I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
I think I might have started a new thing for family birthdays. It's happened twice now, so it's at least on its way to becoming a thing. Since I bake a lot, and I really can't or shouldn't eat as much as I bake, I decided to send cookies to family members on their birthdays. I'm sure that now this is in writing, I'll not have time to send cookies for the next birthday. It might just be a when-I-have-time thing, and that way the cookies will always be a surprise, right? This cookie recipe is from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook, and coconut is added to the dough. I bought a bag of natural, unsweetened, shredded coconut and then worried that the cookies wouldn't be sweet enough since I didn't use the regular, sweetened stuff. I tasted the dough before I baked the cookies to see if I thought I should add more sugar, and it seemed good to me. Kurt was happy to taste test a cookie fresh out of the oven, and his reaction made me confident they were just fine. The cookies almost disappeared before I could box them up for shipping.
There was nothing unusual about making the cookie dough here. You could use chocolate chips, but the recipe called for chunks, so I chopped a bar of bittersweet chocolate into bits. At two different cooking classes I attended, I learned the same lesson from both Nick Malgieri and Alice Medrich. When you chop chocolate into chunks for cookies, you want to leave the chocolate dust behind. Nick Malgieri places the chopped chocolate in a sieve and shakes it to remove the pulverized stuff and keep the chunks. Alice Medrich used her hands to pull the chunks away from the dust on the cutting board. The fine, powdery chocolate muddies the look of the dough and using only the chunks results in a neater cookie. So, cream butter and brown sugar, add an egg and vanilla, sift flour, baking soda, and salt and add oatmeal then add that to butter mixture, then fold in shredded coconut and natural, unsweetened is fine and neat, dust-free, chocolate chunks. Drop into mounds on baking sheets and bake.
These were easy, straightforward cookies, but the addition of coconut to an oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie was new for me. It's an excellent addition, adding a little chewiness, and one I'll continue to include from now on. Actually, now that Kurt knows about this cookie flavor and will no doubt be requesting it frequently, I'll be baking a lot of these cookies.
You know I love it when I get to bake some cookies and then promptly get them out of my house. I don’t need those little, tempting treats sitting on my kitchen counter taunting me every time I walk through the room. And, putting them in the freezer is no better. In this weather, frozen cookies are just as irresistible as the ones on the counter. So, when my brother sent me his cookie wish list, I was game. It was an opportunity to whip out the Martha Stewart's Cookies book again, try a couple more recipes, and then box up the results and ship them away. The book has 175 cookie recipes, and I’ve joked that I’ll eventually try all of them. I just counted, and I’ve made sixteen so far. Although not all of them are mentioned on my site, I haven’t encountered a disappointment yet. My brother’s list went something like this: oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies, brownies, chocolate chip, peanut butter cookies. I took some liberties with flavors, naturally, and decided to make the iced oatmeal applesauce cookies and peanut butter swirl brownies.
The iced oatmeal and applesauce cookies are a rather healthy option with only half a stick of butter, one egg, and a half cup of applesauce. Those ingredients were mixed with brown sugar and granulated sugar before the dry ingredients including oats, of course, were added. Last, golden raisins were folded into the dough, and the cookies were baked and cooled. If they weren’t delicious enough on their own, the drizzled maple glaze on top made them stellar. These could easily be one of my favorite cookies from this book.
Up next were the peanut butter swirl brownies. Making a simple batter in a bowl with no need for a mixer is always fun. Unsweetened and semisweet chocolates were melted with butter and then combined with the dry ingredients. Sugar, eggs, and vanilla were added, and that was set aside. Peanut butter was mixed with melted butter, confectioner’s sugar, salt, and vanilla for the filling. Part of the chocolate batter was poured into the prepared, square baking pan. The peanut butter filling was globbed here and there on top of it, and then the remaining batter was poured over the filling. The filling was swirled into the batter with a knife, and the brownies baked for 45 minutes. They came out looking decorative all on their own with no need for added embellishment, and with swooping peanut butter throughout the chocolate brownies, the flavor was perfect. Getting to bake some cookies, have a little taste of them, and then, poof, have all traces gone from the house is my ideal arrangement.
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.
It's fair to say that I bake a lot more cookies than I eat. Usually, the fun is in the baking and the sharing. These cookies are different. I first tried this recipe when it appeared in Living magazine, and it became a favorite of mine. I typed it into my file, with one small change, and kept it for future use. My little change was to increase the amount of whole wheat flour to 3/4 cup to bring the dough together a bit more. Something I wouldn't change is the use of natural peanut butter. Most recipes assume regular, sugary, hydrogenated oil-filled peanut butter will be used, and when I use natural instead I have guess at the right amount of sugar and make other alterations. It's so rare, but fantastic, to see real peanut butter used. This weekend I purchased a copy of the new Martha Stewart's Cookies book and was delighted to find the recipe included in it. Apparently, everyone at MSLO knew it was a keeper too. I baked a batch yesterday, put several in the freezer to enjoy as needed, and brought a few to work to share. Kurt completely disagrees with me about the use of peanut butter in baked goods. He gave this cookie a seven out of ten after eating four of them and claims to only ever want chocolate chip. No matter, this is a cookie I enjoy eating as much as baking.
, and coconut is added to the dough. I bought a bag of natural, unsweetened, shredded coconut and then worried that the cookies wouldn't be sweet enough since I didn't use the regular, sweetened stuff. I tasted the dough before I baked the cookies to see if I thought I should add more sugar, and it seemed good to me. Kurt was happy to taste test a cookie fresh out of the oven, and his reaction made me confident they were just fine. The cookies almost disappeared before I could box them up for shipping. 
book again, try a couple more recipes, and then box up the results and ship them away. The book has 175 cookie recipes, and I’ve joked that I’ll eventually try all of them. I just counted, and 
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.
