White Chocolate-Macadamia Nut-Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Cherries

At some point last year, I was talking with my mom on the phone on a day when I was trying to decide what kind of cookies to bake. Her first suggestion was White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Cookies. I ended up not making them at the time, but I did stop to wonder: why haven’t I ever made those? Fast forward to a year later, and I knew exactly what kind of cookies to bake for my mom after she fell and broke her ankle. It’s a proven fact that cookies help with all recoveries, I think. I had a recipe from the December 2012 issue of Saveur for exactly this type of cookie. But, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wanted chunky cookies with oats in them and maybe some dried fruit as well. In Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, there is a version with oats. However, in that recipe, the oats are chopped to bits in a food processor. I followed the recipe for quantities but stirred everything together by hand and kept the oats whole for maximum chunkiness. And, then I added dried sour cherries. The result was a dangerous thing. I like baking cookies to share, but I kind of wanted to keep all of these for myself. 

I started by roasting two cups of macadamia nuts. I sprinkled on sea salt, and it sticks to the nuts as the oils are released while roasting. They roasted at 350 degrees F for about eight minutes and then were coarsely chopped. This cookie dough is easy to stir together because melted butter is used. Two sticks, or 16 tablespoons, of butter was melted and set aside. One and a half cups of flour were sifted with a teaspoon of baking soda and a half teaspoon of salt. One and a half cups of oats were added to the flour mixture. In a separate bowl, the melted butter was combined with two-thirds cup of granulated sugar, two-thirds cup of brown sugar, and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. The flour mixture was added to the egg mixture and was stirred to combine. The chopped nuts, two cups of white chocolate chips, and two cups of dried sour cherries were added to the dough. Then, the dough was refrigerated for a couple of hours. Because of the melted butter in the dough, it needs some chilling time before baking. Heaping tablespoons of dough were baked on sheets at 325 degrees F for about 15 minutes, and sheet pans were rotated halfway through baking. 

These were indeed chunky cookies just as I’d hoped, and they were packed with great flavors. The salted, buttery macadamia nuts contrasted with the sweetness of the white chocolate, and the chewy pieces of dried sour cherries were a nice fruity addition. I can’t prove they’ll help Mom’s ankle heal faster, but cookies are always good medicine. 

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Rugelach

I always like a theme especially when it comes to choosing cookies to bake for the holidays. One year, it was pretty sandwich cookies, and last year, it was swirl cookies. I think this year the theme became classic cookies I’d never baked before. It started with the Linzer Cookies, and then I really wanted to try making Rugelach for the first time. I’d seen the Barefoot Contessa episode in which Ina makes Rugelach several times, so I wanted to use her recipe. It’s in her book Barefoot Contessa Parties!, and it’s also available online. I knew rolling up the little cookies from the wide end of a wedge to the point, just like rolling croissants, would be fun. I went with a classic filling of apricot preserves, chopped toasted walnuts, and currants for half of the cookies. The other half were filled with raspberry preserves and walnuts. These are great cookies to bake as needed just before serving. I filled, cut, and rolled all of the cookies and stored several of them in the freezer. Then, I baked some for dessert for a dinner with Kurt's parents, some a few days later for a party, and more when a cookie craving hit. With the tender, golden pastry encasing fruity preserves and nuts, they’re like little bites of pie in cookie form. 

First, the dough should be made in advance and chilled. Softened cream cheese and butter were creamed with sugar and vanilla before flour was added. This makes a sticky dough, but it’s much easier to handle after it’s been chilled. It was divided into four pieces that were each wrapped in plastic, and I left them in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, the dough was rolled out on a floured surface into a nine- or ten-inch circle. Apricot preserves were pulsed in the food processor until smooth. Some preserves were spread on the dough circle and topped with chopped, toasted walnuts, currants, and a mix of granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. The filling was lightly pressed into the dough before the circle was cut into twelve wedges. Next came the fun part. Each wedge was rolled into a cute cookie with the point of the wedge neatly tucked under the bottom edge. For half of the dough, I used raspberry preserves, that had been strained to remove the seeds, and chopped walnuts. Before baking, the cookies were brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. 

I love finally attempting classic cookies like these. Now I know what a delight they are to make and how delicious they are warm from the oven. I have more holiday cooking that I can’t wait to tell you about, and I’m trying to decide what to make for New Year’s. I hope you’re having a great holiday season with lots of fabulous food! 

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Linzer Cookies

When it comes to classic recipes, ones that I’ve never tried before, I sometimes get caught up in checking every possible source at my disposal for versions of the recipe in question. It’s a little crazy, but I have to know what all the options are. And, so it was with Linzer Cookies. I kept seeing them here and there and really wanted to try making them this holiday season. With the sugar-dusted tops and jam filling, they make pretty holiday cookies. I had an excellent reason to bake some extra cookies too. The gang behind Austin Bakes organized another bake sale on the weekend following Thanksgiving to benefit recovery efforts after the recent flooding in south Austin. It was a great way to start the holiday baking season. So, my search for recipes started with the original The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Ina’s Linzer Cookie is a plain, shortbread sandwich cookie with raspberry jam. They’re lovely but a little less traditional. A more traditional option would be made with ground nuts, spices, and maybe citrus zest in the dough. In The Model Bakery Cookbook, Linzer cookies are made with almonds and lemon zest but no spices. Raspberry Linzer Disks from The Modern Baker have almonds, cinnamon, and cloves but no zest. The version found in Martha Stewart’s Cookies includes ground pecans and cinnamon but no citrus zest. And, the version I finally settled on is from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, and it combines all the possible ingredients with cinnamon, cloves, orange zest, and lemon zest. Hazelnuts are suggested for the nuts, but I liked the idea of using pecans and made that one change. 

The cookie dough comes together quickly in the food processor. Flour, toasted pecans, granulated sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cloves were pulsed until the nuts were finely ground. Pieces of butter were added and pulsed until crumbly before almond extract and lemon and orange zests were added and pulsed into the dough. The dough was divided into two parts, each was wrapped in plastic and left in the refrigerator to chill for a few hours. I actually made it in advance and left it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. When ready to bake, each half of dough was rolled out between sheets of parchment paper. Circles were cut, and I used a piping tip to cut smaller circles in half of the cookies for sandwich tops. The dough does become soft and sticky as it’s rolled and cut. While combining and re-rolling dough scraps, I placed the dough in the refrigerator from time to time to let it chill for easier handling. The cut cookies baked for about 14 minutes. When cool, the cookies for the bottoms were topped with raspberry jam that had been strained to remove the seeds. The cookie tops were dusted with confectioners’ sugar before taking their places on top of the jam. 

I’m easily entertained by learning about different approaches to the same type of cookie, and in the end, I was thrilled with this choice of recipe. All the flavors of spices and citrus were fragrant and lovely. I think Linzer Cookies are now going to have a permanent spot on my holiday cookie baking list. 

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Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Apparently, as the bandwagon was driving by, I jumped right onto it. It’s a pumpkin spice world. There’s probably even a pumpkin spice shampoo at this point. Pumpkin spice toothpaste? But, who can resist those flavors? In full disclosure: there is actually no pumpkin in these cookies, but they are shaped like pumpkins so I think the name is valid. I baked them to send as long-distance trick-or-treats for my nieces and took a few to a party as well. I heard lots of good things from the party guests about them which tells me the recipe is a definite keeper. It’s from the October 2000 issue of Living magazine, and it’s available online. I made a few changes from the original. They’re intended to be circular cookies cut from logs of chilled dough. I added a step by rolling out the dough and cutting pumpkin shapes. It’s a somewhat soft dough, and it does spread a bit in the oven. After the first sheet of spread-out, blobby-looking, baked pumpkin cookies, I decided to chill the cut cookies on baking sheets before putting them in the oven. That helped some. But, any shape more intricate than a pumpkin might not work well. You’ll also see in the photo with the original recipe that they’re decorated like jack-o-lanterns in various colors. Piping bags and I don’t always get along so well which is why I took a different direction with the decorating. 

The dry ingredients including flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger were sifted together and set aside. Butter and sugar were creamed together, and then eggs were added followed by vanilla. Next came the molasses, and every year at this time, I’m reminded of how much I really like the flavor of molasses. After incorporating the lovely molasses, the dry ingredients were added and mixed into the dough. Rather than dividing the dough into two pieces and rolling each into a log to be chilled, I just chilled the dough in one big disc. The next day, I worked with a quarter of the dough at a time and rolled it out with a rolling pin to about a one-quarter inch thickness. I cut pumpkin shapes, placed them on baking sheets and popped the baking sheets into the refrigerator for a few minutes before baking. After the cookies were baked and cooled, I used Royal Icing to outline each cookie and then filled that outline with more icing which was topped with orange sugar. This was far easier for me than attempting to draw jack-o-lantern faces with a piping bag. 

Fragrant cinnamon and ginger draw you in, but I think it’s the molasses that seals the deal. I liked these cookies just as well with no icing or decoration at all. But, for Halloween, they do demand some dressing up, some color, and more pumpkin-ness. 

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Giant White Chocolate Pecan Cookies

I don’t know how I let so much time go by since I last talked about cookies around here. It might be a record of time passed between cookie posts for me. But, as soon as I made these, I couldn’t wait to mention them. I’m drawn to new and different cookie recipes for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s a mix of ingredients I’ve never tried in a cookie before, and sometimes it’s a seasonal thing. With these cookies, I absolutely had to make them for no other reason than they’re big. Actually, they’re huge. These are pancake-size cookies. I have an old favorite Big Thin Chocolate Chip Cookie made from a rich dough that spreads and spreads as it bakes. With that recipe, four cookies will fit on a baking sheet. These Giant White Chocolate Pecan Cookies are made with about a half-cup of dough per cookie, and only three fit per baking sheet. They’re from the April issue of Living magazine, and the recipe is online. You might think it would be appropriate to break each cookie in half or into quarters and enjoy a smaller portion, but I encourage you to go the two-handed approach and nibble through an entire giant cookie at one time. It’s the only way to truly appreciate the thrill of a really gigantic cookie. 

Since I wanted to share these giant cookies with as many people as possible, I doubled the recipe. Flour, salt, and baking soda were sifted together and set aside. Butter, dark brown sugar, and granulated sugar were creamed together before whole eggs and egg yolks were added followed by vanilla. The flour mixture was mixed in, and chopped white chocolate and roughly chopped, toasted pecans were stirred into the dough. Using a big, sturdy food scoop, four ounce scoops of dough were placed on baking sheets with at least three inches between them. The dough balls were lightly pressed to flatten a bit before baking for about 16 minutes. 

With a cookie this big, you’re guaranteed a good mix of crispy and chewy textures. The big, sweet white chocolate chunks and pieces of pecans add more crunchy textures of their own. These easy cookies are fun to make. And, what’s even more fun is everyone’s reaction when they see just how big these cookies are. They’re as tasty as they are huge. 

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Lemon Ice Cream with Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

You know I sometimes go a little crazy with cooking and baking with lemons. I’ve mentioned this before. It just happened again. Just recently, I made a lemon cream sauce for pasta, a few different kinds of lemon cookies, and lemon ice cream all in one weekend. Organic Meyer lemons aren’t always easy to find here but I got lucky one day, so I had a good excuse, right? You see, I do have two Meyer lemon trees, but they’ve had a tough couple of years. From the two trees, I only harvested one useable lemon this year. I blame the squirrels and birds, and well, I should probably keep a closer watch on the trees. So, when I find a good supply of Meyer lemons, I take advantage of it. This ice cream is from The Perfect Scoop, and it’s incredibly easy. Everything is whizzed up in the blender, and there are no eggs and no custard to cook. I love it when a recipe is this simple with a result that’s this delicious. It’s a creamy but tart ice cream that was fun to scoop up with a crunchy shortbread cookie. The cookies are from Martha Stewart's Cookies, and the recipe is also online. Orange zest is suggested for the cookie dough, but obviously, that got replaced with lemon zest here. There’s added flavor and a pretty, pale yellow color from cornmeal both mixed into the dough and rolled onto the edges before the cookies are cut. Together, the ice cream and cookies made a perfectly lemony dessert. 

I wasn’t kidding about how easy this ice cream is to make. You zest two lemons into a blender pitcher and add a half-cup of sugar. Just blend those together until the lemon zest is chopped very fine. Then, add one half-cup of lemon juice. I was using large lemons, so two was enough for one half-cup of juice. Also add two cups of half-and-half and a quarter teaspoon or so of salt. Blend until smooth, and chill for at least an hour before churning in an ice cream maker. The cookie dough is made by creaming together butter and confectioners’ sugar and then adding lemon zest and vanilla extract. Flour, yellow cornmeal, and salt are then added and mixed to combine. The finished dough is divided into two equal parts which are each rolled into a cylinder, wrapped in plastic, and refrigerated for an hour. The logs of dough are then rolled in cornmeal, and I added some sanding sugar as well, and then cookies are sliced and baked for about 30 minutes. 

Of course, other types of citrus could work here, or you could even mix more than one kind. But, once I’m thinking lemon, I tend to have a one-track mind. Right now, my trees are covered in blossoms, making me hopeful for lots of homegrown lemons next winter. I promise to make better use of those lemons than the squirrels or birds would. 

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Crème-Stuffed Chocolate Cookies (Homemade Oreos)

I’m a big believer that homemade is always best. The flavor is always far better than anything packaged, and I like being able to choose each ingredient myself. In fact, I almost never buy packaged snacks because of all those things on the ingredients lists that I’d rather avoid. So, I was immediately drawn to the new book from Lara Ferroni Real Snacks: Make Your Favorite Childhood Treats Without All the Junk, and I received a review copy. These versions of popular snacks not only cut out all the preservatives since they’re homemade, they’re also made with whole grains in some cases and less-refined sugars. Of course there are instructions for making your own Twinkies, Pop Tarts, Nutter Butters, and more sweets, and there are also recipes for Cheesy Squares, Corn Chip Strips, and Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chips. There are even a few dips, Potato Chips, and Hot Pockets. Most recipes even have options for making them gluten free and/or vegan. I wanted to try the homemade Oreos first because I knew they’d be on another level compared to the store-bought ones. As a kid, I never really liked the middle of an Oreo because it didn’t taste like much to me. I was pretty sure I’d have a different experience with these.

The cookie dough is easy to make with a food processor. Whole wheat pastry flour, teff flour (or whole wheat flour), cocoa powder, muscovado sugar, salt, and baking soda were combined in the food processor and pulsed to mix. Cubed butter was dropped into the food processor one piece at a time while pulsing. The dough started becoming crumbly which is what you want it to do. Last, a little milk and vanilla extract were added while the machine was running, and the dough formed a ball. I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and chilled it for about 30 minutes before rolling it out. For rolling, I placed the flattened dough between sheets of parchment paper since it was a little sticky. That way, extra flour wasn’t worked into it while rolling. The dough was rolled to a little thicker than one quarter inch, and one and a half inch circles were cut. Although the yield for this recipe is noted as 40 cookies, I got exactly 24 circles even with re-rolling dough scraps. The cookies baked for about 10 minutes and were left to cool. The filling was made with butter, vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and confectioners’ sugar. There are recipes in the book for pantry items like homemade confectioners’ sugar, vanilla and mint extracts, marshmallow crème, etc. I made the confectioners’ sugar which was a simple matter of placing granulated sugar and cornstarch in the blender and letting it run for about five minutes. In the end, I didn’t find the flavor much different from the organic confectioners’ sugar I buy in bags, but it’s nice to know I can whip some up if I find I have an empty bag and don’t feel like going to the store. I used a plastic bag with the corner snipped to pipe the filling onto the flat sides of half the cookies. They were sandwiched and left to set up for about 10 minutes before a first taste.

If Oreos had always been this good, I would have been a huge fan. These were definitely worthy of being twisted apart for licking the middle, and they were great for biting right through to taste the cookie and filling at the same time. I want to try the Corn Chip Strips next or the Cheese Squares or maybe the homemade Nutter Butters. I’ll definitely be making more homemade versions of snacks.

Crème-Stuffed Chocolate Cookies
Recipe excerpted from Real Snacks: Make Your Favorite Childhood Treats Without All the Junk by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2012 By Lara Ferroni. All rights reserved.

About 40 cookies

There are two types of people in this world: those who eat their Oreos in one piece and those who carefully twist them open to expose their delicious insides, lick them clean, and then dunk the dark chocolate wafers into milk until they are perfectly soggy. Guess which one I am.

Cookies:
1⁄2 cup (60 grams) whole- wheat pastry flour
1⁄4 cup (30 grams) teff or whole-wheat flour
1/3 cup (26 grams) cocoa powder
1⁄2 cup (100 grams) loosely packed muscavado or cane sugar
Pinch of salt
Pinch of baking soda
6 tablespoons (3⁄4 stick) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling:
4 tablespoons (1⁄2 stick) unsalted butter, plus 2 tablespoons melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
1 cup (130 grams) powdered sugar

To make the cookies, combine the whole- wheat pastry flour, teff flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the dough blade (or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment). Pulse several times to mix thoroughly. Drop in the butter 1 table- spoon at a time and pulse to create a crumbly mixture. Then, with the food processor running, drizzle in the milk and vanilla. Mix until the mixture starts to stick together, about 1 minute. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough until it is a little less than 1⁄4 inch thick. Use a 1- to 2-inch round cookie cutter to cut out the cookies (you can reroll any scraps). Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until set, 10 to 12 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool completely on a wire rack before filling. While the cookies are baking, make the filling. With a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, vanilla, and salt until smooth, about 1 minute. Gradually add the powdered sugar until fully incorporated.

Spread about 1 teaspoon of filling on half of the cooled cookies. Top with the remaining cookies and gently twist to seal. Let sit for 10 minutes before indulging.

For gluten-free Crème-Stuffed Chocolate Cookies, replace the whole-wheat pastry flour with an equal amount of gluten-free all- purpose baking mix. Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment for easier rolling.

For vegan Crème-Stuffed Chocolate Cookies, replace the butter with an equal amount of coconut oil and the milk with an equal amount of almond milk.

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Irish Coffee Bars

I admit that I’m fickle when it comes to cookies. One of my favorite cookies in the world is a basic sugar cookie that my Mom taught me how to make when I was little, but I have trouble choosing a top five and sticking to it. I’ll forget about a favorite cookie after awhile, or a new cookie will come along and be my favorite thing for a few months until I discover something else. There were those Gingerbread White Chocolate Blondies that I fell pretty hard for, those Ganache-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies that took me by surprise, the Lemon Wreath Cookies that I’ll be making every holiday season, and of course, the Homemade Thin Mint Cookies can’t be forgotten. And, there are probably twenty others that deserve a mention too. However, I can say with absolute certainty, this Irish Coffee Bar is currently, definitely one of my favorite cookies. They’re from the March issue of Living magazine. With a bar cookie, I usually prefer the middle pieces to the ones with crunchy edges, but as proof of just how good these were, I wanted to eat every bar from every region of the pan. The crunchy parts were great, the middles were great, the coffee flavor was aromatic and lovely, the sliced almonds on top added nice texture, and the whiskey glaze was sweet and ever so slightly boozy. They were also just as good after sitting for a couple of days as they were the day they were made.

This is one of those delightful cookie recipes that doesn’t require a mixer. The dry ingredients including flour, baking powder, and baking soda were sifted and set aside. In a mixing bowl, melted butter, brown sugar, ground espresso, and salt were combined. Eggs and vanilla were whisked into the mix, and the dry ingredients were stirred in next. The batter was poured into a parchment-lined nine-inch by thirteen-inch pan, and it was topped with sliced almonds. It baked for about half an hour, and the pan was left to cool. The glaze was made with melted butter, some whiskey, and confectioners’ sugar. You could drizzle the glaze from a spoon, or place it in a bag and pipe it on the cooled bars. I opted to spoon the glaze into a plastic bag, snip the corner, and make diagonal lines of glaze. When the glaze had set, the cookie bars were cut.

So, yes, I like a lot of cookies and sometimes get distracted and forget which ones I said were my favorites in the past, but these Irish Coffee Bars have captured my full attention. Now, I just need another excuse, or occasion, to bake these again soon.

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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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Chocolate-Oatmeal Almost Candy Bars

The other day, I mentioned that my blog had just become four years old. During those four years, I’ve visited lots of other blogs and seen lots of fabulous food. I’ve always enjoyed reading about the results of the different baking and cooking groups that show dishes from Dorie Greenspan’s books. I never got around to joining the groups since I knew I’d somehow manage to miss every deadline for posts, but every time I see a dish chosen by the groups, I can’t wait to try it. I think about that every time I open one of Dorie’s books. So, at last, I’ve baked the Chocolate-Oatmeal Almost Candy Bars from Baking: From My Home to Yours. Even though I’ve seen these bars on other blogs in the past, I didn’t quite realize what they're really like. These cookie bars are serious business. They’re crunchy, chewy, chocolaty, nutty, and delicious. Cutting these into small pieces is a good idea since they are filling, but I think they’re actually better than a candy bar. Dorie recommends serving them cold which keeps the layers firm, and I agree.

These bars are baked in a nine- by thirteen-inch baking pan, and the recipe makes a lot of cookies once they’re cut into small pieces. The bars can be frozen and thawed in the refrigerator. You start by making the oatmeal layer which becomes both the bottom surface and the crumble on top of the cookies. That’s made by creaming butter with brown sugar, then adding eggs and vanilla. Flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon are added next, and then oats and chopped peanuts are stirred into the dough. A couple of cups of dough are set aside, and the rest is pressed into the buttered baking pan. The chocolate layer was next, and that was made by melting chocolate chips with sweetened condensed milk, butter, and salt in the top of a double-boiler. Once melted, vanilla, raisins, and peanuts were added. The chocolate mixture was poured over the oatmeal layer in the baking pan, and the remaining oatmeal dough was scattered on top. The bars baked for about 30 minutes, were cooled, and then refrigerated before cutting.

It’s delightful knowing I have a stash of these bars in the freezer. They’re there for me any time I need a candy bar or cookie fix. They work for both kinds of cravings. And, when they run out, I’ll have to move on to something else I've read so much about over the last few years.

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Brownie Bow Ties

I have no idea how an entire year went by during which I watched so few current films. As of Oscar night, I had seen exactly two of the movies nominated for Best Picture. As usual, we attended an Oscar party and bet on the outcome of the awards. I was sure the Academy would pick George Clooney as Best Actor, and in my typical Oscar-betting fashion, I was wrong. At least I had these cookies to enjoy during the ceremony. They’re little squares of pastry that get folded over a filling of brownie dough and end up looking a little like bow ties. I thought bow tie cookies seemed appropriate for Oscar night. The recipe is from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, and I have a couple of things to tell you about making these cookies. First, Alice Medrich is always very precise with her instructions, so rolling the pastry dough and cutting it to the size she suggests works well. She then instructs you to fill each pastry square with one rounded teaspoon of brownie dough and fold two corners of the square in and seal at the top with water. Maybe I rounded my teaspoons of brownie dough too much because the first batch I placed in the oven came out looking like they sort of exploded and not much like bow ties. So, less than you think of the brownie filling per cookie is better. The other thing I wanted to mention is that Medrich suggests optionally grating some cinnamon stick or nutmeg over the cookies before serving. I suggest definitely doing so. I used both cinnamon and nutmeg. When I tasted a cookie that hadn’t been dusted with the spices, it was of course delicious, but it seemed lacking or naked compared to the ones with spices.

You begin by making a cream cheese rugelach dough which needs to be refrigerated for at least a couple of hours before being rolled out. Next, you make the brownie dough by melting butter and chocolate in a double-boiler. Some sugar is added to the butter and chocolate followed by vanilla, salt, and eggs. A little flour is whisked in, and then this chocolate dough is also refrigerated for at least an hour or overnight. I made both doughs a day in advance of rolling, cutting, and filling. Working with one quarter of the rugelach dough at a time, it is rolled out and trimmed into a nine inch by eleven inch rectangle which is then cut into twelve squares. A barely rounded teaspoon of the chilled brownie dough should be placed in the center of each pastry square. Then, two opposite corners are pulled up and over the brownie dough, and the pastry corners are pinched with water to secure. Just before going into the oven, the cookies are brushed with milk and sprinkled with sugar, and they are baked for about 20 minutes. After cooling, I highly recommend grating cinnamon and nutmeg over the cookies.

These aren’t the quickest cookies to bake, but all of the steps involved are simple enough. The cream cheese pastry is delightfully flaky, rich, and tender for a cookie, and it makes a very nice wrapper for a bite of dark chocolate brownie. They’re dressy, little cookies suited for a black tie kind of night.

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Pretzel-Shortbread Bars

Show me a cookie or type of candy with a crunchy, salty ingredient, like pretzels for instance, and I'm sold. When sweet and salty are together in a recipe, I almost always have to try it. These shortbread bars make use of the pretzels in two ways. Rather than just topping the cookie bars with broken pieces of pretzels, ground pretzel crumbs also make up part of the dry ingredients in the dough. I found this recipe in last October's issue of Living magazine, and then I had to take it a step or two further. After making the cookie dough and pressing the broken pretzel pieces into it, I thought some dry roasted, salted peanuts would be at home there as well. Then, after baking, I felt the need to gild the bars with a drizzle of melted chocolate. The salty-sweet flavor thing is a success here, but there's a bonus with the pretzel flavor that was worked into the shortbread with the crumbs. Whether you keep these simple or start adding the extras like I did, these are very worth trying.

The bars were baked in a rectangular tart pan with a removable bottom, and that shape was very easy to cut straight across into pieces. First, some pretzels were pulsed in a food processor until powdery. One half cup of the pretzel powder was added to flour and baking powder for the dry ingredient mix. Then, more pretzels were coarsely chopped in the food processor. Butter and sugar were combined in a mixer, and then an egg yolk was added followed by the dry ingredients and then some of the coarsely chopped pretzels. The dough was pressed into the tart pan and topped with the remaining chopped pretzels which were pressed into the surface. At this point, I added a handful or two of dry roasted peanuts and pressed them into the dough as well. The shortbread baked for about 30 minutes and was left to cool. I melted some bittersweet chocolate and drizzled it over the cooled cookie tart.

Caramel, peanut butter, and cookies all work for me in this arena of mixing salty and sweet. And, I'm sure I'll repeat this topic sooner or later because there's a tart with a pretzel crust I've been meaning to try for years. I might have to start a sub-section in my recipe file just for sweets with pretzels.

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Coconut Cookie Sandwiches

Coconut is great for holiday cookies as it provides instant flocking. Snowy, fluffy coconut is an easy decoration, and it would have been even better if I had used the regular kind. No, I had to go ahead and use the bag of natural, shredded coconut that I already had at home. The natural kind is delicious, and it has no added sugar, but the shredded pieces are smaller and less exciting-looking as a decoration. Next time, I might bother to get regular shredded coconut instead, but still, these cookies were cute and tasty just as they were. These sandwich cookies are the last ones I have to show from my cookie platter this year, and once again, they’re from last year’s Holiday Cookies publication. The recipe is also online. They weren’t difficult to make, but the dough was a little temperamental. It’s a somewhat dry and crumbly coconut dough, so you have to pack it a bit in an ice cream scoop to form domed shapes for baking. Once baked, the cookies held their shape well, and the filling was a simple schmear of vanilla buttercream.

As usual, flour, baking powder, and salt were sifted together into a bowl. Some shredded coconut was coarsely ground in a food processor and added to the flour. Butter, sugar, and brown sugar were creamed together in a mixer, and an egg and vanilla were added. The dry ingredients were slowly incorporated, and the dough was ready to be scooped. As I mentioned, the dough was a little crumbly and had to be packed firmly in an ice cream scoop to form domed shapes. The cookies baked for about twelve minutes and then were left to cool before being filled. The vanilla buttercream was an easy mix of softened butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla extract. The flat sides of half the cookies were spread with the buttercream, sandwiches with the other half of the cookies, and then rolled in shredded coconut.

One more detail I would add to the next-time file would be to slightly decrease the size. They were just a little bit bigger than I would prefer for a sandwich cookie. It might seem like I’m doing a lot of complaining about these cookies, but they were, of course, delicious or I wouldn’t be mentioning them at all. With a smaller scoop for the dough and regular shredded coconut for the decoration, we’ll have a completely perfect cookie next time.

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Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

I promised to show some holiday cookies, so on with the cookie parade. This is another one from the Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies publication from last year, and the recipe is available online. The flavors in these chocolate peppermint cookies are very similar to the chocolate mint sandwich cookies I mentioned back in March. But, I think these have a much more festive look. Here, peppermint extract is added to the chocolate cookie dough rather than the white chocolate as in the sandwich cookies, and each cookie is completely covered in melted white chocolate. Broken candy canes decorate the tops. The cookie dough was rolled out and cut into circles, but it would have worked just as well to form the dough into two logs and slice cookies from them. I’ve learned that regardless of whether the mint flavor is added to the chocolate cookie dough or the white chocolate and whether the white chocolate is sandwiched between cookies or used to completely cover them, this is a flavor combination that’s well-received.

The cookie dough was started by sifting together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of a mixer, butter and sugar were creamed until pale and fluffy. One egg and one egg yolk were added followed by the peppermint extract. The flour mixture was slowly added, and then the dough was divided and formed into two disks which were covered with plastic wrap and chilled for at least an hour. This is a sticky dough, so it’s best to roll it out between pieces of parchment paper. It may also need to be chilled before cutting rounds. Once all the cookies were cut, they were placed on baking sheets and chilled again for 15 minutes before going into the oven. After baking and cooling, each cookie was dipped in melted white chocolate and topped with crushed candy cane pieces.

They have a snowy, pretty look and fresh, mint flavor. The broken candy cane pieces on top of each cookie add visual appeal and also make the cookies more easily stackable without sticking to each other. I might go back to the sandwich cookie version when it’s not the holiday season, but this mix of flavors is a winner any time.

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