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 :)