a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut Butter Thins

If Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch hadn’t chosen Coconut Butter Thins for TWD, I probably never would have baked them.  Even though they’re made with some of my favorite things– coconut, coriander and macadamias– they just didn’t sound “substantial” enough for me to have paid them real consideration.  I would have missed out, because although they aren’t too fancy, they were just right in so many ways.  Just right with lemon curd sandwiched between them; just right with a little bowl of ice cream; just right all on their own.  They were golden, crispy, buttery and a little crumbly.  Mine didn’t turn lacy like Dorie said they would in her intro description, but that could have been because I parked them in the freezer before baking so they’d hold their square shape.

For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or read The Barefoot Kitchen Witch.  Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars

We have another yummy cookie for TWD this week.  Whitney of What’s Left on the Table? had me putting caramel crunch bars on my table, and trust me, nothing’s left!

This cookie does have a lot of crunch.  It’s a brown sugar shortbread, flavored with a little cinnamon and espresso powder and a lot of chopped chocolate.  On top there’s melted dark chocolate and a generous sprinkle of toffee bits.  I have never bought Heath Toffee Bits before, and was completely amused by the package.  Not only does it say “Bits o’ Brickle,” which is enormously funny to me, but it also says “finest quality English toffee” in one spot and then “artificially flavored” in another.  Hmmm…

In the book, Dorie suggests using these for ice cream sandwiches.  I had a little homemade fresh mint ice cream, so I decided to give it a try.  I topped the bars that I was using for the sandwiches with cocoa nibs instead of toffee (these I scattered sparingly, because they are kinda bitter).  Tasty?  Yes, but also a little hard to eat.  I thought the bars were a little too crunchy for ice cream sandwiches.  They were difficult to bite into frozen…I think I prefer a softer, more yielding cookie for that purpose.  The caramel crunch bars are sweet enough and rich enough on their own, that I preferred them just as they were.  Well, with a cup of herbal tea, that is.

For the recipe, read What’s Left on the Table? or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.

Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies

I know these cookies.  Not that I’d ever made them myself before Jessica of cookbookhabit chose them for this week’s TWD, but a few summers ago, I spent a couple of days in Paris visiting a friend.  It was August and several of the shops I hoped to visit were closed for their own vacations.  That was a bummer, but I was happy to find that Pierre Hermé on rue Bonatparte was open.  I pretty much scarfed down the entire macaroon display, and then moved on to the shelves, where I picked up a little baggie of chocolate sablés for the plane trip home.  I hadn’t a clue that these cookies were super-famous, but I knew after tasting them that they should be!  Honestly, I couldn’t believe how good they were– crumbly and chocolaty…but it’s the hit of salt that really made me say, “Oh la vache!”

I used Sel de Guérande in these cookies, but if you don’t have fleur de sel, don’t worry.  I maybe wouldn’t recommend regular table salt (which is too harshly salty– if that makes sense–for my tastes, even for everyday cooking), but a “softer” salt, like Kosher or sea salt, will work just fine.  The recipe has a bit of chopped dark chocolate folded in at the end…you can be experimental with this bit, if you want.  I used a combo of chopped bittersweet chocolate and cocoa nibs, so that there would be a little gooey melted chocolate and a little bitter crunch in each bite.

Can world peace really be achieved through a cookie?  Oh, if only it were that simple…but if the new Administration wants to give it a go, I’ll happy accept the position of Secretary of Snacks!  To feel like you’ve gone to Paris without leaving home, read cookbookhabit or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan for the recipe (she also has it here on The Splendid Table’s website).  Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Buttery Jam Cookies

TWD’s holiday cookie extravaganza continues, with Heather of Randomosity and the Girl choosing Buttery Jam Cookies as this week’s recipe.  These are pleasantly chewy, sturdy little cookies, with a surprisingly delicate flavor.  Lightly sweet and  jam-kissed (I used peach-apricot jam from Sarabeth’s),  they keep their shape in the oven, so what you scoop is what you get.  I’ll certainly make them again– they were perfect with chamomile tea.

For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  You can find it on Randomosity and the Girl, too.  Check out the TWD Blogroll to see lots of jammy cookies!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

For TWD this week, one of my favorite bloggers, Ulrike of Küchenlatein, chose Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies.  These may technically be “all-occasion,” but I bet that Ulrike knows they’re exactly what Santa hopes to find waiting for him on Christmas Eve.

These are sweet and buttery…great with tea, hot chocolate, eggnog…Thank you, Dorie’s grandma!!  You can cut them out in fancy shapes and decorate them a zillion ways, but I took the easy route and just did slice-and-bake.  I made a little glaze from powdered sugar and bourbon (naughty but in the nicest way, right?), and shook on some sprinkles.

For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on The Splendid Table site).  You can find it on Küchenlatein, too.  Check out the TWD Blogroll to see lots of well-decorated sugar cookies!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Linzer Sablés

Seems the next few weeks of TWD will be dedicated to cookies.  Very holiday-appropriate, no?  Despite my best intentions, I never make a multitude of Christmas cookies…when the time comes, this little elf just doesn’t really feel up to the task, so I guess this will give me a bit of a shove.  First up, we have Linzer Sablés, chosen for us by noskos of Living the Life.  If you’ve ever had a linzer cookie or torte, you will know that they usually have a pastry made with cinnamon and ground nuts, and some type of jammy filling (often raspberry).  I love this combo…I even made linzer cupcakes once.

I think linzer dough is most tasty and flavorful when made with hazelnuts.  Alas, I still do not have my food processor, and pre-ground hazelnut meal is hard to find here.  Almond meal’s pretty easy to source (I got a nice speckled one, made with skin-on almonds, from TJ’s), so I went with that this go-round.

I made half a batch of dough, but guess I forgot what I was doing when it came time to add the cinnamon.  Luckily I caught myself before the full 1 1/2 teaspoons went in, but my dough was dark with the extra spice.  It actually had great flavor!  I used mixed berry preserves from Sarabeth’s as my filling.  I was careful to roll my dough to a thickness 1/4-inch, as Dorie states.  After sandwiching the cookies, I wished I’d rolled them thinner.  Too much cookie and not enough jam.  Next time, I’ll go about 1/8-inch instead.

For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  You can also find it on Living the Life.  Check out the TWD Blogroll to find plenty of other baking tips for these cookies!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Rugelach

We have made it back to New York, safe and sound.  Thanks so much for all the well-wishes in the past few posts!  Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to a more regular blog-checking schedule now.  We’re staying in a temporary furnished apartment all the way downtown in the Financial District.  Strange place to live, but hopefully we’ll find a “real” apartment of our own soon.  At least this place has a big oven, so I was able to crank out the Rugelach that Grace of Piggy’s Cooking Journal chose for TWD this week.

I don’t have any fond childhood memories or stories of rugelach.  In fact, I’d never had them before I moved to New York, and I’d never made them myself till the other day.  If you’re not too familiar with rugelach either, it’s basically a cream cheese pastry that’s rolled out, schmeared with a sweet filling, and rolled up. They kinda look like mini croissants, no?

Dorie suggests using the food processor to bring the dough together.  I won’t see my Cuisinart anytime soon (it’s been living in a storage facility, along with all my plug-in kitchen appliances, in New Jersey for the past couple of years), so I made it by hand…just a half recipe.  It was super-easy, too.  Rather than using cold butter and cream cheese, I brought them to cool room temperature, then just used my right hand to squish them together with the dry ingredients.  No utensils needed, and very little chance of overworking the dough.

You can be really flexible with rugelach filling.  I used apricot jam, cinnamon sugar, walnuts and dried cherries.  You can use whatever jam you like (or no jam at all), different nuts, different dried fruits…Dorie even adds chocolate.  I left that out of mine because I don’t like fruit and chocolate combos.  I made a bit too much cinnamon sugar, so I sprinkled a little extra on top before baking.  It’s important to chop up the chunky ingredients, like nuts and fruit, pretty well, because big bits can make the cookies hard to roll up neatly.

I think they came out quite cute, if I do say so myself.  After rolling the cookies into crescents, I stuck them in the fridge for a couple hours.  That way, they were nice and firm, and held together well in the oven.  There was a little jam leakage out the sides, but nothing major, and I was able to pick it off when I lifted them off the sheet tray.  These cookies are just lighty sweet from the filling (the dough has no sugar at all), and really good with the warm beverage of your choice.  I think I’m gonna put a few of these in a baggie and munch on them while I wait in line to VOTE today!!

The recipe, of course, is in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but she also has it here on NPR’s site.  And for some extra rugelach tips and flavor suggestions, read this post on Dorie’s site.  Don’t forget to read Grace’s write-up and check out the TWD Blogroll to see what a zillion-trillion other people had to say!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Lenox Almond Biscotti

Is this picture ridiculous?  Of course I did not store the Lenox Almond Biscotti I made for TWD in this jar.  I couldn’t close the lid without destroying them.  That would be dumb, possibly even self-defeating.  I just need better props. 

Anyway, we have Gretchen of Canela & Comino to thank for this week’s recipe choice.  I knew before baking these biscotti that they would go over well.  R, being the good half-Sicilian that he is, loves crunchy, almondy Italian bakery cookies. 

You probably know that biscotti are sturdy, crunchy and “twice baked”…they first go into the oven as large log to set the dough, and then again when that dough is sliced into individual cookies.  During the first bake, my biscotti log certainly spread, as I knew it should, but it didn’t poof.  The finished product was much flatter than I expected or hoped.  I decided to cut them a little wider to compensate for their sad, deflated look.  I must have done something screwy, because I’ve seen others make this recipe with picture-perfect results.  I was kind of pissed at myself, but they tasted *fantastic*, so I got over it soon enough.

I definitely had to increase the times for both the the first and second bakes…I can’t really tell you how much extra time I added, but for the first bake, I left the log in the oven until it no longer had visible raw spots.  For the second bake, I made sure the slices were crisped through before taking them out of the oven.

I followed Dorie’s cue to add a couple extras to the dough…a big pinch of cinnamon (that was for Gretchen, although I chickened out on the cumin!) and a handful of white chocolate chunks (there is still a tiny bit left in the bag).  The full amount of almond extract sounded quite overpowering, and too much can be a little artificial-tasting, I think, so I did choose to go skimpy on that.  Also, I used slivered almonds instead of sliced, because that’s what’s I had.

The finished cookies were crunchy and craggy– perfect with coffee, or with ice cream!  Quite sweet, too, but then again I did add white chocolate.  The cornmeal in the recipe gives a golden boost to the color of the cookie dough, and a rustic, gritty crunch (which I like, but I know some aren’t crazy about).

For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on NPR’s website) or read Gretchen’s post.  Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!