Granola Cookies

These guys are a variation on my Flourless Oatmeal Cookie.  I was making them for a friend and wanted them to be a sort of homey power food, so I was looking to give them a little more nutritional value and nuts and seeds seemed like a logical way to go... and then I realized I was basically making granola bars in cookie form, except they use egg as a binder [more protein!].

I'm rather pleased with the results.  I decided with the Flourless Oatmeal Cookies that processing the ingredients into tiny bits made them stick together better,  but I missed having chunks of things, so this time I reserved a little of everything and combined them by hand at the end.  Much better.  I also upped the egg to oat ratio, which means they don't have to be pressed flat; they'll spread of their own accord more like a normal oatmeal cookie.

If you have a serious problem with gluten, be sure to get rolled oats specifically labeled "Gluten-Free" since most commercially produced oats will have cross-contamination from other grains processed at the same facility.  If you just have an intolerance, you're unlikely to notice the trace amounts in standard oats.

Recipe:  Granola Cookies

Calaveras Cookies

 

I meant to get these posted before Dia de los Muertos [All Souls Day], but that didn't happen.  Instead, you can marvel at them this year and plan to make your own next time... They would, of course, work as Halloween cookies, but since I was using my Mexican Chocolate Cookie dough it seemed only appropriate to wait for November 2nd.  Sometimes decorated cookies don't taste as good as the look, but that cookie is a workhorse and has enough flavor to power through my as-tasty-as-it-gets royal icing. [Royal icing looks great but tastes flatly sweet, even with a goodly amount of almond extract. That's why the flavor of the cookie underneath is so important.]

These were pretty fun to make.  As you fill them, different features appear and I'd intentionally leave "highlights" here and there and I found the emerging characters very entertaining... which is good, because I made a double batch (~80) and it did take a while.  On further consideration, I could have made the cookies twice as thick (1/4") and it probably would have made them even tastier.

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You also don't need the fancy cookie cutter.  I have one (that I think I got after Halloween one year at Williams-Sonoma) so I use it, but you could do the same technique with a simple oval and get almost the same effect (minus the little teeth).  I have no artistic talent*, so I like guidelines.

Recipe: Royal Icing

Chocolate Macarons

JG and I are spending a bit of time in the heartland, which meant we had to clear out the fridge and put the garden in the bathtub [it wasn't easy].  I had 6 egg whites leftover from a couple projects and chocolate that was starting to bloom in my warm pantry, so I figured I may as well make a triple batch of David Libovitz' chocolate macarons and my own low[er] fat caramelized chocolate ganache.    

My only adjustment was that I sifted the dry ingredients into the whites because the nut oil/cocoa powder combination was clumping together... and the final result was still a little too bumpy.

 As for the ganache, I caramelized the sugar and browned the butter before adding fat-free evaporated milk [in lieu of heavy cream] and then stirred in nearly a pound of chocolate... and had nearly a pound of the resulting ganache left over, waiting for me in the freezer when I come home.

Recipe: Caramelized Chocolate Ganache

Whole-Grain Chocolate Almond Biscotti

I realize I have a biscotti problem -- obsession, really -- but once I gave up coffee I haven't been able to commit to a single flavor. The latest batch were from Joy of Baking, and I followed it pretty closely [except for substituting 1 cup white whole wheat and 3/4 cup oat for the called-for A.P. flour] but I had a little timer problem:

I didn't realize it until I was sitting at the computer and a toasty smell wafted toward me. I looked at the clock, then ran to the kitchen, half-expecting to find biscotti charcoal. They were deeply brown around the edges but just shy of burned, which actually gave them an amazing roasted marshmallow-esque flavor. I'm making a note to add another 15 minutes to the second bake on this recipe. [I think it was actually closer to 20 but they were just a shade away from the trash can, so it's best to undershoot and monitor, know what I mean?]

Dutch Letters -- Almond Bankets

Here's another Iowan delicacy for you: The Dutch Letter. It's an artifact of Dutch settlers in the area, an almond pastry called "banket" that was once reserved as a holiday treat and often spelled out "Merry Christmas" [in Dutch] or a birthday celebrant's name: the "letterbanket". In Iowa, it's simply called a "Dutch Letter" and found year round in certain bakeries in the shape of an "S." [I guess it was the prettiest of the stand alone letters?]I loved these things as a kid and always asked my grandmother to bring them with her on their annual visits to Texas. I hadn't had them in years until I recently came across her recipe and made them for my uncle, a fellow almond pastry lover. They're not nearly as intricate as they were in my memory. You roll out a pastry dough (pie dough) cut it into strips, lay a log of almond paste down each strip, roll it up, and bake it. The fact that pie dough now comes in the freezer and almond paste now comes in tubes makes it even easier, if you like shortcuts.

However, I believe that easy is often less tasty and definitely less economical... Almond paste in a tube is about 50% ground almond, 50% sugar+ binder+ preservatives+ bitter almond, and costs $7.99 for 8 ounces at my grocery store, which -- if you generously allow $.50 for the sugar and preservatives -- means you're paying $30/lb* for ground almonds. Yes, they're blanched almonds but a) my whole grains add flecks and bits to everything anyway, so pure white almonds are almost antithetical to my baking aesthetic and b) blanched almonds still only cost $6/lb, tops.

Grandma Sue's recipe calls for adding sugar and eggs to the almond paste to make the filling, and I discovered I could use whole almonds (at $4/lb), toast and grind them with sugar, add egg and extract, and the resulting filling was a little less sweet and tasted even better.
[Love you, Grandma!]As for the pastry, you can certainly use your favorite pie crust recipe, but I tinkered a bit and came up with a whole-grain version that uses half the butter of a regular pastry recipe and added ground almonds to boost the flavor. [Yes, it's adding some fat back in, but it's different fat.] It's slightly less flaky, but the nuts and oat flour make it an extremely forgiving, richly flavored dough.

Recipe: Dutch Letters -- Almond Bankets
There's a total of 1 pound almonds used three different ways. I made these as 2-inch sticks for JG's lab; you can make them much longer and shape them in whatever form appeals. You can also make much heftier pastries by not dividing the dough and using all of it to fill a single baking sheet and piping the filling twice as thick... just be careful to seal the seam. The almonds on top are not traditional, but rather pretty and give the pastry an extra crunch.

Filling:
4 oz almonds, toasted (~2/3 cup almond meal)
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 egg

In a food processor, grind almonds and sugar until very fine and clump together, ~2 minutes. Add egg and extract and process until smooth. Scoop into a ziploc-style bag and chill until ready to shape pastry.

Dough:
1 cup oat flour
2 oz almonds, toasted* (~1/3 cup almond meal)
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
6 T butter (3/4 stick or 3 oz.) [optionally browned and cooled]

1 c white whole wheat flour
2 T butter, diced and chilled
1 T amaretto
1 T vodka
1 T water

flour for dusting
1 egg
2 oz sliced or crushed almonds [optional]
sugar

Combine first 6 ingredients in a food processor and grind until almonds disintegrate ~2 minutes. Add wheat flour and pulse until distributed, then add chilled butter and liquids. Process until dough forms cohesive mass [small chunks of butter may be visible], divide in half, flatten into disks, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least 20 minutes. [Depending on your oven, you may want to start heating it now.]

Assembly:
Set oven to 425F.
Remove filling and dough disks from fridge. [If dough is hard, wait ~5 minutes until pliable enough to roll.] Cut parchment paper to fit your baking sheet, dust with flour, and roll out one disk to ~ 12"x15" or the size of the sheet. Use a straight edge and pizza wheel or knife to cut along the length of the dough in 4 equal strips. Use your baking sheet to transfer the cut dough back to the fridge to firm up while you repeat with the other disk.

Using 1st sheet, cut ~ 1/4" -1/2" corner off of the filling bag and pipe along one edge of the strip. Roll the dough along the length and pinch/flatten seam underneath. Shape each log into letters or cut each into 5-6 equal pieces.

Topping Option 1:
Beat egg, brush over top of pastry and sprinkle with sugar

Topping Option 2:
Beat egg, add almonds and stir to coat. Scatter almonds down the length of the logs [fingers are easiest] and sprinkle sugar over all [use fingers from the other, non-gooey, hand].

Bake 18-20 minutes or until egg wash is golden brown. Check in the last couple minutes to make sure optional almonds are deeply toasted but not burned. Transfer to a cooling rack and break pastry at seams once cool enough to handle. [The crispy filling globs that ooze out and stick to the sheet are what I like to call "baker's pay."]

Assemble 2nd sheet while the first sheet is baking. Store in an airtight container.

*Updated: My brain originally refused to compute the full extent of the price gouging and I erroneously stated that 40z of almonds for $7.50 equaled $15/lb. 1 lb=16oz, so the paste costs ~$30/lb for the blanched almonds.


* *Toast raw almonds at 350F for 5-10 minutes [it varies] or until they sizzle and start to pop. Small black spots where they touch the pan are okay, but if they smell burned at all you've got to start over.

Flourless Oatmeal Cookies

These oatmeal-raisin cookies are crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and gluten-free without a special flour mix if you use GF oats.* They have 5 key ingredients, and three of them are endlessly adaptable.[For the record, I'm not on the gluten-intolerance bandwagon. I know there are some genuine diseases and allergies -- and I'm concerned that the genetic modifications that make our grain crops withstand bad weather and long storage may also make it more difficult for our guts to break down and digest -- but I also think people eat too many rich bakery goods and put a lot of junk bewteen the halves of their fluffy white, low-protein/gluten sandwich rolls and then blame their indigestion on the bread.
I think going the other way and embracing whole grains and hearty breads is a better way to go but, that said, I have a limited audience and an significant minority have expressed a desire to cut gluten... and I like a baking challenge.]
The inspiration for this cookie came from a tuile/macaroon hybrid in Ginette Mathiot's I Know How to Cook [Je Sais Cuisiner] that used only nuts, chocolate, egg, and sugar. While I love exotic cookies, I also like reengineering classics. The thought that someone with Celiac's disease simply cannot have an oatmeal cookie is unacceptable to me.

Herewith, the Recipe: Flourless Oatmeal Cookies
You can substitute up to a cup of the oats with nuts and use any dried fruit you like... or chocolate chunks. I buzzed everything in my food processor because smaller bits hold together better, but you could use quick cooking oats and roughly chopped raisins and squeeze everything together by hand. Salt, cinnamon, and vanilla are optional flavorings.

Makes ~3 dozen 2-inch cookies

3 cups rolled oats [gluten free, if desired]*
1 1/4 cup sugar [I used 3/4 white, 1/2 cup brown, you could also replace 2 Tbs with honey or sorghum]
1 tsp kosher or sea salt [ or 1/2 tsp table salt]
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

Water for flattening [or booze, but it'd be wasteful]

Preheat oven to 375F and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment.

Combine dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse ~5 times to crush the oats. [See header for by-hand instructions.] Add raisins, egg, and vanilla and pulse until mixture clumps together.

Use a tablespoon or #60 scoop to make walnut-sized balls and space them evenly across the 2 sheets. [You should be able to fit 20 on one large cookie sheet; they won't spread much.] Dip a flat-bottomed glass in a shallow bowl of water and flatten cookies until they are ~1/8-inch thick and 2 inches across, rewetting the glass before each cookie. [Twisting the glass as you pull up helps it release from the cookie.]

Bake ~14 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Slide parchment onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely. Once cool, cookies should peel cleanly from the parchment. Store in an airtight container.

*As I understand it, the little gluten that exists in oats is not actually a problem for those with gluten sensitivities; it's just that oats are usually milled in the same place as wheat flour and pick up a lot of cross-contamination. The separate-mill requirement is also what makes GF oats more expensive.

Sorghum

Sorghum syrup isn't much used outside the breadbasket states, but it's pretty popular where my parents are from in Iowa, where sorghum [a grain species that includes milo and millet] is mostly grown as livestock feed. Its taste is a little spicier and sweeter than blackstrap molasses and has a much richer flavor than dark corn syrup, though either could be used in this recipe. I've never found anyone who sold sorghum outside the Midwest, but it is available online.I grew up drizzling the syrup over my pumpkin pie -- no matter how good your pumpkin pie is, it's always improved by a little sorghum. My dad's favorite way to consume it is in the form of oatmeal-sorghum cookies, so I recently created a lower-fat, whole-grain version. Both he and my mom said they were the best they'd ever had.
Of course, I'm their only daughter, so I don't imagine they'd ever turn down my cookies.

Recipe: Oatmeal Sorghum Cookies
You can use all purpose flour in lieu of oat flour, but cake flour would be a better substitute.

1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sorghum
4 T brown butter
2 T amaretto
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine flours, leaveners, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. In a mixing bowl, combine sugars, sorghum and butter and beat until combined on medium-low speed. Add vanilla and amaretto and beat on medium speed until incorporated, then add egg and repeat. Add flour mixture and beat on low speed until mostly combined. Scrape down bowl, then add oatmeal and beat until dough is evenly moist.

Drop from teaspoon onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (or use a #40 scoop). Bake 12-14 minutes or until the tops look dry and the cracks look moist. They will fall as they cool.

Gluten-Free Cashew Gingersnaps

This recipe is basically a tuile batter: an egg-white based cookie that uses a little flour or ground nuts for structure. They harden as they cool, so they're sometimes spread thin, then rolled up like a cigar fresh out of the oven and filled with a ganache after they cool, or sometimes they're made into squiggly designs and stuck vertically in a mousse or ice cream, restaurant-style.

I'm not much of an artist, but I can write fairly well with tuile batter.


Recipe: Gluten-Free Cashew Gingersnaps
There's not a whole lot of ginger in this recipe, but there's no flour to mute it so the flavor is pretty pronounced. The cashews offer a neutral buttery flavor that goes well with the ginger, but almonds would work well, too. The batter can be stored in the fridge for a few days, but after baking they'll soften to the point of chewiness after a few days.

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cashews
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cider vinegar
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp cardamom
1/8 tsp salt

Sesame seeds, to garnish

Preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and puree until mixture is mostly uniform and frothy in appearance with small nut chunks. Transfer to a quart-sized zipper-seal bag. Snip one corner and pipe into desired shapes, then sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake ~10 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch. [The cookies will harden as they cool.] Transfer paper with cookies to a cooling rack -- do not attempt to remove cookies until cool. If they're still flexible at that point, you can put them back in the [off]oven and the residual heat should dry them out.

Store in an air tight container.

Peanut Butter Shortbread for Grandpa Ed

My paternal grandfather passed away recently. He was a great lover of peanut butter before his doctor cut it from his diet, so I've created a new peanut butter cookie recipe in his honor. I did a shortbread because he considered people over 5'5" to be abnormally tall.
He switched to refried bean and mustard sandwiches once the peanut butter was banned. I'm still working on how to turn that into a cookie.

Recipe: Peanut Butter Shortbread for Grandpa Ed
These actually hold together a little better if you use at least part wheat flour, but a few relatives will be avoiding gluten at the memorial, so I adapted. I like to use the grind-it-yourself peanut butter, it's nice and thick and the oil doesn't separate.

yield ~4 dozen

2 cups oat flour
1 cup powdered sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cocktail peanuts (or cashews)
1 cup natural peanut butter
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), browned or simply melted
1/4 cup amaretto
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla

[up to 4 Tbsp water, as needed]

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine dry ingredients and nuts in a food processor and pulse until nuts are roughly chopped. Add all remaining ingredients and process until well-combined, stopping at least once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mixture may look crumbly but should cohere when pinched together -- add water a tablespoon at a time until it does.

Transfer dough to a mixing bowl. Pinch off walnut-sized pieces [cookie scoop #60] and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Use a small cut-glass vase or candy bowl to press the dough into a 1/8" disk, repeat until the sheet is full, then trim up the edges with an offset spatula or pizza cutter. [I obviously turned them into squares.]

Bake ~12 minutes or until cookies are golden brown.

Whiskey Oatmeal Cookies

One more variation, then we move on to other fun things...
1 recipe Butter Rum Cookies with amendments and substitutions:
** Do not process oatmeal, mix all by hand or in standing mixer
** Use whiskey and amaretto for alcohol component

Fold in 1/2 cup prunes, chopped, or raisins. Bake as directed.

Chocolate Sunflower Cookies

This variation was inspired by a bowl of chocolate/candy-covered sunflower seeds at a checkout counter. They were tasty -- so are these cookies. I pressed the seeds into both sides so the bottoms have a nice crunch. I considered arranging the seeds in a sunflower pattern, but the chocolate chunks made it too tricky and I was loathe to omit the chocolate.
Variation: Chocolate Sunflower Cookies
You can use a booze-free chocolate chip recipe if you're baking with children.

1 batch Butter Rum Cookies
~3/4 cup dark chocolate, roughly chopped, or a bag of chocolate chips
~ 3/4 cup roasted, salted sunflower seeds

Preheat oven to 375F. Fold chocolate into cookie dough. Roll or scoop into smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball and drop into a bowl full of sunflower seeds. Press the dough into the seeds, flip, and press again. Transfer to a baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough. Bake 12-15 minutes or until the edges brown. [It takes 14 minutes in my oven.] Cool until chocolate resolidifies, then store in an airtight container.

[Low-fat] Butter Rum Cookies

Someone asked me what the point of a low-fat cookie was since I was still making -- and consuming -- sweets. The way I see it, 1) reducing/replacing the fat reduces the overall calorie count of the treat and 2) sugar calories are only "bad" if you don't burn them off* -- then they turn into fat -- whereas fat calories start off as fat and require extra effort to convert; like aerobic activity and reaching your target heart rate and whatnot. While I've come to enjoy lifting weights and spending time on the elliptical machine, I'd rather have a cookie that I can work off on my walk to the gym.
This new recipe, for example, still has all the sugar, but uses only 4 tablespoons of butter and 4 tablespoons of 80 proof alcohol (net: ~535 calories, some of which I think bake off with the alcohol, & ~45 grams of fat) versus 12 to 16 tablespoons of butter (~1,220 to 1,630 calories & ~135 to 180g fat) in a standard recipe. With another ~500 calories in flour and ~700 in sugar, they're still not "good" for you, but it's a pretty significant difference. At the rate I like to consume cookies [think Cookie Monster] there's no way I can keep ordinary cookies around the house and still be able to zip up my pants... and I like it when my pants fit... and I like keeping cookies around the house.
Enough ranting... This cookie is a riff on the pie crust method of using alcohol to hydrate the flour while inhibiting gluten formation, plus oat flour and powdered sugar/cornstarch for tenderness. Most of the alcohol does bake off, but a good ~30 -40% remains immediately after baking and slowly evaporates out over time, so this is probably not the best cookie for the kiddos [and the dough is downright boozy and eggless, making it an inappropriately excellent snack for adult dough-eaters]. These start off crunchy on the outside with a chewy caramel-flavored center and become uniformly soft over time. I've got a few variations in mind, but I'll test them first. So many cookies, so little time...
Recipe: Butter Rum Cookies
Yield: ~2 dozen cookies
Since there's so little, browning the butter is important for delivering the flavor of buttery goodness. These guys don't spread much during baking, though they will puff from the baking soda. You can use AP flour in place of the whole-wheat flours, and oat flour in place of the oatmeal. It may work using just 1.5 cups of AP, but I don't have any so I haven't tested it.

1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup rolled oatmeal
1/2 cup powdered sugar (or white sugar plus 1 tsp cornstarch)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
4 T butter, browned
2 T spiced rum
2 T vodka, everclear, or amaretto
2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine all dry ingredients in a food processor [or blender**] and process ~3 minutes or until oats are mostly pulverized. Meanwhile heat butter in a small skillet over medium flame, stirring occasionally with a heat-proof spatula, until nutty brown milk solids rise through the foam, ~2 minutes. Remove from heat and scrape into a heat-safe bowl to stop further browning/burning.

Add alcohol and vanilla to the dry ingredients, then drizzle butter over. Pulse until mixture forms a cohesive ball. Scoop by rounded tablespoons (I used a #60 scoop) onto parchment lined sheet and flatten with a fork or glass [cut glass makes pretty patterns]. Bake 12-15 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. [Cookies may bee surprisingly flexible, but if they're browned, they're done.] Slide parchment onto cooling rack and allow to cool to room temperature. Store in an airtight container.

* My dentist may disagree.

**If using a blender, process dry ingredients, then transfer to a bowl and mix wet ingredients with hand mixer or spatula.

Sticky Crab Apple Meringues

My shortbread experiment needs more work, so in the interim I thought I'd share another crab apple failure. The New York Times had a recipe for a walnut meringue with caramelized apple and still I had some quartered and seeded crab apples in the fridge that needed to go.
I also have fond memories of a nutty meringues my grandmother used to make with pecans -- although that may only have been when she was visiting us since Iowa has lots of black walnuts -- and the addition of herbs and alcohol made it seem like the sort of recipe I was meant to make.
But then a mild cold front came in, and my meringues got sticky. I tried rebaking them, which never looks pretty but can work texturally, but the net result just wasn't exciting. The caramel crabapples were still very tart and didn't meld with the nutty meringue at all... I think it was a pretty solid fail, but I blame myself, not the newspaper.
I'll encourage JG to post his opinion, since we don't always agree on these things.

Hatch Cookies

I'm one of those people who get obsessed with Hatch chiles right about this time every year. I didn't figure they'd be as excited about a specific New Mexican pepper growing region up here, but Whole Foods (again, Texas-based) actually has them and I'm buying them in 5 lb. increments. Anything I make right now has a pepper or three thrown in and my baked goods are no exception.

This is a recipe I created a couple years ago. They're spicy/sweet/tangy/crunchy and they've been a staple casual dessert at my fajita/taco parties. My only frustration is that I haven't been able to get a satisfactory texture without a higher butter content. I'm pretty sure the problem was the whey, so substituting yogurt cheese or fat-free cream cheese would probably work, but I had a deadline that needed to be met so I decided to "re-familiarize" myself with my recipe before I tinkered with it again.
Recipe: Hatch Cookies with Cornmeal and Lime
As always, you can just use all-purpose flour in lieu of both whole-wheat varieties. I tend to use whatever cornmeal I have on hand: yellow, white, stoneground, polenta, etc. Stone ground cornmeal will have a crunchier texture; blue cornmeal obscured the flecks of green and was my least favorite.
My mother thinks I just like to get things dirty* but I think it's best to use both the food processor and the mixer on this one because you want to make the lime bits as small as possible and the Hatch bits as non-pureed as possible. If you can't possibly wash both contraptions, try doing it all in the food processor and let me know how it goes.

1 Hatch chile, roasted, skinned, and seeded ~1/4 cup

1 cup cornmeal [yellow or white]
1 cup white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup white or evaporated can sugar
zest (rind) of 3 limes, juice after zesting and reserve for divided use
8 tbs (1 stick) butter
1 large egg
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/8 teaspoon almond extract

~2-3 tablespoons remaining lime juice
~2/3-1 cup powdered sugar
pinch of salt

Fine dice the chile and refrigerate to cool [you don't want it to melt the butter]. Whisk dry ingredients together [evenly distribute cornmeal and flour] and set aside.

Process sugar and lime zest in a food processor until sugar is uniformly green and only tiny flecks of lime skin remain ~2-3 minutes. Transfer to mixer bowl and add butter. Beat on high until pale and fluffy ~4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg, and beat until fully incorporated ~1 minute, then drizzle in lime juice and almond while the mixer is running. Scrape down the bowl, add chiles, and mix briefly on low speed until dispersed [the flour will clump on them if they're not already mixed in].

Add half of the dry mix, mix on low until mostly incorporated, then add the rest. Dough should be soft and somewhat sticky. Chill no more than 20 minutes in the freezer or refrigerate at least one hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 375F. Drop by tablespoons** onto parchment lined baking sheets, ~12 per sheet, and bake for 16-19 minutes or until cookies are faintly golden around the edges, rotating sheets after 8 minutes. Transfer to cooling racks.

While cookies are cooling, measure out remaining lime juice into a small mixing bowl and add 1/3 cup powder for each tablespoon of juice and a pinch of salt [2 T juice should be enough for 2 dz cookies]. Whisk with a fork until no clumps remain, or pass the mixture through a strainer. Once cookies are no longer hot, line them up as close together as possible and use a fork to drizzle/spatter the lime glaze over them. Once glaze dries, store in an airtight container.


* She's not wrong. I do.

** If you happen to have a portioning scoop, let the dough warm up a tiny bit before you scoop it. Higher-butter doughs get pretty hard and can bend the ratcheting mechanism and I now need to buy a new scoop.

Multi-Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm moving -- next week -- and packing up my kitchen makes cooking pretty awkward... but sometimes you've just got to make a soothing batch of cookies, especially when you need to use up some random pantry ingredients. These were surprisingly good. The oat flour makes them nice and crispy on the outside, but perfectly soft in the middle. Chocolate chip cookies are JG's favorite and he's always resisted my attempts to "healthen" them. These, he loves.

Recipe: Multi-Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
As always, you can just use all purpose flour, but the oat flour is key to the texture and well worth seeking out.

7 Tbs butter (you could use 6 or 8, but I had 7 left)
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs yogurt [plain fat-free]
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 Tbs coffee liquour (I was out of vanilla extract, it worked really well)

1 cup whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat)
1 cup oat flour (key)
1/2 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
12 oz. bittersweet chocolate (I usually chop it, but I had a bag of Ghiradelli 60%)

[Optional step: In a small skillet, brown 3 tbs of butter until the solids turn the color of almond skins. Pour into a metal or shatterproof glass bowl and transfer to the fridge to cool. Once it's opaque but still soft, add it to the remaining butter and sugar in the mixer]

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine butter, sugar and yogurt in a standing mixer and beat on medium high until smooth (it won't really cream, but the color of the butter will get paler). Reduce speed to medium. Add whole egg and beat until combined, scrape down the bowl, then repeat with the egg yolk and the liquour.

Add the dry ingredients and mix on low until almost all of the flour is incorporated, then add the chocolate and mix in. [You don't actually have to worry about the cookies getting too tough because there's no gluten in the oat flour.]

Drop by rounded tablespoons on a parchment-lined sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes or until edges begin to brown. Slide onto a cooling rack and wait at least a few minutes before eating.

Whole-Wheat Mexican Chocolate Cookies

I always have to suppress an eye-roll when people talk about baking as chemistry. It's not real chemistry. I mean, some of the more avant guard pastry may be, and there are chemical reactions involved in baking, but most home baking is a matter of approximate ratios of flour/sometimes sugar/butter/salt/sometimes egg. You don't have to level off every cup and teaspoon perfectly... eyeballing it works in most cases. You might start off with a quick bread and end up with a cake, but that's because they're not that different... muffins are just an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. That said, it is possible to throw off your ratios inadvertently -- like forgetting to reduce one ingredient when halving a recipe or accidentally grabbing the 1/3 cup instead of the 1/2 cup -- and it change the texture quite a bit. Still edible, but not quite right.

In the case of these particular cookies, there is a certain point where the batter is basically a soft chocolate mousse... a really, really good chocolate mousse with caramel notes of browned butter, earthy cocoa and espresso and just the right amount of cinnamon. If you eat enough of the dough at this stage you can actually throw off your ratios significantly, rendering the final dough too dry and unfit for anything but a cookie crumb crust base. It, um, happened to someone I know...
Recipe: Whole-Wheat Mexican Chocolate Cookies
These cookies are very thin with a delicate crumb, in part because of the pastry flour. I've only managed to reduce the butter by 25%, but since they're so thin you get a lot of cookies and each one packs a pretty satisfying chocolaty punch. Sometimes I roll them thicker ~1/4” if I want something sturdier to make sandwich cookies. You can omit the sesame and cinnamon for a more basic chocolate cookie flavor, or add 1/8 tsp cayenne for a hint of heat.

1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sesame seeds

8 oz. (16 Tbs/2 sticks) cold butter (divided use)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp espresso powder
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 Tbs vanilla

Combine first five dry ingredients and set aside. Brown 4 Tbs butter in a small skillet until golden brown and fragrant. Pour into bowl of your standing mixer and add cocoa, cinnamon and espresso. Turn on low speed and stream sugar into running mixer. [This helps cool it a little so you don't melt the rest of the butter.] Once sugar is fully incorporated, slice remaining butter into large pats and add to somewhat cooled mixture. Increase speed to high and beat until creamed… 2-3 minutes. The color will go from almost black to a rich brown like chocolate frosting. Reduce speed to medium and add eggs yolks, then vanilla. Beat until batter is nice and thick.

Now you’re just a few eggs and some refrigerator time shy of a mousse. DO NOT EAT MORE THAN A SPOONFUL OF THIS LOVELY BATTER OR YOU’LL RUIN YOUR COOKIES! Add the flour mixture, ½ cup at a time and waiting until flour is mostly incorporated before adding next scoop. Divide dough roughly in half and dump into Ziploc bags or wrap in plastic wrap before flattening into disks. Chill dough for 15 minutes, refrigerate for up to 3 days, or freeze indefinitely [Allow to come to a cool room temp before rolling out]. If chilling, turn on oven to 350F so it'll be ready when you are.

Unwrap dough and place on parchment paper, keeping plastic wrap spread over top. Roll dough to 1/8” thick, remove plastic, and cut into desired shapes. Using an offset spatula or a thin pancake spatula, move shapes to parchment-lined baking sheet and bake 8-10 minutes. Once done, slide cookies, parchment and all, onto cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before removing from parchment.

Mexican Chocolate Biscotti

We eat these daily. When we run out, I usually make more the same day. Sometimes I'll switch it up and make Sicillian biscotti with lemon and anise, or a hazelnut or almond biscotti if I've got nuts to spare, but the next batch will always be Mexican chocolate. The whole wheat flour contributes to the nutty, earthy, chocolate-ness without making them seem "healthy." This style of biscotti using only whole eggs for fat, makes a very hard cookie after the second bake [biscotti means "twice-baked in Italian]. I have made these by hand but the dough is pretty gooey, so by the time I stirred in enough to get everything incorporated it was a little overmixed and the resulting texture was more dense than usual, but still good. The chemical reaction between the soda and the chocolate helps the crumb immensely. They aren't so hard you'll fear for your teeth, but they do soften nicely when dunked in coffee. They can keep for months in a sealed container... but we always finish them well before that.

Recipe: Mexican Chocolate Biscotti

You can chop some of the chocolate and add it at the end if you want chunks... but you'll also have to wait a couple hours for the chocolate to set before you can cut them cleanly for the second bake. The sesame seeds and tahini add a great mole-esque flavor, but they're easily omitted. I've made these with honey, but the texture was off. You can also use all purpose flour for all or part of the flour mix.

4 oz Mexican chocolate squares (Popular, Ibarra, or the like -- or 4 oz regular bittersweet)
1 cup sugar
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/3 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (add an additional 1t if using regular chocolate)
1 1/2 tsp sesame seeds
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbl tahini (seame paste)
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
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Set oven to 350 degrees F. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper or grease lightly.

Combine chocolate squares and sugar in a microwave save bowl and nuke 1 minute or until chocolate is soft, stirring every 30 seconds. Transfer mixture to a standing mixer. Whisk remaining dry ingredients in another bowl and set aside.

Add eggs and vanilla to sugar. Mix on medium speed until creamy, then add tahini and mix until combined. Switch to low speed and add dry ingredients a 1/2 C at a time; mixing until just combined. The dough will be very sticky, but resist the temptation to add more flour.

Spoon the dough into two logs 12-15 inches long and at least 1 ½ inches apart on the cookie sheet. Using saran wrap as a barrier, pat the logs smooth with your hands. Bake approximately 35 minutes or until log begins to crack along the surface. Transfer to a large cooling rack and cool for at least 10 minutes or cool enough to handle.

Turn oven temperature to 325 degrees F. Transfer logs to a cutting board. Slice logs on a diagonal 1/4” to 1/2” thick. (If you have a storage container in mind, it helps to measure your diagonal to it so they’ll fit inside.) Arrange slices on the cooling rack and place in the oven for an additional 20-25 minutes or until biscotti reach the desired crispness. (If you don’t have a large cooling rack, place on the cookie sheet and flip halfway through.)

The drier/harder they are, the longer they keep…up to a few months in an airtight container.