Kitchen math

One of the things that Gillian has gotten into is doing Bedtime Math.  We don't get to it every day, but she's definitely getting better at the Little Kids problems over time.  We kind of did our own version in the kitchen today.  G asked me if we could make treats for her teachers (classroom and after-school).  At her request, we settled on David Lebovitz's Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies.  (Okay, I just realized that when I wrote that post, I also talked about Bedtime Math, but totally forgot that I had done so!)

The math didn't come in with the measuring this time.  It was after the cookies were baked & Gillian was trying to figure out if we had enough for all the teachers plus some for us.  So, there are three classroom teachers and four after-school teachers.  There are two pans of cookies, one with fifteen cookies and one with eleven.  How many cookies can we package up for each teacher, and will there be enough left for a family of four to have dessert? =)

Peace on earth, and in cookies

Happy blogiversary to me!  5 years and 485 posts later, I'm still here. =)  I'd hoped to be closer to 500, but it's been a busy month.  I've been on vacation for the past few days and have finally had time to do some holiday stuff.  We finally put up the Christmas tree last weekend, and finished putting ornaments on it today.  Yes, it's been that kind of week.  On Wednesday I baked lots of cookies to take to G's kindergarten holiday party.  The kids had fun decorating the cookies (and eating lots of the decorations straight up, since I brought stuff like chocolate chips and m&m's).  B's party was Thursday, and at her request I made brownies for her to take.  Then on Friday I made a batch of caramel snack mix to bag up for my employees.  Right now I'm working on chocolate sponge cake that will be one component of a chocolate mousse cake (G's request for a holiday dessert).  Tomorrow I should finally get to cookies for us--and Santa Claus--now that I've finally gotten my hands on Hershey's kisses after looking at three different stores.  

Along with all the other baking, I wanted to make something for teacher gifts.  The girls were in favor of something chocolate.  I wanted something without nuts, since there are allergy issues at the schools.  I also wanted a dough that was easy to make ahead if necessary and bake off as needed.  I've never been a big fan of slice & bake cookies, but I may have changed my mind this year, after settling on Dorie's World Peace Cookies as the recipe to make.  I've made them before, of course, but not in as large a quantity as I did this year.  To make them more festive, I substituted peppermint crunch baking bits for part of the chopped chocolate, and used mini chocolate chips for the rest.  

The verdict?  I've made three batches so far, and will make at least one more to ship, since these should be sturdy enough to travel.  I got a couple of notes from the teachers, saying that they really liked the chocolate & peppermint combo.  I've stashed away several bags of the mint baking bits so I'll be able to make a bunch more of these if we want.  I've also passed out the recipe to several people, and I hope they'll give them a try for themselves.  If you'd like to, you can find the recipe online at Bon Appetit.

I've really enjoyed sharing both my baked goods and my life with all of you over the past 5 years--I've made lots of great friends, which is without a doubt one of the best things about blogging.  Here's to many more wonderful years!

With a corncob pipe and a "button" nose

When I got my December issue of Bon Appetit, the pretty cookies on the cover definitely caught my eye.  Then I spyed the small print near the bottom that proclaimed them to be Dorie Greenspan's Speculoos Buttons, p. 96.  I immediately knew that I'd have to make them.  After all, I know I can rely on Dorie. =)  I realized also that these would be perfect for my virtual cookie exchange. 

The dough is easy to mix up.  You cream butter with regular and brown sugars as well as a little molasses.  Next in are an egg and some vanilla.  Then you add the dry ingredients--flour, salt and spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and a bit of cloves).  The dough is formed into logs and chilled for several hours.  Before baking, the logs of dough are brushed with egg white and coated in sparkling sugar.  This was a great chance for me to use the pretty pearlized sugar that I picked up a couple weeks ago.  The recipe calls for adding a glaze and additional decorations to the cookies after they're baked, but I didn't get that far.

The verdict?  I really liked these cookies--they have a good level of spice and aren't too sweet.  Brianna tried one and didn't really like it.  Gillian wouldn't even taste one.  So I took most of them to work, and found several people who were more than happy to take them off my hands.  I will definitely be making these again--the dough is easy to mix up and stash in the freezer for cookie emergencies. =)  Next time I'll have to add the glaze and play around more with the decorations.  Maybe if the girls get to decorate them, they'll reconsider eating them.  Lol. 

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  Be sure to check back in a few days so see what other tasty cookies my friends have come up with for our cookie exchange!  

3rd Annual Virtual Cookie Exchange!

I am so fortunate that I am friends with a wonderful group of bakers and bloggers.  I wish that we could all get together in person to talk and eat cookies, but we live all over the place.  So until we can manage to meet up in person (one day!) we'll have to make do with drooling over pictures of each other's fantastic holiday cookies.  This is our third year of having a virtual cookie exchange, and I can't wait to see what everyone has to share this year!

I'll tell you all about my cookies later today, and I'll be back sometime next week with this year's round-up so you can check out everyone's wonderful recipes.  Be sure to check out the delicious cookies that we shared in 2010 and 2011, too.

Spice is nice

Well, I'm more than ten days in now, and so far the posting every day thing is going pretty well.  I'm not entirely happy with all the posts, but none are really bad.  And I feel like I'm making progress toward my goal of just getting the words out.  Today's post is a bit more extensive than the past few, since I had the time to take some better pictures.  I'm playing around with different spots in my house to find some good lighting, and this spot was pretty successful.

As you may be able to tell, today's featured ingredients are nutmeg and rum.  One of my favorite blogs is the one written by the folks at King Arthur Flour.  The posts are always entertaining and informative, even if the recipe isn't something that I plan to make.  But sometimes I read a post, like this one last Monday, and know I have to make the recipe as soon as possible.  Nutmeg Bites sounded fabulous, especially once I got to the part about the rum icing. 

The great thing about these cookies is that they're really easy to make.  No particular mixing order--you pretty much just dump everything in the mixer.  It's a straightforward ingredient list, with flour, sugar, butter, egg, salt, vanilla, and a full teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg.  Once the dough comes together, you stick it in the fridge for an hour to firm up.  I actually left mine longer than that without any problems.  I used my #70 disher to scoop the cookies.  My bake time was a little longer than the 8-10 minutes stated in the recipe; I let them go until they were clearly starting to brown on the bottoms.  While the cookies cooled, I mixed up the icing, which consisted of powdered sugar, a little butter, and some dark rum.  

The verdict?  Mmm, these are wonderful.  I love cookies like these--almost like shortbread, but easier.  The rum in the frosting was very strong right after I mixed it up, but mellowed a bit after a day or two.  In fact, I think that overall, the cookies were better after a day or two.  Nutmeg has become a favorite spice of mine, and I enjoyed the fact that there aren't any other spices in these cookies to distract from the nutmeg flavor.  

If you'd like to give these a try for yourself, you can find the recipe here at King Arthur Flour.  I will definitely be making these again, and probably putting some in my holiday gifts.  

Inspiration

I love to make ice cream, but I do buy it occasionally.  Sometimes my girls wear me down, and I buy some because I don't feel like (or have the time for) making it.  That happened this weekend.  But while B&G were debating over what flavor to get, I had a chance to look for myself.  Haagen-Dazs had some limited edition flavors on the shelf that caught my eye.  I seriously considered the Salted Caramel Truffle, until I realized it was in a vanilla base.  If it had been chocolate ice cream, I probably would have stopped looking there.  But instead, a container (I almost said pint, but unfortunately these are a bit shy of that mark) of Spiced Caramel Biscuit jumped in my cart.  I've thought about putting crumbled Biscoff cookies into homemade ice cream, but haven't been able to decide what base to use.  I like the combination of cookies with caramel ice cream, though the Haagen-Dazs caramel is definitely sweet, not salty.  Overall, I do like the flavor quite a bit.  Plus I think I'm now inspired to fire up the ice cream maker this weekend and make my own version.

Hey, Mikey!

Yesterday, our loan officer bought lunch for the branch, which was really nice of her.  It was pizza, which always goes over well.  The only problem for me was that every single pizza had stuff on it.  Stuff like pepperoni, or sausage, or bell peppers.  I'm that crazy person that likes plain cheese pizza.  (I'll also eat it with just mushrooms.)  But there wasn't any plain cheese.  The closest was a pizza with fresh tomatoes on top.  One of the bankers asked me, "Can't you just pick them off?"  Of course I can.  I just don't want to.  So I ended up leaving the branch in search of something to eat for lunch.  (I usually bring my lunch, but didn't yesterday because I knew in advance about the pizza plan.)  Fortunately, I figured out before I actually ordered any food that I didn't take my wallet with me.  *sigh*

I've always been picky, mostly about textures.  I do try new things, because I do find new things that I enjoy, but more often I stay with what I know I like.  If I'm going to spend money (or ingredients) on something, I want to know that there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to enjoy it.  Most of the time I'm a pretty good judge of what I'll like.  But I probably shouldn't try out new recipes when I'm already in a crabby mood, because I don't listen to that inner voice that warns me when a recipe probably isn't the one for me.  Because in the end, I'll just be that much crabbier when it doesn't work out.  Case in point, the Cream Cheese Chocolate Snacking Cookies from Baked Elements.

There were several clues in the recipe that I should have paid attention to.  There's liquid, in the form of cream.  Liquid usually means cakey texture.  The Baked authors also call for Dutch-processed cocoa in their recipes, and I'm not really a fan, even of the good stuff (Valrhona).  The leavening was a whole bunch of baking soda, which made things even more alkaline.  The end result?  Cake-like cookies that spread like crazy and had a flavor that I didn't care for.  I do like the idea of using cream cheese in the dough, but if I make these again, I'll definitely tinker with the recipe.  The good news is that there are lots of other recipes in the book that sound good, so hopefully the next one will turn out better for me.

Do the math

Well, school starts tomorrow.  I think the girls are somewhat excited and also somewhat sad that summer break is done.  Gillian starts kindergarten this year, and some anxiety about has definitely been showing.  She's been much more clingy than usual, to the point of driving me totally crazy.  Brianna, on the other hand, is starting to worry a little about stuff like not remembering her math facts as well as she should.  Of course, that may just be because she wants an excuse to do flash cards on my iPod. =)  

We've been having fun with math in another way as well.  A month or so ago, someone from a parenting group I belong to introduced us to Bedtime Math.  The idea behind it is that we all focus on reading to our children at bedtime, but we don't teach them that math can be fun, too.  You can subscribe via email or just follow the blog, and every day you get a new problem to solve.  There are actually several problems in each email, for "Wee Ones," "Little Kids," and "Big Kids."  So far Gillian does fine with the easiest problems while Brianna has to help her with the Little Kid ones, and the Big Kid problems just enough of a challenge for B.  I love that they make it real, tying in a variety of different topics.  For example, during the Olympics, there were problems that had to do with different sports.  Some are more random, like today's problems about escalators.  I hope you'll check it out for yourself!  (I'm not affiliated with them in any way, btw.)

One of my favorite ways to use math in our everyday activities is to bring it up in the kitchen, of course.  My girls love to help me bake, as I've mentioned here before.  So far I think I have them pretty convinced that all baking is done by measuring ingredients with a scale, preferably in grams.  For now, I'm the one doing the math, since many of my recipes only give volume amounts, and the ones that do give weights often just use ounces.  I know how much a lot of ingredients weigh, but I also sometimes refer to tables like this one.  I'm getting pretty good at converting from ounces to grams in my head--I've memorized a lot of the common ones, like the fact that a cup of sugar weighs 7 ounces, which is about 200 grams.  I need to start putting Brianna to work figuring out the numbers, though. =)

With some authors I get lucky, and they publish recipes with metric weights.  That was the case for these Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert.  I made them a few weeks ago, during a rough week at work when it seemed like we all needed some chocolate to get through the days.  Any recipe that starts off with a full pound (about 450 grams) of chocolate has got to be good for that!  I didn't tinker around with the recipe much, other than to substitute dried cranberries for the nuts.  The recipe says to do the cookies as slice & bake, but I haven't ever done that.  Instead, I scoop the dough out with my #40 disher and let it set up on the pans.  If you're going to go that route, I recommend scooping all the dough (it's more like a batter) out at once, otherwise the later cookies don't look very pretty.  I end up with about 45 cookies doing it that way, and bake them for 10 minutes.  

The verdict?  These are very intense, and very tasty.  They were definitely just the thing for a pick-me-up during a stressful work week.  Gillian is happy any time she can convince me to make chocolate chocolate chip cookies, but was kind of annoyed that I added the cranberries.  I, on the other hand, think that I should use more cranberries next time.  The tartness cuts through some of the richness of the chocolate.  

If you'd like to try this recipe for yourself, I encourage you to get your hands on a copy of Ready for Dessert.  I also found an older version of the recipe (a half-recipe, actually, without ingredient weights and missing the salt) online here.  

When life hands you lemons

It's 11:30pm, and I'm still up.  J headed up to bed, but I didn't feel wound down enough to sleep yet.  Then I realized that I hadn't had my nightly mug of tea yet.  I'm drinking Christmas Morning, which may not seem appropriate for a late night in July, but it's one of my favorites.  Normally I'd be stressing about getting enough sleep, since I tend to get up early for work, but I'm on vacation for a couple more days.  It's amazing how much better I feel, after getting a decent amount of sleep and some naps in over the past few days.  I needed this break.  A lot.

There has been so much going on.  When I saw my mother-in-law a few weeks ago, she commented that she could tell I'd been busy with work because I hadn't been posting here much.  (The fact that we were having the conversation in person is an indication of how crazy things have been, since that wasn't really planned.)  She's right.  When I'm just stressed about work, or stressed about my personal life, I can usually manage.  But both have been kind of out of control, which tends to make me shut down.  I do what I have to in order to survive on a daily basis, but that's about it.  Fortunately, I think I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm starting to feel creative again, which I haven't in quite a while.  One nice thing about having some vacation time is that I've had a change to play around in the kitchen, and I actually feel like writing about some of it.  (So hopefully you'll see some more posts after this one!)

Right at the beginning of this month, one of the work stresses sort of resolved itself.  I'm taking on a new position, which will mean more stress in the short term, but it's a better sort of stress that what I've been dealing with for several months.  It's a pretty big change for me, since I realized that I'd been in my previous role for 7 years.  New location, new people, lots to adjust to.  (plus I'm still helping out my old team for most of this month)  But I'm excited about the change, and I realized that having new (to me) employees has an advantage--more taste testers!  My new team is over twice the size of my old one, so even if some are on diets, there will be others willing to eat baked goods. =)

We had a staff meeting last Monday, and I figured that bringing dessert would be a great way to get off to a good start with everyone.  I wanted to bring a couple of things--something chocolate and something not.  Fortunately, I already had an idea for the non-chocolate one, from one of my favorite sources, King Arthur Flour.  They featured a recipe for Molasses-Raisin Cookies on their blog recently.  I love raisins and spice cookies, and was looking for a good excuse to try the recipe. 

The recipe is pretty straightforward to make, using the creaming method.  The one unusual step is that you put the dry ingredients and raisins in the food processor and pulse to chop up the raisins.  I generally avoid using my food processor because I hate to wash it, but I was intrigued by the idea of the small pieces of raisins blending into the cookies better.  So I pretty much followed the recipe as written.  I did make my cookies bigger than the recipe said to--I used my #40 disher, and got two dozen.  Because they were bigger, I baked them for 13 minutes.  I also skipped the coating of sparkling sugar.  Since the blog post suggested lemonade to go with the cookies, I whisked together some lemon juice and powdered sugar and drizzled the glaze over the cookies.

The verdict?  These cookies are awesome. I took them to the meeting along with a batch of brownies, and the cookies were the clear favorite.  The lemon glaze was nice with the spices in the cookies, although I kind of wish I'd applied it with a heavier hand. =)  I can definitely see how these would pair nicely with lemonade.  I like raisins, but since they're chopped up, they're not very noticeable, and might sneak past the raisin haters if you don't tell them they're there.  The cookies definitely wouldn't be the same without them.  I'm seriously considered making another batch of these cookies just so I can crumble them into a batch of lemon ice cream.

If you'd like make these cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe here at King Arthur Flour.

Wordless Wednesday - Unexpected travel

Be good to yourself

So, do any of you totally beat yourselves up after making a mistake?  I just can't seem to stop.  Logically, I know that I just need to learn from it and move on, since I can't change what's already happened.  But emotionally, I can't let it go.  I go over and over things in my head, finding all of the things that I think I should have noticed at the time.   Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and the more I think about it, the more stupid I feel. (And of course none of this is helped by the fact that I've been really, really tired due to my crazy work schedule the past couple of weeks.)

I really need to stop being such a perfectionist.  Yes, it's important to do a good job.  But the world won't end if things aren't totally perfect.  I'm that way about way too many things in my life, including baking.  I can't seem to help apologizing for everything, including things that other people wouldn't have any clue about if I didn't say anything.  I'm starting to realize that it keeps me from blogging more, too.  I worry that my pictures don't look good enough.  I worry that what I write about isn't interesting enough.

So how do you deal with this sort of stuff?  How do you get yourselves out of a funk and back to being more productive?

I debated whether to share these cookies.  After all, I've already blogged about the base recipe, the Cook's Illustrated Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Why would anyone be interested a relatively small change that I made?  But what the heck--I like the way they turned out, and maybe you wouldn't think to do it on your own, or wouldn't know how to go about it.  It may have seemed to me like an obvious thing to try, but not everyone thinks like me.  (Thank goodness, or we'd all be too busy worrying to ever get anything done!)

I've altered cookie doughs in the past by substituting cocoa powder for some of the flour in the recipe.  You don't want to just add cocoa, or you'll end up with dry cookies.  Cocoa has a starchy quality to it, so it can fill in for part of the flour.  I decided to swap out about half a cup.  I prefer the flavor of natural cocoa, so that's what I used.  I wanted to bring out as much of the chocolate flavor as possible, so I took a tip from some of the chocolate cake recipes I make--a number of them mix cocoa with boiling water so the flavor can "bloom."  I didn't have water in this recipe, so I whisked it into the warm browned butter before adding the sugars.  Other than that, I followed the recipe as written.  For the mix-ins, I wanted a couple different types, so I split the dough in half.  Both portions got chocolate chips, but one half also got peanut butter chips while the other got white chips.  I like chocolate and peanut butter, but Gillian recently informed me that she does NOT like the PB chips.  Plus I wanted to be able to pack some of the cookies in Brianna's school lunch (this was about a month ago), and she really shouldn't take things with peanut butter.

The verdict?  Well, happily, I'm doing a lot better than when I started writing this post this morning.  I got past the sick feeling in my stomach and got mad at the situation, instead of just at myself.  And the cookies?  They were much appreciated both at home and at work.  I'll definitely be making this chocolate version again.  If you'd like to give it a try for yourself, here's the ingredient list I used.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

200 grams all-purpose flour
45 grams natural cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
100 grams granulated sugar
150 grams dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
340 grams mix-ins of your choice

For the recipe instructions, head over to Cook's Illustrated.  The recipe is also in the new Cook's Illustrated Cookbook.

Good things come in small packages

I have no idea how it can possibly be the end of May and the end of the school year.  Brianna's last day was last Thursday.  Being a worrier, I don't think she was completely convinced that she had been promoted to 4th grade until she saw it in writing on her report card.  Then last night we had Gillian's graduation from pre-K.  (She'll still be at the daycare for the summer, but they had the ceremony at the end of the traditional school year so that no one would miss out because of vacations, etc.)  It wasn't a very long program, since 4 and 5-year-olds don't have very long attention spans, but it was certainly entertaining.

One of the things I like to do at various times including the end of the year is make little gifts for the teachers.  I don't usually do anything big, but I try to make sure that it's something special.  For Teacher Appreciation Week in early May, I made World Peace Cookies.  What teachers wouldn't welcome a little more peace in their lives? =)  Since I went with chocolate for that occasion, I wanted something different for the end of the year thank-yous.  Something...vanilla.  

Over the past couple of weeks Central Market did a focus on France, with lots of interesting French products and ingredients.  I picked up some salted butter, so I had to find something to make with it.  Naturally, I turned to Dorie.  I remembered seeing a cookie recipe of hers in a recent issue of one of my cooking magazines.  I had to do a bit of searching through the stack by my computer, but I found it.  Vanilla Bean Sablés--French butter cookies.

The recipe calls for unsalted butter and sea salt, so I used my salted butter and skipped the additional salt.  Rather than two vanilla beans, I used one and some of my vanilla sugar.  I love rubbing the vanilla seeds into the sugar--it always makes my fingers smell good.  (And after I scraped the seeds from the pod, I stuck the pieces into my container of vanilla sugar to make more!)  The rest of the ingredient list is simple, just some powdered sugar, flour, and an egg yolk.  The dough mixes up quickly in a stand mixer, and gets formed into a couple of logs.  Once the dough is chilled, it's rolled in coarse sparkling sugar, then sliced and baked.  I did skip the step of brushing the dough logs with egg wash before coating with sugar; I just pressed the sugar into the dough.  The cookies bake for about 20 minutes, and you can smell when they're done.  

The verdict?  I totally love these cookies.  The flavors of butter and vanilla play so well together, especially when the bottoms of the cookies turn such a lovely golden brown.  The cookies have a great texture, short and crumbly and with the contrast of crunchy sparkling sugar on the edges.  They're great paired with a mug of tea.  I hope the teachers enjoyed them as much as I did.  

If you'd like to try these cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe in the April/May issue of Fine Cooking, or here online.  

Ready for kindergarten!

One of those days (Cooking the Books)

I've been having one of those days.  Except that it's not the usual one of those days.  It started with me getting up at 5 because I was scheduled to work all day today.  That schedule usually means that I have to drop the girls at school and daycare before I go to work at 8:15 or so.  But things didn't go as planned.  Brianna was still complaining of a really sore throat when I went to wake her up.  She'd been telling me the same thing for most of the weekend.  I checked, and it was red.  But it didn't look that bad, and since she hadn't been running a fever I figured that she was suffering from a virus and not strep.  I could tell she wasn't quite herself, though, since she napped for about 3 hours on Sunday afternoon.  

So I had the always fun parenting dilemma...  B didn't seem that sick, but sending her to school probably wasn't a good idea.  At the same time, I was worried about leaving my coworkers shorthanded.  Jamie had already left for work, and it was doubtful that he'd be able to come home early to stay with B.  I just love it when the parenting guilt wars with the work guilt--nothing like having an unexpected day off that you can't really enjoy because you feel like you're supposed to be somewhere else.  I did get to take a nap, but it wasn't a very good one.  I ended up feeling sort of restless and out-of-sorts all day.  I did get some reading time in, but couldn't really settle on anything.  And writing was right out.  I've been trying to get this post done for my Cooking the Books event for two days, and just haven't been able to figure out what to write, which is why you're getting my sad story.  =)

Maybe some dessert would make me feel better.  We had Brianna's favorite soup for dinner, this chicken chowder from Cook's Country.  Naturally, since B loves it, Gillian hates it.  (I decided not to fight that battle tonight, and just made G a sandwich for dinner.)  I like it just fine, and soup is nice because it generally leaves room for dessert.  This particular one was inspired by the new book J got me for Mother's Day--Alice Medrich's new Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts.  The idea is that you can make lots of great desserts from simple, tasty components.  What I came up with first was sort of a mini ice cream tart/sundae.  

The base was a simple butter cookie.  Central Market has an event going on called Passport France, and they've had a lot of great French products and ingredients available.  I bought some Breton salted butter, and turned to Dorie's Around My French Table to figure out what to do with it.  Naturally, she didn't let me down, and I found a recipe for Sablé Breton.  I didn't want to do a full-size tart, but there was a Bonne Idée for making slice and bake cookies with a variation on the dough, so I went with those.  I didn't add any salt, since my butter was nicely salty, with noticeable crunchy crystals in it.  I did roll the log of dough in a combination of sparkling sugar and a bit of fleur de sel before slicing it up for baking.

Besides the great butter, I also picked up a package of dark muscovado sugar on my shopping trip.  My new Medrich book has several caramel-type sauces in it.  One is a simple mixture of muscovado sugar, cream, a bit of salt, and a splash of rum.  It was really easy to make.  For the final component of my dessert, I wanted something that would provide a contrast to the richness of the cookie and sauce.  I found what I was looking for in one of my earlier Medrich books, Pure Dessert--sour cream ice cream.  It's a non-custard ice cream, which really allows the sour cream flavor to shine through.  The technique for making it is similar to the one in my Jeni's ice cream book, and I tweaked the procedure just slightly to make it even closer (I added a bit of corn syrup to the milk/sugar mixture, and boiled it for several minutes before adding the cornstarch in a slurry).  

For the final dessert, I started with a cookie, topped it with a scoop of ice cream, and drizzled warm tropical sugar sauce over the top.  The verdict?  Yum!  All of the components are really tasty, and work well together.  There's a great contrast of sweet and salty, cold and warm, soft and chewy/crisp.  The cookies are also great with a cup of tea.  My favorite part was the ice cream.  We also ate some of it topped with fresh strawberries--the cold tartness of the ice cream is a great foil for fruit.  I can't wait to try it with peaches, too.

I definitely encourage you to check out all of the books that I mentioned.  Your local library might even have them!  To get you started, you can find the ice cream recipe here.  This is my contribution to our spring Cooking the Books blog event; you can find links to the other contributors in this main post.  If you'd like to join in, submissions are welcome anytime this week.  If you'd like to be notified of future events, send me an email at diskitchennotebook at gmail dot com and I'll add you to the list!  

P is for perfect, they're close enough for me

Monday was a mostly lazy day around here.  I was lucky enough to have the day off due to the holiday.  It was just me and Brianna at home; I sent Gillian to daycare so I didn't have to listen to the two of them arguing. =)  Actually, it was just as much because I knew I needed to take Brianna shoe shopping, and you couldn't pay me enough to do that with both of them in tow.  (I like to think I've learned my lesson--the hard way--with that one.)  I was pleasantly surprised that the shopping went pretty quickly.  I was just plain old surprised at how much B's feet had grown--the salesperson said that the new shoes she picked run a bit small, but we still had to buy a size 4 (!) to make sure she had a bit of growing room.  Crazy.

Other than the shopping, we were pretty lazy--we sat around and watched cartoons.  I napped; Brianna read.  I did summon up the energy to bake some cookies, though.  This is yet another one of those recipes that I've made a whole bunch but never blogged.  Everybody needs a good chocolate chip cookie recipe in their repertoire.  For the longest time, mine was the one in my Betty Crocker cookbook, and I do still make that one sometimes.  But a couple years ago, Cook's Illustrated published a recipe for what they claimed to be the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie.  

Their definition of perfect is cookies that are chewy in the middle but crisp on the edges, with lots of buttery, toffee-like flavor.  Sounds pretty good to me!  The keys to achieving that flavor are browned butter--melted butter makes for a chewier cookie, and browning it adds flavor--and dark brown sugar.  For the texture, besides melting the butter they went with a somewhat unique mixing method to dissolve some of the sugar (helps with the crisp edges) and also removed an egg white for more chewiness.  The recipe says it makes 16 cookies.  Those must be some huge cookies!  I made mine smaller (still about 3" across) and got twice as many.  I baked them for 12 minutes.  For this batch, I skipped the nuts (which I'd like but my girls wouldn't eat) in favor of a mix of semisweet and bittersweet chocolate chips.  

The verdict?  Well, the dough itself is extremely dangerous--to the point where I'm not usually very interested in eating the cookies once they're baked because I've eaten too much dough. =)  I'm a sucker for anything with browned butter.  The baked cookies are really good, too.  I've made quite a few variations over time--the most popular (with people outside my house) was probably the batch I made with pecans and white chocolate chips.  This recipe is my pantry focus for this month--I always have the dough ingredients on hand, and the mix-ins can be whatever I have in the pantry that sounds good.

If you'd like to make these for yourself, you can find the recipe here at Cook's Illustrated.  My friend Tracey also has it on her blog.  

Wordless Wednesday - Letters to Santa

Until we meet again (soon!)

I posted at the end of last week that I've been blogging for four years now.  I wasn't entirely sure how to begin.  I started by just posting some of our favorites, and assorted things that I decided to make.  So not that much different from what I do now. =)  That got me through the first month or so.  Then I decided to be brave.  After reading this post from Peabody, I decided to join a fairly new baking group called Tuesdays with Dorie.  At the time I thought I was crazy, but it's one of the best things I ever did. I've learned to bake lots of amazing things, and made some fantastic friends.  

In the beginning, I participated almost every week.  Over time, other things (work & family being two of the biggest) claimed more of my time than they used to, though I still tried to keep up.  For the past couple months, I've still been baking a lot of the time, but haven't always had the time or felt the inspiration to write.  And now, after four years, we've come to the end of the book.  Don't worry, you'll continue to see Dorie recipes here on my blog, since there are some that I haven't posted that I want to.  Not to mention the fact that Dorie has written other books.  But more about that in a bit.  

  

I was looking through some of my earliest blog posts and was amazed to see how much my girls have grown.  When I started all this, Brianna was about the age that Gillian is now.  Wow.  After getting a new baking book for Christmas, Brianna made us breakfast (mini corn muffins) on Monday pretty much all by herself.  I have to say, it's quite a change to be just a coach when you're used to being the baker.  I promised Gillian that she could help me with the TWD recipe, fittingly the Kids' Thumbprints.  She helped me measure things on the scale and add them to the mixing bowl.  When the dough was done, she helped me shape it into balls and did most of the thumbprints.  Her only complaint was that she doesn't really like peanut butter. =)

We mostly followed the recipe as written.  I did chill the dough for a bit after it was made, since it seemed kind of soft.  To make sure the dough balls were all the same size, I used my #70 disher to portion the dough, which we then rolled between our hands to form smooth balls.  We filled most of the cookies with a couple big chocolate chips, but left a few empty to be filled with raspberry jam after baking.  A handful of cookies ended up with both when I discovered that I had a little jam left over.  The size of cookies we made took 14 minutes to bake.  We did skip the chopped nuts on the outside of the cookies; I knew there was no way the girls would even consider eating them that way.

The verdict?  Well like I said, G doesn't like peanut butter, so she isn't a huge fan of the cookies.  B thought that they were okay, but nothing great.  Fortunately, Jamie liked them a lot.  And I'm sure I'll be able to find a home for any extra cookies.  I was surprised to find that I preferred the jam ones.  I think it's because the chips didn't melt to fill the thumbprints (which makes sense, in retrospect).  If I make these again, I'll used chopped chocolate instead of chips, or just fill the holes with ganache after baking.

If you'd like to try the recipe, you can find it in Baking From My Home to Yours, of course.  For this final week of this incarnation of TWD, Dorie herself is our host and will have the recipe up as well.  If you're not currently a member of Tuesdays with Dorie, membership in the group will be opening up again very soon.  The next book will be Baking with Julia.  I've had a copy of the book for a long time, but haven't really baked from it.  I'm hoping that this will be the push I need to pull it off the shelf.  

I'm sure there will be lots of participants this week, so be sure to check out all the Links!