Hot Cookie - the Archive

Thumbprint Cookies with apricot, strawberry and blackberry centers. A Thumbprint Cookie by any other name ... is still a thumbprint cookie. In 1948, these were called Jelly Centers. OK, so that is also descriptive. The dough for these cookies is firm and can be rolled into little balls immediately, although it does ask for 2 hours of chilling. The recipe calls for a 3-to-1 flour-to-butter ratio, and the equivalent of an egg (actually, two yolks) per cup of flour. Compared to the floppier doughs I've been mixing, this has a higher solid to liquid ratio. The egg yolks add richness to the recipe. After baking two batches on different days, I did not get the baking time just right. They got a bit overcooked when I turned off the oven after 15 minutes and left them in to evaporate the butter that bubbled at the edges. Then, after chilling the dough a couple of days, 10-12 minutes of baking was not enough; the dough inside remained uncooked and, well, doughy. Maybe if I'd fo...

I have consistently weighed in below 151 for more than two weeks. I'm calling it half the goal achieved. A couple pairs of pants are noticeably looser and others fit much better. The muffin tops are still there, but smaller. I can see a better shape in the mirror - at least at some angles. My friends have been remarkably kind about not asking my weight, but they do ask how I plan to lose while baking cookies. I find it difficult to write about weight loss. It's like writing about religion. People cling to deeply held beliefs about weight loss which, much like the troublesome pounds, are hard to shed. Remember that 149 on my scale is 150 by the doctor's office scale. These beliefs may have come from one authority or another, many of whom tout elaborate theories or philosophies in a popularized book, and are only partially based on science. If you have a diet that eliminates specific foods, doesn't put health at risk, and it works for you, go for it. I won...

Nothing says love like heart-shaped beets. Thanks to my gardening friends, Barry and Margaret, I served these to Doug for dinner tonight. There were the beets. There were the cookie cutters. What could I do? Happy Valentine's Day.

Refrigerated dough needs to warm a bit and rolls out slowly. Just as I wondered whether I would find a cookie that rolled out easily, along came these butter cookies. In complete contrast to the floppy refrigerated doughs I've been working, a slab of this dough broke off from the rest and landed on my counter with a thump. At first, it barely moved under my rolling pin. But no matter how clean my pin became, the dough did not stick. (Happy dance!) With a bit more work, it finally gave and rolled to a perfect flat layer, about 1/8-inch thick. TECHNIQUE: Don't try to roll a firm dough from 1 inch thick down to 1/8-inch in a couple of passes. As my pottery instructor used to say, "Everything in clay is done slooow-ly." Same for cookie dough. The dough cuts perfectly. The hard-boiled yolk, put through a fine sieve, distinguishes this recipe from those of other butter cookies. The yolk is supposed to give the cookie a very light and crisp shortbread texture. I...

Third night: Notice the brown tips - these cookies don't cook evenly, another strike against them. The book calls for a blue icing onto which you drop white dots at each star point. I could barely see any contrast in colors in the photo. Because the cookies themselves were lacking, I decided to treat them as "practice." I mixed up a small amount of plain white icing (1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar and a tablespoon of lemon juice - not the one in the book), and tested my piping technique. Disco Dust makes these cookies sparkle, but doesn't improve the taste. I felt like I was writing with the wrong hand; I need the practice. My mixture flowed out the tip, alright, but way too easily. The border lines I drew on the stars wanted to drip over the sides. I adjusted where I laid down the icing - not so close to the cookie edges. Problem solved. The borders set up by the time I'd edged a dozen cookies, and I flooded the centers. The up-side of runny icing i...

"We have bakers ammonia, if you need it," Greil told me as soon as she heard about my blogging project. "What is bakers ammonia?" I asked. "It's called for in some old cookie recipes. It makes cookies light and crisp. It's hard to find, but we have it." "OK, I'll check." I felt like saluting. I had entered the world of Home Cake on Roosevelt Way in Seattle. (They don't have a website, but Yelp has reviews.) It is half the size of a 7-Eleven, the walls and shelves are government-issue green, and they are covered with cake pans, decorating equipment, cookie cutters, fondant, sugars, cupcake papers, cellophane bags and tiny boxes for gifting truffles and baked goods. Every item has a number. "What I really need is a piping bag and some tips. I think this kit would be a good start," I said. "Oh, but for cookies you'd want a slightly smaller version of each tip in this kit. Instead of a 4, you want a 3, ...

First night : "Makes about 6 dozen cookies." I read through the rest of the recipe, and considered the meticulously cut star shapes with two-toned frosting in the photo. I could do without a 6-dozen-cookie-with-icing task, so I mixed up half the recipe, wrapped it in plastic and went to bed. Second night: I tried to ready myself for frosting cookies, which would be the third step in this process. I'm not really a glutton for punishment, and I haven't frosted a cookie since my kids were little. I can extrude cookie dough through a disposable plastic bag, but icing a cookie requires special equipment. First, you draw the outline of the cookie around the edges with perfectly flowing icing through a tiny metal tip on the end of a pastry bag. You let this dry while keeping the rest of the icing moist. Guess what? It all wants to dry out, so you have to cover it with wet paper towels. I remember making only a limited amount and putting it in my pastry bag all at onc...