TWD: Chockablock Cookies

Or mini boulders. Or granola-bars-as-cookies. Or "oh, I have all sorts of odds and ends in my pantry, I guess I'll make cookies!"

Yeah. As I was making these, the fiance looked over and noticed the chopped nuts, chunked chocolate, bottle of molasses, and container of oatmeal. His first comment? "Oh, you're making a Dorie recipe?" Why yes, yes I am. Because no other person would make such monstrosities. Oh no, simple can't truly be better, can it? I mean, this is the woman of chocolate chunkers, granola grabbers, chunky peanut butter and oatmeal chocolate chipsters... Yeah. She went there. Over and over again.


And I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. No, these won't get into my normal cookie rotation, but they were definitely an okay cookie. My opinion was that they were better the second day, when the molasses had mellowed a little bit and you could taste everything individually. But really, I sort of missed the simplicity of a good ol' chocolate chip cookie. Tollhouse recipe.

Which brings me to a new revelation on my part. You see, I had, oh, 2.5 pounds of butter in my fridge as well as the need to bake something for all four shifts in the department I work in. So obviously, chocolate chip cookies. I can pre-scoop and flash freeze them, baking them off as needed. And I figured what the heck - I'll just make a quadruple batch of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. Number one: holy hell that's a lot of cookies. Number two: you can only mix a double batch in a standard Kitchenaid stand mixer. Which leads to number three: um, ow, my arm? And number four: I have never. Never. gotten as many compliments on anything I've baked for them as I did for those freaking Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies.


Lesson learned. Simpler is almost always better.

Last Week: Sweet Cream Biscuits
Next Week: Burnt Sugar Ice Cream (nectar of the gods. for serious.)

TWD: Sweet Cream Biscuits

Do you hear that? No? Listen a little closer - spring is here. It's here. We've had thunderstorms, spring showers, sunny days, buds on trees... And yes, we have outdoor farmers markets too. For all of you who have had all of these things for a while already, give me a break - Wisconsin's a little slow, don'cha know? But just a couple days ago, the Madison, WI downtown, outdoor farmers market had its debut. And man, what a debut - morels (already!), ramps (ubiquitous, sorry), rhubarb, spinach, arugula, and the most adorable little new potatoes in white, yellow, red and purple. This year, I've fallen head over heels for spring. It doesn't hurt that this is the first year I've been in Wisconsin when there hasn't been snow on the ground this first farmers market weekend...

So the fiance and I giddily (okay, I was the only giddy one...) wandered the market. Pork tenderloin, new potatoes, and spinach for dinner that night, and sage breakfast sausage for breakfast the next morning. Of course, the last purchase was due to a request from the fiance last weekend for biscuits and gravy - he had also requested cinnamon rolls, but we ran out of time for those. Instead I had a last bagel from my favorite bagel place. But yes! Biscuits and gravy! I never used to be one for it, but with good sausage and freshly baked biscuits, it's a winner. Melissa's pick worked perfectly into the plan.


So Sunday I got up and actually whisked my dry ingredients for them, just so that there wouldn't be icky pockets of baking powder. I admit that I doubled the salt and bumped the leavening up just the teensiest bit, just in case. Another trick was to quickly hand knead the dough together (wetter is better here too!) and then give it a quick letter fold to incorporate some layers. Patting it out to one inch tall instead of half an inch also gave taller biscuits. They were wonderful with the sausage gravy, and now I'm seriously regretting leaving the leftovers with the fiance!

Last Week: Swedish Visiting Cake
Next Week: Chockablock Cookies (better the next day, imo)

*Disclaimer: My camera is currently w/ Nikon getting repaired. In the meantime, enjoy some rustic (?) pictures!*
*Double Disclaimer: Let the 10 weeks-without-an-oven commence! I'm currently either a)packing, b) moving, c) in North Carolina, or d) in Bakersfield, CA. Yippee!*

TWD: Swedish Visiting Cake

We'll just pretend these aren't the crappiest photos to grace this blog, okay? Because there's nothing like asking your fiance if you can borrow his digital camera, only to find out that it is a 3MP piece of crap that can't take an in-focus picture to save it's itty bitty little life. Although I have to admit, it gives an interesting effect. Not the one I was really going for, but we'll just pretend it's artfully blurry - blur is to photography like rustic is to baked goods, right?


As for this cake? Rustic, while a word to describe it, doesn't do it justice. Nancy did us a huge favor by picking this one this week - it's a seriously awesome cake. And I hardly ever say that about a cake that doesn't have any sort of frosting or glaze. Ground shaking. Earth shattering. Awesome. Seriously, I cut a slice for the fiance Saturday night, figuring he could taste test and then take the rest home with him. And then he offered me a bite. Immediately, plotting began running through my head of whether I could convince him that sending him home with peanut butter cookies would be plenty. He didn't really need to take this cake back with him too, did he?


And then I looked over to see crumbs. Damn. Guess I'll just have to make it again, eh? Although I do find it unfair that he got both this and the peanut butter cookies...

Last Week: Mocha Pecan Layered Cake (well, sort of.)
Next Week: Cream Biscuits

Gingernuts

Phew! It's, uh, sorta been a while since I've had a non-Tuesdays with Dorie post, hasn't it? And I hate to admit it to you, but it'll probably be a while before another non-TWD baked good comes around. Let's just say that the last 6 months have been crazy, and the next 6 or so will be equally crazy. Because there's nothing better than quitting my job, moving halfway across the country while moving my belongings halfway across the country in the other direction, finally moving myself to join up with my belongings, starting graduate school, and getting married. All in a 7 month timespan.


Okay, so let's back up - I know I've left many hints about the ol' blog (and many more on Twitter), but here's the deal. I am leaving my job at the end of this month so that I can go to graduate school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I'll be going for environmental sciences and engineering, which has also tentatively given me the opportunity to participate in a field study in LA in May and June (between 4 and 7 weeks sans oven - perhaps the second or third circle of hell for me). The next four months or so are going to be crazy, to say the least. Given how much of my spare time was devoted to planning this the last few months, I'm not sure I'll be sane by the end of it.


But hey! At least I can go back to pretending I'm not an adult. Which is why I can officially giggle like a schoolgirl at the idea that I baked "gingernuts." Seriously, don't they sound funnier than gingersnaps? Maybe you shouldn't answer that, especially if you want to pretend to some semblance of adulthood. I, on the other hand, will gleefully giggle as I snack on these cookies. They're like a daintier gingersnap - more crumbly and delicate, but still with that nice punch of ginger and spice. The recipe suggests dipping the cookies in a tempered chocolate, which would probably be fabulous, but I adore spice. Unadorned and in your face. In my opinion, spice doesn't need a complementary flavor. But hey, whatever floats your (non-adult, hopefully) boat!


Gingernuts
(adapted ever so slightly from Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts by Claire Clark)

230 g softened unsalted butter
100 g dark brown sugar
1 medium egg
85 g molasses
250 g all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream together the butter and sugar just until combined. Don't beat it until fluffy - I did this by hand so that I didn't beat any air into it. Beat in the egg, followed by the molasses.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. She says to sift them three times, but sshh - I just whisked them together. Once. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar, then gently fold them together until they're just combined. She suggests doing this by hand to keep from over mixing. Turn the dough out onto plastic wrap and shape into a log. I made mine rectangular, 1"x1"x I don't know - maybe 10"? Wrap and freeze for two hours.

Preheat the oven to 325*F. Take the dough out and let it sit on the counter for 5-10 minutes before slicing into 1/4" thick pieces. Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, spacing them at least 1" apart. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until you can lift them easily from the baking sheet. Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes about 60 cookies.

NFR: Not Again

Yeah. Again. The camera is going off to the Nikon peeps, but this time for a completely different reason - yay? And let's just say that the last few days have been too full of ups and downs to be coherent right now.

In summary, I am becoming more irritated by my D90, the mocha walnut marbled bundt cake became a mocha pecan layered cake, it was good but could use more coffee, and I have a very busy but exciting summer ahead. Normal programming will resume once I regain coherency.

Cheers!