Cookie Elf 2007, Urban Edition ...

Doreen once referred to where I live as Calico Corner.

Nick once referred to my abode as a Laura Ashley house.

In my home's defense, allow me to say that there is no calico to be seen, and while I do like the occasional floral print, every inch of my house isn't dripping with it like some Shabby Chic experiment gone horribly awry.

But yes, I do tend toward cottage when it comes to my decorating, "cottage" as in an eclectic mix of stuff all peacefully coexisting in one room. If we stood in my living room, I could point to each thing and tell you its story about how I came to own it and I wouldn't mention the same place more than twice. Well, maybe three times. (I just realized two of my lamps are from Marshall Field's.) I don't walk into a furniture store and buy a "living room set." Nope. My loveseat is from Jennifer Convertibles. My chair is from Marshall Field's. My rug is from Pier 1. My coffee table (which is really a steamer trunk) is from an antique store in some Indiana town, the name of which I can't remember, but Gemma and I managed to get it into the back seat of her rental coupe. It was a very little red car. Getting that trunk in there was a feat of genius.

But I digress. The point is, a long time ago, back before I had a place of my own, back when I thought about what it would be like to live in the city, I had visions of black leather furniture and chrome and glass. Apparently, I thought I was a bachelor. But when I moved into my first place and started buying pieces, I never looked at anything modern. Then again, my studio wasn't a white box in a high-rise. It was in an older building with beautiful wood doors and moldings and modern furniture just would have looked weird.

So I have the taste I have, and I like it. It's comfortable. It's mine. And I'm sure I've been heavily influenced by my mom's decorating sense, too. My parents' house isn't matchy-matchy either.

What does all of this have to do with cookies, you ask?

Just this. Today is the Day 1 of playing Cookie Elf, and this year's packaging for the cookies is decidedly sleek. I found very cool matte silver bags at Hallmark with a simple grosgrain ribbon handle (which can be taken out of the way – for filling the bag – by putting the toggled end of the ribbon through a grommet in the bag). A bit of tissue paper went in the bottom of each bag, just for a bit of cushion, but the cellophane bundles (tied with pewter-colored ribbon to match the bags) are the only thing peeking out of the top. No tissue in sight. And the notes are affixed to the bags with binder clips because I love binder clips.

All of which makes for a decidedly urbane presentation of my tasty treats.

No calico in sight.

Double Chocolate Chunk Peanut ...

I'm back into holiday baking, full swing.

Every year, I try to add at least one new cookie to the assortments that I give away to my family and friends.

This year, in honor of my friend L.A. Dave, I added a chocolate peanut cookie to the mix. He may not like walnuts in brownies, but he's all about peanuts in cookies.

Of course, before I give away a new cookie, I need to try it and see if it's worthy. Not all are. I tried a recipe for a white chocolate-cranberry cookie a few days ago that was 1) printed incorrectly (the recipe needs an extra stick of butter), and 2) yields cookies that are far too sweet. I still have half of the bad dough in the fridge. I thought I might try incorporating more butter and trying again, but I don't like the cookie anyway, so why throw more ingredients after bad?

But these chocolate peanut cookies are fab. The addition of cinnamon adds a complexity to the cookie that could have ended up a bit too much like a Mr. Goodbar.

The recipe as written makes a blonde cookie. I followed the instructions to create Double Chocolate Chunk Peanut Cookies because more chocolate is almost always better.

Chocolate Chunk Peanut Cookies
(From Southern Living; you can find the recipe online here)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup unsalted dry-roasted peanuts
1 (11.5-ounce) bag chocolate chunks

Beat butter and shortening at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; add chunky peanut butter and sugars, beating well. Add eggs, beating until blended. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients. Add to butter mixture, beating well. Stir in peanuts and chocolate chunks. Shape dough into 2-inch balls (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie). Flatten slightly, and place on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375° for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on pan 1 to 2 minutes; remove to wire rack to cool completely.

Double Chocolate Chunk Peanut Cookies: Reduce flour to 2 cups; add 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa, sifted. Proceed as directed.

Blueberry Muffins ...

You can tell fall is on its way: I'm inspired to bake again.

It was a lovely, cool morning, so I went for a walk to Starbucks for some coffee and a low-fat blueberry muffin. And then, on the walk home, I strolled through the farmers' market and saw lovely boxes of blueberries. I couldn't pass them up. I bought a box, thinking I'd put them in oatmeal. But then, with the pleasant memory of my blueberry muffin fresh in my mind, I decided to make blueberry muffins and share them with my neighbors. (Hi, Rhonda, William, and Shane!)

Once home, I pulled a couple cookbooks off my shelves. My first instinct was to check Baking with Julia. Surely I'd find a winning recipe in there. Julia baked with the most amazing chefs in that series. Sure enough, there was a recipe for blueberry muffins. But the recipe called for ingredients I didn't have on hand – cake flour, sour cream – and I'd have to haul out my stand mixer. Too much effort. And the picture of the muffin was forlorn. The recipe stated that the muffins, when baked, would be flat-topped. Well, who wants a flat-topped muffin? It didn't even look like a muffin. It looked like a failure of a muffin.

Harumph. No thank you.

I checked some other baking books and was surprised by the dearth of blueberry muffin recipes. And then I remembered Mostly Muffins, a little, unassuming square book, one of a three-book set I bought years ago, along with Completely Cookies and Simply Scones. Surely Mostly Muffins would have a blueberry muffin recipe. Blueberry muffins are the gold standard of muffins. Sure enough. Page 10. The third muffin recipe. (The sections are arranged alphabetically, otherwise I'm sure blueberry would be up front.)

I read through the ingredients list. Yup, I had everything on hand. But walnut pieces? Yeah, I have walnuts in my house. I always have walnuts in my freezer. But who puts walnuts in a blueberry muffin? I don't, and I put walnuts in just about everything. Plenty of recipes don't call for walnuts but I add 'em anyway. But a blueberry muffin should be unsullied by nuts of any stripe. The only thing I want to find inside my blueberry muffin is more blueberries.

So I got down to business. I was shy a few muffin liners, but I spritzed the unlined cups in my muffin tin with some Pam and forged ahead.

One useful tip out of Julia's book is to coat the blueberries with a bit of flour before stirring them into the batter, to help them stay suspended in the muffins. Left alone, they sink to the bottom. So once I measured the flour for the recipe into a bowl, I removed a tablespoon and added that to the bowl of blueberries and tossed them gently. (Note: I washed the blueberries gently in a strainer then turned them out onto a clean kitchen towel to dry them gently. [Yes, "gently" is the key when handling blueberries.] That also gave me the opportunity to check for smooshed berries and discard them.)

If you're not usually a muffin maker, a key to making muffins is not to overmix the batter. Don't beat it vigorously until it's perfectly smooth. Just mix the wet and dry ingredients until they're almost combined, then add the blueberries and gently (see?) fold those in. Then stop! Resist the urge to keep mixing.

Blueberry Muffins
(From Mostly Muffins, Published by St. Martin's Press, 1984)

2 C. all-purpose flour
1 C. plus 1 T. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 C. milk
1/2 C. lightly salted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 t. vanilla
2 C. fresh blueberries
1/2 C. walnut pieces (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 3 x 1 1/4-inch (3 1/2- to 4-ounce) muffin cups. [I used a standard muffin tin.]

In a large bowl, stir together flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, butter, egg, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients; add milk mixture and stir just to combine. [I didn't do the next step, but I'm including it because I'm copying the recipe exactly as written. I didn't want blue muffins.] Mash 1/4 cup blueberries and stir into batter with a few quick strokes. Stir in remaining blueberries and walnuts (if desired). [NOTE: I measure the flour out into the mixing bowl, then remove two tablespoons of flour to another bowl, into which I've placed the washed blueberries. Then I toss the berries gently with the flour to coat. This step helps the berries stay suspended in the muffins, instead of sinking to the bottom.]

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of one muffin comes out clean.

Remove muffin tin or tins to wire rack. Cool 5 minutes before removing muffins from cups; finish cooling on rack. Serve warm or cool completely and store in an airtight container at room temperature.

These muffins freeze well.

Makes 12 muffins

Update: I figured out why I was short a few muffin liners. I went to the store last night and bought another package of 32 liners. Who's the genius who thought to put 32 muffin liners in a package when most people bake muffins in multiples of 12? Oh, and I should also mention that while these muffins are delightful while still warm, they're right tasty later, once the flavors have a chance to further meld. As I said to my mom last night, "Damn, that's a good muffin!" If you have any baking tendency whatsoever, try these babies. They're easy and delicious and they go together in no time, so you can whip these up for breakfast whenever the mood strikes. And you'll knock the socks off guests if you offer warm blueberry muffins in the morning!

No idea ...

... why Bloglines reported that this blog had six new and/or updated posts on it. I haven't touched this thing in ages. But now that summer is waning and fall is ahead, I'll be firing up the oven again.

I'm catering the desserts for a baby shower in October. That should be fun.

My First Bread ...

I learned how to make bread when I was 8.

My Aunt Anne, who always reminded me of Piglet - small and soft-spoken with a sweet, kind face (nevermind the fact that she was a pool shark in her day) - taught me and my cousin Lora. She wrote out the recipe on a piece of my pink stationery. I don't know where it's gone.

Pogacha, it's called, though it's essentially just a white bread that only raises once and is formed into round, flattish loaves instead of the traditional shape. I stopped needing a recipe years ago, but I'd like to find the pink paper and see Aunt Anne's handwriting again. All the aunts had very similiar handwriting. I never understood why.

It makes spectacular toast. Truly. The best toast you'll ever have in your life. The denseness of the bread plays a big part. Slather on some butter and apricot preserves and you're in breakfast heaven.

Similarly, it also grills up well for bruschetta. It soaks up an egg mixture well for French toast. It's very versatile. I don't make sandwiches with it, strangely, but I made a couple loaves for my brother's family around the holidays and my niece wanted to be sure that they saved a couple slices so she could take a sandwich when she returned to school.

People are daunted by the making of bread, but it's really rather simple. And, at the same time, miraculous. A few humble ingredients, some love, and some time, and voila!

The most important thing to know is the proper temperature for any liquids, lest you kill your yeast. You can haul out a kitchen thermometer, if you feel the need to be precise, but my Aunt Chick (one of Anne's sisters) always gauged the temperature of the water on her wrist. "Baby's bath water" is the rule by which we live. Pleasantly warm, not hot.

The second most important thing is to add flour gradually. You can start with a few cups at once (in fact, you want to, and then whip that mixture to form the gluten in the dough), but as the dough becomes more cohesive, flour needs to be added gradually, lest you end up with too heavy of a dough.

Can you use a bread machine? I don't know. Can you? I've never used a bread machine to make dough, much less bake bread.

I believe that we put a part of ourselves into the food we make. I suppose you can dump a bunch of ingredients into a machine and turn it on and walk away and it will churn out something that looks like bread. But if you're going to make bread, commune with it. Get your hands a little doughy.

Little can compare with the satisfaction of making bread by hand from scratch, then inhaling the aroma as it wafts out of the oven, and then slicing the warm loaf and smearing it with butter. That, my friends, is life worth living.

Right, the recipe, then:

(Note: I use my KitchenAid for most of the heavy lifting, and finish kneading it by hand.)

2 t. salt
2 T. sugar
2 T. butter
1 C. hot milk (I use organic 2%)
1 C. hot water
1 package yeast proofed in 1/4 C. warm water
5-6 C. flour

Combine the first five ingredients in a bowl. Let mixture cool until it is warm. (I put mine in the freezer for a few minutes.) Add the yeast mixture and 3 cups of flour. Using the paddle attachment (if using the mixer), beat for a few minutes. Switch to the dough hook and start adding flour until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl. Finish kneading by hand. Separate dough into two pieces. Knead each. Form into flat rounds. Place on greased baking sheet and spray loaves liberally with Pam. Cover with a towel and raise in a warm location until about doubled in bulk. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then lower the temp to 350 and bake for 25-30 minutes.

My First Tiramisu ...

Mom didn't want a cake.

She wanted tiramisu for her 65th birthday instead.

I'd never made tiramisu before, but she had, and she promised it was easy. Not like cake-mix easy, but easy enough for someone who knows their way around a KitchenAid.

So I bought the ingredients and followed the recipe on the back of the package of ladyfingers. Typically, the Serbian Oath by which I live precludes me from buying any prepared ingredients. We're a from-scratch clan, we Serbs. At least the ones in my family. But there was no chance that I was going to attempt to make ladyfingers. Mom buys the packages, too. I don't think our Serb cards are in danger of being revoked.

I assembled all the ingredients on the counter. My local store didn't have mascarpone so I opted for the substitute solution: softened cream cheese blended with sour cream and heavy cream. Which, of course, required a KitchenAid bowl for combining. My second KitchenAid bowl was in the freezer with the whip attachment, chilling in advance of whipping the nearly two cups of heavy cream. But first, I used KitchenAid bowl No. 1 to beat six egg yolks and 1 1/4 cups of sugar until they were thick and lemon-colored, and then cooked that mixture over a double boiler for 10 minutes, stirring constantly with my silicone spatula.

Ten minutes later, I had a thick, grainy bowl of sugary yolk. The sugar wasn't dissolved. Did I do something wrong? Heck if I knew. I decided to proceed. Perhaps the sugar would dissolve at a later stage. If not, I'd make another run to the store to buy more eggs. And cream. And everything else.

As the yolk mixture cooled, I make my makeshift mascarpone. Then I whipped the cream. I combined the cheese with the cooled yolk mixture then folded in the whipped cream. Like magic, it turned into the most gorgeous, silken, heart-stoppingly-delicious mixture.

I placed a layer of ladyfingers in the bottom of a Pyrex dish. The recipe calls for making this in a bowl, but I wanted to serve pieces of it, not spoonfuls of it. I brushed the ladyfingers with Kahlua. I poured half the cream mixture on top. Then more ladyfingers, more Kahlua, and the balance of the cream.

And then I whipped the remaining cream called for in the recipe to spread on top. Except that my decision to make the dessert in a low, wide dish meant I came up short on whipped cream. So I whipped what I had left - what else was I going to do with it? - and spread it over the remainder of the top. It wasn't the prettiest presentation, so I covered my imperfection with a thick dusting of cocoa.

The next day, when we ate it, it was still quite soft. I expected it to have more body. But the taste? Oh. My. God.

Divine.

We had a lot left over. Mom shared some with my neighbors. I kept the plate of misshapen pieces that I extracted from the dish in an effort to dish up pretty pieces for the neighbor folk. Mom took home the balance in the dish.

It is a dangerous thing to have tiramisu in the house.

Well, it was, anyway.

I've since trashed the ladyfinger packaging, so I don't have the recipe to share. And I didn't take a photo of it because anything a Pyrex dish is nothing to look at. And when I dished it up on mom's birthday, the last thing on any of our minds was photostyling and photography. There was tiramisu waiting to be eaten, dammit!

But tiramisu recipes abound. Mom found one in her new Cooking Light cookbook (one of her birthday gifts from me) that boasts a mere 140 calories per serving! Is a serving a one-inch square? I must investigate.

And make the "healthy" version.

I'll report back when I do.

I don't hold out high hopes for "healthy" tiramisu, but tiramisu hopes spring eternal.

Cookie Tips, The Second ...

My cookie stash is dwindling.

Which is the point. I gave most of them away to friends last week, kept a few for dessert for Christmas Eve, made a cookie plate for my brother and his family, and now have a few stragglers in the freezer, which are being eaten a few at a time, a treat for me who doesn't usually keep cookies in the house.

But as I was baking and wrapping and packing, I jotted down ideas as they came to me. Here, then, is the latest batch.

To bake or not to bake
Some recipes have large yields. Maybe you don't want six dozen cookies lying around the house, waiting to take up residence on your hips. Maybe you want to mete out the fresh-baked goodness a half-dozen at a time. Maybe you're tired and want to stop baking and go to bed. So line a baking sheet with some waxed paper (or parchment), roll the cookie dough into balls (or measure with a cookie scoop), place on the lined baking sheet, pop it into the freezer until the balls are solid, then plop six or 12 each into Ziploc bags and stash in the freezer. Unexpected guests? Bake off a dozen cookies and be a snack-time rock star. Having a crummy day? Bake off a few cookies in your toaster oven. It's hard to be pissed with a warm Toll House cookie in your hand. Bake the cookie dough, right from the freezer, for a few minutes longer than the regular number of minutes.

Don't take it or leavening it
Funny things, ingredients. In the democracy that is cookie baking, every ingredient contributes to the outcome. If a recipe calls for baking soda or baking powder, it's there for a reason. No, you cannot omit them. Nor can you necessarily sub one for the other. And take special note: self-rising flour has leaveners built in. It is not the same as all-purpose flour. You cannot use them interchangably.

Get cracking
If your recipes call for eggs, don't crack them directly into the ingredients already in the bowl, crack them, one at a time, into a small dish, and add to the larger bowl before cracking the next egg. Eggs are relatively cheap. Cheaper, certainly, than the butter your recipe likely starts with. If you crack a crummy egg into a bowl of creamed butter and sugar, the whole mess will need to go into the garbage. Eggs. Separate dish. Always.

More is better
When I'm in a baking zone, I don't want to break my rhythm to wash utensils. Buy several sets of measuring spoons and cups so you can keep on goin'. For that matter, it's a fine idea to have more than one mixer bowl for your KitchenAid (or mixer of choice) and paddle attachment so you don't have to wash them between uses.

Sheet safety
Cookie sheets might not looks like they're in need of washing, but if you're baking cookies with nuts and then cookies without nuts, wash the sheets in between batches. Most people with nut allergies simply steer cleaer of baked goods if they're unsure of the source, but even traces of nut oils can cause reactions to those allergic to nuts. Play it safe.

Packaging productivity
This year, I made seven collections of cookies, so I got into a serious assembly-line mindset. I cut all my cellophane at once, then, in a rare moment of brilliance, created index cards on which I wrote each recipient's name and number of each cookie variety they'd receive. Then I made tape loops for the back of each card and stuck each card to the counter, on top of which I placed a square of cellophane. Like a landing site for the cookies. As I took each variety out of the freezer, I was able to quickly dole out the cookies among all the cellophane, then tie each bundle with a ribbon and tag. I made stations on my dining table for each recipient and grouped the cookies around each person's name until I was ready to fill their boxes.