Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Lucky Charm Brownies
February 16, 2021 at 10:27 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, brownies, chocolate
If you are here expecting a brownie topped with pastel mini marshmallows and cereal bits, you will have to look elsewhere (they do exist, I checked the Google). These Lucky Charm Brownies have a different sweet treasure, both on top and in the batter- amaretti cookies.
The brownie batter contains many of the usual suspects…melted chocolate, cocoa, butter, sugar and eggs…but it’s gluten-free, as the flour is replaced with a mix of pulverized almonds and amaretti. The whole batter is actually whizzed up in the food processor, which makes it super quick and easy. It bakes up into a fudgy, truffle-like slab.
You could just stop there and cut them up into rich little squares. But why would you, when you could also dress them up with chocolate glaze and more crushed amaretti cookies? This makes them even richer but also even more irresistible, which is lucky for everyone who gets to try them.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Dark Chocolate Pudding
February 12, 2021 at 9:05 am | Posted in everyday dorie, groups, puddings, custards, mousses, sweet things | 3 CommentsTags: chocolate, everyday dorie, pudding
I do love a good homemade pudding, but I only seem to make it when a recipe rolls around for a blog group. That’s the case today, with this Dark Chocolate Pudding. This is delicious- thick, rich and luxurious. It comes together quickly in a pot and with constant whisking, you can skip the immersion blender whiz at the end (which is great, since I don’t have one). Not all pudding recipes call for eggs, but this one does, so I did push it through a strainer at the end, mostly to make sure all the little egg chalaza squiggle bits were gone.
Dorie suggests serving the pudding with a sprinkling of cocoa streusel crumbs she calls “chocolate crunch,” but I didn’t feel like firing up the oven for something that would have otherwise been a no-bake dessert. I went freezer foraging instead and came up with a handful of leftover misshapen almond macaron shells. I decided to turn them into my own crunchies by roughly crumbling them and coating them in melted chocolate. Once the chocolate set up, I had some nice rubbly bits to scatter on top of the pudding…or on top of the crème fraîche on top of the pudding.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our pudding cups this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Major Grey’s Roll-Ups
February 2, 2021 at 4:09 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory, snacks
I know we just did a rugelach cookie last month, but I had a half-finished box of Triscuits left from holiday times, as well as an open jar of chutney in the fridge, that I wanted to get crafty with. So, here we have Major Grey’s Rollups, a savory rugelach-style cookie with a cream cheese and ground Triscuit dough and a mango chutney filling. It sounds like a bizarre thing to turn crackers into cookies, and it kind of is, but this uses the same dough as the Triscuity Bites we made a couple of years ago.
I only made a quarter-recipe of these cookies, which not only means I still have Triscuits left(!), but also that I ran into the same “issue” that I did last month. My rolled out dough circle wasn’t big enough to really form them nicely…I knew that would be the case and I just went with it anyway. I sprinkled my roll-ups with some nigella seeds before popping them into the oven.
The dough is flaky, crisp and buttery, and the finished cookies have that sweet and salty combo that does go well with a cocktail.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and please join us anytime!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Chocolate-Cranberry and Almond Cookies
January 19, 2021 at 8:50 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, cookies
At first glance, to me, the recipe for these Chocolate-Cranberry and Almond Cookies sounded like a bit of a throw-away….not weird, but just some random stuff squished together to make a cookie. But then I made them and tried them, and I really liked them.
These cookies use Dorie’s “Do-Almost-Anything” chocolate dough, which is a nice dough that holds it’s shape well and can be used for cut-outs, pinwheels, thumbprints, whateves. Take the base dough and mix in bits of tart dried cranberries, roll and cut the cookies and top them with a sugary, meringue-like sliced almond topping. In keeping with my on-going pandemic pantry-purge, and in the spirit of this recipe of random stuff, I used what I had when I made these cookies: dried cherries in place of the cranberries and granulated almonds in place of the sliced. I made just half of this recipe, which was a pretty small amount of dough, so I did something I usually avoid at all costs…I formed it into a slice-and-bake log. I don’t normally like messing with that style of cookie formation, but I thought I wouldn’t get a good yield as roll-outs, without re-rolling scrap a zillion times. They aren’t perfect rounds because I stink at slicing, but they tasted good (sweet, tart and chocolatey), and that’s what matters.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Friendship Cookies
January 5, 2021 at 5:41 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Happy 2021– to celebrate another year of baking cookies with my friends, I present you with a plate of Friendship Cookies! These are really rugelach, with a flaky cream cheese dough filled with lots of things that play well together. I had a just little bloop of Philly that was exactly enough to make the dough for a quarter-recipe of these cookies. Not getting to invite friends for cookie parties and the “use what ya got” challenge are two 2020 trends that seem to be continuing into this year, so a smaller amount was just fine with me. The one downside to the downsize is that my cookies were a bit squat. The dough is rolled into a circle that’s spread with the filling and cut like a pizza into triangles, which are then individually spiraled into the rugelach shape. Since I was working with a smaller piece of dough, my rolled-out circle was a smaller diameter and as such, my triangles weren’t long enough for me to get the extra loop in. I don’t know if that makes any sense unless you’ve made the recipe, but you can see that there is something just a bit off about the way these look. You may have to look closely, because I tried to distract the eye with some rainbow sugar sprinkle.
I filled my cookies with cranberry jam (and by that I mean leftover cranberry sauce), boozy golden raisins, toasted walnuts and cinnamon sugar. I had to leave my very best friend out of these cookies…I could tell there just wasn’t going to be any room for chopped chocolate with my smaller dough round…the filling that I already had in there was basically busting out! It’s all good though. These were delicious as-is, and that chocolate will no doubt get used another time.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
TWD DC Rewind: World Peace Cookies
December 29, 2020 at 5:00 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: chocolate, cookies
This isn’t the first time I’ve made the famous World Peace Cookies, but I did skip making the recipe again 2017, when they were the pick for Dorie’s Cookies. That a cookie could bring about peace is a sweet sentiment for the end of a weirdly unsettling year, so I whipped up a quick batch of these to say farewell to 2020. They might not achieve world peace, but the delicious lightly salty, extra chocolatey flavor of these cookies certainly gives me a good feeling inside.
After mixing my dough (to which I added a 50/50 combo of chopped chocolate bits and cocoa nibs), I formed it into slice-and-bake logs. Then I put the sliced cookie coins into the cups of a muffin tin for baking (rather than just baking them on a sheet tray). Dorie doesn’t use the muffin tin method in her recipe for this cookie, and having tried it out, I might understand why. After the fact, it dawned on me that this dough has a bit of baking soda in it, which is not typical of a sablé, so it was probably designed to spread more than the cookies she usually bakes in a tin. I think they weren’t able to fully expand within the confines of the muffin cups, as each cookie had a raised rim and a slightly sunken interior. I didn’t let this take away my sense of inner peace, though. I considered the center divots the perfect nesting spot for a little spoonful of vanilla ice cream!
So, a very happy new year to you!! For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (or get it here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of this week’s rewind on the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Mincemeat-Oatmeal (Raisin) Bars
December 15, 2020 at 7:59 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, holiday
These Mincemeat-Oatmeal Bars are Dorie’s “Playing Around” take on her Raisin Bars, with a jammy raisin filling sandwiched between two layers of delicious oatmeal-almond cookie dough. Actually, maybe they are my take on the “Playing Around” take, as I made a very off-the-cuff approximation of a (meatless) mincemeat filling. I don’t even know if I’ve ever had mincemeat, but it is the holidays, so why not give it a shot? I swapped out a couple of spoonfuls of the raisins for candied orange peel, added a few grates of fresh ginger and a big shake of mixed spice and cooked it down in apple juice. Mardi mentioned that she found the Raisin Bars to be too sweet, so I kept that in mind and didn’t sweeten my mix until I’d cooked and thickened it. A little sprinkling of maple sugar was all I thought it needed.
The same cookie dough, made with oatmeal, brown sugar and almonds, forms both the crust and the topping to these bars. It’s like an oatmeal crisp really, and basically any fruit jam would work sandwiched in the middle. I used to make very similar bar cookies for family meal meal at work, using up whatever fruit was on the way out (or often pâte de fruit scrap) for the jam. The only thing I did differently here was to pre-bake the crust layer for ten-ish minutes before finishing the bars. I’m not sure it was necessary, but I knew I’d have these around for a few days, and I planned to bring a couple to the trainers still at the gym, so I wanted to be sure they had a stable base.
There was a time in life when I wouldn’t have touched a raisin, but I’ve really come around in recent years and I thought one of these bars with a scoop of vanilla ice cream was, well, *chef’s kiss*. Oh, and the dudes at the gym requested more, but they’re all gone now, so it’s on to the next…
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Molasses Coffee Cake
December 11, 2020 at 8:07 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, everyday dorie, groups, simple cakes, sweet things | 5 CommentsTags: cake, everyday dorie
Although, I can assure you, a slim slice of this Molasses Coffee Cake is fabulous with a morning cuppa, it isn’t the hefty streusel-topped sour cream number you might normally think of when you hear the words “coffee cake.” This one’s like a molasses gingerbread with coffee in the batter. Five-spice powder is an interesting twist here on the typical gingerbread spicing, and that glug of coffee adds to the rich dark flavor of the molasses. The white chocolate and coffee glaze on top may be optional…but is it really? I made mine a tad thicker than the Dorie did, just by decreasing the liquid a bit, so it would stay put and hold onto the holiday sparkle I scattered on top.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our coffee cakes this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Mint Chocolate Sablés
December 1, 2020 at 5:26 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, cookies, holiday
I’d say that the first of December marks the start of cookie season, but isn’t it always cookie season around here? I’ll just put a more festive spin on things this month, starting with these Mint Chocolate Sablés. We make this type of buttery French shortbread on the regular, but this particular sablé has a chocolate base jazzed up with mint oil or extract and little bits of chopped chocolate. Chocolate and mint is a pretty winning combo in my books. If it had occurred to me in advance, I would have bought a nice mint chocolate bar to cut up for the added bits, but, as per usual, my best ideas happen just as I’m about to put something in the oven. These are really good anyway, and I could actually smell their minty-ness while baking…I did add some gold glitter sugar for sparkle, so there’s that. I’m having a cookie tonight with vanilla ice cream and am very much looking forward to it.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Everyday Dorie: Parsnip and Cranberry Cake
November 27, 2020 at 8:30 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, everyday dorie, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 8 CommentsTags: cake, everyday dorie, layer cake
This Parsnip and Cranberry Cake was the star of the show for our Thanksgiving-for-two dinner last night. And for leftovers night tonight. And I’m sure for leftovers-turned-into-something-else night tomorrow. It is very good. Originally, this cake is a big triple-layer nine-incher, but since we were solo for the holiday, I scaled the recipe back to a third of that to get two (rather tall) nice six-inch layers. I pretty much expected it to taste like carrot cake, until I realized the spicing is quite different. This one has ground coriander, grated fresh ginger and orange instead of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. It’s filled and frosted with cream cheese icing, but it has a sneaky layer of cranberry sauce inside, too. It also should have had chopped fresh cranberries mixed into the batter and sugared cranberries on top, but I was working with a partial bag of berries, and after making the sauce, I didn’t have any extras. Rather than the berries in batter, I used chopped candied orange zest (and left out the sugared fresh zest in the recipe) and put some bloops of sauce on top of the finished cake, along with some maple-parsnip chips. I don’t always go for the “nearly naked” style of decoration…like someone did the crumb coat and then said “to heck with it”…but here, I thought it was kind of charming with that little bit of cranberry sauce peaking out.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see all of our cakes this week.
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