a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Tenderest Shortbread Four Ways (the rye-chocolate way)

Dorie says to bake the Tenderest Shortbread you need to make the dough with powdered sugar, egg yolks, and of course lots of butter. She gives four different flavor options for these sablé-like cookies, and I made the Rye-Chocolate Shortbread version, not only because I will rarely pass up chocolate if it’s an option, but also because I really do like the flavor from a bit of whole grain flour in baking. I can’t help myself from adding flakey salt to just about every cookie I make, even though they probably could have handled a sprinkling of coarse sugar instead, as they aren’t very sweet. They are melt-in-your-mouth, as Dorie says, but they are also good keepers– perfect for cookie tin coffee treats!

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Park Avenue Brownies

Dorie says these Park Avenue Brownies are named after the “rich and slim” Upper East Side crowd. I think they were made to be packed up in a picnic basket, shuttled uptown and enjoyed in Central Park. Chocolaty and fudgy, everyone who likes brownies will like these.

I made a half recipe in a loaf pan. I go for nuts in my brownies, and here, I added walnuts and flaky salt to the top. I made these a couple of years ago, too, and topped them then with sea salt and pecans. I like to take my brownie slab and, as soon as it’s cool enough to lift out of the pan (but still warm), pop it in the fridge on a cutting board for a couple of hours. Someone I used to work for taught me that…it does seem to make the brownie texture set up really nicely, and of course, brownies cut so sharply when chilled.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Oatmeal Cookies with Nuts and Chocolate

What’s better than an oatmeal raisin cookie? Try one of these Oatmeal Cookies with Nuts and Chocolate. I went with pecans and milk chocolate, and swapped out the raisins for dried cranberries. More is more, I think, so I increased a bit what Dorie calls the “middling” amount of chopped nuts and dried fruit that she prefers.

These have just a touch of honey, along with the normal white and brown sugars, and they baked up nicely browned but kept their soft chew. Very comforting to have a tin full of these, I must say. Maybe I made a mistake by only making 1/3 recipe!?

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Biscuits Rose

Here’s a new-to-me cookie that’s in fact over 250 years old. Biscuits Rose have a long history in the Champagne region city of Reims, where they were, and I bet still are, dipped in and nibbled with glasses of bubbles. Sounds delightful…I’ll have to investigate more in person one day.

Based on the name and the pretty color, I thought they’d for sure have some rose flavoring in the mix. Nope, they are just pink with a bit of vanilla extract. The batter is a separated egg sponge that’s similar to ladyfingers with a rosy tint. The “real deal” biscuits are rectangular in shape, but I broke out a piping bag (which I rarely do) to make the homemade version. The piped biscuits are twice-dusted with powdered sugar and then they are twice-baked, or rather they are baked and then allowed to cool down and crisp up in the turned-off oven. What you get are pink, sweet, very crunchy dry cookies that I can tell you are good dipped in coffee, if you don’t happen to be popping the cork off a bottle of Champagne.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan (you can also read more about the cookies here), get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Brown-Sugar Oat Squares

These Brown-Sugar Oat Squares may not be too fancy, but they sure are good. And they couldn’t be easier to make– the dough is zipped up in the food processor in about a minute. They’re buttery little cookies, with flour, oats, brown sugar and some spices all whirled up in the processor. Pat that stuff into a pan, scatter some extra oats and turbinado over the top, and into the oven it goes.

I made half the recipe in my 6-inch square pan. I lined it with a parchment sling and just lifted the baked cookie slab out of the pan rather than flipping it out. There was still some oat topping loss while moving it around, but it was minimal. I cut my slab into 12 little pieces, so my squares are really rectangles, but they all taste the same. Mine are more crisp than chewy but I don’t mind and I can tell they’ll keep well in the tin through the week…as long as I pace myself.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Coffee Shortbread

We’ve baked our way through multiple Dorie books, which means we’ve also baked multiple Dorie shortbread recipes. I can tell shorties are a favorite of hers and I always think they’re good, so I was looking forward to this Coffee Shortbread version.

Here, her buttery shortbread base (which I think is pretty much the same as shortbreads from Dorie’s Cookies) is flavored with instant espresso, lemon zest (I subbed clementine) and cardamom. I’m into it. Pressed in a cake pan, docked and crimped, these are cut into cute wedges after they’re baked. I opted for the glaze, but I skipped the egg white bit and just whisked together powdered sugar with a splash of milk and a pinch more espresso powder and salt. These were perfect with- you guessed it- coffee!

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Rugelach with (two of) Four Fillings

The fact that I made two of the fillings for the Rugelach with Four Fillings is probably the closest my little cookie tin is going to get to one of those fancy holiday cookie box assortments that I’ve started to see pop up all over Instagram. No complaints from me though– rugelach is a treat! We’ve made lots of Dorie’s rugelach recipes before, and here we take the easy cream cheese dough and our choice of filling and simply roll them up into slice-and-bake logs. The dough is super thin and flaky, and the filling makes a cute spiral in the middle.

Of the four filling options Dorie gives for her rugelach spirals, I chose the babka one with a cocoa and cinnamon paste and the classic jam one. For the jam filling, I used fig jam, crimson raisins, the cinnamon sugar and walnuts, but I left out the chocolate chips. I brought some of each to my college alumnae association holiday party last week and they all disappeared quickly. I am a rabid chocoholic, so it surprises me to say that I gave a slight edge to the jam-filled ones.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Caramel Crunch-Chocolate Chunklet Cookies

Wow– even though it’s almost 10:00 at night, it’s still Tuesday, and that means I’m on time with my post for these Caramel Crunch-Chocolate Chunklet Cookies! My blog stats tell me this is actually my 1,001st post…how I have managed to write so much about cookies and cake, I really don’t know.

If you make this recipe, you might do a double-take of the ingredient list searching for a mention of caramel, or at least brown sugar, but the “caramel crunch” actually comes from the baking technique. Rather than baking free-form, these are baked in a muffin tin, and what you get with all that hot metal contact, are crisp, shortbread-like cookie pucks with caramelized bottoms and sides. (We made some similar, or at least related, cookies using this method when we baked from Dorie’s Cookies.)

Dorie says you can add nuts along with the chocolate chunks to the mix, and I went with toasted hazelnuts, a good chunklet choice. I scaled back the recipe and just made a third of the dough. Since I only needed to complete one round in my muffin tin, I also didn’t bother with the slice and bake step, one that always frustrates me anyway. I simply scooped the just-made dough straight into the tin and gave each cookie a little pat down to flatten and fill the cavities before popping the setup in the fridge to chill pre-bake. As advertised, these were caramelized, crunchy, chocolatey and chunky. They were also good keepers and I enjoyed them with morning coffee. I added a pinch of flaky salt to the top of each cookie before baking because I love that little salt hit on a chocolate chip cookie.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds

I am not loyal to one chocolate chip cookie recipe– I want to play the field and try them all. These Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds are the latest to have caught my eye. At first glance, these seem pretty similar to the Mokonuts ones we made a couple years ago, but these swap the dried fruit for a strong hit of spices (coffee, cinnamon and cardamom) and use a mix of seeds (sunflower, flax, poppy and sesame for me). Dorie says you can put either milk or dark chocolate in these, so I naturally had to go with a combo. I’ve taken to usually creaming any spices in a recipe into the butter and sugar, rather than just stirring them into the flour. A lot like rubbing citrus zest into sugar, I feel like that bashing and smearing in the mixing bowl really makes spices pop, too. Creaming in the espresso powder at this early stage also helped to make my cookies look extra-dark. Before baking, I basically rolled the dough balls in more of the birdseedy mix (plus flaky salt) for good coverage, including on the bottoms. These cookies have so much complex flavor and a great texture with chewy middles and a crisp, toasted seed coating. Even if it is onto the next CCC, I’ll circle back to this one for sure.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!