a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Almond Crescents

I feel as though I say this with like every other cookie we make, but these Almond Crescents are the perfect coffee or tea treat. Tasty, slightly nutty, crispy and a bit delicate, buttery, sugar coated, cute…shall I go on? I used the guidelines that Dorie gives in the recipe intro to make my cookies on the smaller side. They looked kinda runty when I formed them, but really pleasantly plumped up in the oven. (BTW, when I first looked at this recipe I wondered if maybe I should try toasting the almond flour before using it for even more nutty flavor. But then I forgot all about it. Does anyone regularly do this with almond flour?)

Now comes the snafu! When I took my bag of powdered sugar out of the cupboard I saw that I had, well, almost nothing left. The first cookie I coated was the bottom right one. You can see that I was basically throwing what sugar I did have around–so wasteful! You can track my work up the sheet tray, getting more and more tight-fisted with it…there was just a sprinkle at the end remaining for the one on the top left. I ate that one first.

I shared these, like I often do, with the trainers at the gym. The owner made it a point to tell me a couple of days later how much he liked them. And as I was leaving today, he called out, “More almond crescents!” So I guess I’ll need to get another bag of 10x and make a second batch (or be forced to do extra pull-ups!).

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: Lavender-White Chocolate Sablés

Back-to-back lavender and white chocolate treats this month! In these Lavender-White Chocolate Sablés, I again used the candied lavender I took from work. I was able to basically crumble it into a powder with my fingers to flavor the cookies. These are baked in a muffin tin…we’ve done this now with many of Dorie’s butter cookie recipes to make perfect circles with crispy rims. Rather than roll out the dough and cut out circles and then deal with scraps, I just portioned it with a little scoop into the greased muffin tin and pressed the balls flat into the cavities with a juice glass. Then I chilled the tin for a couple of hours. I will say, though, that I made a small batch of these (1/8th if I remember correctly) and only had to use the tin once, so this method was quick and easy for that.

These cookies are really crisp and buttery. The lavender is not the in-your-face flavor here that I was worried about…it’s pretty subtle. The white chocolate bits I think are star of these sablés…they get a little caramelized in the oven and sort of butterscotchy. The general consensus seems to be to check on the cookies a couple of minutes early, as they may not need the full 16-18 minutes of bake time.

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: Pink Peppercorn Thumbprints

These sweet and dainty little Pink Peppercorn Thumbprints are a perfect teatime treat. Pink peppercorns and white chocolate are two surprise twists in the dough, which comes together quickly in the food processor. The peppercorns didn’t break down as much in the food processor as they would have in a spice grinder, and I think the little unground bits and pieces were where I noticed their pop of flavor the most. You wouldn’t really know these cookies have white chocolate in the dough because that did get fully incorporated, but it gives them a richness that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Dorie uses strawberry jam in her recipe to fill the thumbprints, but I had some plum in the fridge and used that instead. I think most any jam would do nicely here. In keeping with the pretty in pink theme, I dusted them with pink powdered sugar (sugar sieved along with a crushed freeze dried raspberry).

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