Silence

It was a busy morning.  I was cleaning the house and doing some baking (note: this was before Lent started!).  I had a handyman in, working on the bathroom.  My youngest daughter called at lunch to ask if she could have two friends over.

When they got here, the three of them pulled out their cell phones so they could compare ring tones – all at the same time. The hammering from the bathroom was challenged and defeated by the decibels at the kitchen table.  Three competing ring tones were analyzed – and modified, and retested – over the pasta. The handyman went out to his truck – ostensibly to eat his lunch, but I suspect he couldn’t hear himself hammering over the symphony in the kitchen.

And then I served these cookies. Phones were set aside, and the kitchen became an oasis of silence, broken only by an occasional guttural sound of gastronomic appreciation.

This recipe comes from the March issue of Bon Appetit magazine.  It makes a fairly small batch of cookies (I got fourteen) which is a good thing, because they’re best served on the day they’re made.  Four to the handyman and six to the hungry musicians left just four for dinner that night.

Fudgy Meringue Cookies

(adapted from Bon Appetit)

1 cup chocolate chips, divided

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons cornstarch

2 large egg whites, room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Place 1/2 cup chocolate chips in small microwave-safe bowl. Cook in 15-second intervals until chocolate softens; stir until melted and smooth. Cool chocolate to lukewarm, about 10 minutes. Whisk 1/2 cup sugar, cocoa, and cornstarch in small bowl to blend.

Using electric mixer, beat room-temperature egg whites, vanilla, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and cream of tartar in medium bowl until soft peaks form. Add remaining 1 cup sugar in 4 additions, beating just to blend after each addition. Continue to beat until meringue is thick and glossy like marshmallow creme, about 2 minutes longer. Beat in cocoa mixture. Fold in melted chocolate, then 1/2 cup chips.

Drop batter by rounded tablespoonfuls onto prepared sheets, spacing 3 inches apart. Bake cookies 7 minutes. Reverse sheets and bake until dry-looking and cracked, about 6 minutes. Cool cookies on sheets 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks and cool completely.

Muffins and Metaphysics

This will probably come as a shock to anyone who knows how many chocolate chip cookies I make, but chocolate isn’t my favourite dessert flavour.  I love it – of course – but given a choice I usually pick a dessert that features fruit.

So these muffins are the perfect recipe when I’m baking for myself and a chocoholic.  The taste of orange and the scent of almond are a perfect combination with the chocolate.  It’s probably my favourite recipe right now.  If my family didn’t love them as much as I do, I would happily eat the whole batch myself.

However, I always get in a bit of a metaphysical fog when I read the recipe.  It calls for “half a cup of half and half.”  Is that one-eighth of a cup of … nothing?  If I think about it too hard I’ll have to lie down, and I’d rather just bake the muffins.

Thanks to Valerie of pixie-baker.blogspot.com for this amazing addition to my recipe book.  If you want to use her recipe using dark chocolate, click here.  My variation with semi-sweet chocolate follows:

Orange and Chocolate Chip Muffins

zest from one orange

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

1/2 cup of half-and-half cream

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°.  

Lightly grease or line 12 muffin cups.
In a large bowl, rub the orange zest into the sugar until it becomes fragrant and coloured.  Mix in the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  Set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs.    Stir in melted butter, cream and almond extract.  Add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling each about two-thirds full.  

Bake for 18 - 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean.  Serve warm.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Bake Cookies

When Andrew asked me to bake cookies for his office (see my last post), I immediately thought of Lemon Buttermilk Cookies.  I love these cookies.  And the recipe is – like all my favourites – really easy.  All you have to do is follow the directions.

Unfortunately I don’t always read the directions in advance, and this was one of those times. When I finally got around to icing the cookies, it was several hours later.  The directions read, “Glaze the cookies while they are still warm.”

Well, that was impossible.  Or was it?  I had just taken something else out of the oven, and it was semi-warm.  So I put these cookies back in the oven for about thirty seconds, thereby warming them up, so I could follow the directions as required.

I will say this:  properly glazed or not, my husband called me at 8:07 to tell me that all the cookies had been eaten by his coworkers.  That’s 8:07 a.m.  So either he dropped the plate on the way to work and was too embarrassed to tell me, or his coworkers really liked these cookies.  I’m going with the latter.

Like many of my favourite recipes, I’ve taken this recipe from http://pixie-baker.blogspot.com. 

Lemon Buttermilk Cookies

1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour

½ tsp of baking soda

zest of one lemon (save the juice for the glaze)

½ tsp of kosher salt

6 Tbsp of butter, room temperature

¾ cups of granulated sugar

1 large egg

½ tsp of almond extract

1/3 cup of buttermilk

Glaze ingredients:

1 ½ Tbsp of buttermilk

½ tsp of fresh lemon juice

¾ cup of powdered sugar

In a small bowl, sift together flour and baking soda.  Whisk in the lemon zest and kosher salt.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter.  Add the granulated sugar, egg and almond extract, and beat until light and fluffy.  Beginning and ending with the flour mixture, alternate beating in with the buttermilk.  Beat until well combined.

Place dough on the cookie sheet (I made about a dozen), leaving about an inch and a half between cookies.  Bake at 350ºF for 11 – 12 minutes, then remove from oven and cool for 1 – 2 minutes on a wire rack.  Glaze the cookies while they are still warm.

To make the glaze, mix the ingredients together until smooth.  Spread or drizzle over cookies.

Less is S'more

I was asked to provide three kinds of baked goods for my husband’s office. Trying to think of a newish recipe, I decided on S’more Cookie Bars, which I recently found on the wonderful pixie-baker.blogspot.com. I made them a week ago for the first time, and Andrew and the girls all loved them.

So how could there be a problem?

Problem #1: I ran out of parchment paper and had to use a patchwork quilt of what little I had left.

Problem #2: I forgot how messy and sticky these were when I cut them. In case you’re curious, an outside temperature of 35ºC (95ºF) does not improve my ability to tidily slice melted marshmallows.

Problem #3: The stakes are pretty high. Not only were these bars being taken into the office, they’re being posted online for my many readers to see!

Outcome:

Not nearly as abysmal as you might think. Because of the parchment paper dilemma, I had to cut them in the pan. But other than wrecking the first one or two, they actually came out well. And no one expects S’mores to be perfectly symmetrical, anyhow.

Give them a try. Just make sure you have lots of parchment paper.

S’More Cookie Bars (recipe adapted from pixie-baker.blogspot.com)

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups flour

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 Lindt Swiss Classic 100 g chocolate bars

1 1/4 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)

Method

Preheat oven to 350ºF .  Line an 8x8 inch pan with parchment paper and butter it, allowing it to hang over the edges for easy removal.  (Blogger's note:  this step is pretty important.)

In a large bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar and white sugar until light.  Beat in egg and vanilla.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt.  Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined.  Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan.

Place chocolate bars over dough.  Spread chocolate with marshmallow creme or fluff.  Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned.

Cool completely before cutting into bars.