Eat First

Time to make the cookies!

A classic Dunkin’ Donuts commercial shows Fred the Baker rolling out of bed and trudging to work, sleepy-eyed, in pre-dawn darkness.  “Time to make the donuts, time to make the donuts,’’ he mumbles as he suits up for the day.

It’s been like that for the few weeks here, except the baked goods in question are cookies – Christmas cookies of all shapes, sizes and persuasions. Cookies that keep us up late at night and get us up early in the morning.

We say “Time to make the cookies’’ with enthusiasm -- most of the time. Making cookies isn’t a chore, unless you erroneously add an extra stick of butter to a recipe and have to make the cookies all over again.

Or the cookies don’t come out quite as you imagined they would, and you start questioning your baking skills and whether you should share said cookies. 

But I digress.

I received a copy of “The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Cookie Recipe Each Year, 1941-2009,’’ from my sister, Anne, for Christmas last year, and that little book has been my constant companion this baking season.

I’ve read it front to back, like a novel, and made several recipes from it for gift-giving, interspersed with a couple of old favorites.

These are Kourambiedes, a Greek butter cookie made with (gulp!) an entire pound of butter.

I would make them again, adding more ground nuts (almonds), more booze (Grand Marnier), a splash of almond extract and more powdered sugar on top. The cookies themselves contain just a half-cup of powdered sugar.

They’re pretty Plain Jane, a cookie to be savored with coffee or tea. Prepare to brush powdered sugar off your clothes as you bite into them.

These are Speculaas (Saint Nicholas Cookies), a traditional Dutch cookie loaded with spices – ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ground anise seed – with slivered almonds pressed into their tops before baking. I cut them in rectangles, as prescribed in the recipe, but you can use any small cutter. A robust ginger cookie is a must-have at Christmastime, and these are a keeper.

These are Anise-Scented Fig and Date Swirls.  They’re a little bit fussy to make, but the return on investment is that they are a refrigerator cookie: Roll up the dough smeared with luscious, fragrant fruit into a big, fat log and refrigerate it until you a ready to slice and bake. The triple-wrapped dough cylinder was in the freezer for more than three weeks and suffered no ill consequences. I’m delighted with the final product and know I will be making this recipe again – and again.

As for the Classics: It wouldn’t be Christmas without All-Occasion Cut-Outs (recipe here) and World Peace Cookies (recipe here).

Gotta go now. Time to make the cookies!

 

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake: the second time’s the charm

Every Christmas season has its misadventures: the gift thoughtfully purchased in July that can’t be located when you're ready to wrap it. The string of bulbs that worked when you tested them but won’t light on the tree. The cookies that crumble as you’re lifting them from the baking sheet.

The Guinness Stout Ginger Cake that fails to rise properly. Ah, yes. Robert was excited to make this dessert for Christmas dinner last year, but inadvertently omitted the baking powder when assembling the cake’s dry ingredients. The result was a short Stout cake rather than a tall one.

He re-baked it in the wee small hours of Christmas morning, bless his heart. But not before a shopping expedition for Guinness Stout in Bridgeport, NY – a one-stoplight and three-convenience store village -- on Christmas Eve.

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake is a grand dessert, as memorable for its flavor and presentation as it is for the story behind it. It’s full-bodied in texture and a little outspoken in taste, thanks to molasses, fresh ginger, ground ginger, cloves and cardamom.

Looking for a festive finish to a holiday dinner party? This is it. Don't forget the baking powder!

While the cake bakes, prepare a big bowl of lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Grammercy Tavern Guinness Stout Ginger Cake

You will need:

1 cup Guinness Stout

1 cup molasses

½ teaspoon baking soda

3 large eggs

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

¾ cup vegetable oil

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1½ teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 tablespoon grated, peeled fresh gingerroot

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan.

In a large saucepan over high heat, combine the stout and molasses and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the baking soda. Allow to sit until the foam dissipates.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk together the eggs and both sugars. Whisk in the oil.

In a separate bowl, which together the flour, ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom.

Combine the stout mixture with the egg mixture, then whisk the liquid into the flour mixture, half at a time. Add the fresh ginger and stir to combine.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour, or until the top springs back when gently pressed. Do not open the oven until the gingerbread is almost done or the center will fall slightly. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Serve with sweetened whipped cream. Makes 12 servings.

 

Let's Go Orange -- Clap-Clap-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!

It's March Madness and Central New York is bleeding Orange.

If the closest you get to orange food in your diet is the sauce on your chicken wings or the Cheez Doodles in your snack bowl, here's some orange food that's more pure and natural:

Pumpkin-Maple Scones.

The pale orange and utterly delicious scones were the first in a three-game streak of going orange in the kitchen.

 

 
To get out of a winter cooking rut, I turned to some magazines for inspiration and found plenty in the autumn issue of Edible Finger Lakes magazine, which contained a recipe for Winter Squash Scones and Roasted Delicata Squash Stuffed With White Beans, Greens and Sage.

I made the scones with organic pumpkin puree (canned) in the interest of convenience and the main course with butternut squash because delicata was not available.

 

The extra pumpkin puree was used to make a couple Pumpkin-Apple-Maple Smoothies, a healthy way to go orange for breakfast.

To make one, combine a half-cup of low-fat vanilla yogurt, a quarter-cup of pumpkin puree (or to taste), a couple spoonfuls of applesauce, a splash of milk and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup in a blender. Blend until smooth. To thicken the mixture, add a couple ice cubes. Serve in a tall glass, garnished with a sprinkle of cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg.

If you care about your body and what you put into it, you know that it's important to eat a rainbow of foods, including red, green, yellow, blue, purple, brown and ORANGE. The color of pumpkin, squash and other vegetables comes from beta carotene, which plays a role in maintaining healthy vision. Beta carotene is believed to delay cognitive aging, help the heart function properly and protect skin from sun damage.

For an orange recipe using carrots, see my first-ever Eat First blog post, Orange Comfort in a Bowl (2009).

Pumpkin-Maple Scones
Adapted from Edible Finger Lakes magazine

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
½ cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg beaten and mixed with a little water to make an egg wash
Maple sugar for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Add chilled butter to flour mixture and combine using a pastry cutter until you have pea-sized chunks.

In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, cream, maple syrup and vanilla until smooth. Add to the flour mixture, mixing lightly with a fork until the liquid is just incorporated. Do not over mix.

Knead the dough several times in the bowl, then turn it out onto a floured work surface. Cut the dough in half and pat each half into a disk, roughly 1 inch high and 5 inches in diameter. Cut each disk into six wedge-shaped scones, and place the scones on the baking sheet, spacing about 1 inch apart.

Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash and sprinkle with maple sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned. Cool on a rack.  Stir together the confectioner’s sugar and syrup until smooth. Makes 12 scones.

Chocolate chip cookies: Double(tree) the pleasure

There's nothing better than a homemade chocolate chip cookie, just baked, still soft and warm and oozing chocolate goodness.  Except for a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are a hallmark of the Doubletree hotel experience. Talk about your warm welcome: Guests checking in are handed their room entry card and a warm chocolate chip cookie. The cookies are so popular they're sold online and shipped all over the world.

I had never had a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie until recently. My friend Scott Severance received a tin of them from the Doubletree Syracuse hotel and shared one with me. It was not warm, but it didn't really matter. The rich, buttery cookie was fully loaded with chips, nuts and oatmeal.

This is the ULTIMATE chocolate chip cookie (sorry, Wegmans), I thought to myself as I inhaled it while walking to my car.

Then I had occasion to meet Kevin Magdon, business travel manager at the Doubletree Syracuse and I told him how much I enjoyed the cookie from Scott. Kevin said he enjoyed the cookies so much when he was new in his job at the Doubletree that he gained 15 pounds. Now, he says, he limits his intake to about one cookie a month.

That's willpower!

Kevin sent me off from our meeting with a warm cookie in a brown paper sleeve. It was gone -- here's a news flash -- before I reached the Thompson Road South turn-off from Carrier Circle. And that got me thinking about trying to duplicate the Doubletree cookie at home.

I usually make chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of whatever brand of chocolate chips I have on hand, adding extra vanilla extract, a smidgen of cinnamon or maybe some finely minced orange zest or finely minced fresh mint for something a little bit different.

The Doubletree recipe is a closely guarded secret, but there are plenty of copycat recipes online, including a so-called Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from Choc-chip-cookie-Recipe.com.

I baked a batch of them for dinner with friends, following the recipe to the letter, including its instructions to refrigerate the batter overnight and use a quarter-cup of batter for each cookie. They were a big hit (pun intended). I also reserved six portions of batter and put them in the freezer for later use.

Last week, I brought a half-dozen of my faux Doubletree cookies to the Syracuse Doubletree, where they were warmed in a microwave oven and served alongside a plate of real-deal Doubletree chocolate chip cookies in a "blind tasting" hosted by Kevin Magdon.

Also in attendance were a group of Central New York cookie lovers: Scott Severance, Jenn Pedde, Mitch Mitchell and Bill Gambino.

The copycat cookies were more crisp and lacked the consistency in color and texture of the real Doubletree cookies. Even so, they were  pronounced "very, very close'' to the original. If they were a more soft and gooey and a little more light in color, it would have been really hard to tell them apart.

Two things I learned in this experiment:

1. All chocolate chips are NOT created equal. The chocolate chips used in the copycat cookies (Price Chopper brand) didn't melt on heating like those in the original Doubletree cookies. Doubletree uses Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips in its cookies and they are definitely of superior quality. I'm going to switch to them in my baking projects -- no more cutting corners.

2. Remove cookies from the oven when they are a little bit UNDERBAKED, especially if you like a soft chocolate chip cookie. Leave them in the oven a little longer if your resident cookie taste-tester, like mine, prefers cookies with crispy edges.

But either way, watch them disappear!

 

Visions of gingerbread at the Erie Canal Museum

This gingerbread isn't for eating. It's for viewing only, through Sunday (Jan. 2) at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse.

The museum's annual Gingerbread Gallery, now in its 25th year, has been open since Thanksgiving. So it's the end of the run for the handcrafted gingerbread houses, cottages, mansions, motorhomes, courthouses and more. Some constructions are coming apart at their seams held together with royal icing and fondant. Peppermint stick pillars are crumbling and candy decorations are sliding from some roofs.

A lot of work goes into gingerbread architecture. And such creativity! Necco wafers for roofing tiles, graham cracker sidewalks, clever embellishments like Peeps Christmas trees and snowmen, sticks of gum and waffle-style pretzels as window shutters, shredded coconut as snow...

In all, there are about 40 creations by both amateur and professional baker-artists on display. Get down there and check it out. I promise it will make your spirits bright.

The Erie Canal Museum is at 318 Erie Blvd. East, Syracuse. The Gingerbread Gallery is on the museum's second floor. The museum closes at 2 p.m. Friday (New Year's Eve) and is closed New Year's Day. Sunday hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

Drumroll, please: And the winner is...

The winner of the first annual Eat First homemade holiday cookie giveaway is Elizabeth Wimer, of Syracuse (@erwimer on Twitter).

Elizabeth loves to bake, so I know she will like sampling a small selection (baker's dozen) of cookies from someone else's kitchen and having a new, seasonal cookie cutter to play with.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and took the time to  leave a comment. It's nice to have visitors!

I'll be having a couple giveaways in January. The first will be a giveaway of some gently used cookbooks (January seems like a good time to do some housekeeping) and the second will be a giveaway of -- gasp! -- something red and in a can.

Stay tuned!

 

 

Giveaway: A baker's dozen (lucky 13!) holiday cookies

Duh! I don't  know why I didn't think of this earlier: It's time for the first annual Eat First Christmas cookie giveaway!

Free to a good home: a selection of 13 (a baker's dozen) homemade holiday cookies. Your winnings will include six thin and crispy cut-out cookies like the one shown above (now slightly smudged, because Wilton's decorating gels in a tube don't exactly firm up, even after an hour in the freezer, live and learn!).

The baker's dozen will also include a couple cut-outs decorated with colored sugars only, a couple decorated gingerbread cut-outs and a couple lemon-poppyseed crisps (right).

To enter: Please leave a comment in the comment field below. You must be a resident of Syracuse or Central New York and you must pick up your cookies in person at a time and place TBA.  Family members excluded. A winner will be selected at random, notified by e-mail and announced here.

The deadline to enter is 12 noon Friday, Dec. 17. Good luck! 

 

'Tis the season to make, bake and take

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately. I been busy baking, working on freelance projects, baking, working on my job search, baking, shoveling, baking, trimming the tree, baking, going to a parties, baking, going to a cookie exchange...

You get the idea.


I shared a sampling of cookies from Sunday's cookie exchange (cocoa shortbread Scotties, Spritz cookies, coffee-flecked cookies topped with chocolate-covered espresso beans, two kinds of chunky, nut-fruit-and-chip cookies) with my sister Annie, and told her the only thing missing were the Almond Horns I brought along.

You don't come home from a cookie exchange with your own cookies. That would defeat the purpose! There were some extras but I shared them with Robert, who was pleased to have a plate of his own, real-deal cookies -- not his usual lot of misshapen, broken and/or overly brown rejects.

I'd been wanting to try this recipe for Almond Horns, from Martha Stewart's "Cookies,'' for a while, and was glad I did.


They're formed by hand, so you get to play with the dough. Better still, they're crisp and crumbly, not super-sweet, easy to make and easy to enjoy with coffee or tea.

Going to a cookie exchange or holiday party this weekend? Take some along!
 
Almond Horns

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted, plus more for dusting

1 large egg

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 cup whole raw almonds, toasted and finely ground in a food processor

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Put butter and and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in egg and extracts. Reduce speed to low. Mix in flour mixture and almonds until just combined. Wrap dough in plastic; refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.

Roll 1 tablespoon of dough (yes, measure it!) into a 4-inch log; gently shape into a horseshoe. Repeat with remaining dough. Transfer to baking sheets lined with parchment.

Bake cookies (rotating sheets halfway through) until pale golden, about 20 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks using a spatula; let cool completely. Transfer to waxed paper. Sift sugar over cookies. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature 2 to 3 days. Makes 36 to 42 cookies, depending on size.

 

Give World Peace Cookies a chance

Linda O'Boyle, owner of Metro Home Style at the Regional Market Commons, is a busy lady this time of year.  She's working long days and having extended hours at the store on Wednesdays during December, but still carving out time to bake.

She writes: "Any suggestions for a cookie that will add some pizzazz to the holiday cookie tray that doesn't require frosting and freezes well?''

Answer: Yes, yes and yes! How about a batch of World Peace Cookies?

The recipe is the brainchild of master baker Dorie Greenspan, and it's included in her wonderful book, "Baking: From My Home to Yours.''

The beauty of these cookies -- besides their rich, double-chocolate, combination sweet and salty flavor -- is that you can make the dough in advance, roll it into cylinders and stash it in the freezer.

Later, all you have to do is slice and bake.

World Peace Cookies get a lot of coverage in the media and in the blogosphere. Click here for the recipe, which is included in "The Splendid Table'' recipe box.

Enjoy! If you make the recipe, stop back and let me know what you think.

 

Season's readings

 

Some people have visions of sugar-plums dance in their head this time of year. I just have visions of sugar. In the form of Christmas cookies.

I still miss Gourmet magazine, especially its December issue, usually devoted to cookies and other sweets of the season.

But there are other sources of inspiration, like classic recipes from Mom's file (Snickerdoodles, Pecan Sandies, Peanut Butter Blossoms), the annual Land O'Lakes magazines (recipes developed by a leading butter maker can't be bad, right?), and, of course, cookbooks.

Betty Crocker's "Cooky Book," with its vintage, slightly garish photos, is always fun to thumb through, and there are some excellent recipes in there, too. Martha Stewart's "Cookies'' causes dreaming and drooling. "Sweet Maria's Italian Cookie Tray'' is a slim volume with dozens of mouth-watering ideas: almond paste cookies, almond crescents, biscotti, you name it.

                 

A food blogger who loves to bake finds plenty of inspiration online, too. Some sites you might want to visit:

• Smitten Kitchen's "all cookies'' section:  Hazelnut Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies, anyone?
• Food52: The online community of cooks and food lovers, launched by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, is a fabulous resource for real recipes from real people. A holiday cookie plate HAS to have something ginger-y on it. I'll be trying Food52 contributor Jenny Steinhauer's recipe for Ginger-Spiced Molasses Sugar Cookies.
• You knew there had to be a website called Christmas-Cookies.com. It's broken down into categories: rolled cookies, refrigerator cookies, drop cookies, decorated cookies, bar cookies, no-bake cookies -- more than 500 recipes in all.

Happy baking -- bring on the butter, flour and sugar!

Ready to roll (and slice and bake later): Two batches of World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours."