Christmas crack

This year, I delegated most of my Christmas traditions and responsibilities in advance, knowing that when Baby 2.0 was born in November, the holidays would be hectic. Thank goodness for family... My sister knocked off all the presents on my list, she helped me decorate the house, and we hired someone to put up the lights. And I told myself I wouldn't do any Christmas baking.

Florentiners a la Mama

When I first opened the pages of Gesine Bullock-Prado's cookbook "Sugar Baby" I'll admit the first thought that crossed my mind was, "Oh she's used her famous sister Sandra Bullock's name to get a book deal." But not long after I realized this was the passion project of someone without any formal training who turned what she love into a successful business, someone who truly loved baking. Someone who was funny, and authentic.

I was hesitant to try out her recipe for Florentiners a la Mama because it has German roots and involves a candy thermometer and anything that has German roots and involves a candy thermometer requires precision.

White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

This recipe caught my eye on Pinterest with the simple caption: "Apparently, the best Christmas cookie ever." "Best" piqued my interest, and "ever" drove it home.  How could I possibly ignore the recipe for the best Christmas cookie ever?

So I decide to make it on a whim and take it to my friend's house as my contribution to her annual cookie swap. I had already made a couple of other kinds of cookies but this one seemed like it would be my show-stopper.

Hershey's Candy Cane Blossoms

You know that saying: Don't judge a book by it's cover? Well, I'd like to meet the puritan who came up with that one to have a word or two. Because we're going to judge a book by it cover even if we don't want to! As a book publishing graduate, I study the cover: It tells me the market the publisher is going for. It tells me if it's won any awards, it tells me what other prominent authors think of the text. A cover is important.

And I also decide to make cookies based on their appearance, obviously. Especially during the holidays. So I flagged this recipe on Pinterest because I loved the vibrant Christmas colours. And we eat, first, with our eyes.

My son's airplane-themed second birthday

I get nervous whenever I am hosting more than two people at my house. It's not that I don't like to entertain. I just want it to be perfect, and expectations are always high - especially when it comes to the dessert. People always ask me, where do you find the time? I start planning months in advance (for something like this), and create a schedule for myself that sets out my tasks for up to two weeks beforehand. I don't have the time to procrastinate.

This time, I decided not to get so hung up on the sweet table that I'd be stressed the entire time, especially for an important occasion like my son's second birthday. Last year, the theme was Elmo, this year I decided to make it an aviation theme for my airplane-obsessed toddler.

Poilane's Punitions or Punishment Cookies

Punitions means "punishments" in English. I'm in a sour mood today, it's raining and it's grey. And I had the day off from work but sure enough my son woke up sick and lethargic. Now that he's asleep, I decided it's time to blog about my experience making these small buttery French cookies a few weeks ago.

This recipe comes to us via Dorie Greenspan's book "Paris Sweets." Which I've referenced time and time again. It's adapted from the classic recipe from the world-renowned Parisian bakery Poilane.

Espresso chip meringues

My past attempts at making meringues have fallen flat. So I was amazed, and thrilled when I came home from work one Friday and whipped up a batch of these meringues in no time at all.

Maybe it's because this time I properly let the egg whites reach room temperature. Maybe the air was dry enough in my kitchen that day. Maybe I didn't overwhip the meringue. Maybe buying superfine sugar rather than trying to make my own by grinding granulated sugar made the difference.

Who knows. The point is that these whipped up in no time, and the peaks stayed stiff. Halle-whipping-lujah.

Nigella's Christmas Cornflake Wreaths

Growing up, Rice Krispie squares were an exotic treat. Celebratory desserts, at our house, were more likely to be baklava, or kenefe (a sweet cheese pastry made with kadaif), or perhaps melomakarona (Greek honey cookies).

So, I will admit that I have never ever made Rice Krispie treats and the prospect of making these Christmas Cornflake Wreaths was a bit daunting. These aren't your typical melted mallow-and-cereal treats, though, these are Rice Krispie treats all grown up.

Chocolate & Zucchini's Canelés

It was love at first bite. Sorry I can't resist a cheesy play on words. Back to the batter at hand (tee hee).

I first made canelés, if you might remember, at Bonnie Gordon's School of Confectionary Arts. I signed up for the two-day course mainly to learn how to make macarons.

And I did, and they were delicious, and I had rave reviews. But. As soon as I had learned how to make the macarons, all I could think about was how delicious these unassuming canelés are.

Sure enough, they are near-impossible to find in Toronto (only at Nadege Patisserie I believe - that's Nah-dej, not Nah-deh-jeh). So I had been craving them ever since.

Cookbook Review: The Gourmet Cookie Book

 

I'll cut to the chase. This is hands down, the best baking cookbook for 2010. And I've been through at least a couple of dozen of the latest and greatest just in the past year.

Despite all the cookie collections that have recently hit bookshelves, "The Gourmet Cookie Book" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is not just any old compendium of cookies. This book lists the single best recipe for each year from 1941 to 2009, offering not only an archive of the best cookies over the decades, but documenting America's history and evolving taste buds through its cookies. 

Crisp maple shortbread cookies

The recipe for these gems comes from the latest issue of Chatelaine but you can also find them here. Unlike other more traditional shortbread recipes, these were just buttery enough, just light enough that you can eat more than a couple without feeling like you are going to keel over from the sheer weight of the butter.

And the maple glaze is the perfect touch to elevate a, let's face it, often boring and overexposed cookie.

Add this to your repertoire and you won't be sorry.
Best of all? This isn't one of those recipes that produces a sorry output of a whole 20 cookies. I got dozens of cookies out of this batch and froze most of them for the holiday season. (I already took a few out to see how they freeze and after spending some time at room temperature, they are as good as new).

Hazelnut-almond financiers redux

I am a micromanager at the best of times and one of the ways that manifests itself is my obsessive checking of my blog stats. I can't help but wonder - who keeps misspelling my surname as Nercessian to come to this blog? And who are the readers in Afghanistan? Also, are financiers molds really that hard to find that so many people find my blog by Googling those keywords? (Please, for the love of all things chocolate, reveal yourselves!)

In fact, they are hard to find and I bought my silicone financiers molds at eBay from a purveyor in New York City. And after many, many, many months I used them.

Cook's Illustrated perfect chocolate chip cookies

A few days ago it was a miserably rainy day and all I could think about was whipping up a batch of warm, gooey, chewy, chocolate chip cookies.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles my son actually sat in his high chair long enough for me to make these cookies and bake them (all the while I fed him his dinner - yes, I'm a good multi-tasker).

I came across this recipe a few weeks ago, during my online travels searching for the perfect chocolate chip cookie (see my previous posts on David Lebovitz's chocolate chip cookies, and Amy Lewis' ultimate chocolate chip cookies).

Easy chocolate-dipped peanut butter cookies

I've been making these cookies for a long time, but it wasn't until recently that I thought maybe I should blog about them. It can't get any simpler than this. Do you have a jar of peanut butter in your pantry? Good. An egg and some sugar? Great. Now all you need to do is rustle up some peanut pieces and chocolate to melt and you are ready to go. If you are a culinary snob you may want to move on to an earlier post. (You are still reading though, aren't you?)

These cookies are real crowd-pleasers, and I can say that with certainty, because every time I have taken them to work or a party, every one of them has been eaten off the plate. Can't get much better than a recipe that has "easy" right in the title. This recipe is from Kraft Kitchens.

David Lebovitz's chocolate chip cookies

When my craving hit, it was sudden and strong. I wanted a chocolate chip cookie.

But not just any run-of-the-mill chocolate chip cookie, a homemade one with dark chocolate chips that was slightly gooey and chewy on the inside.
Some of my readers may or not remember my day job (at least when I am not on maternity leave) is as a journalist. And so I approached this self assignment much as I would approach any assignment.

French pastries day 2: Guimauves and madeleines

Day two of my French pastries course at the Bonnie Gordon school started quietly enough. We were to finish decorating the macarons we made the day before, and we were to bake the canelés batter sitting in the fridge.

But in the middle of our demo on guimauves, I realized what I dismissed as a mere headache was quickly becoming a migraine, an ailment I had avoided since becoming pregnant and having my baby.

French pastries course day 1: Macarons and canelés

You've heard me say it a kajabillion times so I won't draw this out for too long. I love macarons. But try as I might, I was unable to reproduce these heavenly confections in my own oven.

So when Toronto's Bonnie Gordon's School of Confectionary Arts offered a two-day French pastries course teaching how to make macarons, among other things, I leapt at the opportunity. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, I cleared it with my husband and mother to see if they could cover watching my son for the two days before registering. And then I leapt.

Raspberry Chocolate Chip Rugelach

In theory, the recipe for Raspberry Chocolate Chip Ruggies sounded ideal: indulgent, versatile, and widely popular. After all, who can fault the raspberry-chocolate combination?

Indeed, whoever sampled these cookies had nothing but complimentary words for me, but at the end of the day -- and even several days afterwards -- I am disappointed. But I will be honest enough to say the recipe is not entirely to blame, some of it should also fall on my shoulders. The recipe I used is from "The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook" (follow this link for my review of the cookbook, and follow this link to see how SoNo's Coconut Chocolate Chip Bars turned out).

Once again, I was unable to locate the recipe online and don't feel comfortable typing it out verbatim, so I will briefly outline what went into these cookies. In the dough: all-purpose flour, baking powder, unsalted butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar, coarse salt, egg yolks, vanilla extract.
For the filling: granulated sugar, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, seedless raspberry jam, semisweet mini chocolate chips; egg for egg wash, and sanding sugar for finishing.

My first batch was a disaster. The dough was not rolled out thin enough and the recommended amount of jam ended up being too thick, so that when the cookies baked, the jam oozed out and hardened until it became a sticky, icky, hard crunchy halo around each cookie. While there was no photo of how the baked rugelach should look in this cookbook, I've seen enough rugelach to know the jam shouldn't be darkening in colour so that it turns brown. Perhaps the baking time should be less, or perhaps strawberry jam would be a good substitution.

With the second batch, I spread half the amount of jam on the dough, rolled it out even more, and then realized when it was in the oven that I had forgotten to add the sugar filling to both of the batches.

In the third batch, the dough was fine, I had the right amount of jam, and I remembered to add the filling. These cookies were delicious but I was still so unimpressed with the messy final appearance of the rugelach that I refused to let only but my closest family members see them.

Substitutions: None in this case. But in the future I would substitute teeny tiny chocolate chips for the regular-sized ones. In fact, the colour photo accompanying the recipe depicted the smaller chips; but the recipe did not specify that readers should use them. It should have, as the regular-sized chips are too large for this recipe. They ended up spilling out of the dough and burning. I will also use apricot jam in the future as a lighter-coloured jam will be more forgiving if it spreads and the end result will be more dainty.

Would I make these again? I'm not sure -- perhaps. Like I said above, I'd like to try making them with apricot jam and mini white chocolate chips. At the same time though, it seems like too much of a hassle. It might just be easier to buy rugelach at a bakery.

Grade: Two-and-half-stars out of five. Yes, the taste was there. But before any sweet hits my lips, I am savouring them with my eyes and that is half the enjoyment. These rugelach just looked clumsy. Something else that grated on my nerves, as the pedantic editor I am, is that the recipe missed a key direction.

The recipe tells readers to bake one sheet at a time and rotate the sheet about two-thirds of the way through the baking time. But the instructions fail to mention why we should set out two racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and where we should place the cookie sheet first, and at what point we should move it. I've baked enough to guess what they meant, but I was scratching my head and stamping my feet out of frustration. Not impressed. Not impressed at all.

Picture-perfect palmiers

Palmiers are elegant, delicious and surprisingly easy to make. Named in French for their resemblance to palm fronds, they are also known as elephant ears or butterfly wings. I made classic palmiers, and also cinnamon-flavoured ones, from one box of puff pastry.

I used the recipe from "The Art and Soul of Baking" for the first of three batches, but when I pulled the palmiers from the oven, they were too pale in colour, too thick and the flavour of the caramelized sugar had not infused the cookies. I was partly to blame of course as I hadn't quite figured out the timing of the oven yet and I was overly afraid to burn these.

So I adapted the recipe using the picture-by-picture instructions from Joy the Baker's baking blog for the next two batches. Sure enough, while the first batch was too pale and thick, the second was too dark and burnt, and the third was just right. Below you will find a simplified version of how to make palmiers based on my own error and trial. I hope your palmiers will turn out just right, too.

Makes about four dozen palmiers.

Ingredients:
One box puff pastry (two rolls inside)
2 cups sugar
Spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, ground cardamom should you wish to spice up your palmiers

Directions:
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and place the oven rack in the centre.

Using about half a cup of sugar, dust your work surface. Place one roll of puff pastry atop the sugar. Make sure it is thawed, but cool to the touch.

Roll out the puff pastry until it is about 12 by 10 inches. Sprinkle more sugar all over the surface, until it is covered. When I made the cinnamon palmiers, this was the point at which I sprinkled the cinnamon atop the sugar.
Using a sharp knife, carefully mark a line dividing the dough in half vertically. Make sure you do not actually cut through the line.

Starting at one end, begin rolling from the outside toward the centre seam. Make it as tight as you possibly can. Now do the other side. Gently press the two sides together. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour to an hour, until the roll is cold and firm.

Remove the cylinder from the fridge (one at a time, so that the other cylinder does not thaw while you are preparing your first batch) and then cut 1/4-inch thick slices from the chilled cylinder. Dip each side in the leftover sugar, being careful not to let the slices unravel, and place them two inches apart on a lined baking sheet.

Bake the cookies for about 7 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are golden. Do NOT pull them out before you see the edges browning. Using a spatula (or your fingers, like I did), turn them over and return the sheet back to the oven, baking another 9 to 12 minutes, until they are a beautiful caramelized golden brown. Keep a close eye on the palmiers as they can burn easily.

Now repeat with the other roll from the puff pastry box.

Substitutions:
I can say that I took tips and ideas from several palmiers recipes until I came up with one that worked for my oven and my tastebuds. The key thing is that this recipe is so easy that you should feel free to experiment. I used cinnamon, but you can also make savoury palmiers with Parmesan cheese and smoked paprika, or fresh basil, garlic, and olive oil, or how about using vanilla sugar rather than regular granulated sugar?

Would I make this again?
I shouldn't be admitting this, but every time I passed the plate of cookies, I ate one. They are that addictive. If you prefer to make a smaller batch of cookies in one go, you can also freeze the dough, double-wrap it and place in a freezer bag for up to six weeks. Before using the frozen dough, thaw it on the counter for about 15 minutes until it is still cold but soft enough to slice safely.

Grade:
Eighteen stars out of five. No, really. I loved these buttery, flaky cookies and will make them a staple at my house. And at about $4-5 for ingredients that yielded more than four dozen delightfully delicious cookies, there is nothing to complain about.

Glittering lemon sandwich cookies

Never judge a book by its cover, right? Wrong. Of course I do, and I am a voracious reader at that. So it's without any qualms whatsoever that I admit I made these cookies purely for shallow reasons. They look pretty and I wanted to see if I could replicate this recipe from Gourmet magazine.

I even read the reviews from readers who warned the taste of cornstarch might be too strong. (I don't think I've ever seen a cookie recipe calling for 2/3 cup of cornstarch.) But I wanted to make them anyway.

So how'd they turn out? I made these for my sister's graduation party and some of the adults were put off by the amount of sugar coating these cookies even before they took a bite. But my husband couldn't get enough, and asked me to save some to have with his morning espresso.

His review? He sent me an email telling me "That cookie with an espresso is truly orgasmic." His employee had one, too, and remarked that the cookie made him happy going down his throat.

Substitutions:
I added a few drops of lemon oil to the dough and also to the icing in the hopes that the extra lemon flavour would mask the cornstarch, which indeed was quite strong when I tasted the dough. I also did not use a pastry bag to pipe the icing onto the cookie halves, I just used a small spreader. I find it more convenient to do so, but you may find otherwise.

Would I make this again?
Certainly, these cookies were stunning and make a beautiful addition to a sweet table, perhaps for a baby or bridal shower, or even using red and green sanding sugars during the holidays. They were a bit time consuming, but that was to be expected. Truth be told, it was greatly amusing to dunk the balls of dough into the different coloured sanding sugars -- took me back to kindergarten or something.

Grade:
Five stars out of five. I am always on the lookout for beautiful cookies and this recipe fit the bill. This isn't a stand-alone dessert. You'll have to serve it alongside coffee, tea, or some other sort of cake. But it's sure to impress your guests. Be warned, the recipe says the yield is 50 sandwich cookies but I got 30 at a stretch, and I'm not sure I could have made them any smaller without burning them.