Hot Cookie - the Archive

Sweet Cottage Cheese Scones I knew they were more scone than cookie (see June 24, 2011 post). I formed a round with the rest of the Cottage Cheese Cookie dough, flattened it into a circle, and scored the top into wedges, baked for about 20 minutes, and--Voila! Scones. If you want to make this recipe as scones, I would use half the sugar. One cup of sugar for 2 cups of flour is a bit sweet for scones. They were just right with tart berries, though, or fruit prepared with very little sugar. Split them open and try the following toppings: Peaches sauteed in butter and brandy Rhubarb simmered with just a little sugar Sliced strawberries, in the buff Lemon curd and blueberries A dollop of ice cream, cream or sweetened mascarpone wouldn't hurt, either. The original cookie recipe is here .

Chocolate and crunch. The frosting is glossy, then dries to a satin finish. Remember those candied orange peels I made for the Cornetti? They come in handy for the Florentines. This recipe starts with cream, sugar and butter heated on the stovetop in a saucepan. The flavorings come next--almonds and the orange peel. A small amount of flour makes a stiff but moist batter from which to drop teaspoonfuls. The dropped globs get flattened by an offset spatula dipped in water. That way they bake flat into crisps that can be frosted with melted chocolate. Dough hot from the pan. Technique Note: Be sure to dip the offset spatula into cold water each time you spread the dough, which is very sticky. These are fairly easy to make, even with the frosting step. The frosting is glossy when melted and first spread on the cookies, and turns dull like flat paint when refrigerated to set the chocolate. The notes recommend semi-sweet chocolate, and I concur. I tried unsweetened and bittersw...

My "skewed distribution" cookies. If you like playing with clay, you'll love making these cookies. Form a long rope of the chocolate part and wrap it in the vanilla part. Bake the two long cookie bars once, then slice (like biscotti), and bake cookies flat for another 5 minutes. Sounds doable, right? The trick is to get each half of the dough the same consistency. The recipe doesn't accomplish that goal; the center is too stiff and the vanilla covering too flabby. I hate flabby. Chocolate center is too dry to hold together. Vanilla layer spreads and spreads. The problem is the timing of the dry ingredients. The recipe wants you to incorporate a full 1/4 cup of cocoa (dry ingredient) plus a half cup of almonds (another dry ingredient) to the chocolate half, at the very end of the mixing. The result? A stiff chocolate dough that barely holds together. Meanwhile, the vanilla layer gets no compensating addition of flour to firm it up. So, the vanilla outer...

Valerie's Tangerine Thyme Chocolate Chip Cookies Here's are the Tangerine Thyme Chocolate Chip Cookies my friend Valerie brought me as a hostess gift. Yum. The orange and chocolate scents waft up first. The thyme flecks make their way to the back of the palate and add depth to this combo. The recipe is here .

Pizzelle, round and rolled--I finally got the hang of the shaping. I can imagine the conversation in the Gourmet Magazine office when the bakers wanted to publish this recipe. "The only problem is: What can we call these?" "Right. Nobody can pronounce 'Krumkake,' let alone 'Pizzelle.' "Just Americanize it. They look like curled wafers." "Done." In the throes of the Cold War, I guess readers weren't expected to accept a foreign name for their cookies. These cookies come from everywhere but here--Norway, Italy, Germany. Credit where it's due, I say. Now, picture a San Francisco flat about the time this recipe was published. My mother's cousin, Maria Crosetti, could always be found with a project in the kitchen, even in her eighties. I called her "Mud-EE-ah" because I didn't grasp the gentle tongue-flip of the "r" in the Italian version of her name. I was 9. The day of our visit, she m...

Oven casualty. Still healing. My sacrifice to protect you and your loved ones from wasting calories on bad cookies.

I keep seasonings on two lazy Susans next to the measuring cups. Among them are all the spices in these cookies--cinnamon, ginger and cloves. The label "Fall Spices" graces that particular shelf. Sparkling sugar topping on left, granulated on right. I usually think about this type of cookie later in the year when I'm breaking out the wool sweaters and the leaves start to fall. When I made these--just a couple of weeks ago--summer hadn't started. These cookies were welcome. Everyone has a favorite ginger cookie and these are some of the best of their type. I love everything in them. Beyond the spices, the other flavors blend without overpowering each other. Who can go wrong with a little brown sugar and molasses? The instructions say to bake them for 7-8 minutes, a little less for a chewy cookie, my personal favorite. If you want a crisp cookie, add 2 minutes to the cooking time. Easy. The recipe calls for dipping the tops in sugar just before baking. I wo...

Cookie Baking Progress How many of the 69 cookies in the Gourmet Cookie Book have I made so far? My very smart readers will notice that the "count" is included in the titles of each post. My last post was on cookie number 24. That makes 35% of the 69 cookies in the book. (I work with statistics in my real job--can't resist them here.) My excruciatingly smart readers will notice that we are halfway through the year, yet I am only a third of the way through the book. Behind my goal. Time to get cracking. Of course there is some lag between making and writing about each cookie. I have made 28 cookies to date. Would anyone be surprised to learn that more time goes into the writing than the baking? I sometimes have several blog posts in the works at once, and add ideas about several cookies as I play with part of the dough one day and part of it the next, or test whether some cookies really taste better the second day, as the book sometimes says. Still, it's catch-up...