Chocolate Chip Cookies for Passover (Pg 167)

I was very, very pleasantly surprised by these. As I said before I was doing a whole bunch of Passover cookies, and this one actually had Passover in the title so I had to make them.

Again, these look like normal cookies, don't they? But they are not made with flour like normal cookies. They are actually made with matzo meal and matzo farfel.

Don't get me wrong, I like matzo. But I never would've thought it could make a decent chocolate chip cookie. I mean, matzo tends to be a bit...dry. OK, that's an understatement; it's very dry. The dough itself was very dry. It was hard to form into balls because it would just kind of fall apart into little chunks. It has eggs in it to hold it together, but it's just not quite enough to really form a solid dough. But  the baking process really works some magic and they come out as actual whole cookies! And they taste really good!

It's seriously surprising. They're not moist but they're not crunchy either - they actually have a really nice texture. And because there's no leavening they're a lot lighter. They're satisfying but you don't get that heavy dense feeling like you sometimes get from cookies.

These were so good that after I gave them all away (which was only to 1 person because it didn't make a lot) I made more of them for my family and some other friends. I actually made a double batch so I could share with lots of people, because they're so delicious.


Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.
Actual: 1.5 dozen.

44 recipes down, 131 to go.

Almond Macaroons (Pg 91)

In honor of Passover I made a whole bunch of Passover-friendly cookies for some Jewish (and non-Jewish) friends of mine. These were the first of the Passover-friendly cookies.

They might look like they are normal cookies made with flour and everything, but if they had regular flour they wouldn't be Passover-friendly, would they? They are actually made with confectioners' sugar and almond paste. 

I find it very interesting that sugar and almond paste can make a cookie dough. I guess the almond paste on its own is practically a dough. I mean, they use almond paste (or almond meal or almond something) to make marzipan which they sculpt into cute little shapes as cake decorations. I find that so fascinating.

I usually don't feel bad about the food allergies I have, but this is one of the times I wished I wasn't allergic to almonds, because I'm afraid to handle the almond paste too much. If I could handle almond paste more I would really love to experiment with marzipan and other fun things. 

I somehow made these cookies way too big, which I seem to do very often. I promise I read the instructions very carefully over and over again and it very clearly says "drop batter by tablespoons full" which I definitely did. I think maybe they should've been teaspoons full. In the picture in the book, the decorative almonds are pretty much the same size as the cookies themselves, and the almonds on mine are definitely not taking up the space of the whole cookie. Also it made exactly half of the cookies it should've.

I've heard these were very good, but of course, I couldn't taste them. But I do like the way they look, even if they should be smaller. 

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 1 dozen.

Actual: 6 cookies.

43 recipes down, 132 to go.

Sand Tarts (Pg 127)

I guess I underestimate myself and I tend to think I don't have a lot of patience. I guess the fact is I choose what I have patience for. For baking, I have patience, and it's when I make recipes like this that I realize how much patience I actually have.

Rolling this dough took an enormous amount of patience. The dough was very dry and crumbly and it had to be rolled very thin. And the cookie cutter was big, so it required rolling a piece of dough smooth and even enough to cut out one or two 3-inch circles. Rolling is always tricky - getting the pressure just right, having just the right amount of flour so the rolling pin doesn't stick but not too much flour that it makes the dough dry, on and on. So this was quite the challenge, but I do love a good baking challenge.

When something like this is very challenging and as I'm working on it I'm wondering why I'm bothering, I always think about how pretty it'll look when it's done. I guess it's the artist in me. I have the patience simply because I keep telling myself it'll look pretty when it's done so it's worth the effort.

These did look awfully pretty. The almonds were another challenge because I'm allergic, and I had these sliced almonds but do you know how many of them are pretty and perfect? Not many. So I had to sift through to find nice ones and my hands got a little itchy. That's why I made the last couple batches without any almonds. Plus these are meant to look like sand dollars, and I looked at some pictures online and I decided the cookies would look more like sand dollars without almonds. So I made all the sand dollars different - because in nature they are all different.

Of course I ate some of the ones that didn't have almonds. It is a very nice cookie. It's crisp and it has a little bit of lemon zest and I always love that tartness in the sweetness of a nice sugar cookie. That's pretty much what it is, a sugar cookie with almonds on it and cinammon sugar sprinkled on top. Very tasty, and very pretty, but a whole lot of work that I'm not inclined to do again anytime soon.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.

Actual: 34 cookies, almost 3 dozen.

42 recipes down, 133 to go.

Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies (Pg 163)

I know it's hard to tell what size these are from the picture, but I'll give you a hint. They're not "giant."

My lovely friend Amy joined me for a day of baking and we had already made a couple of batches of cookies. I was winding down for the day, as I tend to do, but Amy was on some sort of sugar rush and insisted on making another batch of cookies, so I let her pick one. This is what she picked. 

I was happy with her choice. These looked mighty tasty, and hello, they're chocolate and we all know how I feel about chocolate. So we happily whipped up a batch. And honestly, there's not much to say. It was pretty much...uneventful. It was a chocolate cookie.

The recipe says the yield will be 8 cookies. That's because they're giant, but as I said, these were not. I just didn't feel like making giant cookies, so I made them normal size, and guess how many it made? 41. Yeah. I'm sure a giant cookie is nice sometimes but I'd rather have a normal size cookie and I'd rather have 41 cookies to give away because that way I can give 10 cookies to each person, or something along those lines. After all I cannot eat so many cookies, whether it's 8 giant ones or 41 regular size ones, so they get given away.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 8.
Actual:  41.

41 recipes down, 134 to go. 

Lemon Poppy Seed Crisps (Pg 262)

This whole lemon and poppy seed thing is interesting. Don't get me wrong, I like it. Actually, I'd have to say that I love it. But the same day I made these I also made lemon poppy seed muffins (they happened to be gluten free, made with coconut flour, but that's another story) and they were delicious, even though half of them stuck to the muffin paper.

Anyhow. I was enjoying some lemon poppy seed muffins and lemon poppy seed cookies, and I just started wondering to myself, are the poppy seeds even necessary? I'm not sure what they really add. Lemon is such a strong flavor on its own it can overpower almost anything. And poppy seeds....do they even have any flavor? I mean I've had them on bagels and I can't really say what they taste like, it's more that they add an interesting texture.

It makes me wonder. Would these be just as good without the poppy seeds? I think they might.

They were absolutely delicious. They totally didn't work as the recipe stated, but they were totally awesome anyway. This was one that was supposed to be rolled into a ball and then rolled in sugar. The sugar was mixed with lemon zest - yum! Well there was no way in heck this dough was going to roll into a ball. It was very moist and sticky. Ball rolling requires a nice, dry-ish, dense-ish dough, not one that gets stuck to your palms. So I had the sugar mixed with lemon zest (yum!) and I just dropped tablespoons full of dough onto the cookie sheet, then I sprinkled the sugar mix on top, then sprinkled with poppy seeds.

There probably was something wrong in my measurements, or temperature of the butter, or some such thing, which is why the dough was wet and they didn't come out crispy. But do I care? No. Because they tasted darn good. But I think it's because lemon plus sugar equals deliciousness, I don't think it has much to do with the poppy seeds.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2.5 dozen

Actual: 2.85 dozen (34 cookies)

40 recipes down, 135 to go.

Icebox Spirals and Bull's-Eyes (Pg 117)

Oh dear. Another disappointment. In the book these look so cool, and they seemed really interesting and fun to make.

They were indeed interesting to make. Fun? Not so much.

Admittedly the dough was really easy to work with, a great consistency for rolling out. Not too dry and not too sticky. But then comes the part of measuring rectangles and rolling logs and refrigerating and putting together and rolling and refrigerating and.....I'm tired just remembering it all.

The bull's eyes are made by rolling either the light or dark dough into a log, and then rolling the opposite dough into a rectangle large enough to roll around the log. I tried this two different ways. I tried it the way the book says, which is to first chill the log and the rectangle in the fridge. I also tried by just doing it as soon as I rolled them out. My way worked better. The issue was once the dough was chilled it was too hard to work with, so I couldn't wrap it around the log easily.

A similar challenge came with the spirals. The process is to make two rectangles of the same size, chill them, then lay one on top of the other and roll them into a log. Once again, once the dough was chilled and hard, it was difficult to roll.

Besides all that, they are log shaped and as we know my log shaped cookies never turn out to be actual circles, but more like rounded rectangles. As you can see in the pictures, these all came out looking a bit....strange. Some are big, some are small, some are round, some are rectangular. They're just all over the place.

Besides all that, they didn't even taste all that great. The raw dough actually tasted better. Something happened along the baking way that made them less flavorful. Some people seem to like them, but I'm not impressed.

Or I just don't like cookies anymore. Is that possible? Hmm.....


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 5 dozen.
Actual: 7 1/2 dozen. Whoa.

39 recipes down, 136 to go.

Anise Drops (Pg 64)

I'm one of those strange people who really likes black jelly beans and black licorice. Your Mother probably warned you about people like me.

For those who don't know, that strange, indescribable flavor of black licorice comes from an herb called Anise. Hence, I like to call these "Black Jelly Bean Cookies" even though they are not black and look nothing like a jelly bean.

Needless to say, I love these cookies. I must admit they are pretty strange. Anise is not a flavor you expect from a cookie. The texture is also unexpected. It's chewy on the inside and the outside is almost like a crisp wafer.

A lot of these got stuck on my cookie sheets but then I realized that I wasn't quite baking them long enough. They got stuck because the centers were still a little soft and the outside hadn't completely hardened into the wafer shell. So I cooked the last batch a minute longer and they came out perfectly, but before that there were a lot of mushy cookie centers being stuck to the cookie sheet. The cookies are still edible, of course, they just have a bit of a hole in the bottom.

I have to warn people before they eat these. Before I offer you one, I will ask you if you like black jelly beans. If you don't like black jelly beans, you will not like this cookie. If you do like black jelly beans, you'll probably love this cookie. I love it.


Yield:

Recipe predicts: About 4 dozen.
Actual: About 3 dozen.

38 recipes down, 137 to go.

Pistachio Lemon Drops (Pg 94)

I am not a fan of these cookies.

First of all, there is no butter in the dough. Second of all, there is hardly any flour in it. Who ever heard of a cookie dough that has no butter and 1 tablespoon of flour?? Not I.

Apparently the finely chopped pistachios, along with a whipped up egg white are supposed to hold these together. I mean, sure, they held together, but there's no substance. There's also light brown sugar in them. So what they end up tasting like is pistachios sprinkled with light brown sugar. I like both pistachios and light brown sugar, but not together, apparently.

Also, I resent the fact that "lemon" is even in the title, because there is so little lemon juice in it you can't even taste it. Really. No lemony taste.

Oh well. My Mom said they were good, but I wasn't impressed. Onto the next one.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 2 dozen.
Actual: 16 cookies. Hmm.

37 recipes down, 138 to go.

Other Adventures in Baking

Alright I admit it. I have a hard time focusing sometimes.

This "baking my way through a cookbook" thing is very fun and I'm always doing something different which I love. But I've ventured off a little bit and found myself spending some time with other baking projects.

I made these precious little cupcakes for a friend's birthday. They're actually a Martha Stewart recipe so I'm still on track in that respect. It's a basic yellow cupcake. I was a little challenged with the frosting. It was like a regular buttercream but for some reason it had milk in it, and as I was following the recipe I was thinking "This is going to have to make it too thin." Lo and behold. Very thin frosting. And I kept adding more confectioner's sugar to thicken it up but I actually didn't have enough! So I ran out and I had to stop with this consistency. It wasn't bad. It was not quite as thin as a glaze but it was kind of in that ballpark. It still tasted great!

Last week was Purim, and I had a special request for gluten free Hamentashen. How could I resist such an exciting new project? I have been doing quite a bit of gluten free baking and I'm really enjoying it. Plus I've always wanted to make Hamentashen because they are so darn cute and so darn tasty.

As usual, I wasn't entirely happy with the appearance of these, but considering how difficult the dough was to work with I'm actually pretty impressed with myself.

Gluten free dough tends to be very very sticky. Since gluten is the protein that actually binds wheat together, without gluten baked goods wouldn't stick together at all, so xanthan gum is added. Xanthan gum makes it really sticky. Like, really really sticky. Like I almost glued my hands together. But I figured out that dipping my hands in ice water helped when I was forming the cookies. I dropped some strawberry jam in the center, dipped my hands in ice water, and folded the edges up. It took a while and it was crazy but it was fun, and the cookies tasted delicious.

This cake was my first ever attempt at gluten free. I have to say the attempt was a success. I have to work on the frosting a little but the cake itself was outstanding.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with gluten free baking. I knew the texture would be really different, and for some reason I thought it would be gritty or chewy or just something weird. On the contrary, the gluten free stuff I've made so far is super light and fluffy. There's an almost airy quality. For cake it's really nice.

I got a lot of compliments on this cake. I tasted a bit and it was really good, but I don't really know what to compare it to. Someone said it was better than some professional cakes. I gave myself a little pat on the back for that.
;)


Still 139 recipes to go!

Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread (Pg 142)

Have I mentioned that I love shortbread? Yes I have. I love shortbread. This is no exception.

This is another one of those buggery recipes where you make a log of dough and then slice it. I really like these in theory but as I've said before I just have such a hard time getting a perfectly round cookie and it drives me crazy. I guess I should learn the lesson not to be as hard on myself when things aren't perfect, but that seems to be a tough lesson for me to learn.

These have orange zest and cornmeal in them. It's an interesting combination, but it works. I tend to really like the cookies that have citrus in them. The citrus is never overpowering, it just adds a little tartness, a nice little bit of interest.

These being shortbread they are dense and rich with buttery goodness. They're small. Again, like little tea cookies. They are definitely quite a nice little treat.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 3 dozen.
Actual: 5 dozen. Seriously.

36 recipes down, 139 to go.