smitten kitchen

These are scandalously good, yes, scandalously. Do you want to know why? Because I had one bite of one of these cookies and honestly think they’re one of the best cookies I have ever made. Like, top five good. Like, I think that the homemade Oreos just got the boot because I had to make room at the top. I hope the dozens of you who have made them can forgive me.

It took me a long time to get an oatmeal cookie recipe on this site, and the reason was that most people really like oatmeal cookies, but they have a very specific view of what they should be. Some people like them heavily spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, others want them buttery and nutty and still others think that if they don’t have chocolate chips or large gobs of dried fruit, they weren’t worth the oats they were cooked with. To add further complication, 99.9 percent of oatmeal cookies fall into one of two categories: thick and cakey or thin and lacy, and oh, how it all made my head spin.

Well, meet the new category: thick and shatter-y, and you’ll have to make your own to believe it. They’re crispy, but not because they’re hard or because they’re thin but because they practically hollow out when they bake, leaving you with this… shell of an oatmeal cookie with rich bits of white chocolate scattered about and the tiniest flaking of sea salt on top.

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Two weeks ago, Alex and I took advantage of the then-awesome weather and went out for dinner at a place with outdoor seating. One cocktail led to another and then Alex put his hand on my knee! No, just kidding. He actually suggested that we order dessert, and in particular, the homemade ice cream sandwiches on the menu. Who was I to argue?

The two tiniest, most precious ice cream sandwiches arrived a few minutes later and, you know, the ice cream, it was pretty good. But the sandwich? The two chocolate cookies? Forgive me for using this over-tired metaphor, but they were an almost Proustian experience.

You see, we made chocolate cookies exactly like that for Hanukah each year growing up. Why for Hanukah? Honestly, I have no idea. It might be that the only cookie cutters I remember were our Hanukah ones (a dreydel, menorah and Jewish star, the nuisance-y stamp type that it was impossible to get the dough out of) or that it was the only time my mother found the nuisance of rolling out dough worth it, but man, did I love those cookies, and I had to make them again, immediately.

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Sure, we’re a couple days late on these this year, but I couldn’t let Purim weekend (see how I added two days to the holiday there? Brilliant) pass without one more chapter in my annual attempt to make hamantaschen that suit my fancy. Was I more successful this year than last? Only slightly. But this has in no way made them less enjoyable.

Living in New York City, I sometimes forget that the rest of the world isn’t aware of Jewish holidays and foods the way they are here, where babka and challah are bakery staples and admirable efforts at hamantaschen are available year round at diners and coffee shops. So for a quick review, hamantaschen are three-cornered cookies typically filled with jams or a poppy seed paste and eaten during the Jewish holiday of Purim. Their shape is modeled after the three-corner hat purported to be worn by the holiday’s villain, Haman. I always think of the holiday as kind of a Jewish Mardi Gras, replete with carnivals, costumes and a good amount of libations–a fun reprieve from the fall’s more somber High Holidays.

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This biscotti is what I like to think of as a Hole in One Recipe. And I know what you’re thinking, “Deb, golf? You never seemed the type.” And you’d be exactly correct; willingly standing outside in the heat and humidity for hours at a time wearing funny shoes is an enigma to me. But a hole in one? This I can compute.

You see, sometimes it takes several tries to come up with the recipe you’d hope for to make the thing you crave exactly as you are sure it should be–for example, I have not yet found the perfect yellow layer cake and I’m still remiss over my two recent butterscotch pudding disasters. But biscotti? I got what I wanted on the very first try.

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I suppose there comes a point in every food blogger’s so-called “career” when she posts her favorite chocolate cookie recipe, but I’ve avoided this point for a long time because, does the internet actually need another chocolate chip cookie recipe? 130,000 times no. But, the thing is, I do have a favorite. And sometimes, sometimes when you’re making a heavy meal full of classics that I’ll get to one by one this week, you want to end on a simple–but not too subtle–note. See, this cookie has what we affectionately call “a lot of chocolate to very little dough,” in fact, when you’re folding all of the ingredients together, it seems impossible that so many chocolate and pecan chunks will fit in so little batter, and the best part is that they barely do.

Who is the crazed, handsome genius who brings us this masterpiece? No, not Alex, though he did bake the cookies while I washed dishes on Sunday (see how we switched it up there? cr-azy!). It is, and really just has to be, the famed David Lebovitz, from his Great Book of Chocolate. And yeah, I was like the last person on earth to buy this but I’ve made up for it by making these cookies more than twice. More than twice. You have no idea how few recipes get even one repeat performance in the smitten kitchen, twice means that you need to print (yup, it’s working again) this post and go make these right now. In 30 minutes, you’re going to be all “Schmoll House who?” and you’ll never look back.

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