running with tweezers

IMBB/SHF Cookie Swap!

When I saw the post on Is My Blog Burning about the Sugar High Friday cookie swap, I was...well...giddy. I loved the thought of being able to make two of my favorite cookie recipes before Christmas and for no good reason, save for taking their photos and eating them!

When I was little, baking cookies during the holidays was something I so looked forward to doing with my mom. In these parts (umm..that would be my parents zip code), my mom's cooking is the stuff of legend - and her cookies were no exception. Scoring a tin of them at the holidays made those people who just didn't make the cut green with envy.

There were the same treats every year: lemon bars, raspberry thumbprint cookies, old faithful chocolate chip. However, the one cookie that made everyone swoon was The Snowball. They were always at the bottom of the tin so as not to get their powdered sugar all over the other cookies...so they always got eaten last. When people bit into them, not expecting the chocolate in the middle, they grinned a crumby, sugar covered grin.

 

Snowball Cookies 

- 1 cup soft butter                  

- 1 tsp. vanilla               

- 1/2 cup sugar       

- 2 cups sifted flour      

- 1 cup finely chopped nuts      

- 1  5 3/4 ounce package of chocolate kisses

- Powdered Sugar

Beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Add sifted flour and nuts, blend well. 

Chill dough about 1/2 hour. 

Remove foil from kisses and shape dough around kisses, using scant tablespoon of dough for each.  Roll to form a ball. 

Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 12 minutes until set but not brown

While still warm roll in powdered sugar.  Cool and store in a tightly covered container. 

Roll in sugar again before serving if desired.

While my first recipe is a trip in the way back machine for me, the second one is a recipe that I just recently started making and simply adore: Five Spice Shortbread Cookies. As a general rule, I like sweets that aren't too sweet. I prefer simple, pure flavors over desserts covered in bells and whistles (previous cookie recipe excluded, of course :) These cookies remind me of a dressed up version of Girl Scout Shortbread Cookies, which I always preferred to the ThinMint. Thank you to Ming Tsai for the recipe.

Butter Shortbread Cookie Dough

Makes 4 logs 10 inches long by 1 1/4 inches in diameter
Lasts 2 weeks, frozen

·         1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

·         1 1/3 cups sugar

·         2 teaspoons kosher salt

·         3 egg yolks

·         2 tablespoons vanilla extract

·         Interior scrapings of 1/2 split vanilla bean, preferably Tahitian

·         3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1. In the bowl of a mixer, combine the butter, sugar, and salt and cream on medium speed until blended, about 2 minutes. One by one, add the egg yolks, mixing until incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and the scrapings of the vanilla bean. Scrape down the bowl.

2. Turn the mixer off and add the flour. Turn the machine to low and mix until the flour is completely incorporated. Remove the dough from the bowl. Working on parchment or wax paper, form the dough into 4 logs 10 inches long and 1 1/4 inches in diameter, wrap, and chill

Five Spice Shortbread Cookies

Makes 20 cookies

·         2 teaspoons ground ginger

·         2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

·         2 teaspoons ground cardamom

·         1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

·         1/2 teaspoon ground star anise (see Ming’s Tip, left)

·         1/4 cup turbinado or other granulated sugar

·         1 chilled log of Butter Shortbread Cookie Dough

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a small bowl, combine the ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, star anise, and sugar.

2. Cut the chilled log into twenty 12-inch rounds. Dip one cut surface of each round into the spice mixture and arrange the rounds 2 inches apart on all sides on a parchment-lined or nonstick cookie sheet or sheets.

3. Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the cookies with a spatula and cool on a wire rack.

going (butter)nuts

  Now that Thanksgiving is officially over, I have two things to confess:

1) I hate turkey.

2) I hate leftover turkey even more.

There is a sweetness to turkey that, as a white meat eater, I don't really care for. Partner that with the fact that I don't know that I have ever had a properly cooked turkey before (sorry, Mom)..and the thought of sitting through at least one turkey dinners in one day makes me just sigh.

So, in the days following Turkey Day, I usually crave things that couldn't be more un-turkey-like. Something to cleanse my palate of it all and bring me back to the world of real food.  Today..the only thing I could think of that I would enjoy eating was the butternut squash sitting on my kitchen counter. No soup for me! I took it in an entirely different direction and made Mario Batali's Scapese di Zucca: Marinated Butternut Squash .

This dish has every quality I look for in food all on one plate: creamy textures balanced against crunchy, sweet versus tangy, some spice but not overwhelming with a cool herb to counterbalance it. Don't cook the squash to death: stick with the inch sized sliced recommended in the recipe. You'll get some caramelization without overcooking it. Also, don't skimp on the fresh mint. It adds a lot to this dish. You wont miss those leftover turkey recipes, I promise.

Scapece di Zucca - Marinated Butternut Squash

2 medium butternut squash, seeded and cut into 1-inch slices
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons plus 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 medium red onion, sliced paper thin
1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 clove garlic, sliced paper-thin
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Season the squash with salt and pepper, drizzle with 4 tablespoons olive oil, and place in a single layer on 1 or 2 cookie sheets.
Bake in the oven until just tender, about 18 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together the remaining oil, vinegar, onion, Chile flakes, oregano, and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Remove the squash from the oven and pour the marinade over. Allow to cool for 20 minutes in the marinade, sprinkle with fresh mint leaves, and serve. This dish can be made earlier in the day but should not be refrigerated.

Hay Hay it's Donna Day!

I love Donna Hay. 100%. As a food stylist, I find her work in her cookbooks and her magazine to be unparalleled. Her influence on food photography and publishing reminds me of the impact that Martha Stewart originally had. Nowadays, on my shoots, people want it to look like "Donna Hay".

So..imagine my delight when I saw a blogcontest on winosandfoodies. Donna Hay recipe challenges! Super! Where do I sign up?

Here's the thing: I have made Donna Hay recipes in the past. Going back to that Miss Martha thing, the two women have something else in common: Sometimes their recipes are a hit...and other times...they go over like a lead balloon. When I found out that the recipe to be made were Donna's "Self Frosting Cupcakes", I did feel a twinge of trepidation.

My first question was "What in the sam hill is a self frosting cupcake!?". The recipe calls for a denser, thicker batter than one might normally use for cupcakes. You then take whatever you're going to use for your "frosting" (peanut butter, nutella, jam, etc.) and swirl it into the raw batter. 20 minutes later...the frosting has swirled through the body of the cake and risen to the top. Your frosting is self contained - genius, right?

Since I can never make things easy on myself, I decided to make two different flavors. The first batch got a swirl of Stonewall Kitchen's Mocha Espresso Sauce. On its own, this sauce did not suck, I assure you. The consistency was a little thinner than I expected, but I figured it would be okay.

Rut roh.

My first oops was overfilling my baking cups and I think I went a little hog wild on my frosting as well. When their 20 minutes was up in the over, several of them have overflowed their banks. The sauce did provide some oozy gooeyness, though, which was a nice compliment to the rich, thick cake.

Unfortunately, this batch wasn't the most photogenic, to say the least. You didn't really see any swirl. An oozy blob would be a more accurate description. Okay. Back to the drawing board (or the cutting board, one might say).

The second frosting I used was something I stumbled upon at Whole Foods - chocolate peanut butter. Those three words made me think of three other words: best thing ever. This particular peanut butter is from Peanut Butter & Co., a shop in NYC. On their website, they say they make a cinnamon raisin peanut butter, which sounds like it might be just the thing to try and make these cupcakes with.

Getting the swirl action going with a thick batter and an equally thick frosting got a little...hairy. There was lots of cupcake liner shuffling, paper getting stuck together, and uneven swirlyness. At the end, I licked the toothpick to get a taste of this heavenly frosting flavor. Eh. Not so much for me.

"You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"

"No...you got peanut butter in my chocolate!"

I digress.

When the baking was done, the frosting looked to be more of a success than the first batch. There was some hints of swirls and the frosting went through to the body of the cupcakes in some of them, as you can see from the main photo at the top of the post.

It was time for the taste test. I have to say...this recipe didn't knock my socks off. The texture of the cake itself I think is what was off-putting to me. This is not your traditional cupcake. The whole joy of cupcakes to me is their airiness and their spongy lightness. The first gooey bite of frosting that gets all mushed up with the fluffy cake. Donna's cupcakes are much heavier and richer, which just doesn't do it for me the way I thought it would. The peanut butter/chocolate flavor, though, was quite good in combination with the cupcake.

All in all, though...I'm glad I gave them a go. Hay...it was a Donna Hay Day!

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F.

Place 6oz very soft butter, 3/4 cup caster sugar, 3 eggs, 1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour and 2 tsp baking powder in a bowl and mix, using electric beaters, until smooth.

Line 12 muffin tins with paper cases.

Spoon in the mixture and swirl 1 1/2 tsp peanut butter through each cake.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 12.

soupçon

   There is very little that makes me as happy as Asian soups (I know I said this in my last post about beets...and lentils...and truffle oil...but just work with me here). The added bonus is nothing cuts through a head full of heaviness and haze like a hot, flavorful soup.

I've begun making these at home. Some days, I feel like making a day of it and making pho broth from scratch - oxtails and the whole shebang. Other times, like today, I want to throw it all together and have it be a band aid for whatever ails me.

Taking frozen homemade chicken stock, I added star anise, kaffir lime leaves, red Thai chilies, and a cinnamon stick. While that is percolating together, I placed some shredded boiled chicken to the bottom of the bowl. Add some Asian veggies to the broth, heat through, and spoon it on top of the chicken. It equals my version of comfort food.

star struck

Beets are my favorite food. No...really. I mean it. Okay... so they're one of my favorites. Picking out a favorite food to me would be like picking a favorite child. Not going to happen.

On any given day, I could also tell you that arugula, lentils, and currants are also my favorite food. That having been said, you can imagine what a treat this antipasto from Star Provisions To Go is: roasted beets with orange blossom water, roasted cauliflower with currants and pine nuts, and lentil salad. They have a huge selection of side dishes that you can mix and match any three of for an incredible meal. Did I mention it was only $6.95? Buying anything at Star Provisions for $6.95 is practically like stealing.

When I eat side dishes like this, I very much subscribe to the "cafeteria tray" way of eating. Not in this case. The orange blossom water from the beets mixes with the oil from the cauliflower and the vinegar from the lentils. It dresses the peppery arugula and lets you mop up all of the flavors at the bottom. Its absolutely perfect.