The Missing cookies

I made a batch of Chewy Almond Bars yesterday and I gave some to church, a few to my friend Rick and a few I put in a cookie tin. I had forgotten to take a picture of them for this blog and so this morning I trotted into the kitchen took the lid off of the tin and found NO Chewy Almond bars. My only conclusion is that there is a cookie thief in my house. This thief complains that I shouldn't have cookies lying around because he can't eat them. So, no picture of the Chewy Almond Bars.

The Cookie Press

I baked Cinnamon hearts and Pecan Butter Balls yesterday. The Cinnamon hearts were shaped by a cookie press, a new toy. It was a little tricky getting the dough out of the press but they turned out alright. It don't think the recipe is that great however.
On the other hand the Pecan Butter Balls are great. There is a lot of pecans and butter but no eggs. The cookies don't spread out when they bake so they remain the balls you've shaped. Then you roll them in confectioner's sugar. What's not to like.

One of the great pleasures I experience with my project is that I can wake up realize that I have cookies to deliver and trot downstairs to the kitchen heat up a cup of tea and start baking. I have to admit that I have become a morning person over the years. I am clear headed and calmer in the morning. And baking is zen-like experience. You have to concentrate and think only about the task at hand. So with that said my labors of the morning yielded Koulourakia, Greek Sesame Ring cookies. This cookie has quite a bit of butter so it practically melts in your mouth.

The wonderful Gingersnap and others

I went off to Cleveland for a family event this past weekend and I brought two refrigerator cookies with me to bake at the in-laws house. I brought Tennessee Icebox Cookies and Pistachio Thins (the middle two cookies on the plate). I love the Tennessee Icebox cookie. It is made with brown sugar and slivered almonds, great texture and taste. The Pistachio thins are very crumbly, a good taste but extremely delicate. 

Yesterday I had my book group over and I made the Good Cook's Gingersnaps (the left cookie). What a great cookie! I love ginger and these are great. I had to watch the baking time. Nick's time was too much for this cookie and the first sheet was overdone, so I adjusted for the other cookie sheets. And I also made the All-Corn Biscotti. This biscotti is gluten free which means two things to me: no flour and hard work with. It does include an egg and some honey to hold it together but it doesn't do that very well. The taste is great but it crumbled a lot when I cut it for the second baking. 

So with the All-corn biscotti I have completed 66 of the 210 recipes in Cookies Unlimited. 

Chocolate Rings and Viennese Linzer Squares

Frankly rolled cookies like the Chocolate Rings are at best a labor of love and at worst a pain. The dough is very buttery and so it rests in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. When you take it out it is as hard as a rock so you have to beat it with the rolling pin. Nice image. Then you flour the surface and the rolling pin and the dough still sticks as you roll it out ... well you get the picture. It is a mess. Finally I resorted to rolling the dough out between two sheets of plastic wrap. Also this recipe for whatever reason specified a ring shape. I could have cut the dough into any shape I chose but I honored the recipe and voila, chocolate cookies in the form of rings. In this recipe the chocolate comes in the form of cocoa powder versus melted chocolate. I am not a fan of chocolate so the cookie tastes okay to me but not great. 

The distinguishing characteristic of Linzer-type dough is the addition of hazelnuts. This version is a bar cookie. In this case the dough was formed in the food processor. The Viennese Linzer Squares were interesting to put together, half of the dough is laid down in the bottom of the pan then you put the raspberry preserves and then you pipe a criss-cross design on the top and pop it into the oven. As you may recall this was my second try with this recipe. In my first attempt I forgot the sugar and it turned out terribly - sort of edible but the dough didn't spread as it baked. So sugar is important. This version emerged from the oven light and fluffy and tastes great. 

Mostaccioli Baresi and Dark Chocolate Macadamia Biscotti

Mostaccioli Baresi means Spice Cookies from Bari. They have an unusual ingredient, a third of a cup of sweet wine. Sweet wine is red wine and sugar that is boiled and simmered for hours reducing the liquid to a syrup. Another ingredient might not be evident when you taste them is the cocoa powder. It gives them a rich taste. To create the shapes you roll pieces of dough and then cut them diagonally. After they bake you dunk them into icing and then pop them into your mouth. Some of these delicious morsels didn't quite make it. I dropped a few of them in the oven. 

To further my mistakes of the week, the biscotti should have had hazelnuts not macadamia nuts. I mistook the package and put in the wrong nuts. My tasters didn't mind, but I'll have to bake the real recipe soon. I have finally gotten over the mess of the initial biscotti dough. I formed the logs in the pan versus putting them on a board and then onto the cookie sheet. This means less frustration on my part. This biscotti really grew in the baking process and they had a great texture. 

Cookies at the in-laws

When we went to Shuba Mulgaokar's funeral I had made a few cookies and so I took them along. My offerings to my in-laws were Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies, Date and Walnut Bars (not shown), Cheesecake Squares and Orange Spice Refrigerator Wafers.
The mourners loved the peanut butter cookies. They remarked that the cookies were not overly sweet and they were crunchy - thank you butter!
I must say that my experience with the recipes in this book is that they are geared to a more adult palate than perhaps the average cookie from the supermarket. Each cookie does have sugar or a sweetener in them but it is not overpowering and that makes each cookie a nice treat.

Taralli Dolci Di Pasqua

Otherwise known as Easter Ring cookies. I couldn't think of a better cookie to be making for Easter service coffee hour. This platter was my only offering, Pam created mounds of delicious treats and Vaudeen made her beautifully decorated vanilla butterflies and chocolate eggs.
The Easter Ring cookie is a molded cookie. The dough was beautiful. It is made with melted butter and that does something wonderful to the consistency of the dough. This cookie is formed into the ring shapes by rolling a bit of it and creating a circle.
You then bake the rings and then frost them. The confectioner's sugar based frosting sets so fast that I had to frost then sprinkle each cookie - no separation of jobs - they had to be dunked and sprinkled within seconds to keep the non-pareils to stick.
This is a light cookie and good with coffee and tea.

Bar, Drop, Refrigerator, Rolled, Molded, Biscotti to Name a Few

My baking adventure during the last week in March included (from the top) Sour Cream Fudge Cookies topped with a chocolate glaze, Buttery Anisette Biscotti, Hungarian Apricot Bars,  and Crisp Coconut Cookies.

The Sour Cream Fudge cookies are a drop cookie because you drop the batter onto the cookie sheet. Drop cookies are easy to assemble and easy to bake. My only problem with this recipe is keeping the sour cream away from Ram. He loves sour cream and eats it almost as soon as it hits the refrigerator. We've had "discussions" about which items are my ingredients and which are general household eats. 

My church buddies loved the Buttery Anisette Biscotti. This biscotti has butter and is light, has delicate flavors and is almost flaky. I would definitely make these again.
The Hungarian Apricot Bars have three steps involved before they pop into the oven. The apricot filling needs to cook and cool. The cookie base is simple enough to put together. And then there is the nut meringue topping which includes almonds with the egg whites. People raved over them but they were more time consuming than other bar cookies and not spectacular looking, but I suppose the prove is in the tasting.
The Crisp Coconut cookies are molded, that is they are rolled into a ball and put on the cookie sheet to bake. Other molded cookies are formed by cookie molds. These cookies have an unusual ingredient, one I'd never heard of: Baker's ammonia or bicarbonate of ammonia. This ingredient makes the cookie puff and gives them crispness.

61 cookie recipes done and 149 to go

Expresso Brownies, Lemon Pistachio Biscotti and Almond Cream Wafers. The brownies are classified as bar cookies, the Biscotti is twice baked - hence the term biscotti = twice baked in Italian, and the Almond Cream wafers are refrigerator cookies; you make up the dough in a cylinder, chill it for at least 24 hours and then cut and bake.

Dutch Almond Cookies, Currant Squares and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti. The Dutch Almond cookies are refrigerator cookies - easy, easy. The Currant Squares came together nicely though it did take some time because you had to soak the currants to plump them up before you can incorporate them into the batter. And the Chocolate Chunk biscotti. Biscotti is simple to put together but this dough was a messy blob and not any fun to work with. However it all came out in the oven and met with rave reviews.

Cheescake Brownies, Loaded with Chocolate Chip Cookies and Aunt Ida's Poppy Seed Cookies. I really like the poppy seed cookies. Both the chocolate chip and the poppy seed cookies are drop cookies. Drop cookies are "dropped" on the cookie sheets and baked. The cheesecake brownies are luscious, a rich chocolate layer on the bottom and a creamy cheese layer on the top. A great cookie to take to a pot luck. 

The Linzer Bar Story

Bar cookies are relatively straightforward to make and are akin to brownies. In fact, Nick's book lumps them together in the Bar cookie chapter. As I've been cooking along, I've started to feel that I could make a few types of cookies with my eyes almost closed. I've gotten a bit overconfident. Well my overconfidence bit me. I was ready to take on yet another Linzer-type cookie. This was the Viennese Linzer Square. I read the recipe and the dough is made with a food processor. Easy. So I put ingredients in the processor, processed, heated up the raspberry jam to liquefy it. Spread the dough, spread the jam, piped more dough on top, fought with the dough and put the whole thing in the oven. Something wasn't quite right. It wasn't baking right. My last foray into the Linzer tart world was frustrating and I really didn't want to repeat that scenario. Anyway, the pan baked on and something wasn't right.  Lo and behold I forgot one ingredient, the sugar! Sugar makes the dough spread in the pan and obviously gives the cookies their sweetness. Well, I had to make them all over again. Which meant I had to get more hazelnuts and more raspberry jam. The second batch's dough behaved so much differently than the first one. And baked differently too. The dough spread and had a much better aroma. So, my lesson is that haste makes waste and oh, what a waste.

Back to Blogging with a lot to say about Cookies

It's been awhile since I have blogged. I was out of town the last week of March visiting my in-laws in Cleveland. My brother-in-law's mother was not fairing well and they had to go out of town for a couple of days so off I went. As I write this on April 10, I have come back again from Cleveland. This time to attend Shuba Mulgaokar's funeral. She was a lovely, lively woman who will be missed. She and my sister-in-law lived off and on together for 30 years, cooking together, raising my sister-in-law's children together. I give them both a great deal of credit. I don't think I would have the love or patience to have another woman with me for that long and on such an intimate level. My sister-in-law is a saint. She cared for her mother-in-law lovingly and with great kindness, seeing to her every need. She and my brother-in-law took her out of the hospital even though she needed oxygen constantly and could hardly walk. They improved her quality of life immensely and she was visited by family and friends up until her last day.
So what does this have to do with cookies. Well nothing really. Though I have been baking I haven't been blogging. So I am back to the blog and still having a grand time working though Nick Malgieri's book.
His cookies are for adults. They are not too sweet and have lovely flavors.
One criticism is that some of the instructions are very detailed and extremely easy to follow while the odd others leave me a bit stymied.
Okay, let's see what I've been up to.
Since March 9th, I have made Currant Squares, Dutch Almond Cookies, Sesame Seed Wafers, Loaded with Chocolate Chips Cookies, Cheesecake Brownies, Aunt Ida's Poppy Seed Cookies, Bittersweet Chocolate Shortbread Squares, Langues de Chat, Peppery Cheddar Coins, Buttery Anisette Biscotti, Hungarian Apricot   Bars, Sour Cream Fudge Cookies, Crisp Coconut Cookies, Date Walnut Bars, Vanilla Pretzels, Orange Spice Refrigerator Wafers, Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies, Taralli dolci Di Pasqua (Easter Ring Cookies), Cheesecake Squares, Mostaccioli baresi (Spice cookies from Bari), Dark Chocolate Macadamia Nut Biscotti. I will get into each experience a bit later. I'm off to a women's retreat.
Pictures to come!