The secret to this recipe is the chill-time. You’re supposed to let the cookie dough chill in the fridge for at least 24 hours before baking. I’d never attempted the recipe until now, mostly because I don’t have the patience to let dough sit around; I’ll either eat it all in one go, or need to bake it to get it out of my sight (yes, I typically love cookie dough more than the baked product!). My friend told me that she had left the dough in her fridge for 4 days!!!! And the cookies were out of this world. So…late Wednesday night I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer and I mixed up a batch of the dough. I exercised great self-control and didn’t bake the dough, or eat it (except for a few tastes) until today. If I’m doing the math correctly, the dough was in my refrigerator for about 91 hours before I baked it. 91 hours?! How did I not eat it all?! I’m pretty impressed with my willpower.

The science behind the extended chilling time is explained clearly in the NY Times article:

“A long hydration time is important because eggs, unlike, say, water, are gelatinous and slow-moving, she said. Making matters worse, the butter coats the flour, acting, she said, “like border patrol guards,” preventing the liquid from getting through to the dry ingredients. The extra time in the fridge dispatches that problem.” and, it turns out, the originator of the chocolate chip cookie, Ruth Wakefield, chilled the dough too, “At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight,” she wrote in her “Toll House Cook Book” (Little, Brown, 1953). This info is left out of the version of her recipe that Nestlé printed on the back of its baking bars and, since 1939, on bags of its chocolate morsels.”

I have to agree; the chilling time did wonders for the cookies. The dough tasted great right away, and even after sitting for nearly four days. I didn’t do a scientific comparison of how the baked cookies tasted after various chilling times but you can see that on this blog here if you’re really curious. What I do know is that the cookies, baked after the dough had been sitting for 91 hours, are delicious!! They are really crispy on the outside and chewy in the centers. I’ve never managed to get such a perfect, even, consistency in my cookies as this recipe created. I’m generally very impressed with these cookies – especially the sea salt sprinkled on the top, that adds an extra dimension to the flavors. I even want to eat more of the finished product, which, as I said before, doesn’t often happen. I usually just want the dough…

I didn’t have bread flour or cake flour, and just used all-purpose flour instead. I am curious as to how the cookies would be if I’d followed those directions more exactly — I guess I’ll have to make this recipe again! (I have no complaints about that). I made my cookies smaller than the original recipe calls for – the balls of dough were only about 1-inch in diameter before baking. I also have no complaints about the smaller size – they are easier to eat as a snack, and therefore probably easier to eat more of!

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yield: 18 very large cookies or 31 smaller cookies

Prep Time: 15 min + chill time

Cook Time: 18 min

Ingredients:

Directions:

Tips:

Stop the presses! I have very important news. Way more important than the Super Bowl, even if San Francisco just broke your heart. Actually, if San Francisco just broke your heart, as it did mine, then this news might cheer you up a little. I think I just found God.

What’s that you say? On a baking blog?

Yes. God, in the form of Smitten Kitchen’s Fig, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt Challah. I am a diehard challah fan, and this recipe just stepped it up a notch. Many notches, in fact. I made a double batch of the bread dough; I kept one loaf, just the plain challah bread recipe and braided it like a normal challah. It’s delicious and fluffy and beautiful:

For months I have been hearing about the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. Everyone says it’s amazing, and while I didn’t doubt the caliber of the recipes, photographs, and book itself, I did doubt the necessity of my owning it. I check Deb’s blog religiously, have made numerous amazing recipes from it, and spent way too many hours oggling her mouthwatering creations. I knew the book would be great, but I thought, “I can just check the recipes online! I don’t need to spend money on another book that will just clutter my shelves…” Boy, was I wrong. My girlfriend got the cookbook from the public library and if it weren’t a library book, I’d have dog-eared nearly all the pages to remember to make all the recipes as soon as possible! Every pastry, salad, vegetable main dish, and dessert look insanely good. I love when cookbooks have pictures for each recipe – otherwise, how can I really trust the recipe will make what it says? In any case, I now know that I need to own the book. Especially after I baked this challah.

I made the second loaf according to the Smitten Kitchen directions and loaded it up with fig jam and orange rind and damn. It has everything you want in a challah loaf, plus sweet gooey citrus deliciousness oozing out everywhere. Dessert, breakfast pastry, bread, all in one. And imagine using this to make french toast! To die for. Proof that I really need to go out and buy this book:

If you’re wishing the 49ers had won, well, here’s a little bit of gold to hold you over till next year.

These pumpkin toffee cookies were on my Halloween table, and they’d make a great dessert for any Thanksgiving meal. In this picture, they don’t look as delicious as they really are. They melt in your mouth. They are pumpkin, my favorite flavor. There are little chunks of gooey, sticky toffee in every bite. And, if you under-bake them, these cookies are even softer and gooeyer and more delicate. If that description doesn’t make you want to try them, here’s one more hint about how good they are: My girlfriend said she wanted to marry them. Thank goodness she now has to be gluten-free and egg-free, or else I’d never have a chance!

The recipe came from this blog, but instead of allspice I used cloves and my toffee was chocolate-almond-covered. I also couldn’t resist adding extra toffee to the batter.

The recipe is based on an old favorite banana bread recipe, which can be found here.

Banana Bread
Makes 1 full-sized loaf or 2 small loaves

Preheat the oven to 350.

In one bowl or an electric mixer, combine:

1/2 stick (4-5 tablespoons) butter, softened
2 eggs
2 very ripe bananas
1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
2/3 cup sugar

Use your electric mixer to mix the ingredients – If you are not using an electric mixer, use a potato masher, fork, or spoon to squish the banana and mix the ingredients together. It is alright for there to be small chunks of banana in the batter, but you want most of the banana to be reduced to mush.

In another bowl, combine:

1 1/3 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix until the ingredients are blended together.

If you like, stir in additional ingredients here, such as chopped walnuts or pecans, dried cherries or apricots, or chocolate chips. A handful (about a half a cup) is about right. I used only chocolate chips in my bread.

Pour the dough into greased baking pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Small loaves take around 30 minutes, a normal-sized loaf takes around 50 minutes.

Remove from the oven. This bread is great warm, but it is excellent cold too.

After they have cooled for 5 or 10 minutes the loaves can be removed from the pan to cool. Once they are cool they can be individually wrapped and frozen.

Enjoy!

Using this recipe and this chocolate peanut butter, I have created a delicious treat! It took a couple tries, but this final batch is perfect! I think since it’s a muffin, it can be eaten any time. A perfect weekend breakfast (or anytime breakfast, because why not?), a great dessert, a tasty snack, a yummy addition to any potluck…anything you want it to be! That’s the best part of a chocolate muffin. Chocolate muffin, with chocolate chips mixed into the batter, with chocolate peanut butter baked on top. “Chocolate chocolate chocolate peanut butter muffin” could be a more accurate title.

I had to make a few adaptations to the recipe listed above. I kept the cupcake batter the same except I added more chocolate chips, and used a dairy-free milk. The first time I made this recipe, I made the peanut butter swirl the way it is listed in the original recipe (except used chocolate peanut butter instead of regular peanut butter). Because of the extra ingredients already in the chocolate peanut butter, it became a very thin mixture, and didn’t soak into the cupcake. It spread out, bubbled across the top of the pan, and burned. Terrible! Totally not fit for bringing to a potluck, or as a treat for coworkers, or anything…except some tastes of parts that could be pulled away from the burntness. Lots of tastes, actually.

I decided that the chocolate peanut butter could hold up on it’s own, and so skipped the extra ingredients the next time I baked them. I just plopped a teaspoon or so of chocolate peanut butter on top of the cupcake batter, and stuck them in the oven to bake. Voila! Delicious, perfect looking triple chocolate peanut butter muffins! Why didn’t I think of that the first time?

Here’s my version of the recipe. Enjoy!

Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Muffins

Yield: about 20 muffins

Ingredients:

For the muffins:
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1¼ cups almond milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 large egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract

For the peanut butter swirl:
1/2 cup Chocolate Peanut Butter (like: Dark Chocolate Dreams from Peanut Butter & Co.)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Line muffin tins with paper liners. To make the chocolate muffin batter, combine the butter and 1/3 cup of the chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are melted and smooth. (Alternatively you can microwave in 20-30 second intervals, stirring in between, until melted and smooth.) Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk or mix briefly to combine. In a liquid measuring cup, combine the almond milk, vinegar, egg, and vanilla and whisk until combined. With the mixer on low speed, blend in the liquid mixture just until combined. Blend in the melted chocolate mixture. Stir in the remaining chocolate chips with a spatula. Divide the batter between the prepared paper liners, filling each no more than 2/3 full. (These muffins will rise a lot!)

Drop a small spoonful of the chocolate peanut butter on top of the chocolate muffin batter. Swirl together using a skewer or knife.

Bake 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
¼ cup sweetened dried shredded coconut
2 cups heavy cream
1¼ cups 1% milk
¾ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
5 large egg yolks
1 lime, zested

Toast the coconut:

Toast the coconut on the stovetop in a dry skillet over medium heat. Toast the two types separately, and stir constantly to prevent burning. Remove from heat and let cool.

Infuse the milk/cream:

1. In a heavy saucepan, stir together the cream, milk, half of the sugar, and the salt.
2. Put the pan over medium-high heat. When the mixture just begins to bubble around the edges, stir in the unsweetened coconut. When slight bubbling resumes around the edges of the pan, remove from the heat and cover the pan. Let steep for 15-20 minutes, or until a distinct coconut flavor has infused into the liquid. Taste it to monitor the progress.
3. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, pressing on the coconut to extract as much liquid as possible. Rinse the pan, and return the infused cream to the saucepan.

Make the base:

1. In a medium heatproof bowl, whisk the yolks just to break them up then whisk in the remaining sugar. Set aside.
2. Uncover the cream mixture and put the pan over medium-high heat. When the mixture approaches a bare simmer, reduce the heat to medium.
3. Carefully scoop out about ½ cup of the hot cream mixture and, whisking the eggs constantly, add the cream to the bowl with the egg yolks. Repeat, adding another ½ cup of the hot cream to the bowl with the yolks. Using a heatproof rubber spatula, stir the cream in the saucepan as you slowly pour the egg-and-cream mixture from the bowl into the pan.
4. Cook the mixture carefully over medium heat, stirring constantly until it is thickened, coats the back of a spatula, and holds a clear path when you run your finger across the spatula, one to two minutes longer.
5. Strain the base through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean container. Set the container into an ice-water bath, wash your spatula, and use it to stir the base occasionally until it is cool. Remove the container from the ice-water bath, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate the base for at least two hours or overnight.

Freeze the ice cream:

Freeze in your ice cream according to the manufacturer’s instructions. While the ice cream is churning, put the container you will use to store the ice cream into the freezer. Add ¾ of the sweetened coconut and all of the lime zest in the last minute or so of churning, or fold it in by hand after transferring the ice cream to the chilled container.  Enjoy right away or, for a firmer ice cream, freeze for at least four hours. Sprinkle the remaining sweetened coconut on top of each serving of ice cream.

A few years ago, I bought the Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook. I bought it mostly because the pictures are amazing, and make me want to eat the cookies right off the page. The index is my favorite part; complete with a mini-photo of each type of cookie in the book, with its recipe’s page number. I’m a very visual person, and often have a hard time using cookbooks that don’t have pictures of the food (if I can’t see it, how will I know if it will work? Obviously, a picture tells me that the dish will taste great…). This book suckered me into buying it, even though there are no vegan recipes and I was vegan at the time. I altered some of the recipes to make them vegan and they were fine. But now I’m not vegan anymore (I know, I talk about this all the time…Sorry), and I made these cookies using real butter and real eggs like the recipe calls for and dang. They were good!

I can never make a recipe as is, I have to have at least one alteration and make my own version. I used this Martha original recipe, but added generous sprinkles (maybe two or three) of cloves and nutmeg to the batter. The cookies came out chewy in the middle, crisp on the outside, and deliciously spicy. Martha recommends adding raisins, toffee bits, or chocolate chunks. I opted for chocolate chips. Yum!

Warning: This recipe makes a ton of cookies! My friends were over one night and we ate a lot of fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies for dessert, I ate some in the following days at home, I brought a bucket of them to school to share with other teachers, and there were enough left over to freeze for a rainy day. It’s not raining right now, but hey, I might just go dig one out of the freezer right now…What better way to start out the day?

The first time I made these scones, I veganized the original recipe because I was vegan (duh). I also added almond meal and millet flour, and it tasted great, but this time I really just wanted the original. So, a few weeks ago I tried making them again. I used the Cheeseboard recipe, because I’m not vegan anymore and I thought of course the recipe filled with butter would be way more delicious. Somehow, they were a total flop: they were flat and spread out all over the pan, the medium-grind cornmeal was too crunchy, and I was confused.

Ultimately, I resorted back to the vegan version and I tried them this week and used a very finely ground cornmeal, and wow, they were good. The best part was that I made them small, much smaller than the Cheeseboard originals, so you could eat one, then another, and another and still feel okay about your tummy. Or thighs. Or whatever.

Corn Cherry Scone Ingredients:


2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour


1/2 tsp. baking soda


1 Tblsp. baking powder

2/3 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup finely ground cornmeal

1 cup cold Earth Balance, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 cup dried sweet cherries


1 1/4 cup almond milk


1 1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking mat.

Combine the almond milk and apple cider vinegar in a measuring cup and stir together quickly. Let stand for a few minutes till good and curdled. While you are waiting, sift the flour, soda, and baking powder together into the large bowl for your mixer (you can also use a pastry cutter and do this all by hand). Add the 2/3 cup sugar and cornmeal, and stir with a wooden spoon till combined. Add the cubed Earth Balance and mix using the paddle attachment (or cut it in with a pastry cutter or 2 knives) until it is the size of small peas.

Mix in the cherries. Make a well in the center and add the almond milk-apple cider vinegar mixture. Mix briefly, just until the ingredients come together; some loose flour should remain at the bottom of the bowl. Let the batter stand for 5 minutes so some of the liquid soaks into the cornmeal and millet.

Gently shape the dough into balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter (they should have a rough, rocky exterior) and place them on the prepared pan about 2 inches apart. Sprinkle the 1/4 cup sugar on top of the scones and place the pan in the oven on the middle rack and immediately turn the temperature down to 375 degrees. Bake for 17-20 minutes, until the scones are golden. Transfer the scones to a wire rack to cool.