Archive for the 'cookies & squares' Category
Oh you guys. I need to come back down from this state of giddiness that made me walk into a wall after Malcolm McDowell and Aaron Douglas hugged me goodbye this afternoon. I’m afraid I’ll gush so much you’ll lose your breakfast.
So if you haven’t heard – and I haven’t been driving you crazy with my tweets – I somehow wound up spending the weekend cooking for Leonard Nimoy, Malcolm McDowell, Sid Haig, Aaron Douglas, Tahmoh Penikett and a bunch of the guys from Twilight. And I can’t wait to tell you all about it, but I won’t do a very good job of it now. I’m done. W is snoring beside me and I’m about to join him. I just set my alarm for 6:30, and I need more than 5 hours this time.
I’ll fill you in tomorrow – when hopefully the photographer will send along pictures. I’ll leave you with my favourite big-batch-brownie recipe. Double this and bake it in a rimmed baking sheet (I buy them at Brown’s downtown – bring cash) for even more people. Easy. To fancy them up, cut them straight from the pan using a round cookie cutter or the open end of a tomato paste tin – skewer them on lollipop sticks from the craft store and you have yourself some brownie pops.
Brownies for a Crowd
8 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
4 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2-3/4 cup chocolate chips or chopped walnuts or pecans
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a small saucepan or a bowl in the microwave, melt the chocolate and butter over low heat. Stir until smooth and if you used a pot, pour into a bowl.
Stir in the sugar, vanilla and eggs; blend well. Add the flour, cocoa and salt and stir until almost combined; add the chocolate chips and stir just until blended.
Spread into a 9″x13″ pan that has been lined with parchment or sprayed with nonstick spray; bake for 25-30 minutes, or until just set. (A toothpick inserted will come out with lots of moist crumbs sticking to it.) Makes about 2 dozen.
April 25 2010 | cookies & squares | 15 Comments »
Did you hear about the brutal storm that has been hammering the west coast for the past few days? Lucky for us we made it to Tofino before they cancelled ferries and flights – there have been plenty of Easter travellers stranded this weekend. My dad was one of them.
He was here when we arrived, but was supposed to leave last week – long story – so yesterday, as he was packing up to take the bus to Nanaimo to catch a flight to Vancouver, then Calgary, I decided to make him a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies to sustain him on his 9 hour trek. It occurred to me as I pondered my limited baking supplies (that includes several bags of oats) that a) I haven’t made oatmeal raisin cookies for a mighty long time, b) he loves oatmeal raisin cookies, and 3) I in fact have never posted a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies here.
So I made some. Because I don’t have my old recipe with me I flipped through a few websites, then winged it – for my dad, I used half canola oil and half butter, and only half a cup of packed dark brown sugar (compared to the up to two cups I saw in some recipes) and truly -they were plenty sweet, moist and chewy, buttery without being greasy, heavy on the oats and raisins. You could, in fact, cut it back further – to 1/4 cup total (2 Tbsp. each butter and oil) – I’ll never make them any other way.
But- back to the story of my dad’s extended journey home. Have you ever seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles? He lived it last night, minus the loveable John Candy character. The bus broke down en route to Nanaimo; he managed to get a ($70) cab to the airport, where it was announced that his flight was cancelled. In line for some food when the call was made, he was at the end of the line to try to get on another flight. He managed to book one for this morning, so needed to find a hotel. He hopped on a shuttle and arrived at one just as he realized his checked bags were still at the airport. He went back to the airport as the highway closed due to a vehicle rollover. He eventually made it back to the hostel (did I mention it was a youth hostel?) and there were no rooms left – being the long weekend and a few hours after the ferries and flights had been cancelled.
He eventually got a room when someone happened to call and cancel theirs as he stood there with his bags.. but when he got to the room there was no alarm clock (nor wake-up service) to get him up early enough to catch his 6:30 am flight. He walked to find a store that sold alarm clocks and bought one, plus batteries. Last I spoke to him he had just arrived back to find there was no soap nor shampoo; he was heading out again on a quest for some.
And I thought all he’d need to survive the trip was a bag of cookies.
Dad’s Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
a good shake of cinnamon
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup raisins or other dried fruit
Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a large bowl beat the butter, oil, brown sugar and cinnamon until creamy; beat in the egg ad vanilla.
Add the flour, oats, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add the raisins or other dried fruit and stir just until blended. Drop large blobs on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes, until set around the edges but still soft in the middle.
Makes 1 1/2-2 dozen cookies.
April 03 2010 | cookies & squares | 15 Comments »
Wait, I haven’t told you I made baklava yet, have I? No? I did! I made baklava. And it wasn’t scary at all. Actually it was, sort of: the scary part was the sheer quantity of baklava I ate over the course of the morning. The honey and nuts powered me through the 5:30-9am on-air shift and then carried me through work until early afternoon. The baklava-coffee combo is a little like speed. I had to put what was left in the trunk of the car – out of reach – on my way home.
Good news: in terms of working with phyllo, this is as easy as it gets – no folding, no manipulating. You thaw the stuff, unroll it, and slide a couple sheets at a time over onto a rimmed baking sheet. Brush with butter now and then (no need to slather it) and sprinkle a few times with chopped walnuts (or pistachios, or almonds, or cashews), sugar, cinnamon and cardamom (which is totally optional – if you don’t use any you won’t wreck it), then bake. If it makes you feel any better, Mike brought the phyllo home at around 9pm, and I needed to make a batch quick in order to get to bed at an appropriate time for getting up at 4:30 and being coherent on air in the morning. So we tried to thaw it quickly by holding it, hugging it, sitting it on our laps and stroking it (yes, in its wrapper) like a lapdog. I still prematurely unrolled it and it cracked completely – shattered, really – through every layer of its middle. No matter – it still worked perfectly and you couldn’t even tell. With all its layers, phyllo is pretty forgiving. Kind of like Mother Teresa.
Now, I realize this appears to be seriously lacking in the nuts department. It wasn’t, really. It didn’t have the inch-thick of nearly ground nut paste in the middle – the fresh walnuts were chunkier and sparser but in quantities not at all inadequate. This photo is of the piece I managed to hang on to and smuggle out the door after the pan sat for the entire morning beside the studio at CBC – 48 pieces made a great many people very happy (and very sticky) – Donna said it was better than the baklava she had in downtown Athens, but I suspect she was just being nice. Although it was pretty fab, if I do say so.
And – seriously? EASY. And far more delicious than any piece of manufactured baklava that’s been sitting on a shelf for weeks. It makes an enormous batch that keeps and travels well, so you can feed fifty-ish without much effort. Even the syrup is simple – you bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the baklava as soon as it comes out of the oven. Snap.
Baklava
1 package phyllo sheets, thawed
4 cups walnuts or pistachios, finely chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cardamom (optional)
1/2 cup butter, melted
Syrup:
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey
a thick strip of lemon peel (cut a slice off with a vegetable peeler, getting mostly the outer yellow part)
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a small bowl, stir together the nuts, sugar and spices.
Make sure your phyllo is completely thawed, and keep it covered with a tea towel or piece of plastic wrap to keep them from drying out. Place 2 sheets of phyllo on the bottom of a rimmed baking pan or jelly roll pan (about 12″x16″) and brush lightly with butter. Add three more stacks of two sheets (it’s easier to pull them off the pile two at a time), brushing with butter between each. Once you have 8 pieces of phyllo, spread a third of the nut mixture overtop.
Place 4 more sheets of phyllo on top of the nuts, brushing melted butter between each sheet or every two sheets. Repeat with another third of the nut mixture, another 4 sheets, and the rest of the nuts. Layer the remaining sheets of phyllo on top of the nuts; brush the top sheet with butter as well. Tuck in any sticking-out edges.
Cut the pastry lengthwise into four strips, then crosswise into six, making 24 pieces (they don’t have to be square), making sure not to slice through the bottom layer of phyllo. (This allows the syrup to soak in better.) Make diagonal cuts through each square, making them rectangles (you’ll end up with 48).
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden. While the baklava bakes, combine the sugar, water, honey and lemon peel in a pan set over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and take out the lemon peel.
When the baklava comes out of the oven, immediately pour the hot syrup evenly overtop. Let the baklava stand at room temperature until completely cool. Slice through each piece completely before serving. Makes 48 pieces.
One Year Ago: Chicken and Sourdough Dumplings
March 25 2010 | cookies & squares and dessert | 22 Comments »
I may have shared this tidbit with you already: when I was in grade 3, I told my class that when I grew up I wanted to be the food editor of Canadian Living magazine. I even read my Mom’s subscription. I began my career as a food nerd early.
The food editor at the time (and still today), Elizabeth Baird was one of relatively few food writers of the eighties and the only I knew, and I wanted to be her. (8 year olds, unless they happen to have been born into a food-writing family, tend to not know of food writers, let alone idolize them like their friends might Avril Lavigne. And it wasn’t just a phase; as a teenager, I wanted to dye my hair silvery-white and get bangs.
There were other food writers of her time – Rose Reisman, Rose Murray, Anne Lindsay – they were the faces and voices of Canadian cuisine, and I thought of them as pioneers, trendsetters – the ones dialing in the menus and trends of our Canadian kitchens. I still have old copies of the magazine, and their books are still some of the most weathered on my shelves; the ones I learned to cook from, they made me feel like an adult when I moved away from home and (eventually) the novelty of Hamburger Helper and Eggos wore off.
Yesterday, a copy of Anne Lindsay’s new tome, Lighthearted at Home, the very best of Anne Lindsay, arrived at my door. It’s like an encyclopedia, or a phone book – a large volume containing every possible kind of recipe one might ever need – the best of her cooking career, in a single volume. Flipping through, I was instantly sucked into the nostalgia of the baking section – Elizabeth Baird’s Chocolate Angel Food Cake, Best-Ever Date Squares (known in my grandma’s day, and referenced here, as Matrimonial Slice) and Raisin Cupcakes with Lemon Icing, the same recipe I recall transcribing into a notebook a couple decades ago; raisins soaked in boiling water and then drained, reserving some of the liquid for the cakes – the recipe comes from her mother-in-law, Olive Lindsay. I can’t possibly not make them. W, who loves raisins almost above all else (all superheroes excluded, of course) might become ecstatic at the notion of turning them into an actual cupcake.
But I liked the look of her Easy Cranberry-Chocolate Cookies – made with oat bran, wheat germ and whole wheat flour, they seemed potentially tweedy-crispy, rather than heavy… they turned out crisp-edged and nutty, with the rough texture of an oatmeal cookie and none of the heavy doughiness you might expect from something so loaded down with grains.
Out of oat bran, I used barley flour, and a little less of it – about half a cup. I turned the butter down to half a cup, added a tablespoon of vanilla instead of water, added some chunky toasted walnuts and fewer dried cranberries.
Grainy Cranberry-Walnut-Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Lighthearted at Home, by Anne Lindsay
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup oat bran or 1/2 cup barley flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour, oat bran, wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir until the batter starts to come together; add the chocolate chips, cranberries and walnuts and stir or beat on low speed just until the batter is combined.
Drop the dough in large spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray or lined with parchment; flatten each cookie a little with your hand or the back of a fork. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until just set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes 2 dozen cookies.
For dinner we ate very mediocre frozen thin-crust chicken and spinach pizza while W had a bath, having slid through a pile of newly-thawed dog poo (ah, spring), and then went to watch Where the Wild Things Are at the Lantern in Inglewood. A bag of cookies came with us, warm from the oven.
And guess what! Being as it’s Friday, I have a copy for you. 500 recipes, almost as many pages – it’s a whole lotta cookbook. If you have a cookie recipe that makes you the most happy, I’d love to hear it. (And share links, if you like!) Otherwise, I always love to hear what you ate/made for dinner last night.
(I do a random draw on Tuesdays, and am happy to ship it anywhere it needs to go!)
March 06 2010 | cookies & squares | 90 Comments »
Not surprisingly, the majority of food consumption in our house today occurred during the gold medal hockey game (yay Canada! that goes for the women’s hockey team, too) and was served from our coffee table. What a game. What a couple weeks. For Vancouverites, tomorrow is going to be the morning after the four years before. (By the way, if you’re in the Vancouver area and are up before 7am tomorrow, I’ll on CBC radio discussing that very topic! Having been through the same in Calgary in ‘88 and all, I guess I’m somewhat of an expert on what to do when you wake up in the morning and the Olympics aren’t coming anymore.)
My mom brought a Hunter’s Pie, filled with lean elk simmered in dark ale gravy with mushrooms, carrots and pearl onions, from Wapiti Ways.
Ali made Greek salad and garlicky guacamole and I did up some potato skins – not that I ate much of anything after filling up on half a dozen chocolate puddle cookies, warm from the oven.
And wow, did I make fast friends with these. OK, favourite cookie might be a little extreme – I could never be faithful to any one cookie. I’m fickle. I have food moods. But although I can’t promise to be monogamous, I think it’s safe to say I’ll love the chocolate puddle cookie for the rest of my life.
I had seen them on 101 Cookbooks, which triggered a memory of a similar cookie I used to make a decade ago. Within days an email came from my mom in Tofino, raving about a particular nutty chocolate cookie they kept cleaning SoBo out of, and her description matched them exactly. So since they’re freshly home from a few weeks away and came over to watch the game, I made a batch. They’re as simple to make as any cookie – you stir together icing sugar, cocoa and salt, add chopped nuts, egg whites and vanilla, drop in glops and bake.
They don’t come across as meringues, and aren’t as ridiculously sweet as one would think they’d be with 4 cups of icing sugar. They were crackly on the outside but wonderfully chewy and intensely dark, likely due to my Bernard Callebaut cocoa – completely devoid of butter but loaded with nuts (read: healthy fats) – SoBo uses pecans, my Mom recalls – but I jammed them with nice fresh walnuts. Next on my to-do list: pecans or toasted hazelnuts. Trust me: make these.
Chocolate Walnut Puddle Cookies
adapted from 101 Cookbooks
3 cups walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts
4 cups icing sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
4 large egg whites
1 Tbsp. good vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350F.
Toast your walnuts or pecans, cool them and roughly chop them. In a large bowl, stir together the icing sugar, cocoa and salt. Add the nuts, then stir in the egg whites and vanilla. Stir until well combined.
Line a baking sheet with parchment and drop the batter in large mounds (about 2 Tbsp. each – I used a heaped soup spoon) spacing them well away from each other – no more than 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 13-15 minutes – they will spread, puff, crack on top, get glossy and then turn matte. Slide the cookies on the parchment off the sheet onto a cooling rack and let them cool.
Makes 18 large cookies.
February 28 2010 | cookies & squares | 25 Comments »
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