Just 1 more cookie: September 2013

Saturday, September 28, 2013

(Caramel) Dreams Can Come True

Some might say it was a bad sign that it was raining.  I had to take a cab through the city to get to the airport, and as luck would have it, the cab I was in had a flat tire.  The cabby pulled into the parking lot of an office building to ask for help, and to my delight, the office building was dry and warm and (best of all) had cookies.  An unattended plate of home-made caramel chocolate chip cookies.  Without hesitation or permission, I reached out and chose one--the best one--just for me.  It was the most incredible cookie I've ever tasted.  Then I woke up.  

It was the best bad dream ever, and it sent me straight to the kitchen.  Before long, I had come up with my Caramel Dream cookie.  They take a little more prep time than the average chocolate chip cookie, but I promise they are worth it!

Caramel Dream
Prepare ahead:

1/2 cup chocolate caramels and 1/2 cup vanilla caramels, all cut into quarters












Make sure the caramels are room temperature when you quarter them.  There are many flavors of caramel, but I like chocolate and vanilla the best.  Use what you prefer.  When the chocolate caramels are quartered, they're going to make a mess:

You have a choice:  eat the crumbs or toss them into the mixing bowl. Big decisions, folks.  Big decisions.
Despite my best efforts, I've become addicted to Riesen chocolate caramels.  I am sure there are other brands, but Riesen is all I can seem to think about.  They will be my downfall.  Once you have quartered the chocolates and measured them, they need to be frozen for at least 30 minutes.  (You can skip this step, but you will be awash in a sea of melted caramel when you are done.)

I know the recipe only calls for 1/2 cup of vanilla caramels, but a little more can't hurt, can it?

Once your caramels are in the fridge, fire up your oven to 350 degrees and get those cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.  Seriously.  If you don’t, the melted caramel will be a killer to clean up after baking and even worse if you skip the freezing step.  I can prove it:

Best case scenario: the caramels were frozen for 30 minutes before baking.

The vanilla caramels tend to behave better than the chocolate when baking. Regardless, the caramels that end up on the edge of the cookie will melt away from it.  You can try to make sure the caramels are somewhat hidden within the dough before baking, but as the cookie spreads during baking, some of the caramels inevitably end up on the edge and seep out onto the pan.  (What can I say? If you want tidy baking, go visit with Martha.)

Speaking of Martha, I have issues with parchment paper.  I love it, but it drives me nuts.  It's too stiff and never fits the pan right, etc.  One day when I have free time (two weeks after never), I will go to a specialty store and buy parchment paper sheets, instead of rolls.  Yes, I know silicone baking sheets are an option, but those have to be cleaned.  I love crumpling and  tossing the parchment paper when I'm done.

Those 30 minutes are ticking by....time to get going on the dough:

Cream:
 1 stick unsalted butter
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar

Add:
2 eggs (one at a time)
2 ¾ c. flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 ½ tsp. vanilla

Slowly add:
1 to 1 ½ cups dark chocolate chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
your quartered and frozen caramels

Once everything thing is mixed well, ferret out your sea salt.

Drop cookies onto your lined cookie sheet by the teaspoonful, placing them about two inches apart.  Salt lightly with sea salt before baking.  Bake 10-12 minutes until lightly brown on top.  As soon as the cookies are done, salt the tops lightly again with sea salt. Don’t even think about removing them from the pan until they’ve cooled for at least 5 minutes;  they’ll fall apart if you do.

Once the cookies have cooled for at least 5 minutes, pick them up one at a time and trim the mess with kitchen scissors:

A bit of a mess?  Maybe...
...but we can fix that.

If you're lucky enough to have a cooling rack, place the trimmed cookies on them to finish cooling.  If not, wing it.  I just got my first cooling racks last week (thanks Mom!), so I promise they will not make or break the recipe.  However, I do love them now that I have them.  

Collect all the caramel trimmings and feed them to people who will love you for it (or yourself). Or toss them.  When all is said and done, you'll have these beauties waiting for you:

Where's the milk?  Do not tell me you forgot the milk!?
So, that's it.  Except for one thing:  How will you make your dream come true? 

Friday, September 27, 2013

A Welcome Diversion (or two or three)

Few things start a weekend better than a fresh batch of cookies.  The craving?  Caramel Dream, my very own cookie recipe, which I dreamed up over the summer.  But first, some details:

A wet paper towel...yum!
Wet a paper towel.  Just trust me on this one.  I am going to teach you a trick that my friend, Chef Jason (Nejberger) taught me.  (I admit I was completely embarrassed that I did not know it already.  I comforted myself with:  That's why he's the chef.)  If you are going to use a cutting board (and to make the Caramel Dream cookies, you are), first wet a paper towel and put it on the counter and then put the cutting board on top of it.  Viola! Your cutting board won't slip.  Your fingers and thumb will thank you. 

Now, let's get down to business.  After you fix up your cutting board, you'll need chocolate and vanilla caramels:
Caramels for now...Giacobean coffee for later
Each of these little beauties needs to be unwrapped...you may eat two (2) of each flavor.  No more. No less.

So modest in their wrappers...
...yet oh so irresistible


Yes, the chocolate ones will be messy. You must eat the crumbs.
Now get out the big knife (and if you are not thinking of Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, you should be), and quarter all of them.  Yes, it takes a little time, but it's so very worth it.  I promise.  It's not hard...You'll need 1/2 cup of the chocolate caramels and 1/2 cup of the vanilla ones.  Once the little morsels of delight are quartered, put them in the freezer for 30 minutes.  You'll be tempted not to, I know.  You'll want to forge ahead, moving straight to the baking.  Patience, my friend.  Patience.  If you do not freeze the caramels now, then when you bake them, the mess will be much greater than you ever imagined possible.  Freezing the caramels makes them behave better during the baking.  I learned this the hard way. 
Oh no!  You quartered more than 1/2 cup!?  You may eat the difference. You're welcome.
I had just put the caramels in the freezer, and things were humming along nicely in the kitchen, when the doorbell rang.  

It was Frank and Omar, the delivery guys.  They had driven up from Texas with 9 boxes (9!) of irreplaceable treasure from my parents.  


I was no longer Betty Crocker.  


 I was Ralph Phillips in Looney Tunes, 

Ralph Phillips in From A to Z-Z-Z-Z
but instead of daydreaming about being a bird, I was daydreaming about the boxes.  Full of treasure.  I should have known perfectly well what was in those boxes (I packed them a few months ago), but I can't remember what I had for breakfast, much less what I did months ago.  I knew it was good stuff, but I just couldn't remember exactly what all the good stuff (NINE BOXES!) was.  Looking at these boxes made me realize:

I could go for what is behind Door #1 (bake cookies) or go for what is behind Boxes #1-9.  BOXES!  I totally went for the boxes and forgot all about those caramels in the freezer.  Did I mention there were 9 boxes?  I was a little excited.  

Here is what I promise:  I will not include photos and lists of all the treasure I found.  However, I will delight you with important cookie treasure from my mom, to wit:

Peanuts! (hypo-allergenic)


Hosting bridge club this week?  Surely you'll want to make sugar cookies that are perfectly suited to the occasion.
No less than 3 (THREE!) vintage cookie decorating presses.
My well-planned cookie baking was way off track.  I was in deep and not likely to correct course anytime soon.  (Other people, like Victoria Elizabeth Barnes, welcome diversion as well.  It's not to be confused with distraction, an entirely different thing.)  

Suddenly, a little voice in my head was saying, "You know, you have a pretty big collection of cookie cutters."  And I was saying back to myself, "No, I don't.  I don't collect cookie cutters."  And the voice said, "Yes, you do.  I dare you to take them all out."  And just like the 4th grade boy on the back of the bus who can't say no to being dared to aim a spitball at the back of the cute girl's head, I say to myself:  "Fine.  I'll do it!"  Which is how I found myself taking a picture of these:
All my cookie cutter friends
I bet you don't have one of these:

That's the Cassini satellite. Space cookies!


Here are the best in show:

My elephant, plain
My elephant, pink and sparkly
I'm a little tea pot...
I'm a little tea pot all gussied up.
Then I stopped and took a deep breath and thought:  I do have a lot of cookie cutters.  Funny how that happened.  I could make sugar cookies now that they are all out.  But sugar cookies don't have chocolate, and I really wanted chocolate.  And chocolate means caramel chocolate chip, which means: I needed to check on the caramels, which had been in the freezer for hours.  Which makes me realize: some days are about the diversions.  If you are lucky enough to have one, go with it.  The cookies can wait.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Field Trip 101...as Simple as Black and White

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Field Trips and Special Guests, in which I bake with a friend and solve the world's problems.  (All in a day's blog.)

City chick: Alfonso

Perhaps with the exception of Alfonso, an incredibly sophisticated Barred Rock chicken, few things in life are black and white.  Everywhere we turn, we are faced with partisanship.  City or country?  Republican or Democrat?  Chocolate or Vanilla?  What's more, I learned this week that partisanship actually makes you stupid. (Thanks for the heads up, Michael Buckley.)  Suddenly this conundrum was keeping me up at night, so I decided to get professional help to put things in perspective.  I went straight to Lori--she's one of my dearest friends AND a psychologist.  (A two-fer!) 

Meet Lori!  She's the best.
Lori was happy to help me through my crisis, and just like that, I'm sitting at her kitchen table solving the world's problems (you're welcome). 



Ohhhh...that's a professional Kitchen Aid MixMaster.
Sure, Lori's PhD means she's great in a crisis, but what really counts is that she's a baker par excellence. (She's even had her own baking business.)  Somehow we would bake our way out of this conundrum together.  Like any good therapist baker, she sat me down, and we attacked the problem by consulting the DSM-V of baking:  Baking Illustrated.  

The well-loved keeper of all things sweet.
The key to answering the partisan problems began on page 448:  Black and White Cookies.

The best thing about Baking Illustrated? The helpful hints! (NO lemon flavor! What were you thinking?!)
There are those (Jerry Seinfeld) who take one look at the Black and White cookie and think of racial harmony.  Or yin and yang.  If you are from New York City, you instantly recognize the Black and White at the city's signature cookie.  But not everyone concurs.  Note that if you go to Boston, it's known as the "Half Moon." (Thanks, Red Sox Nation.)  But I am troubled.  How can it represent all that is right if the chocolate and vanilla are separate?  How can it be the cookie of harmony if we can't even agree on its name?  Again with the partisanship.  Undaunted, Lori and I persevered.  First, the cookie ingredients:

The Cookie
Ah, King Arthur Flour, my love.  My one and only.
4 cups (16 oz.) plain cake four

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but still cool

1 ¾  cups (12 ¼ oz.) granulated sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon lemon extract

1 cup milk

This is a serious recipe.  When a recipe gives measurements in more than one way (cups and ounces!) and gives lengthy descriptions of butter and egg temperatures, you are in the presence of greatness.  It also means you better pay attention to the details:

This is what room temperature organic eggs and butter look like. Wait!  They look just like regular eggs and butter.  (The kettle is on for tea.)

Lori has incredibly high standards, which is why eating at her house is sublime and baking with her makes me feel slightly lazy.  Everything she uses (from equipment to ingredients) is top notch--that's what being a pro will do to you.  It's awesome.  But it's also awesome to be the schleppy home baker (me) who is perfectly happy baking up a batch with whatever is in the cupboard.  Mix and match, my cookie-loving friends.  Whatever gets you to the cookie.  

These little pockets of wonderfulness are going to bake at 375 degrees, so Lori gets the oven going and moves the racks to the lower and upper middle of her oven. Folks, do yourself a favor:  know your oven.  Know how it heats (Evenly?  I doubt it.).  Know how they run (20 degrees hot or cold)?  With baking, it matters.  And for the love of god, buy some parchment paper.  Life's too short to wash cookie sheets.

I watch, mesmerized, as Lori gets to work.  Yeah, yeah, I know how to bake, but Lori's a pro.  She combines the dry stuff and sets it aside (boring), but then she gets to work creaming the butter and adding the sugar.  She sets her awesome MixMaster to work, and we realize we have a few minutes to wait while the butter and sugar get fluffier and fluffier.  The perfect time to visit Lori's chickens!  A few steps out the door, and here we are chatting with the ladies:

I like to call them the Kitchen Chickens--it's just fun to say.


Here's Alfonso (again)...of course the black & white chicken is Lori's! 

























The butter and sugar are ready when they look like this:

It takes time to get this kind of fluff...be patient!
Now it's time to add the eggs, vanilla and lemon extract.  Make sure you scrape down the sides and the bottom so that it is all mixed very well.  The mixer won't just do it all for you.  If the butter isn't mixed evenly, the cookies will not bake evenly.  Period.  Set the mixer on low and add a little of the flour mixture.  Then the milk.  Then the flour.  Then the milk. Then the flour. Then the milk. Then the flour.  (You should be done now.)  

She's a pro, but you can and should attempt this at home.
Now comes the tricky part.  These cookies, as Lori pointed out, are really little cupcake tops.  This means that you need to treat them accordingly.  You're baking a cake.  (And here you thought it was just a blog about cookies--try to stay with me, because we're way outside the box today.)  To follow proper cake protocol, you must taste the batter to make sure it is good.  (YES, you must!)

YUM!  Raw eggs are GOOD!
To get the cookies onto the cookie sheets (which you have lined with parchment already, right?) you will need a 1/4 cup measure and a spoon (like I have) or one of these nifty measuring cup scoopers (like Lori has):




Scoop out 1/4 cup balls of dough onto the parchment paper and place them 2 inches apart, like this:  


Next, wet your index and middle fingers with a little water and then gently pat the cookies down, like this, until they are about 2 1/2 inches wide:

So shiny!
Bake these little pat-a-cakes for 20 minutes, rotating the pans in the oven after 10 minutes.  They are done when they are light golden brown on the edges.  

Beauties!
After baking, let them cool for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  "OH NO!" you say, "My cookies turned out like THIS:"

Perfectly imperfect
Lori, veteran of many batches of Black and Whites, says the edges get all smushy like this when you don't scrape down the edges of the bowl and stir them back in enough when doling out the dough.  The good news is, you can just trim them up with a knife and make them look as round as the moon.  They'll be iced, so no one (but you) will know!

Now...The Icing!  This is where the Black and Whites come into being. 

Icing
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/3 cup water
5 cups (20 oz.) confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate (either in the microwave or on the stove over water; either is perfectly fine with me) and set it aside.  In a separate pan, bring the corn syrup and water to a boil and then remove the pan from the stove.  Immediately pour in the confectioner's sugar and vanilla into the corn syrup mixture and stir until combined.  Transfer 3/4 of the vanilla mixture into the melted chocolate and stir until combined.  (Yes, you heard it here first:  vanilla and chocolate are combined!  SEE, it's NOT simply black and white! The revolution--or is it revelation?--begins.)

From here, you set to work icing.  The first big decision:  do you start with the vanilla or the chocolate?  We divided and conquered.  Lori took vanilla, and I took chocolate.  Or was it the other way around?

Look closely...what do you see?
Now it's Lori's turn to be dismayed--the chocolate has gone matte.  She likes her icing nice and shiny.  (See photo above for examples of both.)  The problem?  The chocolate icing cooled too much.  The solution?  Either reheat it ever-so-slightly or add a few drops--drops!--of hot water.  As soon as the chocolate looks glossy again, you are ready to go.  Same thing with the vanilla.  Of course, some of us don't care if our icing is glossy or matte (those are lipstick terms as far as I am concerned), but for those of you who do care, you now know what to do.

So we're working, working, working, and it's entirely possible I was licking my fingers and icing cookies at the same time, but this batch was for us, so I didn't care.  I was throwing caution into the wind.  The next thing I knew, I was questioning the whole notion of Black and Whites.  Why I asked Lori are the chocolate and vanilla kept separate?  The separation is a false choice.  They taste the same when mixed together.  My chef pal, Patty, recently pointed out "No one really messes with Black and Whites." But I am a Native Texan.  I mess.  I looked at Lori and said Let's go crazy.  Let's blur some lines.  Mix ALL the chocolate and vanilla together!  And we did, ladies and gentlemen, we did. (Actually, Lori did.)

Blurred lines.
First, we were cautious.  We made a few brown and whites.  Then, we felt brave and went for the full brown:

Look at those bad boys.
And you know what?  They were delicious.  All of the them.  The traditional Black and Whites, the Brown and Whites and the Browns.  By the time we sat down and had a few, I was feeling much better.  Thanks to Lori, I had a made it through my crisis of partisan stupidity.  Black and White?  Maybe--if I feel like it.  But really, I like Brown, and I think the world would be a better place if more people did, too. 

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Just a Smackerel of Something



It was the kind of day—with a crisp fall breeze and cloudless sky—that demands a particular type of appreciation.  A sit still and remember kind of day, and (to take a phrase from A. A. Milne) I needed "just a smackerel of something" to help me get the remembering right.  Something rich and satisfying was in order, and I knew just the thing: The Bumper Book.


Edited by "Watty Piper" (who is apparently not a real person, but that's another story), The Bumper Book is full of fair-to-middling 20th century children's literature.  What makes it great, however, is the art, by a woman known simply as Eulalie.  As children, we all have those things—a book or a letter; a trinket or photo—that make us feel magical. For me, it was this book, and I poured over the pages again and again hoping to somehow make it real. 


And so it was, on this particular sit still and remember day, that I found myself remembering how badly I wanted the book's world to be real.  I slowly turned the pages until I came to  "Animal Crackers" by Christopher Morley.  Suddenly I was dreaming of the kitchen Christopher and Eulalie imagined for me:


Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers, I think;
When I'm grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.

What do you choose when you're offered a treat?
When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"
Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
It's cocoa and animals that I love the most!

The kitchen's the coziest place that I know:
The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
But they don't have nearly as much fun as I
Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
And Daddy once said he would like to be me
Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!
_________________________________________

I have a black cat like the one on the photo, and there's a kettle on my stove.  The kitchen is the coziest place that I know, and I love having tea.  But one line had me panicked:  What do you choose when you're offered a treat?

Suddenly tea time had become an existential crisis.  What do I choose!?  With that, I shut the book and headed straight to the kitchen.  Faster than you can say "Eulalie" I was preheating the oven, fishing out cookie cutters, and searching for my best animal cracker recipe.

In truth, there aren't that many good animal cracker recipes.  Oprah has one, but I don't trust it.  (It included frosting and sprinkles.  Too fussy.)  I found another that listed allspice, mace, and ginger in the ingredients, which all sound completely unnecessary.  William and Sonoma's recipe...well...I just refuse to believe their recipes are real.  In the end, King Arthur Flour has the best animal cookie recipe.  (King Arthur's Flour is my one and only;  I don't bake with anything else.) 

And yes, the recipe is important, but let's be honest:  What you really need are stellar cookie cutters.  Though I don't have an entire zoo, I do have a few animals to choose from:

Lions and elephants and giraffes...oh my!
The list of ingredients is brief:


A few caveats: I hope to never cook with anything that has the word "Princess" in it.  I am assuming this is a play on the whole "King Arthur" thing.  I skipped the special "Princess Cake and Cookie Flavor" and just used vanilla extract.  The results were terrific.  Next time I will use 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, just because I am crazy like that.  Also, I did not have any oat flour.  I did have plain oats, though.  I ground it up and used it instead.  

Last but not least, I added my own special touch:  I sprinkled a very small amount of vanilla sugar on top of each cookie before I baked them.  Last spring I bought a jar of vanilla sugar at the world-famous Demel café...




As far as I am concerned, this jar is worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox.  I use it very sparingly on special occasions like sit still and remember days and mornings when my sister, Sharen, is visiting from Texas and doesn't have her special Coffee Mate for her coffee. 

The verdict?  Absolutely delicious animal crackers, with or without the vanilla sugar.  You'll need to line the pan with parchment paper and bake at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes.  Do all that, and you'll have these:

See the crystals of vanilla delight?


Like the plate?  Check out Miss Blackbirdy
Go ahead, bite me!








If you want to get wacky and super size it, go ahead:


Whether you have vanilla sugar, appreciate the day for what it is--it's only 24 hours.  Make it real.  Sit still and remember:  life's what you bake it.