Chocolate Crackles

So it's been a busy summer. I've been out of town quite a bit over the weekend, hence the lack of cookie posts. For updates on that, you can go to my other blog (yes I'm a blogging fiend...http://jesshoma.wordpress.com/.

This was nice way to break back into baking season. Although the dough needed to rest in the fridge for a couple of hours (which was fine since I had to do a 10 mile run that day anyway- marathon training- again: http://jesshoma.wordpress.com/), the actual mixing didn't take that long, and the baking was quick. I guess the most time consuming part was the sugar rolling. So here we go...

Mix the Dry:

Melt a bunch of chopped bittersweet baking chocolate and melt with some butter before beginning to mix. Look closely and you might even see a little Pepper in the background (not of the flavor palate, but of the photo)

After you mix the chocolate with the dry goods, some milk, an egg, some vanilla and cocoa powder it sits in the fridge to firm up.

Next you roll 1 diameter balls, coat in granulated sugar first, then confectioners. And into the oven:

After 15 minutes at 350- they're cracked and gorgeous! Tell me that's not a perfect Christmas cookie! Too bad it's only September, but I'm ready for the holidays (I'm even mostly done present shopping! ::ducking tomatoes::).

Sand Dollars

So appropriate. I'm not sure what happened around here, but I know 95 degrees is not a normal temperature for the DC metro area in late April. It was a scorcher. Yeah, I got a little burned, but what are you going to do. Met the fam at Maryland Day, but I needed some supplemental gift cookies for Dad, so I finished these off before we left the house.

Stop me if you've heard this before.

Cream butter and sugar.

Add in your flavorings- lemon zest and vanilla this time, along with eggs.

Add in some flour and let it rest in the fridge before you cut out 3 in. rounds. I don't have many cookie cutters, so my glasses have to do.

After they're on the cookie sheet- brush with egg white, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and place almonds thusly (sanddollarly).



Bake and enjoy. As a side note I brought them to meet Dad and we got a burrito at Chipotle. A few people in line asked if they could try one and since dad didn't mind, I passed some around. I'm not a huge huge fan, but the Chipotle clientèle must have an affinity for desserts that resemble seashells. ;)

Chocolate Malt Sandwhiches

Two in the same night- it was a long one!

These bad boys I made to accompany some cherry ice cream (also for blossom festivities). They're a chocolate cookie sandwich with a cream cheese frosting filling.

I ended up halving this recipe, and I still ended up with a ton of cookies. I made about 16 sandwiches, so 32 cookies, with half the batter.

I love cream cheese frosting, so these were right up my ally. I caution those of you with husbands that are less than enthusiastic about cream cheese to temper your expectations, and prepare to consume yourself or share with fam and office mates.. ;)

Cherry Tuiles

The cherry blossoms are out in DC, and so these are seasonally inspired. They are very similar to the honey florentines- so obviously, I love them!

Instead of the honey, these are made with corn syrup and cherries. Same process, but the baking time, and final shape are a bit different.

The cherries need to be re-hydrated a bit, in warm water, then mixed in with the batter. After chilling for about an hour, I shaped and baked the dough.



When they came out of the over, I draped them over my cookie dough scoop- it was the only cooking utensil i had that had the recommended circumference.

Crispy and delicious!

Pistachio Lemon Wafers

Maybe it's my affinity for lemon flavor, but I thought these were excellent. I'm finding, with each recipe, baking cookies is not nearly as difficult or time consuming as I initially thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of very intricate recipes with multiple layers, that are technically challenging, but just as many are fairly easy and quick- including this one.

Only levener was a whipped egg white with salt. Whip to stiff peaks:

Then add in chopped pistachios (finely chopped) and brown sugar, a little flour and lemon juice.

Spoon a couple of inches apart on baking sheet and in the cooker for 10 min.

At first i was nervous, because I hardly "finely chopped" the pistachios. For the significant lack of chopping, the cookies were surprisingly well balanced, they weren't that chunky. The lemon flavor, like I said, really made it for me- nice after dinner cookie.

Grammy's Chocolate Cookie

I don't remember my Grammy making anything like this, but I guess Martha's did. Super easy- or maybe I'm just slowly getting better at this. The only thing that took some extra time was the chilling.

I started with a cream of sugar, butter, vanilla and egg- then mixed in chocolate, flour and some other dry ingredients:

I love the look of this dough- so dark it's almost black. You know there's plenty of chocolate in there...I had to rest it in the fridge in some plastic wrap, but I had a bite to taste before I put it to bed. Mmmm, chocolate flavored sugar butter...sooo good. Sorry, this photo's not so appetizing- but just wait- I'll make it up to you.

Once the slab was chilled, enough, I made 1.25 inch balls of dough, rolled in turbinado sugar- subbed for sanding sugar.



They baked up perfectly. This is the first recipe that really came out the way the book pictured, so I was very pleased! I topped a bowl of ice cream with one that was fresh out of the oven and gave it to Scott for dessert. He was not disappointed.

Chocolate Meringues

Only a few ingredients, but a big time investment. These could be made plain, but I added dutch cocoa to choc them up.

This recipe starts with a technique that I've only used to melt chocolate before. I steam heated the egg white, sugar and a little cream of tartar and vanilla over simmering water.

After stirring constantly until it's warmed up and sugar's dissolved, I whipped in the mixer- to stiff peaks, then fold in sifter cocoa powder.



This doesn't sound like a lot of work, but both steps take 10 minutes or so, and then you have to get all of this sticky goo into a piping bag.



Next time I think I'll use my normal parchment piping cone, but since I just bought a piping bag set at Tuesday Morning, I wanted to try it out. It was a big fat mess, then I had to wash it all out afterwards, and couldn't get all the cocoa stains out.

After all the piping, they just go into the over at 175 for 2 hours. Wait 2 hours??? I should have read that part before I started them at 8:30.

2 hours later we had about 3 dozen cute little meringues. I had Scott test one before I brought them into work- I'm not looking forward to his blog post, but hopefully, others will be more accepting of the egg white concoction :)

Russe Cigarettes

They look so beautiful in the photo. I had to try them. The prep work is very simple. You make a waffle batter of sorts with a whole lot of confectioners sugar. I have to guess that if you fried this you'd get some kind of hybrid doughnut, funnel cake concoction. As funnel cake is one of my all time favorite foods, I was pretty excited about the consistency of my batter once it had set in the fridge for a couple of hours

Funnel Cookie here I come.

Next step is to spread batter on silipat. Here's where I'd suggest you deviate somewhat from the recipe, and you'll see why later. Were I to make these again (and I probably will tomorrow), I'd use half the amount of batter per cookie as called for by the recipe and spread as wide to give a much thinner crispier cookie.

After baking for just 6 minutes each sheet, you've got to work quick, and try not to mind the hot cookie on your fingertips.

As you can see, these were just a bit to thick to role as tightly as pictured- hence my previous advice.



Once they're cooled a bit, dip in some melted chocolate, and let cool completely or enjoy immediately. Scott did with some milk (the later that is), and so did I. So what if they don't look like the photo in the book ;)

Pistachio Cardamom Crackers

Since I had the cardamom laying around....I made these crackers. Very interesting!

They're called crackers, but this is a sugar cookie recipe. Make the dough, refrigerate for 2 hours, and roll out:

They do have a neat crumble of pistachios and coconut on top which I thought was an awesome flavor combo with the cardamom.

My favorite part was the cutting the edges off before backing with a pizza cutter, and then cracking apart the final product. I love the taste, although I think the title "cracker" is pretty misleading.

Orange Cardamom Madelines

Have to be my favorite so far. I've never used cardamom before. I got a packet of pods at world market a while back, and decided it was time to break them out.

I know you can buy ground cardamom, but I went a head and ground this myself in a mortar and pestle. I hope that the immediate release of the essential oils has a good impact on the flavor. It's strong, but I like it. The silly thing is that this recipe is completely different than the one for the lemon madelines. This entailed no cake flour, just regular flour, and instead of the creaming of butter and sugar, I was instructed to use melted butter and mix with sugar and egg.



After the batter was mixed- it also required a rest of about 30 minutes. Then into the pan for baking.



Once out of the oven, I covered in an orange glaze of juice, rind and confectioners sugar. It was more like a syrup. I think mine could have used more sugar, to thicken, but the end result was actually more like a syrup soaked cake. Very very tasty.

I loved the taste. My only issue was the consistency. It didn't quite hold a shape, and had a bit of a fried waffly taste. I would have liked if they looked a little nicer, but as they tasted that good, I'm willing to overlook :)

Peanut Butter Brownies

Mmmm peanut butter brownies- how could you not love this idea (unless you're allergic to peanuts)?

I'll tell you how- reading the recipe to find that you'll need a stick and half of butter to make an 8x8 in pan of brownies. That's 1.5 tbsp of butter per square inch of brownie.

Ok, so if you're not quite so calorie conscious as I am, you'd thoroughly enjoy this decadent dessert.

Line brownie pan with parchment, thusly:

Mix up your choc (melted), butter, sugar and eggs:

and then make the peanut butter swirl sauce- a combo of vanilla, sugar peanut butter and- you guessed it- even more unsalted butter:

Scott actually helped cook this recipe- normally he's on camera duty, but he got this nice jar shot before he started in on his mixing:

after all this, you add dry ingredients to your chocolate batter

then move to your papered pan, and swirl in the peanut butter sauce- cutting with a knife.

Very heavy, and a bit dry which I couldn't believe based on fat in both batters. All in all a nice taste. I served at our Oscar party, and most folks liked them, but I have to say I was expecting a bit more out of my first homemade brownie recipe.

Madelines

I got a very lovely valentines day gift from Scott- a new cookie tray, and decided to use it immediately as I had all of the essential ingredients for making Madelines. This particular varietal is lemon flavored, so it included along with cake flour, some butter and eggs, a bit of lemon juice and rind.

Can you tell by now that we had a technical flub? In my excitement to try out my new pan, I neglected to notice that my camera battery was out of juice, before mixing the batter, so you guys get no procedural photos, only the end shot. I can tell you that baking these is pretty easy - the only tough part was getting the dough into the pan.

Grease pan liberally, and I'd even grease the spoon. After letting this dough rest for a half hour as per the recipe- it became quite sticky. Oh- and do abide their request to fill only 3/4 full- although that's a little difficult to eyeball due to the odd nature of the pan recessions- the one's that I overfilled definitely bubbled over and kind of lost their pretty shape and golden edges.

Oatmeal Raisin- One of My Favorites

Yah! Finally something more normal for Scott! Oh, but wait- not a big raisin fan- oops. Well I already bought the tub of oatmeal (and we don't eat oatmeal that often) so I'm going ahead with this recipe anyway. Also, kudos to him for this excellent oatmeal action shot.



I may be repeating myself here- but I'm slowly getting the hang of this- cream butter and sugar, mix dry and incorporate!



The more I say it, the quicker I get. I didn't think this experiment would make me actually enjoy baking, but much to my surprise, I think it's growing on me- the routine of it perhaps? I love routines- dance routines, ice skating routines, daily routines- so I suppose I should have know all along....I just hope I'm not addicted- I made 4 batches of cookies this week- so I may have to throttle back.

Back to the recipe, same as the last one I made add in your flavor- raisins and wheat germ in this case, spoon onto baking sheet and throw into the oven.

A lovely batch- halved and still came out with about 24 cookies. Co-workers loved them- who wouldn't they're a staple American lunch dessert. I unfortunately can't say the same for the hubs.