smitten kitchen

I woke up Sunday morning craving oatmeal raisin cookies something fierce, so I tried to make myself eat oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar in it for breakfast but that didn’t work, and so there was nothing left to do but to bake cookies. My life is so hard, innit?

I have very specific tastes in oatmeal raisin cookies. A crisp edge is always welcome, but the rest of it must be thick and chewy. Just to confuse, this is unlike other oatmeal cookie recipes on this site, the crunchier chocolate chip pecan version and the thick but shattery, salty white chocolate version. Nope, my oatmeal raisin cookies demand their own texture, and one I can’t get from those other recipes.

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There is a notable, sad absence of recipes that involve coconut on this site and it’s like totally my husband’s fault. The boy thinks he doesn’t like coconut and every time I mention something that involves it he says “maybe you can make something chocolate instead?” But he’s wrong, no really, he is. I believe that he does like coconut, he just doesn’t like that shredded, hard to chew stuff people stick to the outside of otherwise-tasty frosting. It’s not the flavor that bugs him. And so I set out to prove him wrong by making these cookies, where the coconut is toasted and then ground and you get all of the flavor but not of the annoyingly papery texture. Alex was adamantly opposed, so I promised to either dip or fill them with chocolate or raspberry or even better, filled with raspberry and dipped in chocolate and do you know what happened?

None of this was necessary. Because I WAS RIGHT! He loves these cookies and he does love coconut when it’s not gagging and leathery and did I mention I WAS RIGHT? Because, well, I probably have one or three or a dozen times this week. I’m really fun and mature like that.

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I have been wanting to make the sugar puffs known as chouquettes forever, or at least as long as it has been since I read about them for the first time on Chocolate and Zucchini. I loved Clotilde’s descriptions of buying them by weight in French bakeries and how the best part is eating the sugar crystals (by licking your finger and reaching in, of course) that have collected in the bottom of the bag. They’re apparently the after-school goûter, or snack of choice, for the French schoolkid set and though I might be getting a late start on them, I am quickly making up for lost time.

Chouquettes are actually really simple: they are based on the “paste” or pâte à choux dough that is also used to form cream puffs, éclairs and gougères — a simple mix of water, melted butter, flour and eggs. There’s only a smidgen of sugar in them, which is why that craggy pearl sugar on top, or — who are we kidding — a deluge of miniature chocolate chips, are so essential. And it was precisely the absence of that pearl sugar that caused my, ahem, five-plus year delay in making them.

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Lest you think my running of at the mouth about the evils of dieting meant that I was going to spend this month in the pursuit of only earnest foods, let me set that straight right now: all weekend, I craved a cookie and by Sunday, I’d had enough. No, I wasn’t going to break out the piping bags or the heavy cream ganaches, but when I need something sweet, I have learned that it’s better to have one and move on than to snack on twent-five other odd ends instead, oh, and still crave a cookie.

As far as my cookie demands went, biscotti seemed a perfect compromise. A little less rich, sweet and heavy than most cookies, they go better with tea, coffee or your morning yogurt (guilty as charged) than they do wtih a platter of even more indulgent desserts. I’d had this recipe from Gina DePalma, pastry chef at Babbo, bookmarked for years, and seeing as I am still wading through pounds of nuts and had some sorry-looking figs in the pantry, it seemed like perfect timing.

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I have this thing about… no wait, that’s not fair. I have a lot of “things” — like the one about not liking warm, oozy chocolate desserts, sugar rimmed drinks or those waxy cubes of cheese you always see at corporate catering events — but for today, let us just pretend that I have one, and that one is about passed hors d’œuvres and amuse bouches that are too cumbersome to be easily eaten, standing up at a party.

Party foods should come in one-bite servings. How many times have you been at a wedding’s cocktail hour and you were somehow supposed to be eating something from a plate (cue your tiny violins, please) that was way too messy to be eaten while wearing a nice dress, carrying a cocktail and mingling with distant cousins? Wouldn’t this all work a little better if things were the size they should be?

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