"Flour: A Baker's Collection of Spectacular Recipes"

I really enjoyed reading and using Joanne Chang's "Flour: A Baker's Collection of Spectacular Recipes."  The book was filled with beautiful pictures, easy to follow recipes, and background stories about the tried and true recipes.
I borrowed this book from the library and liked the recipes I tried.  I may purchase a signed copy from "Flour" bakery when I'm back in Boston next year.  I liked how all the recipes listed ingredients amount by volume and metric mass units!
Baking is just as much as science as it is an art, and sometimes weighing the ingredients versus volumetrically measuring the ingredients is the difference between a bad versus good recipe or a good versus great recipe.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (I made oatmeal cranberry cookies).

Lime Cornmeal Cookies-These cookies were average. I thought they were a bit pasty and dry in texture.

Snickerdoodles. Yum! These were light and crunchy (I overbaked them by mistake).



Puffy cookies right out of the oven

A lot of people on the mainland enjoy soft and chewy cookies. I'm familiar with crunchy cookie recipes, but have been working on perfecting a soft/chewy cookie.  I think the secret is to slightly under-bake the cookies. 

This is a picture of the underbaked cookies after sitting on the pan for 10 minutes after pulling the pan out of the oven.  I think my favorite cookie recipe that I tried was the chocolate chunk cookies.  It may even become my "go to" recipe instead of the traditional Toll house cookie recipe.  I have to work on tweaking the recipe a little bit. I'd like the finished cookie to have a little more shape instead of becoming a thin pancake. 

Itty Bitty Chocolate Chip Cookies

*This is a "back-post"-Mike and I are currently stuck at the DFW airport, waiting to see when our flight will take off. So far, it's been delayed for more than 4 hours because of mechanical malfunctions...hopefully we'll be able to catch another connecting flight to Kauai once we land in Honolulu*

This year, I made it a goal to try out at least one new recipe every two months. So, I went to the local public library and checked out Sherry Yard's "Desserts by the Yard." Sherry Yard is the pastry chef for Wolfgang Puck and has been creating the Oscar's desserts for a few years. 

A lot of Sherry's recipes seemed elaborate for a novice baker, and for the lazy baker in me, there were too many techniques (too many dishes to wash).  So i decided to try one of her easier recipes, which was her Quintessential Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

Sherry Yard's recipe called for high quality chocolate like valrhona chocolate. I didn't have valrhona chocolate, so I used this mini chocolate chips.  Since I was using mini chocolate, I thought, "why don't I make mini cookies?"

I used the quarter teaspoon to measure out the dough and made about a bagillion (I know that's not a real word) cookies.  I really liked how these cookies came out.  The dough to chocolate ratio is almost 50:50, so it was almost as if there was just enough dough to hold the chocolate chips together.  I baked them until they were a toasty brown color and had a hard crisp bite.  I was reading an article the other day and it said that people from Hawaii like crunchy cookies, while people on the mainland like softer chewier cookies. I'm not sure if that is true or not, but I guess you can say I made a cookie with a "Hawaii" texture. 

This cookie recipe will be making it into my "recipe book" of recipes.

Hard Brown Sugar?~Andes Chocolate Mint Cookies

While living in Hawaii, I never had to deal with hard lumps of brown sugar. In Champaign, the air is pretty dry, so once I open a bag of brown sugar, within my next use of brown sugar there are dry lumps of sugar. I cannot use rocks of brown sugar in my baking, so I end up tossing the whole bag (or baking muffins with pockets of sugar).

But, this past Christmas season, I was introduced to Andes Chocolate Mint cookies! Another student in my department made these for a progressive dinner and I had to have the recipe! Not only do they taste great, I do not have to waste my brown sugar!

Andes Chocolate Mint Cookies

Ingredients:
¾ c. margarine
1 & 1/2 c. brown sugar
12 oz. chocolate chips (I used Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips)
2 eggs
2-1/2 c. flour
1-1/4 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 T. water
2 (6 oz.) boxes Andes Candies

Melt margarine, brown sugar, and water together. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Cool mixture for 10 minutes. Beat in eggs with chocolate mixture and add remaining dry ingredients. Chill dough for at least one hour. Roll dough into approx. 1" balls and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. After the cookies are removed from the oven (immediately) place ½ of an Andes candy on each cookie and after a few minutes, spread the chocolate around with the back of a spoon evenly over the cookie and add sprinkles.

If you slightly under-cook the cookies, or make them thicker, they have a chewy slight brownie consistency, which makes the uber delicious too!

These cookies are so simple to make and so delicious! I am not sure how they will hold up in warmer climates, but in colder climates, these cookies are great!
It's a pretty foolproof recipe. But we'll see just how foolproof they are. I emailed the recipe to my sister (that's the foolproof test) and she made it a few weeks ago. My sister also used Splenda's brown sugar, so we'll see how her cookies turned out.

I passed!

Recap-
*I passed my Preliminary Exam last week! I just a have a little bit more research, my thesis writing to tackle, and then my defense!

*Mike's home alone for a few days while I'm off to Texas. Maybe he'll blog about his exciting adventures.

*I discovered new dishes that I enjoy: 1) yamaimo okura natto nebaneba bo-ru minus the ikura. It's basically a slimy mess of natto, a grated sticky potato, and okra. Oh, it's great! 2)and chicken biryani, an Indian rice dish.

*I treated myself to a present. "Field Guide to Cookies," by Anita Chu from Dessert First. I'm quite excited about this purchase. I've been meaning to buy this book for a while, but needed to find something else on Amazon so that I could receive the free shipping.

cookies

here are some decorated sugar cookies from christmas. i asked my mom for a recipe and i guess i misheard her. i was expecting a fool-proof recipe b/c she used to make these cookies with her 1st graders. well, i misheard her on the phone and instead of using 2 blocks of butter, i used 2 pounds. the dough was quite difficult to work with and i kept adding extra flour. thus, the cookies were a bit doughy and not as sweet as i would have liked.
but i do think that everyone made them look yummy!