Almond Butter Thumbprints

I'm always trying to create new treats that I think my boys will enjoy. Sometimes I fail miserably, but sometimes I hit upon a winner. These cookies are a serious winner.

Though I had the idea about a year ago, it took me until last month to make a peanut butter cookie with almond butter. I've now made them three times in two weeks, and my little ones can't get enough. These are some of the easiest and simplest cookies I've ever made, and their taste far outshines their appearance.

These humble little cookies may not be pretty, but they are fantastic. They are full of almond flavor, which pairs beautifully with palm sugar; the chunky almond butter gives the cookies a wonderful nubby texture, and the cookies are satisfyingly dense. The dab of jam lightens them up and provides a lovely counterpoint to the richness from the nut butter. I can't get enough of them either!

Don't be alarmed if the dough seems greasy, they won't bake up that way.

Almond Butter Thumbprints

1 cup almond butter

1/4 cup (1/2 stick, 4 tablespoons, 2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup palm sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup unbleached white flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

jam

Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the almond butter, butter and palm sugar until fluffy. Add egg, and beat until combined. Stir in vanilla. Add flour, baking soda and salt, and mix until just combined. Form dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter, or 1 ounce each. Flatten ball into disk, and form a small well in the center with a fingertip. Place disks 1 1/2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. Spoon a dollop of jam - I use sugar-free fruit spread, use what you like - into each well you've created. About 1/2 teaspoon should do. Bake cookies for 12-14 minutes, or until very lightly browned. Cool completely on baking sheet.

Green & Black's Peanut Sticky Buns with Salted Butter Caramel Sauce

A couple of weeks ago, Tastespotting sent out a tweet on Twitter that said to contact them if interested in an opportunity that involved baking, blogging and chocolate. Those happen to be my three favorite things in the world aside from my kids.

I received a response a few days later asking for recipe ideas involving the new Green & Black's chocolate bar, Peanut. It is a milk chocolate bar containing caramelized peanuts and sea salt. I love Green & Black's chocolate. As many of you know, I eat exclusively organic food, including copious amounts of G & B chocolate. The ideas started coming. I sent a list of about 8 or more possible recipes to Sarah of Tastespotting and The Delicious Life, including these rolls. They picked four bloggers' submissions, and I was so lucky to be one of the four!

I had so much fun developing this recipe. I made it three times in five days, and unfortunately I ate almost all of them. True story: the day I was photographing the final batch, I looked down and saw that there were only five of twelve rolls left in the pan. I had eaten seven. SEVEN!!! They are just so damn tasty!!!

These are some of the most delicious, decadent things I have ever eaten. Really. They have everything: bread, crunch, chocolate, goo, caramel. Oh my. Oh. My.

The roll itself is not something I would call moist, but it is most certainly not dry. Soft. It is soft. It is ever so slightly sweet with a hint of vanilla. This is a roll that could stand on it's own - all too often I find that the bready part of a cinnamon roll/sticky bun is flavorless without all of its acoutrements. In this case, the roll is already so good, it is brought to a ridiculous level of deliciousness by its toppings and fillings. The Peanut bar is really quite something. I'm normally not a big fan of peanuts, but these are caramelized, so you get a wonderful sweet crunch every bite or so that is a lovely counterpart to the rest of the bun. The chocolate is rich and decadent but not overdone, and its sweetness is balanced by the barely sweet roll and the salty caramel sauce. Oh the caramel sauce. It is perfection. If I could eat it with a spoon I would. Oh, wait. I have been eating it with a spoon. It is smooth. So smooth. So creamy. The perfect balance of sweet and salty with a deep, dark caramel flavor.

Thank you so much to Sarah of Tastespotting for giving me the opportunity to create a fun and scrumptious recipe with a fantastic new chocolate bar. My recipe will be posted on the new Tastespotting blog. The blog launches next week, but there is no word yet on the order that the recipes created by myself and the other bloggers will be posted, so check back here for a link to the recipe.

*** UPDATE *** 3.23.10

The recipe is up!!! Here is the link. Enjoy!

The Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's about time, isn't it?! I can't believe I haven't posted in so long. And here I am with another chocolate chip cookie... I hope you're not tired of them. There have been many factors to my absence, not the least of which is the fact that I've baked several things that I wasn't really crazy about, and I have a hard time posting sub-par treats. These cookies, however are anything but sub-par.

These are the cookies that I surmised about in my last post. These are the Perfect Cookie and New York Times cookie hybrid. These are the cookies. The cookies.

They are drawn more from the NYT recipe than the CI one, the only real contribution from CI being the brown butter. What a contribution it is, though! I will never make another chocolate chip cookie without brown butter. It does add an extra step, but it is well worth it. I find it fascinating that the actual brown butter flavor doesn't really come through here. I tasted several to make sure. What it does is deepens the flavor of the cookie, tempers the sweetness and imparts a slight nuttiness. It is a smooth and subtle addition, one that highlights the tastes already present and seamlessly ties all of the elements together.

These fulfill all of my requirements for a perfect chocolate chip cookie: they are dense and chewy on the inside, with a crispy and sturdy outer shell; the flavor of the cookie itself is rich and complex and mysterious due to the brown butter; the balance of cookie to chocolate is right on and the sprinkle of salt on top is the perfect finish.

I have no criticisms of this cookie. None. They were given enthusiastic thumbs up by everyone who tasted them, were the winner of a blind taste test with this cookie, and my mom deemed them the best chocolate chip cookies she's ever had. That's the real ccc test, people. If my mom approves, it is a true winner.

The Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from The New York Times and Cook's Illustrated

8 1/2 ounces unbleached white flour

1/2 + 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

10 tablespoons (5 ounces) unsalted butter, browned

5 ounces light brown sugar

4 ounces granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chip-sized pieces

Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine sugars. Pour hot brown butter over sugars, and without stirring, place in refrigerator to cool the butter to room temperature. Attach bowl to mixer and on medium speed, beat until light in color and fluffy. If butter isn't becoming pale, it isn't cool enough. Pop it back in the fridge for a few more minutes and try again. When butter mixture is desired consistency, add egg and beat for 30 seconds. Stir in vanilla. Add dry ingredients, and mix until just incorporated. Stir in chocolate. Form dough into a log and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours (if you can stand to. If not, I understand). When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment. Form dough into balls a little over an inch in diameter, or 1.5 ounces. Place balls at least 2" apart on baking sheet, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until slightly puffy, dry on top and tinged with golden. Let cool completely on baking sheet.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies?

I know I just posted chocolate chip cookies a couple days ago, but here are some more for you. These come from Cook's Illustrated, and were brought to my attention by Nancy. As soon as I heard about them I had to make them. Why? They contain brown butter.

I have made my love known many times for all things brown butter, though for some inexplicable reason, I have never made chocolate chip cookies with it. Oh I've considered doing it several times, but I just never did. I am kicking myself now for not doing it sooner. I will have to make up for lost time.

Maybe the reason I waited so long was because I knew that I would love brown butter chocolate chip cookies so much that I would want to make nothing else and eat nothing else until the end of time. That's pretty much what has happened. If one could subsist on cookies alone, I would be tempted.

I'm giddy just thinking about them.

Now, are they perfect as the name of the recipe suggests? Weeeeelll, almost. The flavor is, without a doubt, the flavor of perfection. The brown butter is much more subtle than I thought it would be, but then it is battling 2 teaspoons of vanilla as well as dark brown sugar for flavor domination. That said, it is unmistakably there. It adds a richness and a nuttiness that only comes from the magic that is brown butter. I would drink the stuff if I didn't think I would instantaneously and simultaneously gain 35 pounds and have a heart attack. There is just the right amount of chocolate in these to ensure that every bite is perfectly balanced between chocolate and cookie, an elusive ratio. The edges are perfectly crispy and the centers chewy, though as with Dorie's chocolate chip cookies, they are just a mite too thin for me.

I think the next thing to do is try the New York Times recipe with brown butter, as that is the only version I've ever made that has the texture and thickness that I prefer in a chocolate chip cookie. I'll let you know how it goes.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Cook's Illustrated, May/June 2009

1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, browned

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) sugar

3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) packed dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

6 ounces coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment. In a large heat-proof bowl, combine 10 tablespoons browned butter and 4 tablespoons butter, stirring until un-browned butter is completely melted. Add sugars, salt and vanilla, whisking until fully combined. Add egg and egg yolk and whisk for about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand for 3 minutes, then whisk again for 30 seconds. Repeat this twice more. Mixture should be thick, smooth and shiny. Add flour and baking soda, and using a rubber spatula, stir until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks. Form into balls about 1 1/4 inch in diameter, or 1.25 ounces. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges have set, but the centers are still soft. Cool cookies completely on baking sheet.

Dulce de Leche + Cocoa Wafer Sandwich Cookies

I have made my love for Alice Medrich known many times. Especially in regards to her newest book, Pure Dessert. It is a beautiful book, with many fantastic recipes. I have probably baked more out of Pure Dessert than from any other book I have - with the exception of Baking from My Home to Yours, of course.

The first time I saw these cookies was on Smitten Kitchen, where Deb made a beautiful Icebox Cake out of them. This is incredibly intriguing to me, and one day I'll make one of them.

Then, quite a few weeks ago, Di and Nancy baked these cocoa wafers together via Twitter. I wanted to join in, but I wasn't able to on their appointed day & time. Plus, after looking at the recipe I noticed that it uses a food processor. Normally, I would just use my mixer and call it a day, but I was waiting on a 14-cup food processor to come in the mail - it was my big Christmas present this past year. It finally came at the beginning of February. It took me a couple of weeks to actually use it, but when I did I knew what I would be making first!

I wanted to do something special with these wafers, I didn't think a plain old thin cookie would have really done it for me. I was wrong. These are no ordinary cookies.

These cocoa wafers are magnificent. They taste purely of chocolate, and are on the bitter side. They are very thin, and very crispy. There isn't a hint of softness or chewiness in them. These would make a fantastic cookie crust (and I think Nancy and/or Di used them that way); you could make your own Thin Mints with them, or oreos, or fill them with some homemade dulce de leche as I did.

The sweetness of the dulce de leche is tempered by the deep chocolate of the cookie, and the result is a wonderfully satisfying cookie; crisp on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside, perfect.

My recipe is for Dulce de Leche is here. Cocoa Wafer recipe below.

Cocoa Wafers

adapted from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

scant 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

14 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks and softened

3 tablespoons whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine flour, cocoa, sugar, salt and baking soda in bowl of food processor, and pulse until thoroughly combined. Add butter and pulse several times. Stir together milk and vanilla in small bowl, and add to bowl with food processor running. Process until dough clumps around blade, scraping bowl as necessary. Turn dough out onto board, and using your hands, make sure it is evenly blended. Form into a log, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour. When you're ready to bake, preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Cut slices 1/4 inch thick* from the log and place 1 inch apart on baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until cookies look dry on top and are fairly firm to the touch. Cool completely on baking sheet.

* For these sandwiches, I rolled the dough out to a scant 1/4" and used my smallest biscuit cutter to cut them out.

TWD: Dorie's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

This week the TWD bakers made one of my all-time favorite treats; chocolate chip cookies!

Chocolate chip cookies played a large part in shaping my childhood. My mom and I baked them together regularly, they were her specialty. They're still the only thing she bakes. I probably make chocolate chip cookies more frequently than any other treat.

I enjoyed these cookies quite a lot. It is no surprise, as Dorie mentions that it is a tweaked version of the Tollhouse recipe, which is the recipe I grew up on. I thought the flavor was wonderful - rich and caramel-y; the texture was good - crispy around the edges and chewy in the center. The only problem I had with these cookies was that they are too thin. I like to have a little more to sink my teeth into. Proving once again that the New York Times recipe is the perfect chocolate chip cookie!

Thanks to Kait of Kait's Plate for hosting this week. You can find the recipe for these yummy cookies on her blog.

Chocolate-Dipped Marzipan Coins

Whenever there was a special occasion growing up, marzipan was my treat of choice. It was not available in the small town I grew up in - except for a short time when there was a much-loved (by me) candy store downtown - so it was only on birthdays and other holidays when I would get it. It came in a shallow little green mesh box, divided into 9 separate spaces. In each space was a molded marzipan fruit or vegetable, airbrushed some bright color or another. Thinking about it now, it sounds slightly repulsive, but back then it was magical. I would savor each piece, trying to stretch out my enjoyment as long as possible, but the marzipan never lasted more than a couple hours at best.

I was trying to come up with something to post that would be Valentine's Day appropriate, though sophisticated - nothing red, heart-shaped or containing catchy sentimental phrases. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, I'm just not so much in the Valentine's spirit this year.

These are treats that you could give anyone you love on V-Day, not just a significant other. They are also ridiculously simple to make.

They taste better than any marzipan I've ever eaten. They taste fresh, which is not usually something you get with the electric red strawberry-shaped version. They are moist, not too sweet, and tender. The store-bought variety can tend towards rubbery, and these are anything but.

If you have molds, you could certainly use them to make fun marzipan shapes. I rolled my marzipan out and used my smallest biscuit cutter.

If you need a last-minute Valentine to give someone, these are perfect. They are delicious, beautiful and only take about an hour from start to finish - including time for the chocolate to set.

Chocolate-Dipped Marzipan Coins

adapted from Smitten Kitchen

8 ounces blanched almonds

1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

1 tablespoon almond extract

4-5 tablespoons corn syrup*

3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, tempered

Place almonds in food processor. Grind to a fine powder, then process a little longer. About 2 minutes in all. Scrape bowl, and add confectioner's sugar and almond extract, process until well combined. Add corn syrup* and process for another minute. The mixture will be crumbly, but when you squeeze a bit of it, it should form a cohesive piece. Turn mixture out onto a board and knead until it comes together. Form a log, wrap in plastic and place in freezer while you temper the chocolate.

To temper chocolate: Place 2.5 ounces in a heat-proof bowl placed over a pot of simmering water. Melt chocolate, stirring frequently. When temperature is over 105, add remaining .5 ounces of chocolate and stir until melted. When the chocolate cools to 90 degrees, it is ready. Keep it at this temperature while you're dipping.

When the chocolate is ready, remove the marzipan from the freezer and roll it out to about 1/4" thick. Using a cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, knife, etc... cut out shapes as desired. Dip into chocolate, and place on a piece of parchment until chocolate is set.

* I've had a couple of comments from people who have made this, saying that the marzipan was extremely sticky and difficult to roll out. My suggestion is to start with 4 tablespoons of corn syrup, and test the marzipan to see if it stays together when squeezed in a clump. If it is still crumbly, add the additional tablespoon. You can also try dusting your rolling surface & pin with powdered sugar, though I have made this twice in the last couple of weeks and didn't need any, so the ideal is to have marzipan that is soft, moist, not crumbly and not sticky (though it will be slightly oily from the natural oils in the almonds).