Cookie Lynn

I was recently contacted by Naomi of Joy’s Teaspoon about creating a few recipes using their tea and spices, and I am happy to announce the the first is here just in time for some last-minute holiday baking.

I made these gingerbread biscotti using Organic Madagascar Cinnamon and Organic Ginger Powder. They were paired with a fantastic English Breakfast blend, which was just a bit spicier than I’m used to. To add a bit more sweetness to the mix, I included a cranberry/white chocolate variation.

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped (optional)
1/4 cup white chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350* and line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
Cream together butter, sugar, and molasses until light and fluffy.
Add egg and vanilla, mix until fully incorporated.
In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and spices.
Add dry ingredients to wet mixture, a little at a time, until combined.

At this point, I took out half the dough, and gently mixed in the cranberries to the remaining half. (You can skip this step, or make the entire batch with cranberries, using about 1/2 cup.)

Make two logs, about ½ inch thick and four inches wide. Bake at 350* for about 15-18 minutes, or until slightly golden on the edges.

Allow to cool, then cut on the diagonal, creating roughly 1/2 inch slices. Turn the slices on their sides, and bake for another 15 – 18 minutes, until crisp.

If using the white chocolate, melt in the microwave or over a double-boiler, and using a pastry bag or parchment cone, pipe a thick line onto one side of the biscotti.

Makes about 2 dozen biscotti.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

This month for the Daring Bakers challenge, I had originally wanted to make a more traditional crostata, but in the end couldn’t resist the lure of making a key lime curd filling for the tart shell, instead. Having just made lemon curd in my pastry classes a week before, I really wanted to try it at home.

I used a Martha Stewart’s recipe for the curd, and nearly regretted my decision to zest and juice nearly two dozen golf-ball-sized key limes,.. but I think it was worth it in the end.

The pasta frolla made a wonderful tart shell, and I think I will be using it again soon… especially having just bought a tart pan for this challenge.

Pasta Frolla
(Provided by Simona)

1/2 c. minus 1 tablespoon superfine sugar or a scant 3/4 cup of powdered sugar
1 and 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
grated zest of half a lemon (I used the key lime zest)
1 large egg and 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten in a small bow

Whisk together sugar, flour and salt in a bowl.
Rub or cut the butter into the flour until the mixture has the consistency of coarse crumbs. You can do this in the bowl or on your work surface, using your fingertips or an implement of choice.

Make a well in the center of the mounded flour and butter mixture and pour the beaten eggs into it
Add the lemon zest to your flour/butter/egg mixture.
Use a fork to incorporate the liquid into the solid ingredients, and then use your fingertips.
Knead lightly just until the dough comes together into a ball.
Shape the dough into a flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place the dough in the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours. You can refrigerate the dough overnight.

I decorated the top with cookies cut from the leftover pasta frolla, and a few raspberries… Honestly, it was kind of a last-minute idea. I like it, but I wish I would have taken the time to come up with something else. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to make a few other tarts soon.

My husband works at a bookstore and recently brought me home a copy of Baked Explorations. Through some complicated series of deals involving bartered household chores, I wound up having to make him anything he wanted from the book, and this is what he chose. (You’d be amazed at how much of our homelife involves these sorts of deals. He’s currently reading the Harry Potter series because I agreed to make him baked ziti for dinner three months ago.)

The Muddy Mississippi Cake, or Mississippi Mud Pie (B) is a flourless chocolate cake topped with chocolate pudding and whipped cream, layered inside a cookie crust. It’s time-consuming, but pretty simple to make.

This was my first time making homemade pudding, and I’ve used that recipe on its own already… because it’s fantastic. The flourless chocolate cake was pretty similar to the one I’ve made before, and was also quite yummy. However, I just wasn’t into the contrast of the two textures. My husband says he liked it, though… so, it’s probably just me.

I love both of the Baked books. Check them out if you haven’t already.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Doughnuts are one of the things I’ve always wanted to try making at home, but have never gotten around to. (I believe they were in my so-far abandoned 101 in 1001 list.) So, I was super-excited, and maybe a little scared, by this month’s Daring Bakers challenge.

I decided to use a cake doughnut recipe, though I would love to try yeasted doughnuts in the near future.

One of my most recent kitchen purchases was two sets of pastry cutters, in various sizes, which worked out perfectly for cutting the larger doughnuts and doughnut holes. For the mini doughnuts, I used one of the smaller pastry cutters, and punched a hole in the middle with the end of a large spoon, because I’m classy like that.

The hardest part of making the doughnuts was keeping the frying oil at a steady temperature. It often got too hot, and the outside of the doughnuts would get hard and crispy before the inside would have a chance to cook thoroughly. It was particularly hard keeping an eye on the temperature while doing everything else in the kitchen, so it’s nice to have a helper sometimes. (In this case, my husband.)

I ended up coating the entire batch in cinnamon sugar. I’ve never been a fan of glazed or iced doughnuts for some reason. I think iced doughnuts (with sprinkles!) are adorable, but I’ve never met an icing I liked. (Unless, of course, it’s flavored. Like maple. Which would have been fantastic here.)

And now the obligatory “I’m a terrible blogger” speech… I haven’t found a lot of time to bake, outside of school and work. Also, my (other) laptop has been mostly useless for weeks now, and this one (a netbook) can’t handle much photo editing. The first photo and the one below were my husband’s handiwork, while the rest aren’t edited at all.

And, yes… Doughnuts make me very happy.

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

I had a minor catastrophe during this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. After getting tons of pictures of the process of making these sugar cookies – including some of me decorating at the coffee table while watching Doctor Who – I popped the SD card into my laptop to discover that nothing had been saved. I tried running a recovery program, and managed to find pictures that were deleted ages ago, but no such luck for anything cookie-related. I am so bummed.

Cut-out sugar cookies are something I’ve been making since I knew how to work an oven, but this is only the second time I’ve attempted decorating with royal icing. As I said before, royal icing may win out aesthetically (assuming you know what you’re doing, which I haven’t figured out quite yet) but, I prefer to slather them with buttercream, myself.

Honestly, I don’t have a lot of patience for royal icing. It’s something I want to learn, but when presented with a reason to play around with it, I’d rather just get it done and over with. Perhaps I’ll have to challenge myself to do it more often.

The recipe for this month’s challenge was a bit different than what I am used to… I usually use shortening in my cookies, whereas this one uses all butter. The dough was a bit more temperamental, but the results were delicious. I also used the vanilla beans I had leftover from last month’s challenge instead of extract, resulting in a very grown-up version of the sugar cookies I made as a kid.

I also chose to make chocolate sugar cookies, by substituting 1/3 cup dutch-process cocoa for some of the flour, and adding chocolate extract instead of vanilla. I can’t believe I’ve never tried that before… They are amazing.