Blessings, Darlings!
Weird dreams. The intersection of 'Tara and Frank, in Chicago' (or north suburbs?) was important. Gathering wild bamboo shoots was important. But they were not shaped like they really are. And ... oddest of all .... Roman Catholic communion wafers that were shaped sort of like palmiers but had the image of crucified body on them, but often just skeletons, colored differently each which might have related to the Loa or to chakras - it wasn't my path, either Christian or Eastern or Afro-Caribbean, so I didn't examine it closely. And we were getting cookies from a Jewish Temple as well. But the hosts HAD been consecrated at a Mass, and I was surprised that they were being handed out in bulk.
The oddest part is that I so rarely remember any of my dreams at all. Maybe it's the influence of tomorrow's full moon? Or the siren call of cookies?
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Monday, January 17, 2011
Chocolate Chip Cookie War
Chocolate chip cookies. So traditional. Except .... the provoke wars.
Blessings, Darlings!
Ah, the chocolate chip cookies I have had in my life!
For years, the woman in the house next to ours baked and maintained a constant supply of them. She used M&M's(TM) in the ones she baked. All the kids in the houses around her came by for our daily dose. And that was a fairly large number of kids - I was born close to the center of the Baby Boom. I was only allowed to shake her down for cookies once a day, no more. I don't know if the other parents had the same rule. Come to think of it, I don't know how my parents would have known if I violated the rule, but I was a Good Kid so actually never did.
That was so long ago I don't recall anything else about the cookies - can't say if they had much brown sugar, estimate relative amounts of butter vs shortening, or anything else. I was no foodie then!
Back in high school, quite some time ago, the school cafeteria had chocolate chip cookies that I felt rocked. Thin, hot from the oven, the grease tended to soak thru' the waxed paper bags they were sold in. These totally featured brown sugar (or the mix had cheap molasses added in quantity. The flatness, and texture, spoke margarine as the main fat. And that there was LOTS of fat.
Ah, the days of me and cookies both being thin! Such a long, long, LONG time ago.
Years passed. I didn't really do sweets for a long time, preferring salty snacks.
Then I married and had a child. Which led to adult vs child cookie wars. For, as every parent knows, there are events you have to bake for. Bake Sales. Parties. Pot lucks. I learned for the first time the intricate effects of different types of fats in baking, and different types of sugar.
I used only butter in MY cookies then. Imagine my flat cookies, and my astonishment at seeing cookies that were thick! OTOH, I was also astonished that those chocolate chip cookies were pallid things - only white sugar in them.
Then, out of no where, my husband and son went into war over sugar. Yes, as noted a couple of weeks back, the chubby hubby and I like cookies that aren't overwhelmingly sweet. So I usually used the full amount of brown sugar in chocolate chip cookies .... but reduced or eliminated the white sugar. Our Spawn, young as he was, rose up in protest!
They also fought over nuts. Husband wanted nuts, Spawn didn't. I was having to make a batch of cookie dough, split it into two parts, and add nuts to one part and more sugar to the other.
This had to stop.
How did the war end?
Obviously - I taught the Spawn to cook. And I put him fully in charge of making his own dang cookies.
Since then, he has happily made batch after batch of chocolate chip cookies, searching for the recipe HE likes back. He liked the online recipe for Alton Brown's Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies (from the "Three Cookies for Sister Marsha" episode), but we don't know where our printout of that got to. A few days ago he did the recipe from AB's "early Years" cookbook. But the recipe seems different - the cookies turned out much more cakey than chewy. The Spawn is sad, but still eating them. He still has a quart of the raw dough for them in the fridge - he bakes about 3 at a time to have the at their hot gooey best. He will survive, and test new recipes.
The battle rages on.
Frondly, Fern
Monday, January 10, 2011
Too Sweet?
Blessings, Darlings!
The Chubby Hubby and I aren't into desserts that hit you with intense sweetness and nothing else. We prefer desserts with lots of flavor and moderate amounts of sugar. The Spawn rather despairs at my habit of cutting the sugar in half in chocolate chip cookies and pies.
So I make things like well-spiced Oatmeal Raisin cookies typically, which we all enjoy.
But this holiday season, when every time the Chubby Hubby planned to make the Crescent cookies that I gave the recipe for last week something came up and he had to abandon the plan for that day, I hit the cookbooks to look for a cookie to make myself. Having moved 3 boxes of cookbooks (yes, I DID get rid of some before we moved!), that took a while. And deciding which recipe to try took a while, too.
I ended up making America's Test Kitchen's "Best Chocolate Butter Cookies", and they SO totally rocked that they seem destined to be a family favorite for years to come! They take little sugar in the recipe, which is well to our taste, I could form them into a roll and slice and bake them which suits me better than rolling and using cookie cutters, and a simple glaze (or a dusting of powdered sugar) kicked them up for presentation.
The recipe is in America's Test Kitchen's "Family Baking Book" - we've nicknamed that one "Big Blue" (we call their "Family Favorites" cookbook "Big Red"). I love all their cookbooks, most of which we even have autographed by Christopher Kimball! And all of which we bought ourselves, since ain't no one sending me review copies of ANYTHING for this blog. Alas.
Frondly, Fern
The Chubby Hubby and I aren't into desserts that hit you with intense sweetness and nothing else. We prefer desserts with lots of flavor and moderate amounts of sugar. The Spawn rather despairs at my habit of cutting the sugar in half in chocolate chip cookies and pies.
So I make things like well-spiced Oatmeal Raisin cookies typically, which we all enjoy.
But this holiday season, when every time the Chubby Hubby planned to make the Crescent cookies that I gave the recipe for last week something came up and he had to abandon the plan for that day, I hit the cookbooks to look for a cookie to make myself. Having moved 3 boxes of cookbooks (yes, I DID get rid of some before we moved!), that took a while. And deciding which recipe to try took a while, too.
I ended up making America's Test Kitchen's "Best Chocolate Butter Cookies", and they SO totally rocked that they seem destined to be a family favorite for years to come! They take little sugar in the recipe, which is well to our taste, I could form them into a roll and slice and bake them which suits me better than rolling and using cookie cutters, and a simple glaze (or a dusting of powdered sugar) kicked them up for presentation.
The recipe is in America's Test Kitchen's "Family Baking Book" - we've nicknamed that one "Big Blue" (we call their "Family Favorites" cookbook "Big Red"). I love all their cookbooks, most of which we even have autographed by Christopher Kimball! And all of which we bought ourselves, since ain't no one sending me review copies of ANYTHING for this blog. Alas.
Frondly, Fern
Monday, January 3, 2011
Crescent Cookies
Blessings, Darlings!
Since I was too busy to blog during the Solstice Holiday Season I'm going to start the year blogging about cookies.
My family is pro cookie, and we bake. The Chubby Hubby's cookie specialty is a recipe he got from his mother, Crescent Christmas Cookies. I've no idea where his Mother got it from. Family? A woman's magazine? A bag of flour? I bless whatever the source was! Very rich, pleasantly sweet, pecan nutty, he makes a double batch because, while with a week of aging they become even better than when first baked, they are go good when first baked that one batch never survives the aging process!
Baking this year was complicated by the oven in the new-to-us house. The temperature control in it is not particularly accurate. I SO wish I had a digital thermometer to test it with, but I used two analog oven thermometers in it when we first moved in. Set at 350 F (and left to pre-heat for 20 minutes), one read 305 degrees, the other read 325 degrees. Either way, the oven runs low when set at 350. Set at 450, the oven thermometer team said it was far more accurate, one reading 450 one reading 445. Alas, this recipe calls for baking at 325 degrees!
So we set the oven at 350, and ended up baking them longer than the recipe called for. Rather like doing good BBQ, 'low and slow'! They turned out particularly well. I'm posting the recipe as we got it, but you might want to experiment with lower temperature/longer time baking if you try it yourself.
And, yes, you MUST do the creaming with your hands. I tried making them myself at the end of 2009, using a blender. They didn't hold their shape, baked up wrong, were miserable.
CHRISTMAS CRESCENT COOKIES
Ingredients:
1/2 pound butter 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon water
2 cups flour, measured before sifting 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped Pecans Powdered sugar
Cream butter with hands. Add sugar, vanilla, water, and cream them together, again with your hands. Sift flour and salt together, then stir them into the butter mixture. Add nuts and mix thoroughly.
To form the crescents, pick off a walnut-sized piece of dough, and roll it into a crescent shape. Place on baking pan, spaced about an inch apart.
Bake 20 minute in a slow (325 degree) oven. Removed when the 'points' of the crescents are lightly brown, but before the entire cookie is brown. They will be pretty delicate at this stage, place carefully on racks to cool a bit. While still warm, roll in powdered sugar.
Makes not nearly enough cookies.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
Since I was too busy to blog during the Solstice Holiday Season I'm going to start the year blogging about cookies.
My family is pro cookie, and we bake. The Chubby Hubby's cookie specialty is a recipe he got from his mother, Crescent Christmas Cookies. I've no idea where his Mother got it from. Family? A woman's magazine? A bag of flour? I bless whatever the source was! Very rich, pleasantly sweet, pecan nutty, he makes a double batch because, while with a week of aging they become even better than when first baked, they are go good when first baked that one batch never survives the aging process!
Baking this year was complicated by the oven in the new-to-us house. The temperature control in it is not particularly accurate. I SO wish I had a digital thermometer to test it with, but I used two analog oven thermometers in it when we first moved in. Set at 350 F (and left to pre-heat for 20 minutes), one read 305 degrees, the other read 325 degrees. Either way, the oven runs low when set at 350. Set at 450, the oven thermometer team said it was far more accurate, one reading 450 one reading 445. Alas, this recipe calls for baking at 325 degrees!
So we set the oven at 350, and ended up baking them longer than the recipe called for. Rather like doing good BBQ, 'low and slow'! They turned out particularly well. I'm posting the recipe as we got it, but you might want to experiment with lower temperature/longer time baking if you try it yourself.
And, yes, you MUST do the creaming with your hands. I tried making them myself at the end of 2009, using a blender. They didn't hold their shape, baked up wrong, were miserable.
CHRISTMAS CRESCENT COOKIES
Ingredients:
1/2 pound butter 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon water
2 cups flour, measured before sifting 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped Pecans Powdered sugar
Cream butter with hands. Add sugar, vanilla, water, and cream them together, again with your hands. Sift flour and salt together, then stir them into the butter mixture. Add nuts and mix thoroughly.
To form the crescents, pick off a walnut-sized piece of dough, and roll it into a crescent shape. Place on baking pan, spaced about an inch apart.
Bake 20 minute in a slow (325 degree) oven. Removed when the 'points' of the crescents are lightly brown, but before the entire cookie is brown. They will be pretty delicate at this stage, place carefully on racks to cool a bit. While still warm, roll in powdered sugar.
Makes not nearly enough cookies.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
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