a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Bruno’s New Year’s Waffles

Maybe we are getting to the point in January where we are no longer really celebrating the new year, but I’m giving it one last toast with Bruno’s New Year’s Waffles. I almost skipped these waffles, which are more like thin wafers, because the recipe uses a pizzelle iron to cook them. I don’t have one. In fact, I think that out of the group, Diane is the only one who does…but that didn’t stop Gaye, who used a sandwich press, or Mardi, who used a griddle pan, from getting them done, so I really didn’t have an excuse to sit them out. With two good ways to hack the cooking process explained, I wondered if there could be a third. Made with a stiff dough rather than a loose batter, these thin, crispy waffles sounded a bit like Dutch stroopwafels (which I have only consumed, never made), especially since Dorie recommends sandwiching them with a filling. I spent some time thinking about how I could get them as thin as reasonably possible and decided to try out my tortilla press. I did only a fourth of the recipe and made them larger than Dorie and Bruno do, getting eight cookies in total. I weighed out my dough balls (about 20g each), gave them each a very firm pressing, and then transferred the resulting circles to my comal to crisp up. I did trim the ratty edges with a cutter while the cookies were still hot.

I’m sure they weren’t as delicate as they would have been in a pizzelle iron, but I was pretty happy with how my waffles came out. They cooled caramelized and crisp, and I sandwiched them with some leftover dark chocolate glaze I had in the fridge. I heated up some classic hot chocolate from Dorie’s xoxoDorie newsletter to enjoy them with, for an extra happy new year treat.

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: Portofignos

I like a good pun, and calling cookies containing port-plumped dried figs “Portofignos” made me giggle. Dorie points out that the chocolate dough that forms the base of these slice-and-bake cookies is similar to that of her famous World Peace Cookies, but that the bits of toasted walnuts and boozy figs that stud it take things in a new direction. Although I’ve been to Italy zero times and to Portugal only one time more that that, I know Portofino is not even close to where port wine is from…but I’m guessing the direction we are headed is somewhere on the sea, enjoying the good life with a glass of fortified sweet wine and couple of chocolate cookies. I’m very happy to go wherever that is right now, even if it’s just in my imagination.

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: Mulled Wine Jammers

Baking with TWD, I’ve made Dorie’s jammers every which way over the years, once even as a galette. No matter the variation in flavor or shape, the formula is the same: a sweet and sandy sablé base is topped with jam and ringed with sweet streusel. Mulled Wine Jammers are the winter holiday edition of the classic fave. A semi-homemade mulled wine filling, made by jazzing up shop-bought cherry jam with red wine, spices and dried fruit, is the star of the show here.

Dorie forms these jammers in the usual round fashion, as cookies baked in a muffin tin…but I remembered seeing Joy the Baker make her own version of the recipe baked as bar cookies a couple of years ago, and I never got that good idea out of my head. I knew I wanted to give it a shot when the recipe finally rolled around for us. (Shall I say I’d been “mulling” it over for some time?) I only wanted to make half a recipe, so I pressed the crust into a 6-inch square pan, and proceeded like normal. Baking them off as bars took out a bit of the fiddly work needed to form them individually, but they are delicious, however you make them!

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: Cherry-Nut Chocolate Pinwheels

I pulled what now seems to be my signature move on these Cherry-Nut Chocolate Pinwheels: I baked them on time and then totally didn’t feel like writing a post about them. I guess now I easily have something to post for Rewind week. Please don’t think that means I didn’t like these. Not so– I actually liked them a lot! A cooked down dried cherry and walnut paste is rolled up inside Dorie’s Do-Almost-Anything Chocolate Dough. What’s not to like? They even held their shape (a fear of mine with pinwheels, and slice and bake cookies in general)! I decided to decorate them with the optional white chocolate drizzle, but it sort of hides the spiral of goodies going on. These have kind of a fruit cake vibe, and I think they would make great holiday cookies.

For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Coco-Almond Thumbprints

One candy bar that I would never trade away in my Halloween stash was always the Almond Joy, and these Coco-Almond Thumbprints are pretty much the homemade cookie version. Dorie originally concocted these gluten-free sweets to be a Passover dessert, and you can see (and taste) the resemblance to macaroons. They are so easy to make that they can be a year-round anytime treat: just whiz coconut, almonds, sugar, a pinch of salt if you’d like and egg whites in the food processor. Roll that mix into balls, give ’em the thumbprint press and stick ’em in the oven. Once baked they get a generous spoonful of chocolate ganache to fill their bellies.

These were so good…the cookies stayed chewy like a macaroon and the ganache never set completely firm. I would have been happy to childishly hoard them for myself in the back of my closet (which is where I used to hide my Halloween candy pumpkin so my brother wouldn’t raid it), but some dude who seems to never go to the office anymore was on to the fact that I was baking cookies, so I was forced to share.

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: Pecan-Butterscotch Shortbread

I’ve been working on another recipe testing job for an upcoming cookbook, and my diet over the past two weeks has been largely puff pasty-based. In an effort to get all my nutrients, I did manage to clear some time and an oven rack to squeeze in these Pecan-Butterscotch Shortbreads. These crispy, buttery, brown sugary rounds have bits of toasted pecans and milk chocolate, and a nip of Scotch (or rum because I don’t have any) to boot.

I don’t think I’ve met a Dorie shortbread that I didn’t love, and these are no exception, but the full recipe makes forty cookies. That’s probably thirty more than two people need to be eating in a “normal” week, much less a week of countless other baked goods. Also, these are made in a muffin tin, and there’s no way I’m doing four rounds of baking in the one tin I have. I scaled back the recipe and just made a quarter of the dough to get ten cookies. I also didn’t bother with the rolling and cutting step…I scooped the dough into my muffin tin and gave each cookie a little pat down to flatten and fill the cavities. I took some shortcuts, but I don’t think they hurt anything…in fact, these are so tasty, I’ll probably have an empty cookie tin in no time and wish I’d made more!

For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!