TWD: Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

Even though I've been a monumental blog slacker of late (which I am really sorry about, particularly to my friends whose blogs I have not been visiting), I always get as excited as a kid in a candy store when the Tuesdays with Dorie recipes for a new month are announced. It's the promise of a clean slate - the promise of a new month in which I CAN make caramel. I just can't click over to the TWD website fast enough when I see that "new recipes are up!" tweet. And typically, I am affirmatively excited about one or two of the recipes; one or two of them scare the heck out of me (usually custard or caramel-based); and one or two of them fill me with indifference. The Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies, chosen by the fabulous Pamela of Cookies with Boys, fell into my "overwhelmed by indifference" category for November. Other people were really excited about them, but as someone who, when presented with a platter of chocolate chip cookies, lemon cookies, and spice cookies, would ALWAYS choose the spice cookies last, my primary thought was "Good. These won't tempt me and David will eat them."


Well. Then I made them. And realized, after taking one bite of their crispy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside-perfectly-spiced-subtly molassesy goodness, that these cookies now rank solidly among my top three favorite cookies EVER, right up there with World Peace Cookies and Alton Brown's The Chewy. This, a spice cookie! I don't know if my taste buds have changed (there's been some banter on Twitter that your taste buds die as you get older, and I did just have a birthday) or if I was just young and stupid back in the days when I thought I didn't care much about spice cookies, or if these spice cookies are just particularly amazing, given that they are a Dorie Greenspan recipe and all. I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that I am deep deep deep in Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookie love. If you see me sitting there with sort of a faraway look and a goofy half-grin, you can assume that I'm thinking about the Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies again.

I was a little thrown off kilter by my love for these cookies. I had to scramble to change my plans, because again, I was expecting to be indifferent to these cookies while my husband, he of the superhuman metabolism, ate them all. But after I had one, I knew I had to get some of them out of the house pronto. I needed a worthy recipient, though, someone who would fully appreciate their awesomeness - maybe someone who is eating for two. Yeah, that's it! So I brought some to my 8 months pregnant friend, Amanda. She called me after trying one and said "I am SO glad that you're on a diet." And I replied "I am SO glad that you are not."

Amanda can expect more of these cookies before she has the baby (and some after she has the baby); and I am going to start sharing them with some of my non-pregnant friends, too. If you are likely to receive baked goods from me for Christmas, these will be in the package. Just wanted you to know so you can plan your Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookie needs accordingly. Don't worry, the World Peace Cookies will be in there too.


My only cookie-related disappointment is my pictures of them. I got a fancy new camera for my birthday, and I expected to take it out of the box and instantly start taking beautifully styled, perfectly composed, well-lit pictures (on full auto, of course). Instead, these are even darker than the ones I took with my old point & shoot! I'm taking an Introduction to Digital Photography class starting this week, so maybe that will help. But I'm afraid that there may be inherent talent limitations at work here, and at the end of the day, I suspect that this is just not going to be the place you want to come for pretty pictures. But this IS the place to come for unbridled enthusiasm about Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies!!

Pamela, I loved you before you chose these cookies, and I love you even more now. Thank you for introducing me to a new favorite cookie!

Ellie Krieger's Breakfast Cookies

I have to thank my good friend Peggy for talking me into making this week's CEiMB recipe, Breakfast Cookies, chosen by Natalie of What's For Supper?. The cookies sounded good to me from the beginning, but I just wasn't sure I was going to be able to fit them in. Then I saw Peggy, who had already made them and raved about how fabulous they are, and suddenly it was clear that nothing I had going on could possibly be as important as making these cookies -- my tire rotation, filing deadline, permanent crown, birthday party preparations, handyman meeting, and sleep could all wait.

I've had store-bought breakfast cookies before, and thought they were really pretty bad. Like actually kind of inedible. So I didn't know what to expect with these, but I figured they had to be better than the store-bought ones. Sometimes it's nice to go into a recipe with the bar set really low.

This is certainly an unusual recipe. It calls for whole wheat pastry flour, which of course they did not have at Publix, so I used white whole wheat. It also calls for all-purpose flour; cinnamon & nutmeg to spice things up; brown and white sugar; a little bit of butter and canola oil, an egg and vanilla. The "breakfast" in these is provided by oats, bran flakes, raisins and walnuts. And the secret ingredient:


My poor hubs almost had a heart attack when he came home and saw that sitting on the kitchen counter. He said "What's THIS for??" and I saw the color drain from his face. I don't know if he felt any better when I told him it was just for the cookies I was making. Yeah, he probably did.


Wow, we love these cookies! They have a lightly spiced flavor and a wonderful soft and chewy texture. They feel hearty but not heavy. Most of the fat in these comes from canola oil, so they are healthier than most cookies, but they don't taste "healthy" (which is a deal-breaker for me with cookies). I will definitely make these again, and not just because I have the second container of baby food carrots that came in the two-pack. These are really delicious, and perfect for grabbing and going on busy mornings. Thanks for the great pick, Natalie!

Breakfast Cookies, Ellie Krieger 2007

3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup (1 small jar) strained carrot baby food
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup bran cereal flakes
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnut pieces, lightly toasted in a dry skillet for 2 minutes, until fragrant and chopped
Directions
Place rack in center of oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together flours, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Combine butter, oil and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on high speed, scraping down sides if necessary, until sugars have dissolved and mixture is light in color, about 1 minute. Add egg, carrot puree and vanilla and beat an additional 30 seconds. Add flour mixture and beat an additional 30 seconds. Add oats, flakes, raisins and walnuts and mix over low speed just until incorporated. Dough will be slightly sticky and less cohesive than traditional cookie dough. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. Using between 3 to 4 tablespoons of batter, form a ball and place on cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining batter, leaving about 3 inches between cookies. Wet hands and use palm of hand to flatten cookies until about 1/4-inch thick. Bake for 12 minutes, until cookies are fragrant but still soft. Let cookies cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

TWD: Coconut Butter Thins

Last week was a busy week, and this week's TWD recipe, Coconut Butter Thins, chosen by Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch (best blog name ever!), could not be a better "busy week" cookie. The dough comes together lightning fast; you don't mess up too many bowls; you don't even have to crack an egg. On the same night I made these cookies, however, I made the poor "busy week" decision of popping in one of my favorite movies ever, the BBC production of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." That set off a chain of other time/sleep sucking activities, such as watching the five hour BBC P&P again, watching every other Colin Firth film ever made (okay, maybe not EVERY one), reading the book again, watching the Kiera Knightly/Matthew Macfadyen P&P, and chatting with my P&P-loving friends about how much we love P&P.

In one particularly great scene in the book (and the movie . . . and the other movie . . ), Elizabeth tells Mr. Darcy that he is apparently lacking any imperfections, and therefore there is nothing she could tease him about. Mr. Darcy protests, and lists among his faults that "My good opinion once lost is lost for ever." Well, when it comes to coconut, I THOUGHT that I shared Mr. Darcy's sentiments, because my good opinion about coconut was lost years ago, and I had assumed that it was lost forever. But the great Dorie Greenspan has created yet another winning recipe, and one that has caused me to confront my prejudices against coconut head on.

These cookies are simple to make. Mix together flour, cornstarch, coriander and salt in one bowl. Then zest up your sugar in the mixer bowl. Look at this beautiful lime-infused sugar!


Many of Dorie's recipes call for this ingenious technique of rubbing lemon or lime zest directly into the sugar. This apparently releases some of the citrusy goodness (actual scientific term) from the zest. I now do this every time I encounter a recipe that calls for zest and sugar. It really makes a huge difference in bringing out the citrus flavor in a recipe.

Add a couple of sticks of softened butter in with the zest and sugar, and beat for a few minutes. Add in some vanilla, and then the dry ingredients, coconut, and finely chopped macadamia nuts. Put the dough into a gallon size ziploc bag and roll the dough to a 1/4 inch thickness:


My rolled dough filled the entire storage bag, and I think that was actually a little too thin. It didn't affect our enjoyment of the cookies in the slightest, though, nor did it seem to cause any overbaking/browning, even when baked for the full time stated in the book.

The dough needs to chill in the fridge for two hours. I believe this is the point at which I popped in my movie and kissed my to-do list for the week goodbye. Then remove the bag and cut it into 1.5" x 1.5" squares. I used a carpenter's level to ensure both size uniformity and levelness.


Prick the squares twice with a fork. There wasn't any picture of these in the book, so I just kind of guessed.


We enjoyed these for several days, and they kept really well in a Rubbermaid container. Amazing how a metric ton of butter will keep things fresh! But I was distressed to realize that we were down to just two not-very-attractive cookies and I had yet to take a picture. How can I still be forgetting to take pictures of this stuff at this point? You'd think I was baking for my health or my family's enjoyment. Anyway, I scrambled and did my best with "11 p.m. in my kitchen" lighting and a couple of asymmetrical three day old cookies:



Sadly, my best is not very good.

I know that when it comes to these Tuesdays With Dorie desserts, my good opinion is frequently bestowed and therefore not worth the earning. But here we go again! These cookies were truly fabulous. My hubs loved the cookies, and I was happy that there were a lot of them for him to eat, because we TWDers are about to dive head-on into chocolate in a couple of weeks, so he'll be dessert-deprived for awhile. I knew that if I told my kids that these were coconut cookies, they would balk, so I just presented them as "butter cookies," and they gobbled them up. I found the presence of coconut to be subtle and pleasant. If there is a dominant flavor in the cookies, it is butter, or maybe lime. But really, the assorted flavors in these meld together beautifully and create a cookie that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Thank you for picking these truly great cookies, Jayne! I most ardently admire and love them.

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

There is a guy in my office I've worked with on several occasions over the years. He is not in my practice group, but our areas overlap every once in a while. Let's call him W. W kind of has a quirky eccentric professor quality about him, and whenever I have a conversation with him, I walk away amused in a "what WAS that?" kind of way. I'll never forget the first time we worked together on a matter, and he started corresponding with me in haiku:

Will they assume lease?
Until we know the status
We will have no peace

Bonus points for working an actual rhyme into that haiku, W. Given that most of my colleagues communicate with me in prose, I wasn't quite sure what to do with this -- but I finally decided that if someone asks you a question in haiku, you should answer in haiku. And so I responded:

They have sixty days
We can't make them go faster
I'll find peace somehow

And so it went. But what started as a couple of nerds just having a good time turned out to be a surprisingly efficient way to communicate. When you have to express your thoughts in a mere 17 syllables, and in a 5/7/5 pattern at that, you really need to think about what you want to say and choose your words carefully. W and I ended up getting a good result in this matter while conducting at least 50% of our communications in haiku. So I know that it IS possible to get the job done without wasting lots of words.

But you'd never know that from my blog posts, which tend to go on and on (and on). That's consistent with most of my communications; it's pretty much the same thing if I leave you a voice mail message, send you an email, or run into you at the grocery store. Facebook routinely tells me that I've run out of characters when I try to update my status -- that's just plain embarassing. But I can't help it; I have a lot of not-interesting things to say in non-succinct ways. But I swore to myself that this week I WILL keep my TWD post short (er, minus this extra long intro), and the only way I can reliably do that is by forcing myself to stay within the rigid confines of the 5/7/5 haiku form. Plus, Sabrina has already shown us that haiku is an acceptable literary form to use in a food blog, so the ground has been broken. So without further delay . . .

Buy one get one free
Way too much milk chocolate
Used lots of it here


Cover KitchenAid
Don't say we didn't warn you
If you get powdered


Here is the batter
I think that it was yummy
But it's been awhile


Spread batter in pan
Will this be like a cookie?
Or more like brownie?


Bars skinny like Posh
Need a little fattening
Chocolate and heath


Now that's more like it
I just made my own Heath bar!
I think I'll dig in


Name says "caramel"
No caramel making, though
Breathed sigh of relief

Crunch bars delicious!
Must get them out of house quick
Too many baked goods


Tried to wrap pretty
To say "We love you, teachers!"
Picture really bad


Another great treat
Dorie has done it again!
I love TWD!

For recipe go
To What's Left on the table?
Big thank you, Whitney!

TWD: World Peace Cookies

I first made the World Peace Cookies right before Christmas. I was mailing off cookie packages to relatives and wanted to include them in the assortment. I had read numerous rave reviews about these cookies around the food blogosphere -- they are kind of legendary here in food cyberspace. They looked easy to make. I had everything I needed except for fleur de sel. Imagine my complete lack of shock when they did not have fleur de sel in Publix. I ended up going with Morton's Fine Sea Salt instead.

Morton's Fine Sea Salt: When Only the Second Best Will Do.



I later looked for fleur de sel at Whole Foods, and examined every last spice container on aisle 4 before finally concluding that Whole Foods did not have it either. I think our local Whole Foods buyers must have just said "Look, this is a total middle-market city. Can't even attract a Crate & Barrel. Zero chance of landing the 2020 Olympics, even though the crazy-ass mayor is trying. The promoters didn't even send all of the real Wiggles last time the Wiggles tour came through town! They don't need the fancy salt. And while we're at it, scratch the red lentils off the list, too."

So I've had to make do with Morton's Fine Sea Salt (Morton's Fine Sea Salt: Too Fine to be Abbreviated), but these cookies still amaze me every time that I make them. And of all of the cookies that I mailed off, the World Peace Cookies are the ones that got mentioned by name the most, and in reverential, hushed tones at that.

I had a helper when I made these the most recent time.


Making this dough is easy as can be. Okay, you do have to sift the flour and cocoa together. But if I've learned anything since I started blogging, it is that if you complain about something enough on the internet, people will start throwing things your way just to get you to shut up already. I once griped about how tedious it is to sift flour through a sieve, and like magic, my great friend Lisa sent me this sweet sifter:

and David's awesome parents sent me this über-cool one:

Y'all are the best! Now that I have the right tools, sometimes I'll just go sift things when I find myself with ten free minutes. It's just that much fun when you are properly equipped! And even though you've created deep incentives for me to become an insufferable online complainer, I will try to keep it in check. Juicing citrus fruit by hand really does make me insane, though.

Spooked by salmonella? Have we got the dough for you! There are no eggs in World Peace Cookie dough, so you can nosh with abandon.


I doubled the recipe when I made these, and I will always double the recipe when I make these. One, because the recipe just doesn't really make that many cookies, when you get right down to it. And two, because this dough freezes so well, it just makes good sense to keep an extra log or two in the freezer for those moments when a psychotic chocolate/Morton's Fine Sea Salt craving strikes. Or is that just me?

Dorie says that you can slice these straight from the freezer, but I find that they cut much more easily and cleanly if you let the dough sit in the fridge or on the counter for 10 minutes or so before trying to slice them. Also, my previous attempts to cut through very frozen things have not ended well for my fingers, so I am really trying to change the way I do business this year.

The recipe says to cut them 1/2 inch thick, but I tend to cut them thinner than that. Maybe 1/4 inch? I find that the wonderfully crumbly texture comes through a little bit more when they are thinner. But I won't turn my nose up at a thick one, either, believe you me.

These don't spread, so go ahead and cram them onto your cookie sheet:



And in a mere 12 (13 if straight from the freezer!) minutes, you will be experiencing pure cookie bliss. If this is the first time you've had a World Peace Cookie, you won't be quite sure what just happened, but you'll know that it was something big. You will be moved to jump onto your blackberry immediately and shoot your friends messages like the one that Lisa sent me last week:

************
Subject: World Peace!

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with Dorie! Oh my God these cookies are incredible! Hillary should bring a plate to every summit.

This is why I love my blackberry....for really important messages like this.
************

Or the note that Amanda left on my Wall on Facebook right after she made them:

************
The World Peace Cookies changed my life. I'm not kidding. I really think I'm a better person because I ate some . . .
************

Now that I've made them a few times, I'm able to hold myself together when I take a bite, but just barely. The secret to the fabulousness of the World Peace cookies lies in their surprise saltiness, brought to you courtesy of Morton's Fine Sea Salt, and their irresistible crumbly texture. The chocolate doesn't hurt, either. Honestly, when you read through the list of ingredients, you would never be able to predict that these cookies will be so utterly amazing. But something magical happens in the oven. It doesn't make any sense. But we live in a world where Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen run a multi-gazillion dollar multi-media empire. Not everything makes sense.

The World Peace Cookies were chosen by my bloggy friend Jess from Cookbook Habit. Jess lives in Connecticut, and her posts are always super fun for me to read, both because of her natural wit, and because she will sometimes say things like "Stop & Shop" which makes me feel warmly nostalgic for my home state. Run-don't-walk to Jess's blog for the recipe. Jess, thank you for picking the greatest cookie ever!

TWD: Buttery Jam Cookies

I know that there ought to be a law against this, but here I am blogging at close to midnight on Monday night after having spent the past two hours at Toys R Us. Yes, as a matter of fact it WAS as bad as it sounds. I thought I'd be the only poor fool there at that hour, but oh no. I actually had to dodge crowds of people while wandering through the aisles past things like the Tini Puppini (I saw "Toffee," who is billed as the "Hollywood Trendsetter" of Tini Puppini dogs; she comes with a monogrammed Tini Puppini brush, a sparkly tiara hair accessory, a ruby red necklace, and gold puppy bling). And I can dutifully report that Elmo is STILL VERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY TICKLISH, because he yelled it at me every time I walked past him on aisle 14. I passed a veritable ocean of saucy hoochie mama dolls, and I was a slightly happier person before I ever knew that a board game called "Toss Your Cookies -- The Chunk-a-licious Card Game" even existed.

So forgive me if I seem a little bit surly tonight.

But moving on to cookies! It's a regular cookie-baking bonanza this month for weekly bakers and occasional bakers alike, and we're right in the thick of the action here at TWD with our third cookie in as many weeks -- this time, it's Buttery Jam Cookies, chosen by Heather of Randomosity and the Girl. And to celebrate the majesty of the cookie, last week Slate treated us to a fascinating discussion between David Lebovitz, Sara Dickerman and our own beloved Dorie Greenspan on The State of the Cookie. We all love to eat cookies, love to bake cookies, and love to share cookies with our family and friends -- but how often do we really ponder the cookie? Well, Dorie, David and Sara have done just that, so even if you have to wait until your schedule calms down in January, it is definitely worth visiting Slate for a peek as Dorie, David and Sara chew on nearly every aspect of the cookie, asking the big questions, like What makes a cookie a cookie? What makes a cookie more "American" as opposed to "European?" What is the optimal cookie size? And what does the future hold for our friend the cookie?

When the conversation turns to possible future cutting edge cookie technologies, Dorie says that she thinks that cookies are almost "too basic" to be brought into the techno age, and in her view that is a good thing. I wholeheartedly agree with her, and I think that pretty much strikes at the heart of why I love to bake. Because while technology has radically changed so much about so many aspects of the way we live -- how we communicate, how we gather and share information, how we are entertained -- cookie baking is essentially the same today as it has always been. Our pans and ovens may be more high tech, and we do have Silpat now, as Dorie notes (an innovation that I do not begrudge, and in fact have asked for for Christmas) but the fundamentals of baking remain largely unaffected by technology. When I bake with my kids, I'm instantly transported back twenty-five years to when my sister and I would bake with my mother -- the dough tastes the same, the kitchen smells the same, the bickering over who gets to use the big snowman cookie cutter is the same, the first bite of that warm "just out of the oven" cookie is just as magical. There is something deeply comforting in knowing that ten, twenty, and one hundred years from now, butter and sugar will still have to be creamed, dry ingredients will still have to be slowly mixed in until "just combined," and those suckers will still have to bake for 9 to 11 minutes.

Of course, just as the cookie-baking process is one constant in an otherwise rapidly changing world, so is my knack for screwing up the cookie-baking process. Dorie warns about overmixing this dough, and when I get warned not to overmix, you can pretty much count on me to undermix:



See that flour? Yeah, you could kind of taste it, too.

I made my cookies with apricot jam, which was really tasty, once you got past that vague flourish feeling in your mouth. Actually, David said that he liked these and did not mention the flour issue, and I can usually count on him to be brutally honest with me. Here they are out of the oven:



In the true Christmas spirit, I decided to do something extra special with a few of my cookies, and in order to do that I had to conjure up the ghost of Marley. No, not that Marley, the other one:



That's right -- it's your favorite Rastafarian, and mine too, Bob Marley. Once I could feel Bob's presence in my kitchen, I proceeded to make some cookies that were not just jammin', but

Ooh, yeah! all right!
Were jammin:
I wanna jam it wid you.
Were jammin, jammin,
And I hope you like jammin, too.

My "not just jammin', but jammin' jammin'" cookies:




These were made with the same apricot jam dough as the rest of the cookies, but I made them into thumbprint cookies and filled the thumbprints with some blackberry jam that we brought home from a recent vacation. If you like jam in your cookies, you'll really enjoy these. We liked them so much that I might do them all the jammin' jammin' way next time. And I hope this jam is gonna last.

My little one year old had to get her shots the day that I made these cookies, and afterwards the poor thing was about as miserable as I've ever seen her (and that's saying something, as this is the same child who screamed bloody murder for the first three months of her life). But as soon as I gave her one of these cookies, her mood instantly turned around. It was a miracle! I might just keep a batch of these in the freezer for all of our pediatrician visits!



Anyway, to recap, I liked these but thought they were a little flourish due to my undermixing, Caroline happily licked the same cookie for 45 minutes, and David claimed to enjoy them and said nothing about the flour situation. I tried to get Jacob and Elizabeth to try these, but they heard "jam cookie" and immediately announced that they don't like jam. I generally do not waste my limited "you must eat this!!" energy trying to persuade my kids to eat desserts, but in that great Ralphie holiday tradition, I dared them, double dared them, double dog dared them and then pulled out the mighty TRIPLE DOG DARE in an effort to get them to try these cookies, but no dice. But somehow the cookies still disappeared within a day or two even with only three of us eating them. Oh well, nothing that some double Spanx can't handle. That's how Gwyneth does it -- she says so herself.

You can find the recipe for these yummy cookies over at Heather's website. And thank you, Heather, for this great pick!

TWD: Linzer Sables

Conventional wisdom says that we enjoy doing things that we are good at. Yet the fact that I show up and bake every week is a testament to the fact that it is also possible to enjoy doing things that we are not good at. It helps to be a hard-wired optimist with a short-term memory. So despite the fact that I am not exactly riding a TWD hot streak (see, e.g, liquid rice pudding and twofer pie with toofer many problems to list) I dove right into this week's project, linzer sables, by doubling, yes doubling! -- the recipe. All memories of scraping my baking failure du jour into the trash vanished, and I visualized myself placing perfectly spiced, festively shaped, deliciously crumbly cookies on a tray (isn't using positive visualization as a means to achieving success the subject of an Oprah-approved book)? Because of all of my weekly commitments, TWD is the only one that is going to work with me, instead of against me, in the mad rush to get ready for Christmas, so I wanted to take full advantage of this cookie-making session to fill my freezer. And I would not fail! I would not.



I've never made a cookie before that called for ground nuts as a significant part of the batter. I chose almonds, because I had them and I love them. Next time, I might try hazelnuts. After mixing everything up, I found the dough to be rather dry. Usually I need to barricade myself out of the kitchen to avoid eating cookie dough by the shovelful, but this one rated no more than a 1 or a 2 on my Spatula Lick-o-meter:

1 -- I'd Lick the Spatula In Private (has to be a sad, sorry dough not to meet this low, low standard)
2 -- I'd Lick the Spatula In Front of the People Who Are Bound to Me by Blood or Law
3 -- I'd Lick the Spatula In Front of the People Who Once Talked Me Out of Doing Something Stupid at 1 a.m., like my great college pal and current TWD cohort, Lisa
4 -- I'd Lick the Spatula In Front of Complete Strangers In a Completely Inappropriate Place, Like on the Subway or at an Inauguration (chocolate malted whopper drop dough)
5 -- I'd Lick the Spatula In Front of Her Majesty the Queen Herself (chocolate chunker dough)

No worries about the dry dough, though -- that just meant that there was more of it left for actual cookies! And it rolled like a dream:



Which was a good thing, because I felt like I pretty much spent the whole night rolling dough, so if it hadn't rolled easily, it would have been a pretty crappy night.

I saw these cutters at Target and immediately thought that they would work for the linzer sables:



They came with, among other things, a big and little Christmas tree, and a big and little gingerbread man. I thought that I could use the little ones to make the peep holes. I knew that they'd be bigger peep holes than the ones that Dorie envisioned, but I was feeling crazy. And I figured that even if they didn't work for the peep holes, I'd still be able to use the little gingerbread man to make gingerbread man shaped pepperoni for my Christmas Eve appetizers, like they show on the package. I sure am glad that even in these tough economic times, innovation lives.

My first cookies were a little bit too crisp and a little bit too browned.



But the great thing about a recipe like this is that there is time to make adjustments in the middle of the process. I've mentioned before that I am missing the gene that would allow me to eyeball sizes. So after seeing my too crisp, too browned first batch, I broke out my trusty carpenter's level and realized that I was rolling the dough much too thin -- more like 1/8th of an inch than the 1/4 inch that the recipe calls for. So I just rolled a little bit thicker (although probably not a full quarter inch, but who can say?) for the rest of the cookies, and they turned out perfectly.

The Christmas trees were my favorites. The larger peep hole worked fine -- the jam set up nicely, and I liked the stained glass effect.



The trees were also easiest to work with because you didn't have all of those delicate petals threatening to break off at any moment. But I also made snowflakes:



And flowers:



And I used the peep hole cutouts to make mini Christmas tree and gingerbread man sandwiches:



We loved these cookies. This is one where the baked cookie far surpassed the dough, in my opinion. Just as I had visualized before baking them, the cookies turned out perfectly spiced, festively shaped, and deliciously crumbly -- sweet mercy, The Secret really works!!!!! David said that he could eat ten of them in one sitting, and I don't doubt that for a minute. And since he is 6'6" and blessed with the metabolism of the gods, he could do that all month long and still fit into the same tuxedo he wore in high school. I, on the other hand, took one look at these cookies and immediately went up a size. December might be a long, long month, scale-wise.

Thank you so much, noskos of Living the Life, for choosing a perfect holiday cookie! This one will definitely show up on our Christmas cookie tray (and that gives me one more chance to remember to sprinkle them with powdered sugar!) And be sure to check out the TWD blogroll to see how other bakers fared!!

TWD: Rugelach

One of my favorite insults ever was recently directed at me by my friend Julie, a fellow TWD-er. Julie and I work together in real life, and have been working together on a notsofun project that involves spending most of the day on the phone with lots of justifiably irate people. One day, there was a lot going on with this project, and I kept calling Julie, emailing her, and stopping by her office. I finally must have bugged her one time too many, because when I knocked on her door, she looked up at me and said "You again! I like you better online." Ah, Jules. Right back atcha, babe. I sure wish that "online Julie" made more regular appearances (although I get MORE than my fill of real life Julie, trust me).

Well, in contrast to the way that Julie feels about me, I could not get enough of this rugelach. So thank you, Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal, for picking this special treat. It's the kind of cookie (pastry?) that makes me feel like a real baker! I didn't want to disappoint Dorie, Dorie's mother-in-law, or Mrs. Strauss, so I made it a few different ways.

This is my kind of dough -- four ingredients that can be whipped together in no time. I was a little bit worried about overmixing, and I thought that I might have gone a few seconds too long with my first batch:




but it baked up just right. I felt more confident with my second batch and knew when to stop processing. My first batch sat in the fridge for days before I got around to topping it, and was a little bit easier to work with than my second batch, which was only refrigerated for a few hours.

Rolling out the dough was a bit stressful for me, since it required that I use judgment. I can no more reliably eyeball "10 or 11 inches" than I can solve Fermat's Last Theorem. So I used a ruler.


I realize that the shape that I rolled does not even remotely resemble a circle. What can I tell you? I'm just not very good at this.

I remember taking a standardized test in high school that measured your aptitude in various subject areas, and then based on your score, provided a narrative analysis of careers that may be suited to your academic strengths. In addition to the usual math and reading, there was a section on "spatial relations," which tested how well you perceive sizes and shapes. I scored abysmally on the spatial relations section, and my narrative said something like: "Whatever you do, we beg you, please don't be an architect." And as you can see based on my efforts to cut my dough into 1/16ths, this analysis was spot-on.

Big Daddy rugelach and teeny tiny rugelach:




Filling the rugelach was the fun part. The sky's the limit in terms of what you can put in these. I liked Dorie's classic combos and figured that they would serve as a good starting point.


I made some with raspberry jam and some with apricot jam. Half of my raspberry ones had chocolate (I used semisweet rather than bittersweet), the other half did not, only because I love my husband. For the apricot ones, I used pecans, golden raisins and white chocolate chips.

Four-ish ounces of chocolate, give or take, according to my flimsy, antique and not-very-accurate kitchen scale:




Dear Santa Claus,

I have been a really, really good girl this year. I did not fight with my sister, and I have tried extra hard to watch my language. All I want for Christmas is this digital kitchen scale, which was recommended to me by my blogger friend Nancy. Can your elves make that? If not, I'm told that the website that I linked for you is THE PLACE for all of your weighing and measuring needs. Thank you, Santa. We'll have lots and lots (and lots) of cookies for you if you stop by our house this year. And tell Rudolph that we'll save him a carrot!

Your friend,
Cathy

After topping and cutting these, it's time to roll them. I was prepared for things to go very poorly for me at this stage of the game. But to my relief, they rolled up fairly easily. The longer the dough sits out, the harder they are to roll. Incidentally, just a couple of days before I made this rugelach, my son gave me this for my birthday:



I had no earthly idea what it was -- I thought that the "other part" of it was in a different gift bag, and when I put the two pieces together it would all make sense. But no, David said that he let our 6 year old loose in Williams-Sonoma and told him to pick out a gadget for me, and that's what he picked. I just held it up and said "it's a metal thing! I LOVE it, honey!!" Well, imagine my delight when I sniffed around a bit on the WS website a few days later and realized that it was a pastry scraper, perfect for this:



It really did make the rolling easier, especially after the dough had been sitting out for a while.

Well, what can I say? We just loved this rugelach. I loved the rugelach. David loved the rugelach. David's parents were in town and they loved the rugelach. I am a gusher, you know that I'm a gusher, and I'm sure that my gushing rings hollow by now -- but these are definitely some of the best cookies (pastries?) that I've ever had. Dorie makes a passing reference to buying rugelach in a German bakery, and since David lived in Germany for several years as a small child, I was eager to ask him how this rugelach compared to the rugelach of his childhood. He said that he remembers being chased through the apartment building by a 10 foot tall St. Bernard, and remembers having the bejeezus scared out of him when he had to ride a log down into the salt mines on a trip to Salzburg -- but has no recollection whatsoever of rugelach. Okay, so that wasn't helpful. But he did love these! As for whether I preferred the raspberry or the apricot, well, that's sort of like the eternal "George Clooney or Brad Pitt?" question. Personally, I'm a George woman myself, but I'm not going to kick Brad out of bed for eating crackers. The raspberry and chocolate combo was pretty close to cookie nirvana as far as I'm concerned, but the apricot was awfully good too. And there are several other combos that I've got in mind that I am dying to try, such as apple jelly with walnuts, and orange marmalade with dried cranberries, and I can't even imagine the abundance of additional brilliant ideas that I'll collect from my fellow TWD bakers. In fact, all of this yapping about rugelach is cutting into my rugelach-making time. Gotta run! Thanks again, Piggy, for a great pick!