Random (and sweet) acts of kindness

Christmas and cookies are synonymous in my house. I bake throughout the year, but when the frost is on the pumpkin, the unsalted butter and eggs go on the counter for a day (and ok, maybe a week) of cookie baking. Each holiday season, I make my mom's buttery, crisp Christmas cut-outs and the cookie of my childhood, spicy ginger with jam.

This year, I got a head start on my baking thanks to a fun program sponsored by Imperial Sugar Company, makers of Dixie Crystals sugar. The program is called Bake It Forward and begins with a tin that you fill with your favorite baked goods then give to a friend who in turn can fill it and send it to another friend. Each tin is marked with a code that can be tracked online; tins may be purchased for $5 from Bake It Foward.

I baked two kinds of cookies for my tin - the favorite ginger cookies and all-purpose second runner-up, oatmeal raisin. I mailed them this morning to a fellow cook, baker, friend and blogger from Open Salon. This has been a year of blessings, and I treasure the community of friendship that I've found on Open Salon.

Spicy Ginger Cookies with Strawberry Jam

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup pecan meal

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/8 cup unsulphured molasses


1/8 cup honey

1/2 cup granulated sugar for coating the unbaked cookies

About 1/4 cup good-quality strawberry jam

1. In a bowl, stir together flour, pecan meal, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves; set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In mixer bowl, combine butter and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Beat in egg, then molasses and honey. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended.

3. Spread granulated sugar in a shallow pan. Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoons into sugar. Roll cookies to coat well, shaping them into balls as you roll.

4. Place about two inches apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets. With your thumb, make a small depression in the center of each cookie. Fill each thumbprint with about a 1/4 teaspoon jelly. I find that a baby feeding spoon, the narrow kind with the long handle, is just perfect for scooping the jelly and placing it on the cookie.

5. Bake the cookies until they are brown and feel firm when touched lightly, about 15 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 30 cookies.

The oatmeal raisin cookies are just homey perfection - buttery, cinnamony, somewhat rustic, and if you underbake them slightly, they will maintain just the right amount of chew. The recipe can be found here - it's from Susan Purdy's "Family Baker."

A note: as I researched this story, I found another "Bake It Forward" that doesn't appear to be a part of the Imperial Sugar program. The other Bake It Forward pops up first in a Google search.  Here's the link for the Imperial Sugar Bake It Forward program. Be sure to check out its Facebook page, too. I'll keep you posted about the tin's progress across the country!

Text & images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Another Salon Kitchen Challenge Winner!

My year of Salon Kitchen Challenges is going strong, with a fourth win, this time in the Tax Day dinner category. The challenge was to make a meal appropriate for tax day that reflected whether or not the participant received a refund or not. The story is posted below, an edited version ran on Salon.com. I expected all kinds of controversy because I wrote about Jesus and taxes, but maybe most folks agree with me? or maybe the food looked so good, they didn't mind the Sunday School lesson.

Sand Castles & Salon

My story for the April Fools' category in the Salon Kitchen Challenge rated a mention in the weekly wrap-up and is an Editor's Pick at Open Salon. I'm now one-fourth of the way through a year of challenges and still having fun. Since January, I've had three SKC winning stories and now five Editor's Picks!

The stories submitted by the other writers are always interesting - this week's winner made sushi from Rice Krispies, but my favorite is a story that uses cookies to explain optical illusions, such as the Kanisza triangle. Here's the wrap-up.

The next category is egg salad, a deceptively simple-sounding challenge. My egg salad is kind of plain, so I'm looking for ideas to jazz it up, especially additions that will appeal to my kids. Let me know if you have a killer egg salad recipe!

Salon Kitchen Challenge Update

This week's Salon Kitchen Challenge entry on tandoori chicken wings wasn't the winner, but my unbroken streak of mentions continues! This is my 13th consecutive entry in the weekly contest. My goal is to participate in year's worth of challenges. My brain and palate are being stretched each week - this was only my second cooking experience with tandoori, which was a big hit with my family.

I already have an idea for the next contest - it's April Fool's and must be a food that doesn't look like food. My kids will love this one!

The Wing's the Thing

Chicken wings are not meant for tea parties. Greasy, saucy and sloppy, they are a guilty pleasure, best served with a handy roll of paper towels. They must be mouth-watering from the git-go, brown and succulent, and require a dipping sauce to suck all the juicy goodness from the bone.

They are one of those foods that I eat only in restaurants, mostly due to the fear of frying factor - I’d rather not subject my kitchen light fixtures to airborne grease. My husband agrees - but he believes that fried wings are the only way to go. If you don’t see scorch marks on the ceiling, the cook obviously hasn’t put forth sufficient effort. If the wings are to be worthy, the cook must brave the shrapnel-spitting cauldron of boiling oil. As if that isn’t intimidating enough, our two daughters can detect a speck of ground black pepper at three hundred paces, while my husband and I like our food with some kick. This leads to a house divided, sort of like what we witnessed this week when Congress voted on healthcare reform.

My goal with a home-cooked chicken wing recipe was to find a relatively clean cooking method and a family-friendly spice level. After giving it some thought, I developed a strategy of roasting wings in a spicy warm tandoori sauce that my girls love. High-heat oven roasting (a technique endorsed by Pam Anderson at Three Many Cooks) browns the wings and keeps them juicy inside. The tandoori marinade is a winner - my family set upon these wings with the same ferocity as a GOP strategist on a yellow-dog Democrat.

And for the grown-ups who like to kick it up, I created a spicy Tikka Masala sauce to serve alongside. The wings are fine without the dip, but they make a pretty picture together - ochre wings and rosy sauce.

Roasted Tandoori Chicken Wings with

Tikka Masala Dipping Sauce

4 pounds chicken wings, tips clipped

Marinade:

2 cups non-fat plain yogurt

8 cloves garlic, peeled

4-inch piece ginger, peeled

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 ¼ tsp. garam masala

1 tsp. salt

Juice of 1 lime

Place marinade ingredients in food processor and puree. Place chicken wings in a shallow container and pour marinade over the wings. Let marinate at least 4 hours. Pull the chicken from the marinade and place on foil-lined baking sheets sprayed with canola spray. Bake at 450 for 30 minutes. Start with skin side down and flip halfway through roasting.

Tikka Masala Dip

1 small onion

2-inch piece ginger

5 cloves garlic

3 tbsp. butter

¼ tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. garam masala

½ tsp. cumin

¼ tsp. cayenne

¼ cup cashews, ground in the food processor (optional)

1 (14.5 oz.) can crushed tomatoes

1 tsp. sugar

Salt to taste, if needed

½ cup half n half (or more)

1. In the food processor, blitz together the onion, ginger and garlic to make a paste. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat and add onion-ginger-garlic paste. Cook gently, then add spices and stir for about a minute. Add ground cashews, then tomatoes and sugar. Season with salt and pepper. When cooked through, add half-n-half to arrive at taste and texture you desire.

2. Serve wings with tikka masala dip alongside. And lots of napkins.

A note on clean-up for these and other wings: don’t even bother with the cheap single-ply paper towels, for wing clean-up, go to the auto parts store and get what the mechanics call shop towels and industrial strength soap. You can thank me later.

Salon Kitchen Challenge Winner!

My Grasshopper Cake story won this week's Salon Kitchen Challenge in the category Green Foods. After considering wasabi, lettuce, cabbage, guacamole, and lime Jell-O, I settled on a reinterpretation of Grasshopper Pie and a meditation on my gardening frustrations. The story is also published below and on Open Salon. The Salon story has a very funny comment by a reader.

Next up: chicken wings. Not an area where I shine, I admit. After three months of weekly challenges (and three wins!), it may be time for a week off. Unless, of course, someone can point me in the direction of a no-fail, blog-worthy recipe!

Asparagus Soup Surprise

I love asparagus and was thrilled when this week's Salon Kitchen Challenge was on the subject of my favorite green vegetable. (The story is posted on Open Salon and also below.)

In Francis Lam's weekly wrap-up, I garnered an honorable mention, which continues my unbroken streak of mentions in 2010. Now, if I can just figure out a way to get paid to do this...

Another note: just when you think your children will eat only hot dogs and nachos, they surprise you. Laura, age 11, spied the asparagus soup, dipped her pinkie in it and tasted. "Mmmm. Can I have this bowl, Mom?"

The picture above is the bowl she brought back to me.

Salon Kitchen Challenge: Hot Drinks

This week's story on candy bar hot chocolate is an Editor's Pick on Open Salon! Read it below, or click over to my page at Open Salon. If you enjoy food writing with attitude, check out the cover of Open Salon. Tuesday covers feature food stories. "Big Salon" has a terrific food page every day, click here.

Liquid candy: the best hot chocolate

Hot chocolate, the body-and-soul-warming beverage of snowy days, is essentially a liquid candy bar, so what if it were really a liquefied candy bar? The best cup of hot chocolate is traditionally made with chocolate melted and combined with dairy, either cream or milk, and topped with marshmallow. This sounds like a candy bar - chocolate, either dark or milk; sugar; marshmallows. In fact, it sounds just like a 3 Musketeers bar, which makes a stupendous cup of cocoa - the sweet milk chocolate is rich and the melted, toasty nougat dissolves and adds body, that creamy mouth-feel that the food writers go on about. Two ingredients, one cooking vessel, one serving mug, so very easy.



Many years ago my friend Billy gave me this ultimate hot chocolate recipe, and it’s an ideal way to use up leftover holiday candies. Three weeks after Valentine's Day, I still have a stash of pink- and red-wrapped milk chocolate hearts and kisses, plus caramel Rolos and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (known in the South as "Reese-y's" and around my house as "Nature's Most Perfect Food"). At the supermarket, I picked up original 3 Musketeers ("whipped-up fluffy chocolate on chocolate taste") and new-to-me 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate ("whipped-up fluffy chocolate on mint taste"), both in the fun size. On a whim, I tossed a box of Junior Mints into the basket. Add a sunny but cold Saturday afternoon in March, and some eager taste testers, and we were ready for a hot chocolate throwdown.

The recipe is pretty much a ratio, approximately 4 ounces of chocolate candy to 8 ounces of milk, beginning with a small amount of chocolate and adding more to taste. I began with milk heated on the stove and mixed up individual servings by placing the chocolate in the bottom of a measuring cup, topping off with milk, then heating in 15 second increments in the microwave.

The results are in: my personal favorite is the 3 Musketeers Dark Chocolate Mint bars. The dark chocolate takes the edge off the sweet and the mint adds a crisp note. There is a pleasant toasty marshmallow taste and the nougat contributes to the texture and body of the beverage. My second place vote goes to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Rich, chocolaty and peanut buttery, two great tastes that taste great together, as the ditty goes. A slight grittiness from the p.b. is the only detraction there. Rolos are a sentimental favorite - try them with popcorn sometime. They make a sweet, thick cocoa, with a pleasant caramel kick. Aggressive stirring is required to incorporate the caramel into the milk.

The young testers gave a universal thumbs up to the dark horse entry, hot Junior Mint. The deep chocolate color was the most appealing of all the cups and the extra sweetness appealed to the sugar-crazed kids. The preschool tester favored the simple 3 Musketeer version, with additional marshmallows.

Master Recipe for Candy Bar Hot Chocolate

Yield: One 8-ounce cup of hot chocolate

Ingredients:

8 ounces whole milk

3 fun-size 3 Musketeers bars (or 10 small Reese's pb cups or 16 Rolos or 4 oz. Junior Mints or 8 Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses or Hearts)

Directions:

Heat milk on stovetop or in microwave, just to scald. Place candy in bottom of mug and pour milk over. Whisk, whisk, whisk until candy is melted. Taste and add more chocolate, if necessary. You may want to place the mug in microwave for 15 seconds at a time to further dissolve the chocolate. Garnish with marshmallows or candy canes, or try this idea from the 3 Musketeers website - shavings from a frozen 3 Musketeers bar!

Salon Kitchen Challenge: Bean Stews

Last week, I posted two entries to the Salon Kitchen Challenge bean stew contest. The first was about green bean soup and the second a dessert riff on red beans and rice. Both appear below. The dessert recipe got a mention in Francis Lam's round-up.

This week's challenge is for hot drinks and I'm planning a hot chocolate tasting with the girls this afternoon. Wish me luck!

My world is small, but my kitchen is big

This is how I know I’m crazy, if crazy can be defined as thinking about desserts every waking minute. You see, this is the story I wasn’t supposed to post. Explanation: for most of January and February, I’ve cranked out ice cream and cookies and all manner of sweets for the Salon Kitchen Challenge. After last week’s entry of Baked Alaska with Roasted Banana Coconut Ice Cream and Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Ganache, I thought I’d lost my mind. It was something that popped into my brain the previous Wednesday and, like an earwig, just wouldn’t let go until I finished the story Sunday night. The challenge has transformed me into the Sweet Tooth Fairy, who dreams in ganache and meringue.

After hitting “publish” in last week’s Frozen Treats challenge, I’d had enough. Please, oh, please, I telepathically conveyed to Francis Lam, please choose a green vegetable for the next challenge. And I think my Carrie-like telekinetic powers must really work because this week’s challenge is a vegetable that is sometimes green, beans, specifically soups and stews that include beans. When the challenge was announced Tuesday, my first thought was green bean soup, which I make mostly for myself from the weekly CSA box bounty. I’d been thinking about the soup for awhile, in anticipation of spring. Make it vegetarian, put some Cheddar crackers alongside, a change of pace from the hearty fare that was sure to be submitted. I even had the longing-for-spring headnote already composed. Done deal.

And then Linda Shiue sent me a message through Open Salon. Linda is one of my first OS friends and I look forward each week to her stories about food, travel and medicine. I’m amazed that she accomplishes so much so well - she’s a physician, mommy, writer, cook. Linda and I trade messages each week wishing each other luck in the SKC. She says it with style - bonne chance. I wish her the same. When the winner and runners-up are announced on Tuesdays, we trade comments and messages and act like we have no clue what we’re turning out for the next challenge, when (I think) we know pretty much know what our stories will be.

In this message, I joked to Linda that maybe I would turn the bean soup into a dessert and she mentioned the Taiwanese treat of red bean ice cream. Well, that got the wheels of my brain turning, I’d heard of red bean ice cream, but had never tried it. How to make that into a soup? Maybe a fruit soup? What goes with red bean? Mango? Guava? Passion fruit? Bingo! Turns out there are recipes online for passion fruit soup and I took a little bit from here and little bit from there and mentally constructed my soup. Found a recipe for red bean ice cream, too. Then to the grocery store to find red bean paste and passion fruit. And I got bupkis. Three stores. No red bean paste. No passion fruit. Not wishing to expand my carbon footprint any more than necessary, I thought about giving up and just submitting the green bean soup story alone. But I couldn’t turn my brain off. Then I thought about red beans and rice, and decided a riff on rice pudding might be clever and yummy. That seemed like sweet on sweet, so I added chunks of cinnamon-dusted mango. Thanks to Chow, I found a recipe for homemade red bean paste, so I bought a bag of beans and started cooking.

The result is tasty, but to be honest, but it needs some work to take it over the top. I’m not sure what red bean ice cream is supposed to taste like, but mine tastes like vanilla with pleasant little chunks of bean.





Recipe notes: the rice pudding/soup is from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The red bean ice cream and homemade red bean paste are from Chow.

As I hit “publish” on this, probably the only sweet entry in this week’s SKC, Red Beans and Rice with Cinnamon-Dusted Mango, I‘d like to channel the Sage of the Airwaves, the immortal Casey Kasem, and send out a long-distance dedication to Linda Shiue. Bonne chance, mon amie.

My world may be small by some folks’ standards - I live in a suburb of a sprawling metropolis. I rarely drive more than 30 minutes from my home, and that’s usually a big deal. The local supermarkets are, shall we say, somewhat lacking. I will say this - I found red curry paste and red chile paste, but no red bean paste. I didn’t find passion fruit, but I came home with carambola, kiwi, pineapple, mango and Meyer lemons. My kitchen and my imagination are huge. One of these days, I’ll taste real red bean ice cream, but I guess until then I’ll take Casey’s advice, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

Salon Kitchen Challenge: Editor's Pick!

My story on Baked Alaska (see below) is an Editor's Pick on Open Salon!

It also garnered an honorable mention in a very funny category on Salon.com - see here!

After putting together this recipe and story, I've decided that I need a test kitchen and studio. It's fun, but challenging to take so many pictures in a home kitchen!

Baked Alaska (because who would eat Baked Canada?)

We are an Olympics family, in enthusiasm, if not in the sense of actually competing in any sport in a world class level, or for that matter, on a neighborhood block level. Each night since February 12th, we gather the girls, and instead of telling stories by a cozy fire, we watch sports history unfold to the flickering light of broadcast television. The Winter Olympics games in Vancouver are thrilling, I grant you, but my heart longs for the innocent Olympics of my youth, when the Games unfolded without a script. These are cynical times and as exciting as it is to watch Apolo Ohno and Shaun White, it’s just not the same as the other Canadian Olympics, 1988’s party in Calgary. When athletes like nearsighted part-time plasterer Eddie (“the Eagle”) Edwards could fly from a 90-meter ski jump and Jamaicans could cheer on their very own bobsled team.

What better symbol of the Olympic dream has there ever been than the Jamaican bobsled team? They may not have ever seen snow or temperatures cooler than 70 degrees Fahrenheit, but they knew how to run. In honor of the Jamaican team (which did not qualify for Vancouver) I’ve created a dessert of contrasts: a Baked Alaska (closest I could get to Canada) with Roasted Banana Coconut Ice Cream and Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Ganache. It is the essence of the Caribbean encased in a marshmallowy meringue igloo.

This dessert has many components and is an ideal way to fill your time while you watch ESPN’s coverage of Olympic curling. The length of the recipe may be daunting, but if Apolo Ohno can return to the short track after winning “Dancing with the Stars,” then you can certainly pick yourself up and put this together. There are four main components: pound cake, which can be storebought or homemade; roasted banana coconut ice cream (the roasted refers to the banana, not the ice cream); Blue Mountain coffee ganache; and Italian meringue.

Baked Alaska with
Roasted Banana Coconut Ice Cream

This recipe yields four igloos and one loaf. You can make a half recipe, using just one pound cake, which is plenty for eight servings (your guests will need to share igloos, though). And, yeah, I know, there are no igloos in Vancouver.

First, you will need to make:

Coconut Ice Cream with Roasted Banana Chunks

adapted from The Family Baker by Susan Purdy

3 medium bananas, peeled and sliced into 3-inch pieces

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 (13.5 oz.) can unsweetened coconut milk

1 cup heavy cream

4 tablespoons light corn syrup

½ cup granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

1/8 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon coconut extract

1. Preheat the oven to 450. Place the banana pieces in a baking dish and toss with the canola oil. Bake for about 15 minutes, until soft and brown. Let the banana cool, then mash with a fork.

2. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine coconut milk, heavy cream, corn syrup, sugar, pinches of salt and allspice. Stir for about five minutes, until bubbles appear around the perimeter of the pan. Remove from heat and add vanilla and coconut extracts.

3. Freeze coconut mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. After about five minutes of freezing, add the mashed banana to the ice cream and continue to freeze. It’s best to fill the cake while the ice cream is still soft, but if you want to make this ahead, freeze the ice cream first, then soften a few minutes at room temperature. A 15 to 30 second zap in the microwave accomplishes the same softening.

You may stop here and enjoy this tropical treat, or you can surrender your kitchen and a few hours' work to a sublime dessert. For the Baked Alaska, you will need three additional items: a couple loaves of pound cake (my recipe is top-notch), a batch of Italian meringue (more on that later) and a recipe of ganache.

Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee Ganache

4 oz. heavy cream

4 oz. dark chocolate, such as Godiva Chocolatier Extra Dark Santo Domingo Chocolate (85% cacao)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons brewed Blue Mountain coffee

1. In a saucepan over a low flame, heat cream to just under a boil. In a bowl, break up chocolate pieces. Pour warm cream over chocolate and ask a pint-size helper to stir until smooth. Add vanilla and slowly stir in coffee. Chill in refrigerator until ready to use.

Begin Assembly:

1. Carve out a boat in one pound cake loaf. Cut off sides and scoop out middle. Save cake bits for another purpose, like feeding any stray helpers who wander into the kitchen. For the igloos, out of the remaining loaf, use a 3-inch and a 2-inch ring to cut out four large circles and four small circles and place on foil-lined baking sheet.

2. When ice cream is ready, scoop four large and four small scoops into shallow containers and place in freezer (these are for the igloos). Fill cavity of pound cake loaf with remaining ice cream. Spread a thin layer of chocolate ganache on top of ice cream. Smooth top and wrap in foil. Place filled loaf in freezer.

3. Make Italian meringue according to your favorite recipe, or use Shirley Corriher’s recipe from "Bakewise." Which is a bit of a pain, but beautiful and your children will be absolutely thrilled when they taste this giant marshmallow.

4. Minutes before serving, have all components at hand and crank up the oven to 475. Have a foil-lined baking sheet ready. For the igloos: Put down a big circle and a little circle of cake, then place a spoonful of ganache on each cake round. Place frozen scoops of ice cream on each circle, then cover with meringue piling high. Bake in 475 degree oven for 3 to 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve immediately.

5. For the loaf: cover with meringue, mounding over the top and swirling in a pretty pattern. Bake at 475 for three to five minutes. Slice and serve immediately. Any leftovers should be frozen. They will not be as lovely the next day, but certainly tasty.

Serve the Baked Alaska to friends while watching the closing ceremonies. Think of all that snow and then turn off the tv and dream of the islands, palm trees blowing in the tropical breeze, a steel drum in the background..Pass the Dutchie, indeed.

Celebrate Your Inner Carmen

Some days, I feel just like a 40-something white Presbyterian. Which in fact, I am. But underneath this minivan mom exterior beats the heart of Bizet's Carmen, a Gypsy vixen in Spain who sings in French and drives the men crazy. In my fantasies, I wear a red dress, sing like Jessye Norman and vamp like Jessica Rabbit.

I may be in my car, in an endless carpool line, but my mind is in sunny Seville, and after I dance and sing, I’m left to wonder: “What will I serve my lover Don Jose for Valentine’s Day?” To the strains of “Habanera,” I compose a dessert of fire and ice, cinnamon ice cream and chile-laced ganache sandwiched between chocolate cookies. Rich chocolate, spicy cinnamon and sweet cream tease your taste buds then the chile hits the back of your mouth and lingers near your throat. This cool dessert sizzles, and it’s meant to be eaten with your hands. Now, that’s sexy.

Fire and Ice Dessert Sandwiches

There are three components to the sandwiches: ice cream, cookies and chile ganache. All three elements can be made in advance. Assembly should take place a few hours before serving so they can set up. Yield: 8 sandwiches.

Cinnamon Ice Cream

1 ½ cups whole milk
1 ½ cups heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
7 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the milk, cream, sugar, pinch of salt and cinnamon stick and heat until scalding, which means that little bubbles will appear inside the perimeter of the pan. Remove pan from heat and let the cinnamon steep for 15 minutes.

2. Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together. Slowly add some of the cooled cream mixture to the eggs, tempering them. Now, reverse and add the egg mixture slowly to the cream, whisking constantly to completely incorporate the eggs.

3. Cook the mixture over low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. The doneness test is when the custard is thick enough to coat a spoon. Remove from heat and strain through a fine-mesh sieve. Discard the cinnamon stick and any flotsam.

4. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. I use a Krups with the canister that you keep in the freezer. Once ice cream is complete, store in an airtight container in the freezer.

Chocolate Cookies

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temp
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
¼ teaspoon salt

1. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy and nearly white-colored. Beat in the egg, cooled and melted chocolate, and vanilla extract.

2. In another bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, and salt. Pour into the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined.

3. Shape dough into a ball and wrap in plastic. Chill for one hour in the fridge.

4. Preheat oven to 400. On a floured surface, roll out dough to ¼ inch thick and use a 3-inch round cutter to cut out cookies. Roll scraps with scraps and cut until all the dough is used. Carefully transfer (an offset spatula is handy for this task) the cookies to a Silpat-lined cookie sheet.

5. Bake the cookies for about 8 minutes or until the edges are just crisp. Set on wire rack to cool. After five minutes, use a spatula to remove cookies and place them on the wire rack to cool completely. If not using right away, place in an airtight container and store at room temperature.

Chile Ganache

Kid friendly note: the cinnamon ice cream and the cookie are kid pleasers, the chile ganache for serious chile heads only. Make some ganache without the chile for the kids, or make the sandwiches plain without the ganache. Leftover chile ganache can be chilled and rolled into truffles; dust with cocoa powder and additional chile powder.

8 oz. cream
8 oz. dark chocolate such as Lindt Excellence 70% cocoa or Green & Black’s Organic Dark 70%
1 teaspoon chipotle chile powder (this is gringo heat, two teaspoons is fiery Gypsy heat)

1. Bring cream to scald, just below boiling, with bubbles in the perimeter. Break chocolate into pieces in a bowl. Pour warm cream over chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted. Cool to room temperature. Store in refrigerator.

Assembly

You’ll need a roll of plastic wrap in addition to the cookies, ganache and ice cream. If the ice cream is too hard to scoop, zap in microwave for 15 seconds at a time.

1. On a sheet of plastic wrap, place one cookie. Scoop the ice cream onto the cookie. Spoon a generous portion of ganache on a second cookie, place the two together and gently squeeze until the filling just meets the edge. Wrap in plastic and place in freezer. Continue with remaining cookies.


L'amour! L'amour! L'amour! L'amour!

L'amour est enfant de Bohème,

il n'a jamais, jamais connu de loi;

si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime:

si je t'aime, prends garde à toi!

Best Cookies in the World, Scout's Honor

The Girl Scout cookie boxes arrived, I opened them, inhaled that sharp mint and chocolate aroma and dove right in. It’s the same story each year, but I’ve come to realize that nothing will ever taste as good as that first Thin Mint from 1970-something. I remember thinking it was the best cookie ever made - chocolatey, minty, crispy. I continue to buy the boxes each year, hoping that the cheap waxy chocolate against my teeth will take me back to those days of peasant tops, bell bottoms and tri-color Keds, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The cookie that does pull me back to my red clay childhood is the soft ginger cookie, a chewy disc, crackly with sugar, fragrant with cloves, cinnamon and the eponymous ginger, anointed with a puddle of raspberry jam in the epicenter. Is it overstating things too much if I say this is Proustian? Perhaps no literary reference is appropriated as much as Marcel Proust's contemplation of the madeleine in "Remembrance of Things Past." Considering that "Remembrance" is seven volumes long, I have doubts that so many cookbook writers have truly read the book. I won't pretend that I've read it, either (I keep a copy of the first volume, "Swann's Way," beside my bed, currently it’s underneath a John Dunning mystery.). If Girl Scouts sold these ginger cookies, not only could they send millions of girls to camp, they could build a retirement village on the proceeds from this cookie alone.


I first tasted ginger cookies at Becker's Bakery in Nashville, Tennessee, the Bakery of My Childhood. I still remember the wood floors, glass display cases and fake wedding cake. While my brothers and I plastered our sticky hands on the glass cases and shouted out the names of the treats, Mom would purchase pastel butter cookies, spritzes in green, yellow and pink. We could each pick out a waving gingerbread man, one arm up and one arm down, sprinkled with red sugar. And no fewer than two dozen ginger cookies would come home with us. Or at least make it to the car, because I doubt they lasted more than 15 minutes with my sugar-crazed brothers (and me).

Becker's is still in Nashville, although the store I remember near Brentwood is now closed. When I travel home, I stop by the store for a dozen or two. I've tried a few ginger cookie recipes searching for one to equal Becker's, and this is the closest. It’s based on a recipe in California Culinary Academy Cookies, copyright 1987. The recipe calls for ground pecans, which I don't think are in Becker's, but make for a tasty cookie. The texture is not quite as soft as the original, either, and I find that they are better after sitting for a day. These cookies are lovely on a winter day, when you can sit with a cup of chamomile tea and curl up with a book, Proust perhaps, in a chair by a roaring fire. Enjoy that moment until the Girl Scout knocks at your door.

Ginger Cookies with Raspberry Jam

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup ground pecans

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup unsulphured molasses (like Grandma’s brand)

1/2 cup granulated sugar for coating the unbaked cookies

About 1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam (I use Polaner’s)

1. In a bowl, stir together flour, pecans, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves; set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In mixer bowl, combine butter and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Beat in egg, then molasses. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended.

3. Spread granulated sugar in a shallow pan. Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoons into sugar. Roll cookies to coat well, shaping them into balls as you roll.

4. Place about two inches apart on parchment lined cookie sheets. With your thumb, make a small depression in the center of each cookie. Fill each thumbprint with about a 1/4 teaspoon jelly. I find that a baby feeding spoon, the narrow kind with the long handle, is just perfect for scooping the jelly and placing it on the cookie.

5. Bake the cookies until they are brown and feel firm when touched lightly, about 15 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 30 cookies.