work, which has fun aspects, but preparing lectures, grading labs, writing exams, and going to class has been seriously cutting into my kitchen time. I can’t remember the last time I baked an impromptu batch of cookies – when I had no one planned to eat my treats, when I saw a recipe and realized I had all of the ingredients lying around, when I had a spare hour or so to make a mess in the kitchen. No wonder I was feeling out of sorts.

Now that the semester is over, I have lofty goals of keeping my house cleaner, exercising more rigorously, and learning everything from the basics of Italian to the ins and outs of Photoshop. But the truth is that I’ll probably spend the bulk of my new spare time in the kitchen playing with butter, flour, and sugar.

And cream cheese, if I’m lucky. As soon as someone says cream cheese, my ears perk up. And it’s all the better if it’s combined with oreos. These cream cheese cookies rolled in oreo crumbs are a fun take on that combination. There’s no egg in the dough, which not only simplified halving the recipe to use the odd bits and ends I had laying around, but gave the cookies a soft texture reminiscent of shortbread. Overall, they were the perfect way to end a baking dry period and put me in a better frame of mind.

One year ago: Bourbon Pound Cake
Two years ago: Cranberry Orange Muffins

Printer Friendly Recipe
Oreo Cheesecake Cookies (rewritten from multiplydelicious)

Makes about 30 cookies

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (4.8 ounces) all-purpose flour
½ cup mini chocolate chips
1 cup oreo cookie sandwich crumbs (about 8 oreos)

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a large bowl if using a hand mixer), beat the butter, cream cheese and salt on medium-low speed until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Beat in the vanilla, and then add the flour and mix on low just until combined. Mix in the chocolate chips.

3. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls. Drop the dough balls into a bowl of oreo cookie crumbs and roll to coat. Arrange the dough balls 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.

4. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, until the edges just start to brown and the tops are set. Cool for a minute or two on the sheets, then transfer the cookies to wire racks and cool completely.

Filed Under: cheese, chocolate, cookies, dessert

translucent maple tuiles

12/07/2010 By

Sometimes I’m really on my game, and other times I am just not at all. For example, last month, I made a big turkey dinner feast for me and Dave, just for fun, and it went flawlessly except for the oven getting turned off in the middle of the day and no one noticing until an hour after I put the turkey in. Every recipe impressed me, I got the food to the table while it was still hot, the kitchen was mostly clean before we sat down to eat. That was me on my game.

These tuiles are a simple little recipe. They only have four ingredients. The dough can be made days in advance. They don’t spend long in the oven. It shouldn’t have been complicated.

But I made mistakes at every step. First I added too little flour, which was solved easily enough by softening my chilled dough, working in more flour, and re-chilling. My tuiles baked up well and I only broke one during the transfer from baking pan to cooling rack (or beer bottle, in this case). But they were chewy, and I assumed they were supposed to be crisp, so I put them back in the oven for a few minutes, draped over the rungs of a cooling rack. You, being smarter than me, can probably tell where this went wrong – the tuiles dripped off of the cooling rack in pieces. And they didn’t get any crisper.

From there, it was just breaking the pieces every time I moved them and adding a ridiculous amount of brandy to the whipped cream filling. So. Tuiles. That was interesting.

Hindy chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has it posted. I added a bit of salt to my dough. Dorie says to bake the tuiles on an unlined baking pan, but mine is really dark and burns things when it’s unlined, so I used parchment paper, which worked great.

One year ago: Rosy Pear and Pistachio Tart
Two years ago: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

Filed Under: cookies, dessert, french, tuesdays with dorie

pumpkin oatmeal cookies

11/26/2010 By

One of my coworkers offered me a cookie recently, and while I try to be on my best eating behavior at work, I figured I had to be polite, right? And then he offered to leave the rest of the batch with me, clearly displaying the difference between the metabolism of an active male in his early thirties and that of a female of the same age. The whole container? Just one cookie first thing in the morning was a splurge.

No, when someone offers me a delicious cookie, I don’t eat the whole batch. I ask for the recipe.

Although these pumpkin cookies don’t make that easy. They aren’t the kind of cookie that you eat one of, savoring every bite, and then feel sated. All that fiber makes them feel more like a snack, like they should be healthy and you should be able to eat a few at a time. Alas, a petite (aka short) thirty-something moderately-active female can never forget all that butter. That’s why I prefer to be on the giving side of cookies instead of the receiving side.

One year ago: Chicken Empanadas, Bacon-Wrapped Scallops with Port Reduction, Slice-and-Bake Brown Sugar Cookies
Two years ago: Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake, Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Multigrain Pancakes

Printer Friendly Recipe
Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies (adapted from allrecipes)

2½ cups (12 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (7 ounces) white sugar
1 cup (7 ounces) packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin puree

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line two baking pans with parchment paper or a silicone mat. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or a large bowl with a hand mixer), beat the butter and both sugars until fluffy, about one minute. Add the egg, beating until incorporated, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin. With the mixer on the lowest speed, add the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

3. Drop heaping teaspoons of dough onto the prepared baking pans. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned around edges. Let the cookies cool slightly on the pans before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Filed Under: cookies, dessert, fall

peanut butter blondies

11/02/2010 By

I was feeling smug last week about how I don’t crave Halloween candy. Of course, that was until I actually bought Halloween candy. I got my childhood favorite, Reese’s peanut butter cups, because I hadn’t had them in years and was curious about whether they’re as good as I remember. I ate about two-thirds of one, just enough to determine that yup, still good, and then employed my favorite technique for not overindulging – giving the rest of my food to Dave as quickly as possible before I change my mind.

Unfortunately, we only got about ten trick-or-treaters. That leaves me with 17 Reese’s peanut butter cups. I’m doing okay. I haven’t caved. Peanut butter cups are good, but they aren’t cookie dough. I can resist, but I’m certainly not complaining that this week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe involves chocolate and peanut butter.

It was the best of both worlds – chocolate and peanut butter combined in cookie dough. That was where the self-control got difficult. However, once the cookies were (over-)baked, I was back to eyeing my bowl of candy.

Nicole has the recipe posted because she chose these for TWD. I baked mine for the low end of the range Dorie recommends, and they ended up dry and crisp. So check yours early! I suspect that if I hadn’t overbaked them, these would have lived up to their potential and given those peanut butter cups a run for their money. 

(About that gaping hole in the middle of the pan: Dorie says to check the doneness of the blondies by inserting a knife into the center, but my top was too crisp for that – perhaps a sign that they were already overbaked – so I dug a little hole out instead.  And ate it.)

One year ago: Cherry Fudge Brownie Torte
Two years ago: Rugelach (one of my favorite recipes from the book)

Filed Under: chocolate, cookies, dessert, nuts, tuesdays with dorie

palmiers

10/03/2010 By

If you watch the Food Network regularly, you’ve probably heard that the correct Italian pronunciation of bruschetta is “brusketta”. That’s all well and good, but most of us in the US pronounce it ‘brushetta’. And no matter how much you insist that it’s supposed to be brusketta, I’m going to consider you an insufferable know-it-all who needs to just go along with the flow. You can do as the Romans do when you’re in Rome; when you’re here, just say brushetta like the rest of us.

So how do you pronounce ‘palmiers’, anyway? The all-knowing Google says PALM-yeh, but I’m not sure if that’s the I’m-saying-it-the-French-way-even-though-we’re-not-in-France-and-no-one-here-talks-like-that way, or if Americans do actually say it like that. Maybe I don’t watch enough Food Network.

Fortunately, they’re easier to make than they are to figure out how to pronounce. All you do is roll out puff pastry, coat it in sugar and maybe spices, fold up the sides, slice, and bake. I actually did it before work, although I was late for work that day. But I’m late for work everyday, so I can’t blame the cookies.

My coworker described them as cinnamon rolls in cookie form, which is exactly what I was going for. Several people asked me what they were, to which I had no good answer. “Um…I don’t know how to pronounce it…some French word that means palm…” Someone please make me smarter. Palm-yay? Palm-yers?

One year ago: Pumpkin Cupcake Comparison
Two years ago: Pain Ordinaire

Printer Friendly Recipe
Palmiers (adapted from Ina Garten and About.com)

Makes about 30 cookies

1 cup sugar
pinch table salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon (optional; or other spices of your choice)
8 ounces puff pastry

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Mix the sugar, cinnamon, and salt.

2. Spread an even coating of the sugar mixture onto a pastry cloth or clean section of countertop. Coat more sugar over the top of the dough. Roll the dough out to a 15- by 12-inch rectangle, adding more sugar as necessary to prevent sticking. Starting at each long end, tightly roll the edges toward the center until they meet. Slice the dough into 3/8-inch cookies, transferring them to the prepared pans. Leave plenty of space between the cookies.

3. Bake one sheet at a time for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies puff and turn golden brown. Immediately (before the molten sugar hardens and glues the cookies to the pan!) transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

Filed Under: cookies, dessert, french

peanut butter crisscrosses

09/07/2010 By

I have a bad habit of losing touch with friends before I get their best recipes from them. I never asked my Spanish/Puerto Rican friend for the basics of his paella, and when I asked him how he makes his rice and beans, he beat around the bush about how I’d never be able to find the right ingredients in the US.

My college roommate made the most amazing peanut butter cookies. I didn’t know I was a fan of peanut butter cookies until hers, and I haven’t been a fan of peanut butter cookies since. But I could never get enough of those.

I’ve been simultaneously keeping an eye out for another perfect peanut butter cookie recipe and afraid to try any because they might not live up to my memory. But I’ve heard nothing but good reviews of Dorie’s recipe.  My friend’s cookies didn’t have mix-ins in them, so I left out the peanuts Dorie suggests, and I underbaked the cookies to get the soft texture I love.

Pretty darn close. Nothing tastes as good as a memory, but soft, sweet peanut butter cookies can come pretty darn close. Jasmine has the recipe posted since she chose these for Tuesdays with Dorie. I left out the salted peanuts and increased the salt to 1 teaspoon.

One year ago: Chocolate Soufflé
Two years ago: Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

Filed Under: cookies, dessert, nuts, tuesdays with dorie
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