Lebkuchen, most delicious of all the Christmas cookies.
Archive for the ‘Cookies’ Category
these are a few of our favorite things
October 24, 2010
Time to bake for the shelter again. I was trying to focus on maple, but my brain kept getting distracted by the pile of pumpkins that was slowly growing on the dining room table, waiting to be put up for the winter. Maple. Pumpkin. Maple. Pumpkin. Hmm. Determined to ignore the gourds, I pulled out the maple syrup cookbook. Yes, she has one. We’ve discussed her addiction before. Anyway.
We first spotted the Maple Syrup Cookbook by Ken Haedrich last year while we were poking around a bookstore in Vermont. It contains many delightful recipes for everything from maple butter to maple coffee cake to crispy maple spare ribs. Yum. Not wanting to make yet another impulse cookbook purchase, mrslovey took a picture of it and kept browsing. We figured we’d put it on a wish list when we got home, and decide at a later date if we really wanted it. Fast forward a year or so, and we’re in a different bookstore, different town, in Vermont. Suddenly from halfway across the store I hear “This is the one!” Confused, I hurry over to mrslovey, to see her with cookbook in hand. She’s convinced that it’s the same one she wanted a year earlier, but to be honest, I’m skeptical. You’re going to remember this glanced at and passed by item for that long? Eager to prove me wrong, she pulls out her phone, skims through the photos, and I’ll be damned, it’s the same book. Since we’ve now encountered and been interested in it twice, we decided it was a safe buy. Read the rest of this entry ?
back in the saddle again
August 22, 2010
So I’m back from vacation, took a little time to recover from *that*, and now I’m truly itching to get my paws back into the oven. We’ve also had an amazing abundance of fresh veggies and fruits from our CSA, so that provides an additional bushel of inspiration, to be sure. I admit that the first recipe back doesn’t follow the reader request guidelines, but sometimes mrslovey gets to bend the rules and move to the head of the line. I’m sure you understand.
For the last few summers, when the tomato bounty has been at its peak, mrslovey has made a delicious (if you like that kind of thing) creamless creamy tomato soup. It has a garden-fresh unadulterated tomato flavor, and it freezes beautifully. When I asked her to define, she just shrugged and said, “it tastes like summer.” (9/2/10 edit: recipe for the soup is here)
Needless to say, she needed something to go along with the soup, hopefully something that also freezes well, so that a grab-and-go lunch or dinner later in the year would be simple and not require additional effort. Knowing that she likes savory crispy/crunchy snacks, I decided to make cookies. Read the rest of this entry ?
i’ll tell you what i want, what i really really want
July 25, 2010
Reader C sent in a request for a chewy molasses cookie. She then clarified that the request was really for her mom, who had been trying for years to recreate her grandmother’s cookies. Talk about a no-pressure request! Research was a little frustrating, as it seemed like so many of the recipes I found ended up in crispy, not chewy cookies. I for sure needed chewy, not only for C, but for myself. I have memories of my mom taking me to a small bakery near our house, and I always thought it was a special treat when I was able to get a hermit cookie to munch on. They were flavorful and chewy, packed with spices and raisins, and they were the biggest cookies in the display. Who could resist?
While the cookie I ended up with isn’t a hermit (no raisins or nuts), it does have a deep molasses flavor, and the spices almost seem to sneak up on you before leaving a glowing aftertaste. And the chew? Oh my goodness, these are some of the most satisfyingly chewy cookies I’ve ever made. Results were sent into work with mrslovey, with a portion set back specifically for C and her mom. I’m hoping that even if they’re not exactly like Gram’s, they’re close enough to keep the memories fresh and bring a smile to her face. Read the rest of this entry ?
not nearly as hard as I make it seem
July 12, 2010I got some reader-request baking done on Sunday, during a short break in the heat wave. K had requested Martha Stewart’s Lemon-Thyme Wafers, so I found the recipe online and got to work. People, let me tell you, it was like an episode of I Love Lucy or something. Anything that I could have messed up, I did. (And of course, it wasn’t helped by the fact that I was working on two things at once for part of the time).
The first step of the recipe is to warm up some cream and then add lemon zest and thyme springs, to let the flavors infuse the cream, ooh la la fancy fancy. I did this no problem, let it sit for a while infusing, and then strained the now-flavorful cream into a glass coffee mug for later use. Step into the other room for a few minutes while I wait for the oven to be free. Come back into the kitchen to talk to mrslovey who is using the break to do some dishes*, and I see a soapy sponge – wiping out a glass coffee mug. Seems I need to label things better. Out comes more cream, more zest, and more thyme from the herb garden. I strain it into a measuring cup and say very slowly and loudly, like I’m talking to a toddler, or a dinosaur, or something, “I’M PUTTING THIS OVER HERE, WITH THE INGREDIENTS,BECAUSE IT IS AN INGREDIENT. WHICH I AM GOING TO USE. WHEN I MAKE THESE COOKIES, WITH THESE OTHER INGREDIENTS. OVER HERE.” I’m lucky she didn’t crack me in the head with a glass coffee mug.
Next step was mixing a bunch of stuff together to make the batter, no biggie. But then, THEN, was the first circus act of the day. Imagine, if you will, that you are holding in one hand a stainless steel mixer bowl, and are trying to pour and scrape the contents into the open end of a big zippy bag, that is perched in a(nother) glass mug, with a piping tip that is way too big for the thickness of the batter, so everything seems to be either flowing right out of the tip, or trying to pull the bag out of the mug and onto the counter. Not saying that’s what happened, but just imagine the frustration if that were the case. Then start piping your cookies out, and realize your piping skills still suck, so you’re dripping batter everywhere and this bag is too big and now the tip is coming out of the bag and batter is leaking out of THAT new hole and OMG is this really this hard???? Read the rest of this entry ?
loveysoven 