Cookies & Bars

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best—” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.

From A. A. Milne, of course. Silly old bear.

I don’t have a lot to say today; I just wanted to leave you with a little smackerel of something to taste.

…

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How Many, How Much

How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ’em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ’em.

You didn’t think I’d leave you without chocolate on Valentine’s Day, did you?

Silly.

…

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Things I crave in the blustery, shivery, bleary month of January:

1. Long, quiet mornings, and the peppermint tea and crossword puzzles that come with them.

2. Snowy beach hikes with Mom and the littlest sister.

3. Bowls filled with belly-warming heartiness.

pasta with Ben Fenton’s spicy sausage tomato sauce and fresh ricotta cheese

lentil stew with kielbasa and veggies

aunt Marie’s turkey chili

chicken and rice soup

January is a difficult month. Here in New York, it’s cold. Like, finger-numbing, eye-tearing, sorry-I-just-bumped-into-you-but-I-have-to-nuzzle-my-head-in-my-coat-because-otherwise-my-face-will-freeze-off cold. The holidays are over, so all the pretty lights have flown north for the next eleven months (apparently to some town named “Yourattic”) and the city sidewalks are covered with dirty snow and pine needles, sad remnants of the merriment of Christmas past.

Despite the searing cold, people are full of resolution, so the gym is brimming with runners and kick-boxers and yogis, and the blond woman who’s always there seems to now be always always there, which is both impressive and concerning.

Cookies are frowned upon. Salad is the darling of the month.

Ugh.

January plays host to this weird back-and-forth, one side of which takes one look outside and says stay in the warm, nothing good can happen out there, the other side chirping it’s a New Year! Be happy and healthy! Run faster!

Well. Fine. I consider myself an optimist (and, you know, someone who likes her pants to fit), so I’ll go to the gym. I’ll make a big, productive to-do list. I’ll drink more water, and less booze. I’ll even eat a bunch of salad. But I will finish it all off with a cookie.

Freeze and Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies
Barely adapted from The New York Times

These are decidedly not healthy, but I use a bit of whole wheat pastry flour in the batter to make myself think that they, you know, could be. I also flash freeze the dough in single cookie portions, so I can store the ready-to-bake dough in my freezer and bake myself one (or two, c’mon now) warm, fresh cookie(s) at a time. This method eliminates the threat of baking an entire batch at once and feeling the need to eat them all. I mean, we all have our ways of cutting back after the holidays.
Ingredients:

• 8.5 ounces all-purpose flour
• 8.5 ounces whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• 2.5 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 10 ounces light brown sugar
• 8 ounces granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions:

In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer). Add the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Add vanilla. Stop the mixer and add the dry ingredients. Gently mix together until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Using an ice cream scoop, drop cookies onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and use your fingers to flatten them slightly – you’re getting ready to flash freeze them, not bake them, so don’t worry about overcrowding the baking sheet; drop the cookies as close together as you can get them. When you’ve filled up an entire baking sheet, place the sheet in the freezer, uncovered, until the cookies are frozen through, about 2 hours. Once frozen, transfer the raw dough balls into a freezer-safe plastic bag and seal tightly. Store in the freezer up to 3 months, and when you’re ready for cookies, bake at 350ºF for 10-15 minutes (baking time will vary depending on how large you make your cookies – just be sure to remove them when they’re lightly golden and just browning around the edges).

It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees…

And making Grinch omelets.

But I promised you cookies and, for the sake of a jolly old guy in a red suit, cookies you shall get.

Classic Christmas cookies – cut-out sugar cookies piped with royal icing, usually – are fun to make and nice to look at (especially these. And these), but sometimes they’re, um… annoying. And before you gasp and yell “blasphemy!” I should tell you that I’m Jewish, so, you know. That’s already sort of a done deal.

I love a good classic Christmas cookie, but a good classic Christmas cookie takes time and patience. The mixing, the rolling, the chilling, the baking, the cooling. Then the mixing of the royal icing and the coloring and the piping and the flooding and then, quite importantly, the drying. Only then can you bite the head off an unsuspecting snowman.

This Christmas, I’m going for simplicity and warm, comforting flavor. Chocolate chip. Pumpkin whoopie pies. Chewy holiday spiced snickerdoodles!

I think, even for a Jew, Santa would approve.

Chewy Holiday Spiced Snickerdoodles
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1.5 cups sugar, plus extra (about 1/4 cup extra) for rolling
• 3 oz cream cheese, cut into small pieces
• 6 tbsp butter, melted
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon,
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium-sized bowl.

Combine the 1.5 cups sugar and the cream cheese in a large bowl, then pour the warm butter on top and whisk to combine. The mixture will be slightly lumpy. Whisk in the oil until combined, and then add the egg, milk and vanilla and whisk until smooth. Add the flour mixture all at once, and beat gently until the dough forms.

Using a spoon or an ice cream scoop, portion out the dough by the heaping tablespoon, and roll gently into balls. Put some sugar in a shallow bowl (about 1/4 cup) and stir in the spices. Roll each dough ball in the spice/sugar mixture, and place on a baking sheet, evenly spaced. Gently press each ball of dough with your hand or the back of a drinking glass to flatten slightly. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are just set and the cookies look slightly cracked. If you can’t decide if they’re done, take the cookies out of the oven. In the case of these chewy delights, underbaked is better than over.

Serve with a tall glass of milk for Santa, and maybe a side of carrots for Rudolph et al.

Just wanted to show you what I made at school this week:

It’s a cake stand! Made of pastillage!

Pastillage. Pah-stee-YAHJ. It’s really just a paste made from sugar, cornstarch, vinegar and gelatin – you roll it out like pie dough and cut it into shapes, and it dries hard. Then, barring any major disasters (this stuff is de-li-cate. It likes to crack and shatter), you can glue your shapes together with royal icing or isomalt, and voilà!

Cute little guy, isn’t he?

You know, I’m sort of sensing a trend with these showpieces. I think someone has a Peter Pan complex.

Oh, what, you think it’s me? Just because I happen to like chocolate chip cookies? And adorable mice? Tiny little sugar mice who like to wear overalls and cookie crumbs?

…Fine. But I mean come on – have you ever read If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff (great name, by the way)?

If you haven’t, you should. And if you have, you sorta like my cake stand, don’t you?

Admit it. You want a cookie.

I wonder what happens when you give a blog-reader a cookie. Let’s find out, shall we?

Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 sticks butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon sea salt, such as fleur de sel, for sprinkling

Directions:

Working in a large pan over medium-high heat, brown the butter. Just swirl the pan of butter over the heat until the milk solids start to separate and turn brown. Once the butter is browned, pour it into a metal bowl and put it in the freezer to cool.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Once the butter has completely cooled to room temperature, whisk it vigorously with the sugar until it is light and pale yellow. Whisk in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly blended. Mix in the vanilla, then stir in the flour mixture gently, until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Using an ice-cream scoop or two spoons, drop the batter by the tablespoon onto the prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle each of the cookies with some sea salt, and then bake for about 12-15 minutes, until the edges have browned and the cookies are golden. Allow to cool, about 5 minutes, before enjoying… with a glass of milk, naturally.

Makes about 50 cookies.

Well, I finished my second full week of pastry school. I can’t truthfully say it was the best week ever – mostly because I got dreadfully sick and spent the week fighting a fever and trying to keep my lungs from being coughed out of my chest, but there were some pastry-related incidents as well.

Because of the fever, I had to miss éclair day. My pastry cream came out lumpy. I burned a pan of caramel so badly it ended up looking like a pan of dry, blackened charcoal. Oops. Also, we made croquembouche, which were supposed to look like holiday-themed, conical towers of pâte à choux (pat-ah-shoe… cream puff dough). I tried to decorate mine to look like a snowman, but instead of looking clean and elegant like this ones,

it ended up looking like someone threw up all over a perfectly good croquembouche.

Ah well. No one said this pastry thing was going to be a cake walk. I mean, we haven’t even gotten to cakes yet. I’ll keep you posted. For now, I’ll just stick with cookies.

Bourbon-Pecan Cookies
From the French Culinary Institute Classic Pastry Arts, Level 1

Ingredients:

• 170 grams pecans
• 170 grams butter, room temperature
• 200 grams sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 2 tablespoons bourbon
• 230 grams all-purpose flour
• 1 egg, for egg wash
• extra pecan halves or pieces, for garnishing

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toast the 170 grams of pecans in the oven or in a dry pan until lightly browned. Cool completely. Pulse the nuts in a food processor, until they’re the size of coarse cornmeal.

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the ground nuts, egg yolk, salt, scrapings from the vanilla bean, and bourbon, and mix until thoroughly combined.

Add the flour, and mix gently until just incorporated.

Shape the dough into a log approximately 2.5 inches thick. Roll the log up in a sheet of parchment paper and chill in the refrigerator, about 30 minutes.

Once chilled, slice the log into 1/4-inch thick slices, and place the sliced cookies on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

Lightly brush the tops of the cookies with egg wash, and place a pecan half (or some crumbled pecan pieces) on top of each cookie.

Bake the cookies for 7 to 10 minutes, or until nicely browned on the edges.

Makes 50-60 cookies.

Shall we tally up? Let’s see. The past eight days of pastry school have yielded me:

• 4 apple custard tartlettes
• 8 vanilla crescent cookies
• 1 tarte aux noix
• 6 shortbread cookies with candied citrus zest
• 1 pear tart with almond cream
• one dozen homemade fig newton cookies
• 1 banana cream tart
• 4 lemon meringue tartlettes
• 6 Scandanavian butter cookies
• 1 caramelized onion tart
• 1 cherry clafoutis
• 1 chocolate ganache tart
• 8 fresh fruit tartlettes
• one dozen gingersnaps
• 1 baked apricot tart
• 1 chocolate Bavarian tart

Vanilla Crescent Cookies

Um, yes. That’s twenty-four tarts and forty-four cookies. In my first week and a half as a pastry babe. Do you even know how much sugar I went through this week? Do you even know? How many pounds of butter? Do you know how hard it was, how much I toiled to bake all of these delicious, delicious things? These twenty-four tarts and forty-four cookies? …WELL? DO YOU?

Just kidding. I love my life.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Molly, WHAT in the name of Santa Claus do you DO with so many sweets?” Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. I eat them.

…Not really. Gotcha again.

While the thought of ingesting one billion pounds of buttered sugar does sound enticing, I thought I’d do well to keep my arteries clear(ish) for now, so I’ve been pawning off my sixty-eight treats to friends. And classmates. …And school staff and homeless guys and fellow subway riders. Really anyone who looks like they could use a cookie or two. Could you use a cookie or two?

Here, try one. Or two. I don’t know. Start your own tally.

From the French Culinary Institute, Classic Pastry Arts Program, Unit 1

Although I’m swimming in cookie recipes these days, this one seemed the most seasonally appropriate… they’re also just really good. They’re gingery and snappy and full of warm, winterish, gingery snappiness. I hear Santa likes them.

Ingredients:

• 150 grams butter
• 400 grams white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 160 mL molasses
• 20 mL white vinegar
• 525 grams white bread flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• extra sugar, for rolling

*Note: I realize this recipe gives amounts in metric units. I’m sorry about that. However, I’ve found it extremely useful to weigh out ingredients while baking – and it’s much less of a pain than it sounds. Buy a cheap kitchen scale and give it a try. If you don’t feel like scales are your thing but still really want to make these, let me know – I’ll do my best to convert it to the standard American measurements for you.

Directions:

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add the molasses and the vinegar slowly, to avoid separating the mixture.

Sift together the dry ingredients, and add them all at once to the creamed butter mixture. Mix just to combine – try not to overwork the dough.

Form the dough into a log, wrap it in parchment and chill it until firm. Once firm, divide the dough into 50 small, equal portions (about 15 grams per cookie), and roll the pieces of dough into balls. Dredge the raw cookies in sugar, and place them on a parchment-lined cookie pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 7 to 10 minutes. If you like chewier gingersnaps, take them out closer to 7 minutes, when the cookies are just browning. For snappier snaps, leave them in a bit longer. The cookies will spread in the oven, the sugar crust will crack, leaving behind a map of gorgeous cookie crevices, and your whole kitchen will smell like the holidays. Enjoy.

Makes 50 gingersnaps.