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...

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 ...

Biscotti di Pinoli go with vino or caffè . The cookie in front is shown bottom side up. Backdrop is a tufa stone wall, common in Civita. Tony, our resident architect here in Civita, is an excellent cook. His kitchen sports two encyclopedic series on Italian cooking I could only wish to find for myself. They are limited editions, and no one in all of Italy seems to be selling theirs. One volume is dedicate d to piccola pasticceria , or small dessert things, which include cookies, tarts, filled eclair-type pastries and fried pastries. Based on the photos, I selected a recipe for Biscotti di Pinoli. My overly wet mixture of almond paste and sugar. Of course, I had to compromise. The recipe called for almond flour; from Seattle I brought almond paste in a can. This almond paste contains some sugar and water, so I was concerned the end product would be too moist. I mixed the almond paste and the sugar with my hands, and unlike their photo of a dry mixture, mine clung together in ...

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.

Written Sunday, April 10, 2011. Tony shows me around the garden.Our "apartment" is in the tall building in the background. My second suitcase arrived with my gardening clothes and cookie making equipment on Thursday, three days late, after missing the connection in Amsterdam to Rome. (See my April 1 post about how I found myself as a gardener in residence in Civita.) I was reluctant to wear my city shoes into the garden, but the fact was that I had work to do, so city shoes and clothes have been sacrificed. I know this is a cookie making blog, but sometimes cookies have to be set aside. I am here to help an architect care for the garden that helps feed academic fellows who come to this small architecture institute . Tony, the architect on site, has been working this garden for years, and I am careful to ask his preferences: Which tasks to prioritize: Besides weeding and planting, Tony wants a culinary bay leaf hedge trimmed (grows like a weed), and a gravel...