TWD: Chocolate Chunkers

I had every intention of sliding through the rest of the year without blogging. Not because I don't love to post over here in my little corner of the blogosphere, I do, but because of the glut of holiday food (sweets especially) in my house. In addition to the sweets galore, time seems to be an even more precious commodity than usual these days, and I just thought that I'd pick up again in January. Then I found myself with some time today, and TWD seemed feasible. My first thought was to make the cardamom crumb cake that Jill chose last week. I'm still irritated that I missed that post. Rewinding one week after the fact smacks of cheating to me, so I tossed out that idea. I started flipping through Baking and I remembered that these cookies were the second runner up to my November rewind, chocolate is always a good choice for me, and I had all of the ingredients on hand. There you have it, my rewind for this last Tuesday of 2010 is Chocolate Chunkers.

I thought these cookies were fairly simple to get together, though there are some extra steps and dishes along the way. You have to beat the watoozie out of the eggs and sugar, and you also have to melt the chocolate and butter together. Meh. A few extra steps but really it's not a big deal. The only other sort of persnickity aspect of this recipe is the whole "one cookie sheet in the oven at a time" rule. Still, when it's all said and done, I think these little extra steps are worth it because these cookies are delicious. They're right up there with chocolate whopper drops for me (that means I liked them a whole, whole lot).

On the fourth day of Christmas . . .

My lackluster photos don't do much to make this cookie look even half as delicious as it is, but you'll just have to take my word for it:  yum, yum, and yum.  I substituted dried cranberries for the raisins, and I used chopped salted peanuts and zomygoodness, I love all of the goodies in these cookies. I think I'm going to have to take them to work with me in the morning to get them out of my reach. This could easily be a cookie that I devour all by myself.

Di's Cookie Exchange: Swedish Vanilla Cookies

I don't know why Christmas is so inextricably tied to cookies. Why not another holiday? What is it about cookies that links them to Christmas? Of course they're sweets, but why are cookies such a big deal at Christmas? I suppose it boils down to the glut of sweets that accompany the lingering year and Christmastime especially. In my family, however, it's cookies, cookies, cookies . . . and then a few more cookies. When I was younger I used to beg to bake the Christmas cookies, and finally my mom let me. There was one catch:  the maid came on Wednesdays, so I had to do any and all baking on the Monday and Tuesday before the Wednesday before Christmas. Are you still with me? I eagerly took the bait, and usually right after I finished finals in middle school and high school I'd go straight into frenetic Christmas cookie baking. I'd bake cookies upon cookies upon cookies. The first year I was allowed to do the baking I chose all new recipes. Yup, so long boring and stodgy standby cookies, that year we had really awesome cookies like sugar cookie angels with pretzels for wings and a pastel mint for a head. There was just one problem:  all of these really cool, pretty cookies tasted like bland nothing. I learned an important lesson that first year I was allowed to do the Christmas cookie baking:  favorites are favorites for a reason, and it is generally a bad idea to toss tradition out the window.

I've mentioned before that thumbprints are the ne plus ultra of Christmas cookies in my family. In fact, I even tried to bake them that first year, the year I threw tradition out of the window. I searched high and low for the recipe in my mom's recipe file (aka "the black hole" -- recipes go in but they don't come out) to no avail. So, I found a recipe for thumbprints and gave it a whirl. My mom took one bite and practically spit the cookie out. She wanted to know what on earth recipe did I use, and I calmly explained my tedious search and empty handed results. She went to the recipe file and pulled out a recipe card with the words "Jeanny Garvey's Swedish Vanilla Cookies."  Oh my gawd. Seriously? These cookies have always, always, always been thumbprints in my family; how could I ever have known to look for the Swedish Vanilla Cookie recipe card?

I can be spacey, and I spend a lot of time lost in my own thoughts; however, I don't usually need to be told something twice. I've never forgotten that these are Swedish Vanilla Cookies, and I still make them every single year. They aren't fancy but they taste wonderful, and that's the most important part, don't you think? And, no, they don't taste as good at any other time of the year, either. The dough is incredibly rich, and a nice dollop of jam is essential to the success of these cookies. These cookies were filled with sour cherry jam, but I use strawberry, raspberry or blackberry jam, too. I'm quite partial to apricot jam in these cookies, and I suppose if you like marmalade the bitter tartness of the marmalade would be a wonderful foil to the buttery sweetness of the dough. It wouldn't be Christmas in my kitchen without these cookies, and now I get to share my family's favorite with you! A big, huge thank you to one of my favorite bloggers,  Di, for organizing this cookie exchange!

Jeanny Garvey's Swedish Vanilla Cookies
Published in Redbook December 1972 and copied on to a recipe card by my grandmother, MawMaw

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter, softened
(note: the recipe doesn't call for unsalted butter, so I usually use salted butter. If you use unsalted butter you might want to add a pinch of salt)
3/4 cup confectioners sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cup sifted flour
Jelly, jam, preserves of your choice

Cookies: Heat oven to 325 degrees. Work butter in a bowl until creamy. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add egg yolk and vanilla and beat well. Add sifted flour to butter mixture gradually and mix until smooth. Divide dough into small balls about 3/4-inch in diameter. Place balls about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten slightly with the fingers and make a depression in each with the thumb. Bake 10 minutes, pull cookies out of oven. Fill depressions with jam and return cookies to oven to bake for 3 to 5 minutes more. Pull cookies out of oven and allow cookies to rest on sheets for about 5 minutes. Cool on wire cake racks.

TWD: Translucent Maple Tuilles

I am always interested in trying out new things, but I have to admit, my heart sank a little when I saw the Translucent Maple Tuilles were this week's TWD. You see, I know tuilles are almost candy-like and very crisp. I live in Houston, TX, land of humidity and 80 degree days in December. Please don't misunderstand me, I happen to love the weather here, and I'm all about palm trees and Christmas, but it isn't the most hospitable weather for things like tuilles. The humidity seeps into their fiber and what was once crisp is now stale and insipid . . . in a matter of hours. Dorie states in the introduction to this recipe that tuilles are generally an accompaniment rather than the main event, so I decided this was a perfect time to try a recipe from Baked Explorations that caught my eye -- the Maple Cupcakes.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you:  my tuilles are rectangles, not circles, and there's nothing curved about them. I wish I'd taken process pictures this time (but I never take process pictures) so you could see what happened. I made the tiniest of balls to make the tuilles because I wanted tiny circles on top of my cupcakes. And I spaced them 2" apart on my cookie sheet, per the recipe's instructions. And, I'll admit, at the time, I thought perhaps a little more space would be needed because, after all, these were going to be waaaaay spreading on the sheets. But, I was in a hurry and trying to take these to work, so I pressed on and popped the sheet in the oven (after rechilling for a bit in the freezer because it's warm here and the dough was melting in my hands). I had the oven light on and after a minute they started to melt. At three minutes we were looking good, perfect flat little circles with plenty of space. Imagine my surprise after 5 minutes when I checked and saw the beginning of this:

A giant, mishappen blob of tuille. Of course, it was more evenly distributed at that point. When I took the sheet out of the oven after 7 minutes had elapsed the blob sort of slid into this shape. I didn't have time to roll out more, and I was determined to make something with this mess so I could decorate my cupcakes and bring them to work with me. I tried rolling little cigarettes out of the mess, and it was ok but a) time consuming b) tricky because the tuilles were cooling and c) not super cute. So, I took out the pizza cutter and I scored the blob of tuille into rectangles.

I mean, really, I was the only person who knew these were supposed to be dainty little circles, and I was just delighted (shall I repeat myself? delighted) that I was in the kitchen by myself when I had this mishap. No one was there to stress out on my behalf. No one was asking me what I was going to do. I just calmly scored the blob and moved on. I told the people at work that the rectangles were supposed to be circles, and they looked at me like I had a third eye growing out of my head. As for the taste, I think perhaps another 30 seconds in the oven would have been good for the tuilles, but they were crisp and tasted, well, like maple syrup and butter. So, if maple syrup and butter are your thing, I think you'll like them. I'm only so-so on maple syrup so I wasn't wild about the serious sweetness of these cookie-tuilles.

I am happy that I tried this recipe, though. Clivia chose this recipe, and she lives in Canada, so it was a perfect choice for her recipe this week. Do check out her blog to see her fun interpretation of these delicate little cookies.

Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites

Le sigh . . . I heart my morning cup of coffee. Right now I have two jobs, and one requires that I wake up at the ungodly hour of 4 o'clock in the morning (otherwise known as "the middle of the night"). I know I could pop out of bed and have a glass of orange juice, but it wouldn't be the same as my beloved coffee. The coffee habit is a relatively new thing for me. I only started drinking coffee every morning about two years ago; before then, I reserved cofffee for special occasions:  early morning meetings, festive holiday coffees, and traveling. And while I am strictly a drip coffee with milk and sugar girl these days, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for cappuccino because that's the drink that started me down the coffee road. 

My parents had a cappuccino maker in the early 80's and used to bust it out with a certain amount of regularity. They had the little espresso cups and the cappuccino cups and they'd steam the milk and drink cappiccino with family and friends. Of course, cappuccino is so pretty, and I'd always ask to have a little sip. Once I got through the milk to the coffee I lost all interest in the coffee. Then we went to Italy and I drank cappuccino with breakfast every morning . . . and gauchly ordered it after dinner in the evening (be still my teenage American heart). I never wanted to be "addicted" to coffee though, so I always reserved it for gala occasions. Well, we all know that stopped the second my feet hit the bricks in Georgetown.

If you happened to miss the flurry of memos going around email inboxes, the blogosphere, holiday baking magazines and cooking shows, it's time to bake cookies. And, gosh darn it, if you're not baking cookies right now, get to a doctor straight away because there is most definitely something wrong with you. The contrary part of my nature bucks the deluge of sources and resources dictating that I must bake now or sacrafice my holiday season to the pain and suffering of life without cookies. I do love to bake though, and of course cookies are so festive, so I always cave in (truth told, I don't even need to be convinced). I was flipping around Martha Stewart's Cookies (a really fantastic book) looking for something a little bit different, and I paused on the Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites. Maybe they aren't different for everyone, but they're certainly different from the normal holiday cookies I grew up with.

I grew up with (and still bake) very traditional flavors for Christmas cookies. Chances are the cookies will either be spicy (gingersnaps) or buttery (jam thumbprints) or citrus-y (orange spritz). Chocolate rarely enters the mix (tragic) and coffee never enters the mix (more tragic still). In addition to the unusal flavors, these cookies require chilling, rolling, chilling, cutting, baking, and sandwiching:  that is quite a bit of work when you're already baking several other types of cookies. That said, I wanted to try them, and I think they're worth it. There are quite a few steps, but they're easily split up and you can (and in my opinion, should) spread out the process over a few days. The dough comes together easily enough, but it's a very soft dough, and I have a couple of notes about rolling the dough and retaining your sanity:

1. The recipe calls to roll the dough out between parchment paper to about 1/8" thick. This is pretty thin. Thin, sticky dough is NOT easy to cut out; however, if you roll out the dough and pop it into the freezer on a sheet pan for about 10-15 minutes and then cut out your circles, it's a seriously simple process.

2. The prettiest part of the dough -- in my opinion -- is the lovely speckled appearance the gound espresso beans (or instant espresso powder that I substituted) give the dough. When you gather your scraps and re-roll, though, this speckled appearance begins to mottle and then fade into one sort of cohesive color. No worries on that score, however, because the cookies are dusted with powdered sugar and cocoa powder at the end anyway. You can see that the spots are still present in the second roll, though not as noticeable. If you're neurotic about using every last scrap of your dough (like I am) then you'll more than likely end up with a cookie that looks like my third roll round. Perhaps the ground espresso beans, rather than the instant espresso powder that I used, would be more likely to retain their integrity in the dough. Darn that espresso powder -- it lacks integrity.

All told, I loved these cookies. They're delicate, buttery, and have a lovely, lovely cappuccino flavor. Dudley loved them, too, and I think that they'll make a repeat appearance in the future. I think they'd actually be lovely at the end of a meal, perhaps with a cup of espresso? They'd be quite lovely with a cup of hot chocolate as well. 

Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites

Martha Stewart's Cookies

Ingredients

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon finely ground espresso beans (I substituted instant espresso powder because that's what I had handy)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, plus more for dusting

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup heavy cream

2 1/2 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped

Unsweetened cocoa powder, for dusting

Whisk flour, espresso, and salt in a bowl. Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle, and mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Mix in vanilla. Add flour mixture; mix on medium-low until dough comes together. Shape into a disk, and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let dough stand at room temperature 10 minutes. Roll between sheets of parchment to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out rounds with a 1 1/8-inch cutter; space 1/2 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment. Reroll scraps; cut out. Freeze 10 minutes.

Bake until set but not browned, about 9 minutes. Let cool on sheets 5 minutes. Transfer to wire racks; cool completely.

Bring cream to a simmer. Pour over chocolate; stir until smooth. Press plastic wrap onto surface; refrigerate at least 4 hours or up to overnight. Whisk to soft peaks; transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4-inch plain round tip. Pipe about 1 teaspoon filling on bottoms of half the cookies; sandwich with remaining cookies. Dust with cocoa and confectioners' sugar. Cookies can be refrigerated in an airtight container up to 1 day.