Big Sur Chocolate Chip Cookies

I remember when I first became aware of Maida Heatter. It was in the late 1990s, and a friend gave me her copy of Saveur magazine. She knew I was getting more and more interested in cooking, and she told me about some of the great stories in that issue of the magazine. It was a really fantastic issue. There were stories about New Orleans restaurants with recipes, and Thanksgiving leftovers recipes, and there was a story about Maida Heatter. I instantly became a huge fan and continue to be all these years later. It was her Polka Dot Cheesecake recipe in that article that fascinated me. I tried making it as soon as I had a chance, and it turned out perfectly. The instructions worked exactly as they should, and it was the most delightful thing I’d ever baked. That recipe also appears in the book Maida Heatter’s Cakes. And now, it appears in her latest book, Happiness Is Baking: Cakes, Pies, Tarts, Muffins, Brownies, Cookies: Favorite Desserts from the Queen of Cake, as well. I received a review copy of this new book that contains her classic recipes. In her introduction, she encourages the reader to treat this and all cookbooks like a textbook. She suggests you write notes on the pages to remember any little changes you should make next time from baking time and ingredients to the reason why you made the recipe. She writes: “In the future you will find that your own notes have added to the book and made it more valuable to you.” When I read that, I realized that’s why I started this food blog. I wanted to track what I was cooking, what changes I made to original recipes, and when and why I made each dish. Maida Heatter wants nothing more than for home bakers to enjoy succeeding at all their baking projects. Her instructions are always the best. This new book includes Everyday Cakes, Special Occasion Cakes, Cookies, and Pies Tarts Brownies Bars and More. There are multiple chocolate cakes and lemon cakes, and I’m convinced I should try every one of them. I just have to decide which to make first, The Best Damn Lemon Cake or the East 62nd Street Lemon Cake. The instructions for Mildred Knopf’s Orange Puff Cake have me very intrigued. To begin, egg whites are whisked with salt on a large platter. There’s a note that “this cake may seem like a lot of trouble, but, believe me, this is the sort of adventure in baking that makes a cook’s reputation.” How could you not try this recipe? The Bull’s Eye Cheesecake appears along with the Polka Dot. There’s Mississippi Mud Pie, Coffee Buttercrunch Pie, Key Lime Pie, the Pecan Squares Americana that I’ve made before, three versions of brownies, and more. 

First, I pre-heated the oven for chocolate chips cookies. I have a mental list of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I suspected these Big Sur cookies would end up on it. They’re big, thin, crunchy cookies with oats and walnuts, and I always love a big cookie. Interestingly, the recipe includes a small amount of lemon juice. I’d never seen that in a chocolate chip cookie before. Making the cookie dough was completely straightforward with creaming of butter and sugar with vanilla and lemon juice. The sifted dry ingredients were added followed by the walnuts and chocolate chips. The dough was portioned into large mounds with lots of space on the cookie sheet and only four cookies per sheet. The dough mounds were flattened slightly with wet hands before baking. 

I had hoped the lemon juice would be apparent in the finished cookies, but there wasn’t enough to taste it. I assume the acidity helped activate the baking soda. The oats, walnuts, chocolate, and cinnamon did contribute to excellent flavor and texture though. I’m glad I followed the recipe exactly the first time using it. Normally, I would be tempted to swap in pecans in place of walnuts, but the walnuts were delicious. And, yes, baking these cookies was definitely a source of happiness. 

Big Sur Chocolate Chip Cookies 
Recipe reprinted with publisher’s permission from Happiness Is Baking: Cakes, Pies, Tarts, Muffins, Brownies, Cookies: Favorite Desserts from the Queen of Cake. 

These California cookies are 6 inches in diameter — they are the largest homemade chocolate chip cookies I know (nothing succeeds like excess). They are crisp, crunchy, buttery, delicious. Too good. Irresistible. But because of their size, don’t make them for a fancy tea party. Do make them for a barbecue or a picnic, or for any casual affair. 

Makes 12 to 15 very large cookies 
1 1⁄2 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour 
1⁄2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 
1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
6 ounces (1 1⁄2 sticks) unsalted butter 
1 1⁄2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
1 teaspoon lemon juice 
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar 
1/3 cup granulated sugar 
2 large eggs 
1⁄4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats 
6 ounces (generous 1 1⁄2 cups) walnuts, chopped or broken into medium-size pieces  
6 ounces (1 cup) semisweet chocolate morsels 

Adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with baking parchment or foil. 

Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon and set aside. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter. Add the vanilla and lemon juice and then both of the sugars and beat to mix. Beat in the eggs one at a time. On low speed, add the sifted dry ingredients and then the rolled oats, scraping the bowl as necessary with a rubber spatula and beating only until mixed. Remove from the mixer and stir in the nuts and morsels. 

Now work next to the sink or have a large bowl of water handy so you can wet your hands while shaping the cookies. Spread out a piece of wax paper or foil. Use a 1⁄4-cup measuring cup to measure the amount of dough for each cookie. Form 12 to 15 mounds of the dough and place them any which way on the wax paper or foil. Wet your hands with cold water, shake the water off, but do not dry your hands; pick up a mound of dough, roll it into a ball, flatten it to about 1⁄2-inch thickness, and place it on the lined sheets. Do not place more than 4 cookies on a 15 1⁄2 x 12-inch cookie sheet. These spread to gigantic proportions. 

Bake two sheets at a time for 16 to 18 minutes, reversing the sheets top to bottom and front to back as necessary to ensure even browning. (If you bake only one sheet at a time, bake it on the higher rack.) Bake until the cookies are well colored; they must not be too pale. Watch these carefully; before you know it, they might become too dark. 

When you remove them from the oven, let the cookies stand for about a minute, until they are firm enough to be moved. With a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool. If the racks are not raised at least 1⁄2 inch from the work surface, place them on a bowl or cake pan to allow more air to circulate underneath. 

When cool, wrap them with bottoms together, two to a package, in cellophane or wax paper or in plastic sandwich bags. If you do not plan to serve these soon, freeze them.

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Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones

The Austin Bakes group has a couple of big bake sale fundraisers under our belt, but because these bake sales were organized to help recovery efforts after terrible events, we all agreed we never wanted to host another one ever again. Sadly, following the tragic events of the explosion in West, Texas on April 17, we started planning the next event to bake for our fellow Texans. The bake sale is happening this Saturday, May 4 at eight different locations in Austin, and there is an online giving page for donations as well. There will be a huge variety of baked goods both sweet and savory from volunteer home bakers and professional bakeries in addition to jams, preserves, sauces, and pickles. We’re hoping for the biggest turnout yet. I’ve been looking through baking books and trying to make decisions about what to bring to the sale. I knew Kurt would be happy to taste test a scone trial run before this weekend, so from several options I wanted to try, I picked the Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones from the Bouchon Bakery book. They’re as easy to make as any other scone, but being from this book, the recipe of course included some attention to detail. Dried, tart cherries were soaked overnight in a sugar and vanilla syrup, and all that time in the syrup plumped the cherries and made them delightfully juicy once they were baked into the scones. Then, the drained syrup was used in making the luscious glaze to top the scones. This was definitely a successful test, and I’ll be baking another batch for Saturday. 

You do need to plan ahead to follow the instructions exactly. First, a simple syrup with scraped vanilla seeds is made, and dried tart cherries are added to it. The syrup is simmered for a moment and then allowed to cool. Once cool, the syrup with the cherries needs to be refrigerated overnight. Then, the dough for the scones can be made, but that needs some resting time in the refrigerator and the freezer before baking. The cherries should be removed from the syrup and drained, and the syrup is saved for use in the glaze. Meanwhile, flour, baking soda, and salt are combined in a stand mixer, and then cold, cubed butter is mixed into the flour. Once incorporated, cream is added and just mixed into the dough. The drained cherries and chocolate chips are then folded in, and the dough is covered and refrigerated for two hours. The recipe suggests making the scones by scooping the dough into mounds with an ice cream scoop. Instead, I patted the dough into a circle before covering with plastic wrap and refrigerating. Then, I cut the circle into wedges. Either way, once the dough is portioned and placed on a baking sheet, the sheet is then placed in the freezer for a couple of hours or overnight or up to a month. The scones were baked directly from freezer to oven for about 30 minutes. The glaze was made with confectioners’ sugar, some of the cherry vanilla syrup, and cream and was spooned onto the scones after they cooled a bit. 

I don’t always chill dough for scones so thoroughly before baking, and I wouldn’t have thought to soak the dried cherries for as long as suggested here, but the results clearly proved those steps were worth taking. If you’re in Austin, come on out on Saturday to taste these scones (and lots of other things) while supporting our neighbors in West. 

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Black Forest Chocolate Cookies

So, last year I instituted the concept of birthday cookies which allows me to try different cookie recipes and if the result is delicious, I send the cookies off to family members on their birthdays. I’m mentioning this again because May is the most popular month for birthdays in my family, and I’ve been baking lots of cookies lately. There are two criteria for good birthday cookies. First, as I said, they have to be delicious, and the second requirement is that they be sturdy enough for packing and shipping. There’s an extremely simple cookie from one of my favorite books that I thought was going to be perfect. Then, I tasted it. It’s a pecan butter cookie from The Modern Baker, and after making many recipes from this book this was the first that I didn’t love. The flavor was a little flat, and I think the problem was that there was no salt in the dough. Those cookies ended up in the freezer, and I’ll eventually use them for a cookie crust. I’ll also eventually make the recipe again and add some salt. But since I was disappointed with them, I moved on to the Black Forest Chocolate Cookies shown here, and these are from the book Baked. At first, I was skeptical about the six eggs in the ingredient list and wasn’t sure the texture would be right, but an overnight chilling of the dough transformed it into a scoopable state. You end up with a crunchy, dark chocolate cookie filled with chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and dried cherries. This one was worthy of being a birthday cookie.

Chopped, dark chocolate was melted with butter in a double-boiler and then set aside to cool. Meanwhile the dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, and salt, were sifted. In a mixer, six eggs, and don’t be scared because six eggs really does work here, were combined with granulated sugar and brown sugar. The cool chocolate mixture was added with some vanilla extract and mixed. The dry ingredients were added and mixed to just combine. Last, the chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and dried cherries were folded into the dough. The dough will seem much softer than cookie dough should, but it needs to be refrigerated for at least six hours or overnight. After being chilled, it’s just right. As the cookies bake, the tops become crackly, and then you have to wait for what seems like forever for them to cool enough so you can start tasting.

These are decadent, richly-chocolaty cookies with pops of sweetness from the white chocolate and dried cherries. And, they passed the sturdiness test for shipping. The coming months won’t be quite as busy for birthday cookie baking, but I’m always looking for good ideas before the next birthday arrives.

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Chunky Peanut, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Cookies

Baking cookies, most cookies anyway, is supposed to be easy. There aren’t too many things that can go wrong with making cookie dough, forming it into cookie-sized portions, and baking the cookies. That is to say, not much can go wrong if the recipe actually works. Last week, I grabbed a book off the shelf that I knew had some interesting options for peanut butter cookies. I didn’t imagine anything could possibly go wrong as I picked a peanut butter cookie recipe that I’d never before tried. As I made the dough, it seemed a little soft, the amounts of both butter and sugar seemed off to me, and the dough tasted like it needed more salt. Like a fool, I was sure I was wrong and went ahead and baked the cookies. The suggested oven temperature was lower than usual, and the baking time was only eight minutes, but I proceeded. When the cookies were not baked through, I gave them more time. It didn’t matter. The cookies were soft, crumbly messes. They fell apart easily and didn’t taste great, and this was a big problem. Some friends were coming to town, and I intended to put some cookies in a welcome basket for them. The rest of the cookies were going to be mailed off as a birthday present. I needed good cookies. Rather than fiddling with a recipe that didn’t work and trying to change it for a second attempt, I ran directly back to the source that has never disappointed. I started over with these chunky peanut, chocolate, and cinnamon cookies from Martha Stewart’s Cookies. The texture of the dough was right, the flavor was good, the baking temperature and time were correct, and the whole process was as easy as baking cookies is supposed to be.

Butter and peanut butter were creamed together in a mixer. Brown sugar and granulated sugar were added followed by eggs. The dry ingredients were mixed together in a separate bowl, and those included flour, baking soda, the right amount of salt, and some ground cinnamon. Those sifted together dry ingredients were then added to the butter mixture, and then chocolate chips, salted peanuts, and vanilla were folded into the dough. I used a mix of bittersweet and milk chocolate chips. The finished dough was chilled while the oven was heated. Balls of dough were placed on baking sheets and flattened slightly before baking long enough to be crisp on the edges and tender in the center.

It could be that I especially liked these cookies because I’d just experienced ones that weren’t nearly as good, but I think you would really like them too. The cinnamon was a nice addition to the chocolate and peanut butter flavors, and the ratio of chunkiness of chips and nuts to cookie was just right. Sometimes, recipes seem weird but actually work, and sometimes, a trusted source saves the day.

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White Chocolate Hazelnut Blondies

Have you heard about the national bake sale for Japan? It’s happening in multiple cities this Saturday, April 2, and Austin is one of those cities. As soon as word started spreading about organizing a bake sale in Austin, the positive response was overwhelming. There are currently over 100 volunteer bakers and about 40 businesses contributing to the Austin event. There will be five locations around town for the sale, and all donations will go directly to Americares for relief efforts in Japan. Each location will have an incredible variety of both sweet and savory treats on offer, and for anyone who is unable to take part in Saturday’s event, there’s an online giving page with FirstGiving where all donations also go directly to Americares.

To be able to contribute, in some way, to the recovery process in Japan by baking sounded perfect to me. The timing couldn’t have been better since I just received a review copy of the new book Milk and Cookies which is from the New York bakery of the same name. The book will be released on April 20. It presents recipes for cookie dough bases from which many varieties can be made. For instance, there’s vanilla base dough, dark chocolate base dough, oatmeal, peanut butter, and sugar cookie base dough. Each base has a chapter dedicated to it with different additions for several unique cookies. From the peanut butter base dough, you might make peanut butter-milk chocolate bites or peanut butter and jelly cookies. There are also chapters for special cookies like mocha-cherry drops, carrot cake cookies, and ice cream sandwich cookies, family favorites like biscotti and sfogliati crown pastries, and brownies and bars like Kahlua brownies and pecan bars. Last weekend, I decided to test a recipe for white chocolate blondies to find out if they were bake sale-worthy. The cookie dough itself was made with melted white chocolate, and after baking, the blondies were covered with a white chocolate glaze. The cut bars were chewy, and there were hazelnuts and chocolate chips to add crunch.

First, a pound of white chocolate, and yes, that’s a lot but this recipe makes a lot of blondies, was melted with butter. I used Callebaut white chocolate disks. Next, flour, baking powder, and salt were combined and set aside. Six eggs were mixed in a stand mixer, sugar was added, and then the cooled white chocolate mixture was incorporated. The dry ingredients were added, and last chocolate chips and toasted, chopped hazelnuts were stirred into the dough. The dough was baked in a large sheet pan and allowed to cool before the blondies were topped with a glaze made with cream and more white chocolate.

As a white chocolate fan, these blondies were a big hit with me. The white chocolate in the dough gave the crumb of the bars a dense but tender texture. The semisweet chocolate chips and hazelnuts added crunch and kept the bars from being too sweet. These will definitely be contenders for what I bring to the bake sale, but I have my eye on that peanut butter cookie chapter too.

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Brewer’s Blondies

It sounds like these should have beer in them, doesn’t it? Well, the original version from Baked bakery in Brooklyn is made with brewer’s malt blended with chocolate that’s swirled into the dough. In the book Baked, the recipe was adapted for home bakers to use malted milk powder and chocolate malted milk balls instead. These are flavor-packed blondies with chocolate chips and toasted walnuts included as well. It’s suggested that they be served warm with a scoop of ice cream, and that’s a very good idea. I chilled them to make them easier to cut, and I might have tasted a bit while cutting. It was for research purposes, though, to confirm the ideal serving temperature. Yes, room temperature or warm is better for serving than cold in this case. The chocolate and malt aren’t as rich-tasting when cold. These blondies taste like a chocolate chip cookie in bar form, but that would be a chunky, malted, rich, and very special chocolate chip cookie.

For the chocolate malted milk balls, you are instructed to coarsely chop them in a food processor. That results in some biggish pieces, tiny pieces, and some powder. Since only three quarters of a cup is used, I might quarter them by hand next time. It will be tedious, but I think the uniform chunks would be better in the blondies. To start, flour was sifted with baking powder, salt, and malted milk powder. Then, butter was creamed with brown sugar, eggs and vanilla were added, and the flour mixtures was slowly added to form the dough. The chopped malted milk balls, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts were folded in to finish it. The dough was spread into a parchment-lined baking pan and spread evenly. It baked for 25 minutes, it cooled on a rack, and then I refrigerated it overnight.

I always fall for the flavor of malted milk, but with everything going on with these blondies they’re hard not to like. I took these cookie bars to a birthday party so they weren’t left sitting around the house tempting me. That does mean I’ll have to make them again so I can go ahead and cut them while warm from the oven to enjoy with scoops of ice cream.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie XS

My kitchen’s cookie baking season has officially started. There remains the question of how much will actually fit in my freezer, but I’ll deal with that as I go. I like to bake a so-called regular cookie or two to go along with the more festive ones. This particular cookie appears to be just an oatmeal chocolate chip. Looks can be deceiving. It’s actually a pretty spectacular version of an oatmeal chocolate chip. Back in September, I wrote about Demolition Desserts by Elizabeth Falkner and baked her smore brownies, and these cookies come from that book as well. The XS in the title is for extra sugar but it could also be for extra special.

Falkner devotes a couple of pages to types of sugars, their unique properties, and how she uses them. For this cookie, dark muscovado sugar is used which is an unrefined, natural product of sugar cane. It contains more minerals and rich molasses flavor than a standard brown sugar. Commercial brown sugar is actually refined white sugar that has some molasses added back into it. The second sugar used here is Demerara which is made in the same way as muscovado, but the grain is coarser. It’s named for the colony of Demerara in Guyana but is now mostly produced in Mauritius. By using both types of sugar in this cookie, the dough develops great molasses flavor, and the Demerara provides a little crunch. To make the dough even more special, the oatmeal is pulsed a few times in a food processor and then is toasted in lightly browned butter. And, the chocolate? No regular chocolate chips here, although they are listed as an option in the recipe. Instead, I chose to make chunks from a piece of Callebaut bittersweet.

For a little cookie recipe, Falkner provides a lot of insight and suggestions. For instance, she precisely describes the steps involved in chopping and toasting the oatmeal. I appreciate this kind of enthusiasm and attention to detail and take it as a sign that she really cares about the quality of the outcome. For baking times, she notes differences in the texture of the cookies for nine minutes, 10 minutes, 11 minutes, etc. Her preferred baking time is 10 minutes for these, but she encourages the home cook to find his or her own favorite. I decided mine was 11 minutes which resulted in a flatter cookie with crisp edges. Shorter baking times resulted in a puffier cookie. These unrefined sugars are delicious, and the texture and flavor combination of this cookie is definitely extra special. If I want something more regular on my cookie platter, I’ll have to bake something else.

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Carmelitas

It doesn’t take much to talk me into baking. Someone at work made an off-handed comment about how she deserved some cookies, and that was enough to send me to my kitchen. I had tucked away this recipe from Food and Wine’s March 2007 issue. These are Texas-standard cookie bars, but I had never baked them. I’ve eaten carmelitas from Whole Foods, and theirs are fantastic. They’re very dense and filling but deliciously so. The chewy layers of chocolate chips, pecans, and caramel make it hard to stop with just a dainty bite.

While shopping for ingredients, I was reminded that dulce de leche is also known as cajeta. I thought it would be easy enough to locate, but two grocery stores later, I finally found it near the peanut butter and nutella. You can also make your own from sweetened condensed milk. The brand I bought is made from goat’s milk, but others are made from cow’s milk. I could have happily sat down with the jar and a spoon and called it a day, but instead I assembled and baked the carmelitas.

The dough comes together quickly, and the half used for the base gets pre-baked. Then, the other ingredients and crumbled remaining dough are layered on top, and the pan is returned to the oven. There is a curious instruction about leaving the pan to cool and letting it sit uncovered at room temperature overnight. Uncovered all night long? I couldn’t do it. We have a cat, and who knows what other creatures could have found their way into the carmelitas overnight? I left it for several hours and then covered the pan before going to sleep. Maybe being left uncovered overnight makes for a firmer cookie bar. Mine were a little crunchy on the bottom, yielding in the middle, and just slightly firmer on top, and I was quite pleased with my result. I brought the cookie bars to work, and happy munching ensued.


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