Hot Cookie - the Archive

Almonds are real work-horses in gluten-free baking. They are the basis for these rolled out cookies. You don't have to be on a gluten-free diet to like them. They are a stunning blend of the nuts, chocolate and spices (cinnamon and cloves). Bonus is that they roll out easily for cutting into shapes. I didn't find the dough sticky as the recipe suggests. These roll out easily between sheets of wax paper. They do want to sit for 3 hours before baking. They are meant to be crisp! These cookies, originally from Switzerland, have a firm consistency that holds up to handling. Add to these features the subtle spices (cinnamon and cloves) that most people don't combine with chocolate, and these are winners. They remind me of Mexican chocolate used for hot cocoa. The one drawback is that the sugar in these cookies gives a gritty consistency. I would try a superfine sugar next time. Ingredients storage note: The dough gets mixed in a food processor, and because you sta...

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...

"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...

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...

These hold their shape - happy dance! Plain in back row, candied orange peels added in front row. Egg white wash helps hold pignoli. I have made similar cookies. In fact, the very first cookie in the book, Cajun Macaroons, is similar in type and style. These require blanched almonds (see previous post), pulverized in a food processor or blender with egg white, then mixed with sugar and a bit of liqueur. Tops get pine nuts over a light brushing of egg white. Too simple a recipe to let it be, I wanted to try some variations. Candied orange peel to the rescue! Recalling the Cornetti I just made, I added finely pulverized candied orange peel to part of the dough. Another portion got larger bits of the candied peel. The plain ones were light and almondy, as expected. The key difference from the earlier macaroons is their shape; they come out of the oven exactly the same shape as they go in. No melting flat in the heat of the oven. Ultimate control achieved! Pignoli stick t...

Not yet satisfied with my version of the Italian almond cookies I made in Italy, I continue my search for the right ingredients and techniques, but success eludes me. The cookies I bought in Rome and in Tuscan hill towns (see my April 17, 2011 post) were smooth and moist on the inside, crusty on the outside, covered in pine nuts, almonds or pistachios, had a fine flavor balance, and were made in round or tubular shapes. My first batch, made in Italy using my standard almond paste in a can, was too sweet. The almond paste contains sugar, which seems to overpower the cookies. European cookies, in general, lean toward less sugar. I knew I'd need to try an alternative to almond paste. As well, my cookies did not sit up in proud little balls--they melted into pancakes during cooking. That will never do. Pretty and tasty made with Bob's Red Mill finely ground "Almond Meal/Flour," but they did not hold their shape. My next experiment, when I returned home, took me ...

Lacking my own recipe, I have embarked on a search for a recipe to approximate the nut-covered almond cookies I have found in the best panificio 's. They seem to come in different shapes and rolled with different chopped nuts, but many exude that floral scent of almonds. The panificio in Rome, where Doug and I bought panini for lunch, baked a particularly lovely assortment, all displayed with names of each cookie. Pinolate were covered in pine nuts (pinoli or pignoli). Bocconcini del Nonno are "grandfather's morsels," covered in sliced almonds. Brutti ma Buoni are made with another type of nut meat or flour. I believe the ones we got were made with hazelnuts, but some recipes online call for a mixture of hazelnuts and almonds. The only requirement is that they be brownish and rough textured, enough to be "ugly but good," as their name dictates. See this link for the controversy about how to spell pine nuts in Italian - pinoli vs. pignoli.

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...