Dunk & Crumble

Cookies & Bars

Little Cornmeal Cookies

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They’re  not entirely much to look at, these little cornmeal cookies.  I mean, they’re cute.  Ish.  A nice yellow color.  But no flashy icings or drizzles or nutty mix-ins.  No chocolate to speak of.  These cookies, though, they’re keepers.  They’re interesting (in a not-at-all-snarky way, I mean).  They’re not entirely sweet, but they’re not entirely savory.  More cookie than cracker, but just barely.  Not even close to entirely spiced.  Hints of ginger and cinnamon, but only hints, not slaps.  Because these cookies don’t slap you until they slap you.

You’ll be sitting there on the couch, contemplating washing your hair and wondering why you ever choose a nail polish color other than Essie’s Lollipop (because it just makes you feel the best about life), and you’ll be cautiously sipping your too-hot cup of tea and planning out your grocery list for tomorrow and you’ll want a snack.  Just a little something, to go with your steaming tea.

So you’ll toss a cornmeal cookie in your mouth.  A whole one, because they’re quite small and because who says you have to be dainty, anyway, while you’re sitting on your own couch with crazy hair and tea?  And you’ll start to chew, still thinking about groceries, but then the tiny grains of cornmeal will pop gently under your teeth and the cookie’s soft crumb will yield perfectly and your tongue will do dances with butter, with faint sweetness and traces of spice, and so you’ll stop.  You’ll stop everything but the chewing, reveling in this wondrous little cookie, and when you swallow you’ll feel both happy and forlorn.  So you’ll pick up another cornmeal cookie, and the process will repeat itself.  Again and again, amid sips of hot tea.  Until all of the tea, or possibly all of the cookies, are gone.

Or until somebody rudely (wisely?) snaps shut the lid on the cookie tin (ahem, Ben.  I both thank and resent you.  …Thank you).

Do you prefer your cookies entirely sweet?  Must you always have some chocolate?  Do you even drink tea?  And would you make an exception for a humble little cornmeal cookie?

So many questions.  So many cookies.  The answer, I’m pretty sure, is yes.

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Spicy Molasses & Brown Sugar Cookies

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Hey!  Look!  A present!  I found your weekend baking project.

This time of year, all I want to do is eat warm cookies.  Crisp-edged and chewy-centered cookies.  Specifically, these.

These taste like Christmas.  Those are Ben’s words, not mine, and he’s not even Jewish, so it’s probably definitely true.  These Christmas-time beauties are as soft and satisfying as a fresh sugar cookie, but they become blazingly rich and complex from the addition of molasses, brown sugar, and cozy warm winter spices.

A quick pre-oven roll in a pile of turbinado sugar (it’s raw and chunky and doesn’t melt during baking) gives these cookies a gloriously poppish crunch around the edges; it’s just about as satisfying as that crackly sound your computer makes when it empties your “trash.”  You know that sound.

Wrap them in pretty bows or dotty bags, or just eat the lot while standing around the kitchen table.  Either way, be sure to share a few.  ‘Tis the season, after all.  Maybe with your sister?  Probably with Santa?  That guy knows when you’ve been nice.  Ben told me so.

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Chunky Peanut Butter Brownies

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A few things that are true:

1. Sharks can (sort of) sense fear.
2. Pumpkin patches in California are dusty and meltingly hot, even in October.
3. I’m having dinner with my Uncle Bob tonight.
4. My Uncle Bob lives in Minnesota.
5. Brownies are sometimes best with peanut butter.

I made these a few weeks ago, right after I got Dorie Greenspan’s baking bible which, incidentally, is called Baking.  It’s a fantastic book, covering everything from scones and muffins to loaf cakes and cheesecakes and special occasion cakes, too.  Hearty cookies to delicate French tarts.  Crisps, crumbles, custards, puddings, ice creams.  Also brownies.  Dorie writes neatly and enticingly, and her recipes are notoriously flawless.  Especially, I find, when they involve a bit of peanut butter.

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Chewy Granola Bars

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September is upon us, all of a sudden.  Doesn’t it always seem to slap you in the face with a Jansport backpack?  I mean, a few days ago I was drinking pink wine and talking about my favorite bathing suit cover-up, and today I had to go to the dentist and sharpen all of my pencils.  School buses are toting kids around as we speak.

So, fine, maybe I didn’t actually sharpen all of my pencils today, but can’t you feel it?  That shift from August to September, when everything starts to get serious and real and “back on track”?  You can.

There are pros and cons to this shifting paradigm.  My inner lazy lady mourns the loss of the slow summer months, but my typical oldest-child-type-A-eager-to-please-ism secretly heralds the crisp structure of autumn.  Let’s compare:

We’ll start with September’s cons:

  1. My birthday is not in September.
  2. Peach season is almost over.
  3. It’s now no longer appropriate to wear white pants.

And the pros?

  1. We can start legitimately thinking about Halloween costumes.
  2. After school snacks!
  3. It’s now no longer appropriate to wear white pants.

I’d like to call attention to the point about after school snacks.  Let’s make granola bars from scratch!  

I’d never thought about homemade granola bars before, and was entirely pleased with myself when I pulled these out of the oven.  I ate them happily, thinking myself the picture of sensible snacking health, until Ben pointed out that these are pretty much just cookies.

To which I replied, “so?” to which he replied “just saying,” to which I replied “SO??”

And then we dropped that issue.

Homemade granola bars!  Like cookies, only not.  Perfect for September.

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Brownie Berry Tart

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Lots of things happening over here, people!  Firstly, my nails are painted a color called “marshmallow.”  Clearly, good things, they are happening.  There are new projects to think about, bright yellow sneakers to wear, picnics to be eaten at the beach, and cross-country flights to take for the 4th of July.  My head is excited.

So let’s celebrate and get patriotic with this thing.  What’s more American than a brownie?  I mean, besides Tim Tebow and pie and manifest destiny and stuff.  Brownies!  Maybe we’ll bake them up in a tart pan, and infuse them with fresh raspberry.  And if we pile them high with  fluffy, white whipped cream and bright red and blue berries, well, then we do our forefathers proud.  Here’s looking at you, Thomas Jefferson.

Happy Independence Day, Amurica!  I made you a brownie.  You feel like home to me.  You have your issues, but really, who doesn’t?  On the whole, I think you’re pretty wonderful.  Covered with berries and cream.

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Oatmeal Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Today is a grumpy day.  A scowling, brooding, arms-crossed sort of day.  Why?

No good reason.

You’ve heard of these days?  The ones where you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and everything and anything is just sort of annoying?  That dust on the bathroom window sill?  Dumb.  Your morning workout?  Ugh.  Dumb.  This bowl of blueberry yogurt?  So dumb.

Okay.  Let’s snap out of it.  Snap snap snap.  We are not grumpy.  We are lucky.

So lucky!  Lucky to live in California, where the sky is blue and the peaches are already in season.  Lucky that our kitchen cabinets are painted purple, and that there are fresh flowers in our brand new bud vase.  Lucky for our families.  Our friends and our Bens.  Lucky to be healthy and alive and wearing neon yellow sneakers.

And lucky for the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

On a day like this, one of these (multiples of these, I think we can agree), might be in order.  Lucky us.

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Creamy Chocolate Date Bars

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It’s getting closer.  The big date, I mean.  You know, the date!  The one on which I board a flight from New York City, wing my way out to California, and then stay there.  Like, for good.

March 5th is that date, and there are signs everywhere telling me that it’s just around the corner.  Signs like a wine- and pasta- and wine-filled going away party.  Extra tight hugs.  Empty shelves.  The stack of brown cardboard boxes cluttering my apartment, and the men here to load them into a truck and move them across the country.  Just a few signs.

As the date approaches, I’m getting antsy.  Excited.  Nostalgic.  Hungry.

On the subject of dates and excitement and hunger, I’d like to tell you about these date bars.  I’ve been on a date kick lately; it seems I buy a new carton every time I’m at the grocery store.  I enjoy them, roughly chopped atop my cereal or oatmeal, or else straight from the carton; I rip each soft, sticky date open, wrest out the almond-shaped pit, and pop them, one after another, onto my happy tongue.

When the urge to bake something with my weekly carton of dates hit, I was initially reluctant to go with date bars.  Date bars sound more like health food than dessert.  But, after some thought, I reconsidered.  I decided that, if I add some thick, rich and chocolatey ganache to my date bars, already filled with crunchy, oat-y cookie and creamy, naturally sticky-sweet dates, they might be okay.

They are.

So here’s to move dates and fruit dates, some of which are bittersweet and full of excitement, others of which are covered with chocolate ganache.

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Black and White (and Pink) Cookies

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The black and white cookie.  The official unofficial cookie of New York City.  Or is it the unofficial official cookie?  Hm.

I made mine black and white and pink, for Valentine’s Day.  Would Jerry Seinfeld approve?  Probably not.  But if you look to the cookie, you will see that these are really kind of perfect — they are a sweet sort of tribute, my personal homage to this city so nice, they named it twice; they are my little love letter to New York City, a city I’ve called home for three years, but which, quite soon, I will leave behind.  For now.

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Chocolate French Macarons

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Look at this fanciness! Sometimes it’s fun to be French and fancy.  And then add sprinkles.

I first made macarons in pastry school, and I remember being surprised and actually a little bit disappointed at just how simple they are to make.  I mean, these are macarons.  French ones! These dainty little pretties line the windows of the best French bakeries, taunting us Americans, we with our thick crusted pies and face-sized cookies, looking all sloppy and oafish in comparison.  Stupide, they say, look at how delicate we are!  Look how elegant, how sophisticated!  Out of your league, girl.

Well, nope.

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Classic Gingerbread Cookies

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I have this friend.  We’ll call him “Big Smooth.”  He recently sent me an email entitled “A Dunk & Crumble Complaint.”  In the interest of complete and total transparency, I think you should see it.  It reads:

“Dear Molly,

As you know, I have been a loyal reader of Dunk & Crumble for months now, and I am generally supportive of all content on the blog.  I find it refreshing and witty, and the recipes always look delicious.

However, I feel you have betrayed my trust as a reader by posting a recipe for pistachio cookies.  As you know, I am deathly allergic to pistachios, and I do not support any pistachio-related items of any kind.  And yet, you have done the unthinkable – you have ENCOURAGED your readership to not only cook with pistachios, but to feature them in the holiest of dessert forms – a cookie!  Well, I for one will not stand for this – the pistachio is a deadly, ugly and terrible tasting nut that has no business going near a cookie.  I am deeply disturbed by this post, and I hope your other readers feel much the same way.

I sincerely hope that your next series of posts on Dunk & Crumble returns to its roots and features a wide variety of nut-free items that all of America can enjoy safely and deliciously.  In the meantime, I shall go into hibernation for a few weeks to ensure that the mass production of pistachio cookies does not permanently wound me.  And with that, I say good day.

Steve “Big Smooth” Brauntuch”

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I know.  It’s quite a note.  My response was as follows:

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