Hot Cookie - the Archive

My friend Gitte brought along a batch of Chocolate Ginger Shortbread. These refrigerator cookies needed several hours of chilling, so she made them up the night before. It is a handy thing to do when you know you are expecting company and want to have some fresh cookies to serve. They roll into a tube shape and you can cut as many as you need from the roll, saving the rest for another time. Gitte's Chocolate Ginger Shortbread Never mind the cookies. Gitte gave me the best kitchen tip of the day. She reuses butter wrappers whenever she can. When the piece of parchment I cut did not cover the entire baking sheet, she reached for the butter wrappers to fill in the empty spaces. Why didn't I think of that? She was reluctant to have me spill this tip in my blog. "Maybe you'll find it's toxic or something!" It turns out that lots of people keep their butter wrappers and reuse them to butter a pan. And for many other purposes. See the comment...

Here's what I took to Christmas lunch at Jill and Mara's. Clockwise are: Cranberry-Pistachio Biscotti (a recipe from local teacher Iole Aguero), Anise-Scented Fig and Date Swirls (ice-box cookies from the book), Mocha Toffee Bars, Walnut Acorn Cookies (this time made with almonds inside the cookie and pecans on top), and (center) Bourbon Balls, a family favorite version I've been making for 30 years. The mischievous elves did not get even one.

#37 Trios (2007) Trios, just before baking. These thumbprint cookies, arranged in threes, were the most colorful of those we baked during our daylong cookie extravaganza (see December 20 post). We filled the holes with a trio of apricot, currant and raspberry jams, each one a festive ornament. My niece and sister-in-law liked using the end of a wooden spoon to poke the holes in the dough balls. The technique gave a uniform and professional effect. As instructions go for thumbprints, these were a bit high-maintenance. The dough wanted to be chilled before rolling into balls and again after forming and filling each cookie with jam. I think one or both chills can be eliminated because the dough seemed plenty firm to hold up to rolling and poking. The recipe is here . Angela melts the chocolate in the double boiler and spreads it on the dough (right). #38 Mocha Toffee Bars (1987) Besides the cashews and chocolate, the best part of this recipe is the "What's ...

Mixing, rolling, dropping - cookies, that is. Julie and Gitte (foreground) drop dough for Mini Black & White Cookies. My kitchen came alive on Sunday with clouds of confectioners sugar, flurries of flour, the whir of the mixer, and the hum of conversation while rolling, dropping and dipping cookies. Never have so many cookie bakers graced my home at one time. A true hive of activity buzzed for more than the allotted four hours, as friends took pity on my blog task and polished off 10 recipes from the Gourmet Cookie Book . My descriptions of the cookies will be brief in the next couple of posts, but they will include many photos of our fun and the bakers' opinions of the cookies. And we did have opinions. Some positive, some negative. Some of my guest bakers might as well have been tasting different cookies altogether, so varied were their reviews of the same cookie. I confess I have been concerned that my recipe reviews have been a bit harsh, but bolstered by the ...

Readers may have noticed that my writing has sort of "blogged down" of late. What with OOT trips and the holidays, not much cookie baking got done. I feared I'd be baking from the same book till next summer. What to do? I've invited some friends to a "Bogged-Down-Blog Cookie Baking Party." Like a cookie exchange where we all get to take home a variety of cookies, except we'll all make the cookies together. And all from The Gourmet Cookie Book. Each friend is bringing an ingredient -- a pound of butter, some flour, pine nuts, molasses, an extra cookie sheet, even a rosette iron. The oven will be working overtime, I'll be taking photos while we bake our way through 10 recipes. My counters are cleared for action. Time for some rest before the extravaganza! Posts to follow.

I wish I could say these cookies had an interesting shape, or showed off the baker's talent, or boasted a great flavor combination. Three strikes. I'm giving "Shoe Sole" Cookies the boot. Small round shapes were easiest to form. First, what could be appetizing about a cookie that in any way resembles a shoe? I'm thinking leathery, flat and hard. Not much going for it in the marketing department here. In fact, the only resemblance to a shoe sole is the shape. The recipe has us using an oval cookie cutter to mimic the shape of a shoe - not a pretty shape in my opinion. I cut mine into circles and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. A ring around the edge remains white because that is the part that is puffing up during baking, and not browning. These do have a light texture, owing to the Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry. That's right, "puff paste" and sugar - the only two ingredients in this recipe. Pastry from the freezer and sugar? No talent nec...

Fall has colored my days especially well this year, but they tell me that winter is on its way. Seattle maples held fast to their leaves until a couple of wind storms, and now a drenching rain blasts the color onto lawns awaiting my rake. The last of the summer veggies on my window sill, like me, prefer to be inside. The winter Delicata squash I dragged home on a trip through Eastern Washington are a dinner vegetable staple twice a week. More pears and apples than cereal grace my breakfast bowl. But as a child in Oakland, California, I best remember fall for the figs and persimmons. The last fruits harvested prefer a long, warm summer. So do I. I have that in common with figs and persimmons. Even now, the small display of orange and purple at my local grocery store turns my head. But $7 for a basket of figs? And only Fuyu persimmons - the hard, crispy kind. Where are the Hachiyas I'm used to? The kind that feel like a sack of mush before you can eat them. California persi...

Steve Hartman's remembrance of Andy Rooney this week would have been unmemorable, at least for me, except for Rooney's comment about -- ginger snaps: I like ginger snaps with milk.  But it's always hard to come out even. You either need one more ginger snap or another swallow of milk. It's just as hard to imagine the mountains Andy Rooney would make of such molehills. Why were his many essays at the end of each 60 Minutes episode so appealing? Perhaps he'd find the crucial pet peeve for some segment of the audience. Maybe his musings endeared us to him in the same way Uncle Les's "quirky" outbursts did at holiday gatherings. Maybe it was the way Rooney could make a story out of nearly nothing. Rooney was easily irked. And easily amused. And he found just a different enough perspective about things we so easily take for granted that we were forced to think about them all over again. Now, where did I put those ginger snaps? I like 'em with o...

Sandwich cookies with more oats than Irish. What makes an Irish coffee cookie? Coffee, Irish whiskey and cream would be my guess. They are all ingredients in this cookie's sandwich layers and in the filling. Sounds like the start of a creamy-smooth coffee dessert with a kick, right? You'd be wrong. This was the '70's, remember. Back to nature. Granola reached the mainstream. Whole grains were worshiped. These cookies were victims of the era. The first problem is the heavy dough. It contains twice as much oats as flour. Doesn't that take you back? I really should have stopped right there, thrown in some raisins and nuts, and let them be the oatmeal cookies they longed to be. But no, I trudged on. Is it dough or continental drift?  Oh, there go Iceland and Greenland. Or is that Australia and New Zealand? I dutifully rolled out the dough. It became a lesson in continental drift on my counter. I massaged it back together and tried to cut entertaining shapes...

Light, lemony, and hardly any calories per cookie. My dad planted a Meyer lemon bush in our back yard before I was old enough to notice that it didn't always grace the northwest corner. Each time I have visited, I have filled empty space in my suitcase with as many lemons as would fit. Thank you, Southwest, for letting me check that heavy bag! At home I would wash the best ones to keep for zesting and to cut slices for iced tea, whiskey sours and the like. The big ones, with less than beautiful skin, I'd squeeze, then freeze the juice in ice cube trays. I'd have the best acidic flavoring for soups, sauces, pies, seafood. Really, almost anything tastes better with lemon juice. Not much batter means really thin cookies. Lemon Thins are cookies pretty much made of lemon zest. OK, there is sugar and flour and butter, but not much. Notice that the batter, with all ingredients added, doesn't reach the widest part of the mixing bowl. Yet, the recipe makes four (count...

Three almond balls ( bolas ) in a row. "This one is good," my sister-in-law Jill told me. She tried not to express too much surprise, but I have regaled her with too many tales of failed cookies. And forced her to eat a few duds. I was glad this one made the grade. I liked it, too. You might think I am a hopeless romantic to fall for another almond cookie. (Italy, almond cookies. Almond cookies, Italy.) The fact is every country that can grow almonds has its special recipes for almond cookies. Portugal is no exception. The ground blanched almonds combine with dry bread crumbs, then the usual sugar, egg whites and almond extract. The dry bread crumbs are key. When the cookies are fresh from the oven, the bread crumbs add a perfect crunch to their rustic, nutty texture. Holes in the center ready for filling. These cookies don't "drop." You roll them in a ball ( bola ) and press a hole in the center, as for jelly-filled thumbprint cookies. Egg yolk ...

The past three weeks have posed many emotional challenges. The most recent and personal involved a search for the best assisted living situation for my mom. She is 99, in a wheel chair, and the 24-hour care she has received in her home for the past 18 months is prohibitively expensive. What to do? I recently realized that letting her run out of money and going on state Medicaid was not an option. In that case, she could only choose among skilled nursing facilities with available "medicaid beds," but not among the many assisted living homes she can choose as a private-pay patient. I needed to find care for her before her savings was depleted and use her home as a rental toward her expenses. I have spent the last month doing just that. I met with placement specialists who have shown me adult family homes in Seattle and equivalent homes in the Bay Area, where Mom has always lived. I selected one, and moved my mom there last week. All a very difficult process, my mom is griev...

"I have to say..." Susan paused with her hand stuck in grasp position as she gazed down at my most recent offering at knitting group. "They look a lot like breasts." The rest of us stared at the sugar-dusted mounds with a whole clove in the center of each one. Sure enough. Recalling my August 22 rant about crumbly, fragile cookies, here is a case in point. Although the editors call them "tender" and "buttery," the less flowery term is "fall-apart." Maybe I don't know how to eat a "delicate" cookie delicately. These make either a mess or a hazard. If you bite in, the crumbs go down your shirt. If you pop the whole thing in the mouth at once, the crumbs stick to every moist surface. Don't breathe in, whatever you do. The crumbs could choke you! What makes this cookie too much to bear, though, is the whole clove that is placed in the center of each one. The recipe says to remove it before eating the cookie! I re...

Crescent Cheese Cookies--prettier than they are tasty. I left off the powdered sugar dusting for the photo. Cookies with no sugar? It is not the same confection if all the sugar is powdered and sifted over the top. Feels like they're putting one over on me. This "cookie" is dough and filling. That's just not a real cookie. It is the dough that has no sugar. As if rolling out tiny pie crusts, you roll out 3" rounds or squares of dough, or cut a larger rolled piece of dough with cookie cutters. You put a half teaspoon of jam on each dough shape. Then, you fold the dough to enclose the jam. Crimp hard--trust me, the jam does not appreciate confinement and tries to escape. Then, roll into a crescent shape. They look like potstickers, except they are baked and drier on the outside. An unusual dough ingredient is "pot cheese," which also goes by the name "basket cheese." "Farmer's cheese" also is an acceptable substitute. P...

Sometimes I walk into my kitchen and baking cookies seems trivial in the face of other life issues. World finance and famine aside, life is hard emotionally right now. Family members struggle with health issues, change and loss. My most stressful responsibility is managing my mother's care in a city a thousand miles away. I call her every day, pay her bills, and coordinate doctor visits, house repairs and medication orders with her care-givers. I feel tense a lot. My blog began because I had trouble concentrating on writing about issues important to me. I had been writing regularly and bringing articles to a weekly writers' workshop for critique. After my mother's illnesses, my creative energies had stalled. My mind spun around friends and relatives far away. But I needed to keep busy and I wanted to keep writing, honing the craft. A cookie blog seemed the perfect choice. Busy-making, focused on a positive change (to lose 10 pounds), it seemed a less demanding writing p...