Save Those Cookies!

 

Hard to believe I haven't posted anything here since April. Okay, maybe not so hard to believe. There were last weeks in the ghost town, travel back to Michigan, months of bookselling and mowing grass, then packing up to come back to the high desert. I haven't been filled with ambition since we got here, either, not for cooking or baking or much of anything but reading and walking with dogs.

I did, however, get it together to mix up a couple batches of cookies before Christmas and want to share a tip that others might find helpful. The first batch of mincemeat cookies I pulled from the oven were not, as it turned out, quite done. I went ahead with the rest, then turned the oven off, and put the not-quite-done cookies back on a cookie pan and in the oven. Remaining heat took care of the problem. In fact (and this might be going further than necessary), I didn't pull them out of the oven until the next morning, when they were crispy and delicious and not at all overdone. 

Mincemeat cookies have a yummy taste but are an easy drop cookie to make and don't need decorating to be festive. Sorry I did not take enough photos to document the problem and solution, but as you can see by the nearly empty bowl, everything worked out fine. This solution just might work with any kind of drop cookie. Let me know if you run into the problem with another kind of cookie and solve it with my fix.

Quarantine Kitchen, Episodes #2, #3, #4: Treats and Exercise Together

Kale on the left, parsley on the right

I'm going to try to condense several projects into one post because, really, how many words do I need to accompany food photos? The beautiful fresh greens above came to us courtesy of a neighbor here in Dos Cabezas who has a flourishing greenhouse. Well, she did lose tomato plants to the last killing frost, but she still has plenty of bounty to share. So I decided to take the kale by the leaves and make roasted kale chips, a snack my stepdaughter Maiya swears by. Here's how it went.

Remove stems

The stems are bitter, and you don't want them. Also, to remove bitterness from the leaves, the part you do want, you drizzle them olive oil and massage it in. Yes, massage. I know. Weird. Never thought I would be massaging a vegetable. 

Some recipes I consulted use only salt. Some recommend sea salt and cumin, and I liked the sound of that. Another possibility was garlic salt, but I didn't go that route. What do you like, and what spices do you have on hand? An idea I really liked was dusting almond flour for added crispness, but I didn't have almond flour. I thought of cornmeal, but the only cornmeal in my cupboard right now is a rather insipid variety, not the Bob's Red Mill stuff I much prefer. So I ground up slivered almonds in my spice grinder to make 1/4 cup of what I called almond flour, added sea salt and cumin and tossed the olive oil-coated kale leaves with it.

Next, spread them out on a sheet for the oven. Maiya had said a 200 degrees Fahrenheit, one recipe said 315, so I split the difference and set the oven at 250.

How did the kale chips turn out? They are very fragile and delicate, for one thing. We liked them. But my husband pronounced them -- and I did not even know this word was in his vocabulary; have never heard him use it before -- oversalted! Okay! Less salt next time!

The parsley went into tabbouleh, one of my personal favorites, although there was no cucumber in it this time. I don't mind buying green bananas and having them go brown, but a cucumber that goes soft in the fridge isn't good for anything that I can see. And while I was sure I had photographed the tabbouleh at a couple of stages, plus in a pita pocket with yogurt, I don't find those photos. Okay, I've got one image of the last bit of tabbouleh. It didn't last long. 

But here's a thought I had. Massaging kale -- does that count as exercise? Did I cover two health birds with one kitchen project?

Not all our treats are green, but exercise comes in more vigorous forms than massaging kale. What about creaming butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon for chocolate chip cookies?

Then mixing in all that flour, again by hand! I'm calling it exercise, friends. And greasing twelve separate little cookie beds in a muffin tin? More exercise. You do it your way, I'll do it mine. 

We like the crispy results

One more closing thought on treats and exercise: making bagels involves a good, long ten minutes of kneading, and when kneading dough by hand you realize just how long ten minutes can be. That counts as exercise, for sure -- and there are the delicious bagels at the end of the project. I wasn't sure the ones I made last weekend were my best-ever bagels, but revisiting them, as we did daily until all 12 were gone, I gave myself higher marks each day. (For entire wordless bagel story, see here.) They were delightfully crispy and chewy and, wow, just so worth the effort! 

Last two bagels! Time to make more!

How I Made Them and What I'll Do Next Time

It started with a package of condensed (concentrated) mincemeat and an idea. I'd made the mincemeat cookies before from the recipe on the box, many times, but it occurred to me on Friday afternoon that the little mini-muffin tins I used for chocolate-cream cheese-peanut butter brownie bites would be perfect for turning out cookies in the form of mini-wintercakes for Lynne Rae Perkins's book signing of her latest children's book, Wintercake. How appropriate would that be? After all, the wintercakes in Lynne Rae's story are rich with dried fruits. I even went all out and sifted the flour, which is something I've only started doing very recently. It's actually kind of fun.

Here is the cookie dough, well mixed:

And then comes the moment to deploy the darling little muffin tins (even my husband, the Artist, thinks they're adorable) and the tiny fluted paper cupcake holders that will make the minicakes easy to remove from the pans, transport to the village, and serve in the bookstore. 

Baking the cookie dough even in tiny muffin tins means adjusting the baking time. As cookies on a sheet plan, they would spread out flat and be done through faster. This way, instead of 8-10 minutes, figure on 12-15 minutes in the oven. 

You wouldn't believe how good the house smells during the baking of these spicy little sweethearts, and the aroma lingers deliciously, temptingly, into the morning of the next day. What I'll do next time, though, is sprinkle maple sugar on the little cakes right when they come out of the oven. You could also sprinkle colored sugar, if you prefer, or wait until they cool and frost them. Lynne Rae Perkins is such a creative person -- writer, artist, baker, cook, craftsperson -- that anticipating her as my guest today I was inspired!

"Mixing It Up" on a Snow Day

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Nothing at all Parisian about it: A spring snow day is pure Michigan! Yard and fields and orchards and woods white again, driveway drifted over, landmarks obliterated, winds battering farmhouse and outbuildings. It took us only about ten seconds to decide to stay home for the day.

All the best meals start with an onion – or in today’s case, three onions, since two of them were already exhibiting plant life’s “force that through the green fuse” ever strives to reach again for the sun. I cooked up the onions before fixing on their ultimate destiny. Maybe onion soup, but then again maybe not....

A session of bookkeeping brought on a virtuous glow, and I wanted a reward. I wanted cookies! The trouble was, I didn’t really feel like making cookies -- but they don’t make themselves. At last I found a recipe that would do, with modifications, for a non-shopping winter-spring day. It is very seldom I have sour milk on hand, and having it that day is what turned the tide. I knew it would come in handy for something.

The cookbook called them “rocks,” the recipe calling for a cup of chopped nuts. My modification was golden raisins and a handful of mixed dried fruit (cherries, cranberries, and blueberries), with whole wheat flour substituted for one cup of the white. Cinnamon and ground cloves deepened the color of dough already featuring brown sugar, and the sour milk made the cookies puff adorably in the oven, with slightly crispy bottom edges.

Tea time!

The snow day was not a gourmet day in my Paris kitchen or our old farmhouse. It was a comfort food day. As it happened, the freezer yielded up a previously cooked chicken breast, the pantry shelves a can of stewed tomatoes, and fresh ginger, garlic, and spices from the Middle and Near East gave character to the developing dish that had begun, so modestly, with three onions.

At last, served on brown rice with chopped cilantro, our mixed-up blizzard day dinner came to the table.

We had had primarily an indoor day, spent with long books (one for each of us) and only occasional sorties out into the wild storm. Soon enough, the rushing spring and summer seasons will be upon us! And so, in northern Michigan a spring snow day is a special gift from Fate, and rather than culinary challenge, I took the storm as an opportunity for comfort and indulgence – one last retreat from strenuous activity before the nonstop season of work begins.

Not Exactly French "Biscuits"

Beese-kwee? No, these are plain old American cookies, but they did come out of my tiny "Paris" kitchen. A helpful trick when space is limited is spreading a project over a couple of days, mixing one evening and baking the next.

I made a double recipe of basic refrigerator cookie dough and played variations on it from there, with prepared, rolls of dough kept cool overnight on the enclosed front porch, along with a bowl of oatmeal-cherry dough. (Organic Michigan dried cherries in place of raisins make any recipe calling for raisins more special.)

Inherent dangers of a small kitchen cannot, however, be denied. Moving in and out with trays of cookies, it's easy to bump the oven control knob. How could one tray have burned -- and so quickly? Oh, too much heat.

The overdone cookies were not good enough to take to Northport, but not too burned to eat at home. A few deformed pinwheels didn't make it into the decorated tin going to the bookstore, either, and here they are (below) on our dining table next to a falling-apart paperback book -- another little orphan staying home with me -- not rejected but special, i.e., slated for home consumption.

Last but not least: presentation! A big, old, beautifully decorated cookie tin from Germany held all the cookies I made and would have held more. They'll keep well in the tin, also. I wouldn't have minded a tin from France, but the German one found me and worked out fine.