smitten kitchen

January is always the time of year when most of us get caught up in the winter produce doldrums, fueled by the dearth of flavorful fruit and the overabundance of hard, starchy vegetables. But I find if I set my mind on citrus, I can carefully sidestep most bouts of Farmer’s Market Mourning. There are few things teeming with more promise of a sunnier tomorrow than sour-sweet piercing members of the rutaceae family, and I’ve got an archive full of margarita cookies, lemon bundts, orange chocolate chunks, grapefruit loaves and key lime tartlets that should assure you that you need not feel that you are missing out just because the peaches and berries have gone into hibernation.

But I haven’t had a lemon bar in there before now, despite repeated requests and, heck, even pleading for one by various people inside my computer. You’d think it is because I’m stubborn but it actually that my bar (ha) for lemon bars has been set very high by my mother, who has an award-winning recipe somewhere in her files. Upon request, she sent it to me a couple years ago, but when they didn’t come out the way I had remembered, her response was “oh, I must have sent you the wrong one.” Tell me, if you had a recipe for lemon bars that you had won you a cooking contest, why would you have a second version in your box that wasn’t as good? Perhaps if you ask her, you’ll get further than I did.

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I knew that there are a lot of would-be bakers out there that have looked at all of the cookie recipes I have posted this week and thought, “yeah, that’s great but it’s just never going to happen,” and I wanted to have a recipe that was just for you. The basic slice-and-bake icebox cookie that takes to a thousand variations is something that every cook–even the intimidated ones–should have in their repertoire, for several reasons.

First of all, if you’re looking to please a crowd, you can’t go wrong with simplicity. You can leave these so-called “plain” (but I don’t think they are) or include an add-in, or several, from nuts, dried fruit, zest, extracts or ground nuts swapped or cocoa swapped for an equal quantity of flour. You wouldn’t believe how many famous cookie recipe have slice-and-bake style dough at their base.

The second reason a recipe such as this is awesome is that it doesn’t require a cookie cutter (but could be shaped, if you wanted to roll them out). But the third is really the clincher, and that is that you can make these cookies into their ready-to-slice tube and freeze them for a month or even longer, until you need them. I had no immediate need for these, so I sliced off a few to bake for pictures and tasting, and will use the rest for parties later this month. You can slice them right from a freezer with a sharp knife, though I find it a bit easier after leaving them in the fridge overnight. However, in order to keep them fresh, I wouldn’t store them in the fridge for more than a day or so.

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If there is anything I am always on the prowl for–besides artichokes, cookie cutters and green anything–it is variations on classic recipes. It’s a sticky thing, of course, because the originals earned their prized state for being blissful the way they are. But I can’t help it–I see a twist, a curve, a departure, or in this case, once again, a grater and I can’t resist.

In my mind, there are few cookie combinations as satisfying as a butter cookie with raspberry, and whether you make them into bars, sandwiches or thumbprints.

But all varieties have a certain density that attracts shortbread-junkies like me, but repels those who want a less weighty cookie experience. This recipe magically ingratiates itself to both parties with the help of a food processor.

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People often ask Alex and me if it is difficult living near a trendy NYC bakery, the kind with the mind-bogglingly long cupcake lines outside at what seems like all hours. It probably would be if I found their generic cupcakes, brownies and cheesecakes more tempting but come on, this is me and you just know I think I make these better in my tiny kitchen.

Of course, this completely excludes their peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, a recipe I have been promising you I’d conquer for so long, I can’t believe you all haven’t organized a mutiny yet in disgust–especially when you learn that the recipe had been at my fingertips the whole time, it just hadn’t occurred to me.

It circles back to so much of what I just don’t *get* about these trendy bakeries. Their recipes are so generic–1-2-3-4 cupcakes with back-of-the-box butter cream frosting; chocolate chip cookies not any better than Toll House; Hello Dolly bars that they neither invented nor make better than the least baking-inclined person you’ve ever met–I fail to see what’s queue-forming worthy about them. [Then again, I don’t believe in waiting on a line for anything in a city this big, and oh, I bake regularly at home, so of course I don’t get it. But I digress.]

Not only are the baked goods unoriginal, there is a veritable family tree of bakeries simply stealing their former employer’s recipes and shop look-feel.

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In my mind, there are few higher callings in the baking world than cookies, and simply no higher cookie callings than shortbread, so I cannot think of a better place to start my Week-O-Cookies. They are firm enough to pack in a tin but manage to taste soft. Bites seem to dissipate in your mouth, but not so quickly that you feel you were shorted. They get better with age–and really, who doesn’t want that? And while I will never, ever (ever) complain about a plain one made with some of that Danish butter with sea salt flecks, I’m continually impressed by the myriad of ways shortbread can be adapted and still be as delicious as the original.

Dorie Greenspan’s Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread are an awesome example of this, and were the first time I have had a coffee-flavored cookie that really, truly tasted first and foremost like coffee. The tiny chocolate bits are reminiscent of Everyone’s Favorite Dorie Cookie, the World Peace variety, but even cooler in this because they’re more contrasted to the cookie flavor.

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