smitten kitchen » Cookie

salted brown butter crispy treats

deb — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:52:13 +0000

As it turns out, the last days of October don’t awaken in me a desire to fly around on my broom, don a “sexy” nurse/maid/fireman outfit or even gorge myself on candy. Nope, according to a quick glance at my archives, apparently when Halloween approaches all I can think about is reinterpreting Rice Krispie Treats.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to choose my recipes very well. Last year’s Peanut Butter Crispy Bars were delicious, but had structural issues that irked me. And two years ago, I fell prey to a Caramelized Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treat that was all sorts of a styrofoam-textured disaster. Nevertheless, I haven’t been able to get them out of my head, so this year I decided I would conquer them once and for all. It helped that I knew exactly what went wrong the original dud of a clearly-untested recipe (hm, do I sound bitter?): the cereal to marshmallow ratio was unfeasibly high, more than double that of the original recipe and — small detail — marshmallows don’t caramelize very well, and should you succeed in getting them to, they don’t cool back down to anything gooey or soft. What a travesty.

... Read the rest of salted brown butter crispy treats on smittenkitchen.com

snickerdoodles

deb — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:59:47 +0000

As it turns out, but should be really no surprise to anyone who has been following along at home, I’m not the most sane person. You see, it wasn’t enough that I baked Cheesecake-Marbled Brownies last week in hopes to win the hearts and minds of labor and delivery nurses, I became suddenly and inexplicably worried that some of them may not enjoy chocolate or cheesecake, and preoccupied myself with providing an alternative. So, to review: I have no interest in such practical things as cooking and freezing meals that will tide us over through those weeks when we have no time to cook, but I will spend my last remaining hours in the kitchen menu-planning food gifts. Totally normal, Deb. No really!

But judge away if you must, fact is, this absurd panic is a win-win for everyone. Hospital staff will have no chance against my baked goods racket, and I got to conquer snickerdoodles — a task I consider years overdue — at home (and yes, had enough leftover to briefly contemplate not sharing them at all) and you can too. Need a deal sweetener? These are perfect snickerdoodles: slightly cakey, crackly surface-d and just enough cinnamon to make your home smell like the heavens descended and landed right smack in the middle of the kitchen.

... Read the rest of snickerdoodles on smittenkitchen.com

cheesecake-marbled brownies

deb — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:24:40 +0000

Rumor has it that pregnancy doesn’t just lead to swollen ankles, an insatiable need for peanut butter and a belly that causes what I will have to assume are otherwise polite people to ask if you’re having twins. Rumor has it that pregnancy quite often leads to teacup humans, and those teacup human need to be “delivered” from one world to another. Oh my god, I am going to have to birth a baby, aren’t I?!

Fortunately for all of us, this is not the kind of blog where I would subject you to the details of delivery, in part because I plug my ears and say “la la I can’t hear you” when anyone brings them to my attention and in part because I’m in the practice of encouraging appetites and well… you know.

... Read the rest of cheesecake-marbled brownies on smittenkitchen.com

granola bars

deb — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:24:48 +0000

Some of you have asked me to share what kind of cooking I’ve been doing to stash in the freezer and hopefully tide us over for the coming storm (T-minus 22 days, not that anyone is counting). I know it’s common, in a fit of impatient nesting, for soon-to-be mamas to tuck away pans of enchiladas and lasagnas and meatballs and other hearty, freezable fare so that they don’t starve in those early weeks when the baby demands constant surveillance (okay, cooing), but despite understanding the logic behind this, I should confess: I’m prepping nothing.

At least one of the reasons I’ve decided to ignore sound advice to cook and stash while I can is that food could not be easier to come by around here. Hummus platter with fava bean stews, pirogis and borscht and/or Tom Collichio-crafted sandwiches arrive so quickly after you call, we’ve become convinced that they’re actually preparing in our building’s basement and you don’t even want to know how many Thai and sushi restaurants there are per block around here (at least two). Plus, both of our families live within an hour of the city and (Hi Mom! Hi Alex’s Mom!) our moms are not only good cooks, but have vowed to keep us from starving. Wasn’t that sweet of them?

... Read the rest of granola bars on smittenkitchen.com

cherry brown butter bars + new video project

deb — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:07:57 +0000

I don’t know what’s happening to me — maybe it’s third trimester dwindling energy levels and an accompanying desire to get the most bang from my feeble bursts of productivity — but all of a sudden, I find myself saying that I don’t want to cook this thing or that because it’s not practical. Practical! Who am I? Certainly not the girl who baked a wedding cake last summer in her tiny, overheated kitchen. Certainly not a person who has [shh, can't tell you]-making and a 12-layer cake on her summer cooking agenda.

Take this recipe, for example. It was originally a delicious-looking raspberry brown butter tart from this month’s Bon Appetit magazine. And although I usually associate brown butter with winter cooking — hazelnut brown butter cakes, brown butter shorties, pear crisps and brown butter with chestnuts and brussels sprouts, yes please. — and although I’ve never met a dessert tart I didn’t like, all I could think was “these would be so much more practical as a bar cookie!” Practical, there’s that word again. It’s all over for me, isn’t it?

... Read the rest of cherry brown butter bars + new video project on smittenkitchen.com

neapolitan cake

deb — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:22:06 +0000

I turned 33 this week, but seeing how I’m a little preoccupied these days with someone else’s impending birthday, I might have brushed over this occasion completely, had it not been for a confluence of events — a fierce craving for Peking duck (then dragging both of our families into it’s crispy-skinned grasp), the decision to schedule our housewarming mocktail/cocktail party the next day (requiring baked goods involving cheese, of course) and the fact that it gave me an excuse to conquer a cake that has been vexxing me for the last year and a half.

The truth is, I start thinking about my birthday cake long before it is healthy or well-adjusted to. I see it as the perfect excuse to tackle something risky and possibly ridiculous — something I’m not entirely confident will work out, but don’t care because I’m only making it to amuse myself. Being freed from not wanting to disappoint another on their birthday has its benefits: There was the Crêpe Cake, which also marked the occasion of me making my very first crêpe, ever. (Which landed in the garbage, as all first and second crêpes were intended to.) There has been a Pistachio Petit-Four Cake, which involved rolling out marzipan and then pressing and tinting little marzipan roses, slightly less risky but no less insane.

... Read the rest of neapolitan cake on smittenkitchen.com

graham crackers

deb — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:29:02 +0000

Let’s say I was an alien, or new here or something — er, not entirely impossible, if you consider that I woke up yesterday with small feet fidgeting way further up my rib cage than I thought anatomically possible, leading me to wonder what I actually know about anatomy, leading to an inadvisable, rash amount of Google Image searching, leading to my eyes popping out of my head and whoa, I’ve digressed mightily — and I asked you to explain to me what is this “graham cracker” flavor that you speak of, could you do it?

Because I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what it was, and seeing the wide range of graham cracker — they’re something like digestive biscuits, for those of you across the pond — recipes out there, it’s not just me. There was the one I tried a couple years ago with rye flour, which I can assure you, was not the answer. Graham flour — a coarsely, exactingly ground whole wheat flour — would be the obvious answer, since they originate with one Rev. Sylvester Graham himself, but that doesn’t go far to explain the curious flavor of the cookie-like crackers. Cinnamon is another thing most recipes agree on, but when I tried a version with a lot of cinnamon in it (rather than on it, in a cinnamon-sugar coating), it tasted wrong. Ditto with another that contained an excess of molasses.

... Read the rest of graham crackers on smittenkitchen.com

chewy amaretti cookies

deb — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:35:44 +0000

We're starting the long and brutal process of packing up our apartment, brutal because as I am sure you know, the longer you live somewhere, the more uh, "stuff" you accumulate and forget about. We've lived here over four years, the longest I've lived anywhere besides my parents house, which means that weeding through our belongings is part "so that's where my Tonic CD went!" (he swears he was joking) and part "you had a recipe binder?"

Oh right, I did. Remember those dark days before the internet, when curious cooks actually had to clip recipes from newspapers and magazines, and keeping those clippings organized in some sort of book or box? Nope, me neither. Going through this binder is fascinating for me as I see what kind of recipe hopes I'd had ten years ago -- a surprising amount I've actually gotten to. And of course there are things that I completely forgot about, like almond cookies that are made with only three ingredients (okay, four, I added salt).

Seeing as my family is a bunch of marzipan junkies, the fact that one of the ingredients is almond paste demanded that I test these, pronto. Plus, lacking flour, they should be perfect for Passover (or they will be until someone in the comments tells me that there's an ingredient that is not Kosher for Passover and yes, this is pretty much the system I use to check on these things) and gluten-free and seriously, might these cookies save the world, too? (Nope, sorry, got that covered.)

But I'll let you decide.

Passover, previously: 17 Flourless Dessert Ideas + Chocolate Walnut Cookies, Almond Cake with Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote and Matzo Ball Soup

One year ago: Shaker Lemon Pie

homemade chocolate wafers + icebox cupcakes

deb — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:16:11 +0000

People, I am so excited about this recipe, it’s pretty much all I can talk about this week. I mentioned it to a broker who showed us another dud of an apartment (more about that if/when we make it out alive). I mentioned it to a friend who doesn’t eat sweets (and we’re still friends! Really, it’s more for everyone else.). And I tried to explain it to another friend who has probably never baked in her life, who politely nodded, smiled and scooted out of the room. As you can see, I can be incredibly boring when I get excited about cooking. That’s what you’re here for.

I have been wanting to come up with a completely home-baked, from scratch and all-natural chocolate wafers for years. It has been an outright obsession of mine, since Alex introduced me to the fabulousless that is Icebox Cake and I was disappointed to learn that the only way to make it was to buy some often-hard-to-find Nabisco chocolate wafers with their own set of disconcerting ingredients. I knew a homemade recipe was out there — for crazy people like me, it’s not like if you’re looking for a shortcut, the store bought ones still won’t do — but I had a hard time finding it.

... Read the rest of homemade chocolate wafers + icebox cupcakes on smittenkitchen.com

crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies

deb — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:00:26 +0000

Does anyone remember the commercials back in the day for Duncan Hines chocolate chip cookies? For some reason, the “crispy, chewy” song got stuck in my head for years. Decades, really. I’m 32 years old and I would like it out now.

Nevertheless, the description of the ideal chocolate chip cookie was perfect — crisp at the edges, soft in the middle, and pretty much summed up what everyone is looking for in their chocolate chip cookie nirvana. Of course if you ever caved and bought a package of their cookies, well, I’ll be nice, but let’s just say they certainly didn’t live up the cookie dream for me.

... Read the rest of crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies on smittenkitchen.com