You'd think with all the food that appears on this blog that there would be clouds of flour and aromas of cinnamon wafting throughout my home. But, like everyone, I'm scrambling to find the balance of working, blogging and family life.

One year, I made over 500 cookies before Christmas for friends and family. This year, I was able to pull off a batch of gingerbread and shortbread!

My girls love decorating gingerbread cookies. So one night we spread out all the sprinkles I've collected and tinted some white icing with food coloring. We have cute gingerbread men, gingerbread Dr. Seuss characters, ghoulish ones with missing legs, and ones with more icing and sprinkles than cookie for the sweet tooth in the bunch (my youngest).

So, though our cookie jar isn't overflowing, we have a table that's still sprinkled with dragees, sugar and dried icing. But best of all we have sweet memories.

Recipe for Gingerbread

From Epicurious

Makes about 50 regular-sized gingerbread cookies

6 cups (about) flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoons ground cloves
¾ teaspoon salt
11 tablespoon (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
1½ teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 large egg
¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon soda

Whisk 5¼ cups flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt in a bowl.

Using a stand mixer, blend the butter and shortening. Add sugar, molasses, and lemon peel and beat until smooth. Beat in egg and buttermilk.

Blend 2 teaspoons water with soda. Beat into butter mixture. In two additions, beat in flour mixture. Add more flour, ¼ cup at a time, until the dough feels slightly firm.

Divide dough into three equal disks. Wrap them and chill until firm enough to roll, at least 2 hours. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep refrigerated. Soften slightly before rolling out.)

Roll out one disk of dough at a time, between sheets of waxed paper.

Either cut the dough using cookie cutters (or another shape) or press the dough into a heat-resistant shot glass or silicon shot glasses. (See blog post for Gingerbread Cookie Cups.) Chill the dough again before baking. (Cutout cookies can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep chilled.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, turning the pan halfway through the baking time.

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Head on over to Natalie MacLean's blog to check out my simple but tasty holiday brunch idea: Salmon Dill Crepe Recipe Paired with Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand



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Here are some other delicious Christmas treats:

Linzer Sablés

Rice Pudding
(which is what we like to have for dessert at Christmas)

Shortbread

Spiced White Chocolate Cappuccino Happy Holidays!

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Feeding Chickadees
 Do you ever think
This could be your last week?
Last day?
Last moment?
What do you dream?
Would you change anything?

What would be on your
day-to-day to-do list?
What would be on your
life's to-do list?

Which one will you do?

There's always
laundry
dishes
work
sleep
hair to wash
mundane things.

Tomorrow
I want to
Splash in puddles
Get muddy
Dance in the rain
Do something I've never done.

And dream
Of what is
And what could be.

````````````````````````````````

Life is transient,
always re-focusing
changing aperture.
But it's always about the light.
Capturing the right light.
Moving to find it.
Or sometimes patiently waiting for it to
change its angle
or find you.

Capturing,
making
and
waiting for
brilliance.

Chocolate Madeleines


Reflections on life and Madeleines somehow seem to go together. Maybe it's because when we think of Madeleines, we remember Marcel Proust’s autobiographical novel, Remembrance of Things Past, which begins with his mother serving him tea and "those short, plump little cakes called petits Madeleine’s, which look as though they had been molded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell."

As the narrator begins to eat his Madeleine, dipping it into the tea, he is overcome with memories and he becomes aware that the simple Madeleines bear “. . . in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

However, as charming as that recollection is, according to Patricia Bunning Stevens:

“Madeleine’s had existed long before Proust’s boyhood. Numerous stories, none very convincing, attribute their invention to a host of different pastry cooks, each of whom supposedly named them for some particular young woman. Only three things are known for sure. One is that Madeleine is a French form of Magdalene (Mary Magdalene, a disciple of Jesus, is mentioned in all four gospels). Another is that Madeleines are always associated with the little French town of Commercy, whose bakers were said to have once, long ago, paid a "very large sum" for the recipe and sold the little cakes packed in oval boxes as a specialty in the area. Finally, it is also known that nuns in eighteenth-century France frequently supported themselves and their schools by making and selling a particular sweet.

Commercy once had a convent dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, and the nuns, probably when all the convents and monasteries of France were abolished during the French Revolution, sold their recipe to the bakers for an amount that grew larger with each telling."

---Rare Bits: Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes, Patricia Bunning Stevens [Ohio University Press: Athens] 1998 (p. 178)

Whatever its origin, these delightful pastries have become a national treasure for the French and I was thrilled, in June of this year (2010), to experience eating an authentic Madeleine in Paris, France.


I also love making Madeleines myself and have experimented with various versions. They are not only fun to make and tasty, but they are also dainty to eat. Not nearly as messy as our ever popular cupcake.

This recipe is for Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines, from Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

The photo of the Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines is taken against a backdrop that is actually a table runner of riddles; not exactly the Proust Questionnaire, but definitely a conversation starter!

Recipe for Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

For the Dip
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 and 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Click here for the recipe and method.

This antique Madeleine pan was given to me this summer
by my mom and dad to mark half-a million visitors to my blog.
Thanks to everyone for stopping by!
It's been a great ride!
Live well!

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Apparently there was a time Before Chocolate Chip Cookies (BCCC), though it’s hard to imagine it.

That BCCC time was prior to 1933, which was the year Ruth Graves Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusettes, was making chocolate cookies when she realized she had run out of regular baker’s chocolate. Not wanting to leave her customers wanting, she substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate from Nestlé, thinking that this chocolate would simply melt and mix into the batter as the baker’s chocolate had. However, to her surprise, the chocolate did not melt and what came out of the oven were the world’s first ever chocolate chip cookies. Her customers were delighted and asked for more. The love affair with CCC had begun. Wakefield sold the recipe to Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips.

The cookies gained popularity during World War II when GIs from Massachusettes, who were stationed overseas, received care packages from home which included CC cookies. They shared these cookies with other GIs from various places around the country and before long Wakefield was inundated with letters from around the world asking for her recipe.

Today, 25% of all cookies baked in the United States are chocolate chip cookies. And out of all the CCC recipes I’ve tried, this one is definitely our favorite.

Recipe for Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies (aka Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies)

Makes 112 cookies (This recipe can be halved.)

2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups flour
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
24 ounces chocolate chips
1 8 ounce Hershey bar, grated
3 cups chopped nuts (optional)

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix in flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar, and nuts. Bake on a greased baking sheet for 8 minutes at 375°F.

Can be frozen in plastic wrap, if desired, and then thawed and cut into rounds. Bake on a greased baking sheet for 8 minutes.


Tasting Notes
The proof of the pudding (or in this case, the cookies) is in the tasting. This is what two-thirds of my daughters have to say (Anna, my 11 year old, declined to comment since she doesn't like chocolate chip cookies!):

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The first step in making shortbread, and many baked goods for that matter, is creaming the butter and sugar. I thought it was funny when someone next to me in the kitchen at Le Cordon Bleu asked me where the cream was when she heard that we had to "cream the butter and sugar" for the tuiles we were making that day. We all have to start somewhere: some watch a master Michelin-starred chef in a famous cooking school, some hold onto their grandmother's apron stirring batter alongside, and some watch endless hours of the Food Network and are forever scarred by the perfectionism of Martha.

Coconut, butter, and nuts make up this delicious shortbread-like cookie. And they're so easy to make. I made half the batter with chopped macadamia nuts and half with pistachios (salmonella-free ones). After rolling the dough out in a gallon-size zipper-lock bag, I let it rest in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Then, after cutting them out, I put them back in the refrigerator to firm up a bit before baking.

Recipe

Makes 32 cookies

1½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
Pinch of ground coriander
2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 lime
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup sweetened shredded coconut
½ cup finely chopped macadamia nuts (or pistachios)
You can find the recipe for Coconut Butter Thins in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Jayne from Barefoot Kitchen Witch who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
These cookies melt in your mouth at first and then you're left with a bit of a chew from the coconut and nuts. I couldn't decide which version I liked better. The pistachio cookies were slightly chewier, and I love their green flecks. Either way, we'll have crumbs left in the cookie jar.

Recipe for Next Week (April 7)
Banana Cream Pie on pages 342 and 343 chosen by Amy of Sing for Your Supper.

Winner of the Giveaway
Thanks to everyone who left a comment on last week's Tuesdays with Dorie post. Green Valley Pecan Company sent me two ½-pound bags of pecans cultivated near Tucson, Arizona. I'm giving away one of the bags they sent me, and Grace from A Southern Grace was the winner!