smitten kitchen

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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It’s not exactly news that I have a soft spot for pretzels. I’ve made pretzels into rolls, soft pretzels for a Superbowl Party and once, in the words of Alex, intentionally ruined dinner so we’d have no choice but go to the neighborhood restaurant with some curious egg noodle dish with crushed pretzels on top.

I see pretzel cookies all of the time, but they’re usually just cut from pretzel-shaped cookie cutter, and not actually twisty and knotted, which I consider totally unacceptable. It’s like one of those things I saw Sandra Lee use the other day which cut her pie lid into the shape of a lattice, without actually weaving it. Meh, I say. That would totally ruin half my fun.

However, I’m also an obsessive comber of recipe reviews when they are available online, a favor sites that embrace them. It is rarely enough for me to know that a recipe should be good, or is from a well-respected chef, I need to see some people to write in and say “awesome as is!1!!” or “wouldn’t change a thing!” Bonus points for a “this impressed my mother-in-law who thinks I am a terrible cook!”

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Picture this: You’re toweling off after your morning shower, your oatmeal in the microwave, looking into the mirror and thinking as per usual, “my god, am I pale. When is vacation again?” when you hear this… noise from the living room. As you get closer, so does the noise, a fluttering, scratching and absolutely frantic in every little way sound. Is it (groan, another) mouse? Why does it sound like a bird? How could there be a bird in the wall? What if it’s stuck? It really sounds spazzed out in there. Calm down, Deb. Surely it’s nothing. It’s probably just a bird on the outside of your thin circa-1870 tenement walls. Sit down, eat your oatmeal, everything is going to be… #$%!!!! BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! A BIRD FLEW OUT OF THE RADIATOR. Omg, it is THROWING itself against the window. Halp! HALP!

You do the logical thing, and call your husband, who is not yet at work, how dare he leave you at home with a WILD ANIMAL banging into the walls. You open the other window, wide, afraid to go near the one that the bird is throwing itself against because, duh, you’ve seen the movie. But it won’t pay any attention to that window, it wants to go out this window and you think, “wow, you really aren’t that bright, are you?” but no, you do not utter the word “birdbrain.” You know who’s in charge here. You finally get your husband on the phone; he’s laughing, you mentally file divorce papers.

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