Hot Cookie - the Archive

Unassuming, but pecan-pie satisfying. "Ooh, these are good," said Doug, skeptical about whether he would like the latest experiment. I can hardly blame him. Some of my cookies have been worthy of the calories, and some have been a bust. Doughy bottom layer requires serious spreading into all corners of the pan. The first surprise with this recipe is the dough consistency for the bottom layer of the bars. I expected the standard shortbread mixture that crumbles into the pan and needs patting down before baking, like the lemon bars I often make (my standard of comparison for bar cookies). But you don't cut the butter in, as for a pastry. Instead, you beat the ingredients into a doughy blob and spread it out with a firm spatula to cover the parchment lining in the pan. I was concerned this would become a hard rock, without the light crunch of shortbread. Not to worry. The second surprise was the new taste and texture of the topping. It starts with the same eggs...

Not burnt - they're supposed to have brown edges. The French game of ring toss was the inspiration for the name. The cookies emerge from the oven with reliable dark brown edges, mimicking the rope rings used in the game. These showed real promise for flavor. Currants are soaked in rum, and both currants and the rum are added to the batter. In spite of using 151 Rum, very little rum flavor is left after baking. After all, this is the liquor, not a strong rum flavoring. I will have to remember that liquor evaporates during baking and is not a reliable flavor-enhancer. If only I'd consumed the rum over ice. Cookies pipe easily onto a buttered (and should have been floured) cookie sheet. They come off the sheet without the flour. The two whole eggs in this recipe produce a cake-like consistency. A client of mine was enthusiastic in his praise for these light, delicate disks. Of the several cookies on the plate, I was surprised this one caught his attention. I am not a f...

Cookies topped with sparkling sugar on left, granulated sugar on right. This cookie is almost as satisfying as the vanilla scent that fills the kitchen while baking.  Similar to the Christmas Butter Cookies, egg yolks contribute to their light, crumbly texture. The name is a reference to the long thin device that guides yarn back and forth across the warp in weaving (or a device on a sewing machine). But these cookies look nothing like their name. Frankly, I would not expect anyone to take one look at these cookies and say, "I know - a weaving shuttle." Not happening. Butter, eggs and vanilla await kneading into dry flour, sugar and salt mixture. I wonder if the recipe or cookie shape goes back to an era of early weavers, or if this was a 1950's invention for the magazine. The Cookie Book calls them "cigar-shaped," not an image I'd evoke to sell a cookie. The making is easy. After rolling bits of dough into, shall we say, a small slug shape (I ...

Flat and round on the page, with a slightly ruddy texture. Not so much eye-appeal against the insistently modern black background of their photo (one-fourth of the way down the page). These cookies might have been hockey pucks or cow pies. Maybe hard, maybe soft, but they were the first chocolate cookie in the book, maybe a sign of good things to come. Right away I thought of the "Famous Wafers" I buy every holiday season only to pulverize them for my rum balls recipe. I hoped my home made cookies would prove more worthy of eating in cookie form than the store-bought. Turns out the two cookies have only two features in common; they are both thin and richly chocolaty in flavor. Beyond that, my work was worth the trouble. This dough sets up firm and smooth after three hours in the frig, and I found them more friendly to roll out than cookies of the 1940's. Way to start the day right. The scent of dark chocolate permeates the kitchen as they roll, and completely ...

When we last left those Brandy Snaps, they crunched and crumbled all over my computer keyboard and the cat on my lap. Nothing worse than sticky cat fur. What to do? I went searching for the perfect filling, and as if by magic, found inspiration courtesy of italian-dessert-recipes.com . I'll give my version: Creamy Cannoli Filling 3/4 cup ricotta cheese (drained in fine mesh strainer a few hours or overnight, if possible) 3/4 cup mascarpone cheese 1/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted through a strainer zest of 1 lemon, grated finely 1 T. 151 Rum (or Brandy, or Gran Marnier) pinch of salt Whisk this together until smooth and plop it into a pastry bag. I used a 12" bag and a #32 tip, which has pointy edges around the opening so the filling oozes to the sides in little ripples. Squeeze into each end of the Brandy Snaps, placing the tip in the center of the cookie tube and backing out the tip to the end as the center fills. At the end of each squeeze, hold the tip in place s...

They don't contain brandy but they do snap. I'd call them Molasses Roll-ups - true to the very dominant flavor and shape, but I didn't write the book. If you like molasses and extra-crisp caramelized sugar, you'll like these cookies. These start out like no other cookie I've made - the butter, molasses and sugar turn to a syrupy mass in a pan on the stovetop. Then, off the burner, a slow addition of flour results in a gradually thickening batter as the mixture cools. Batter is not always pretty. Two teaspoons of batter per cookie, these are "drop" cookies, with no refrigeration needed.  They spread out flat, so place them about 3 inches apart. Easy to melt, mix, drop and bake, the easy part ends here. Cookies crisp up and hold their shape after cooling around a spoon handle or dowel. After 12 minutes in a slow (300⁰) oven, they sizzle and spread out with a bubbly texture. They emerge from the oven squishy-hot. Here's where your timing is esse...