Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Pecan-Brown Sugar Crack-Ups
May 18, 2021 at 7:22 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Pecan-Brown Sugar Crack-Ups are an interactive treat…a cookie baked as a slab that you (or you plus buddies) “crack up” into shards and bits. The dough for these comes together with just a few whizzes of the food processor. What you get are streusel-like crumbs that you press into a sheet tray to bake as one mass. The pecans are completely ground down in processing the dough, but the cookies certainly do have a toasty nuttiness, a delicate texture and a nice brown color. I made just one-third of the recipe, but still formed the dough into the same sized (quarter-sheet) tray used for a full batch. My baked cookie sheet was nice and slim, but not so thin that it crumbled apart, and I was able to break it into some good-sized chunks. We’ve been enjoying bits and pieces of this both at night with a little ice cream and in the morning with a little coffee.
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: Chocolate Chip Not-Quite Mandelbrot
May 4, 2021 at 7:42 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Mandelbrot are Ashkenazi Jewish almond cookies that share a similar shaping and baking method to Italian biscotti. Dorie leaves the nuts out of her Chocolate Chip Not-Quite Mandelbrot and swaps in the mini chips. I didn’t want to buy a bag of mini chips, so I left them out and swapped in a handful of cacao nibs instead (I didn’t measure them). I guess mine are not-quite chocolate chip not quite mandelbrot, but I say it worked nicely.
The dough is baked first as a cinnamon sugar-sprinkled (yum!) log, then sliced, sprinkled with more cinnamon sugar (more yum!) and baked again. The baking method is just like biscotti, but Dorie describes these mandelbrot as cakey, not dry and hard. Hmmm…”cakey” makes me think she means them to be soft, but mine were definitely dry and crisp after the second bake. They were not hard, though, and they were much easier and more pleasant to eat than some biscotti, which you almost have to dunk in coffee in order to not scrape up the roof of your mouth. Also, they sliced like a dream– with no cursing! I liked these very much, and even though I didn’t get quite as many as I should have from the stated yield, with just a third of the recipe, I was set for the week with coffee treats.
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!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Matcha-White Chocolate Mini Mads
April 20, 2021 at 8:05 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, cookies & bars, DC, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Madeleines…are you cookies, or are you little cakes disguised as seashells? Personally, I say little cakes, and these Matcha-White Chocolate Mini Mads are really little cakes, since they were baked in a mini madeleine tin. A regular-sized tin will work just fine also…whichever you use, just be sure to grease and flour it well, even if it’s nonstick. These are flavored with, you guessed it, matcha and melted white chocolate, and there’s a bit of lime zest in there, too.
Madeleines are easy to make by hand, but you do need to allow time to chill the batter before baking. I got a pretty good bump on the backsides of these babies. In the past, that has not always happened with Dorie’s madeleines, so I was quite pleased. I liked the flavor of these, and their cool Frankensteinian color, courtesy of the green tea powder. They stayed nice and soft even the day after I baked them (I did check them early in the oven to make sure I took them out when they were just done…over-baking tiny things makes me nervous!). I piped a white chocolate drizzle on some of my mini mads, but that wasn’t as cute as I’d hoped, so those didn’t make the photoshoot– haha.
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: Fennel-Orange Shortbread Wedges
April 6, 2021 at 1:43 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory, shortbread, snacks
These Fennel-Orange Shortbread Wedges are an apéro hour delight. Just a little sweet with a salty zip, they are finely flavored and fragranced with orange zest and cracked fennel seeds. They have that crisp yet tender texture that earns the name “shortbread.” These are really good with olives and a piece of cheese. And a glass of wine…don’t forget that. I made half of the recipe and patted the dough out into a six-inch cake pan for baking.
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: Peanut Brownie Sablés
March 16, 2021 at 2:11 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, cookies, nuts
Peanut Brownie Sablés…when two become one. You do actually need to make two different doughs to make this recipe, something that initially sounded very annoying to my lazy self but is actually no biggie. First mix up a peanut butter sablé dough then get cracking on a brownie batter. The brownie just uses cocoa, so there’s no messing with a water bath (also, I followed Mardi’s lead and used room temp butter for that batter). The two separate mixes get paddled together to become the final hybrid dough.
This cookie mash-up was a hit for me. Chocolate and PB is a most winning combo, and these cookies are nice and soft in the middle. I have some more dough in the freezer that I’ll bake off this weekend.
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: Ms. Corbitt’s Pecan Cake Fingers
March 2, 2021 at 3:35 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, nuts
Ms. Corbitt’s Pecan Cake Fingers has a name that makes me giggle and is a vintage recipe straight out of the late 50s. A pecan-loaded brown sugar meringue bakes up into something that I guess could be called cake-like, although still recognizable to me as a chewy meringue, and is topped with a thick brown sugar and vanilla-speckled icing.
When I took my baked meringue out of the oven, it had formed a shell that was a bit souffléd with a hollow gap above the rest of the base. This maybe…probably…had to with my mixing, but I knew that wouldn’t cut or ice easily. I decided to dampen the raised shell slightly, press it down onto the rest of the base and pop it back into the low oven for ten minutes to dry and fuse. Success! It seemed fine.
Dorie and Ms. Corbitt make a stiff, moldable icing that is hand-formed onto the tops of the individually sliced cookies. Boy, that sounds time-consuming, even for the 1/3 sized batch I made. I also didn’t want to handle my cookies quite so much (after I’d already had to squash them into submission once), so I altered the icing a bit to be a spreadable frosting that I could more gently apply to the whole slab before cutting. I let my browned butter set to a soft room temp before stirring in the powdered sugar and vanilla. Then I added just a few drops of milk to get it moving. I frosted the slab, let it set up in the fridge for a few and it was good to slice.
These are sweet, for sure, and it’s no wonder our friend Ms. Corbitt cuts them into slim “fingers,” but they are excellent with a cup of strong coffee. The browned butter icing, whichever way you choose to get it on top, is not to be skipped.
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!
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!
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.
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