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Fall

Lemon Rosemary Palmiers

Lemon Rosemary Palmiers

Lemon Rosemary Palmiers
Lemon Rosemary Palmiers

Lemon Rosemary Palmiers

When I say palmiers, doesn’t something incredibly fancy and impossible to make come into your mind? It does for me. If the name is so French that Jonah can’t say it, it’s gotta be tricky. (Every time I told him I was going to make these, Jonah asked “What’s a palmier again?”) But that is so not true. Especially when you’re just going to use your leftover puff pastry from that beet tart you made… Seriously. So easy.

I found these on Joy the Baker and have been dying to make them. They’ve been calling my name from my Pinterest food board. I adapted the recipe and the method a teensy bit.

Lemon Rosemary Palmiers

Ingredients

1 package puff pastry
3/4 cup of sugar
zest of 1 large lemon
1 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary (fresh is better, but dried will do just fine)

Instructions

Finely chop the rosemary and set aside.  On a clean, flat surface rub lemon zest into the sugar using a bench knife (if you have one) or the back of a spoon (that’s more like it).  Put the sugar in a bowl and set aside. Unfold the thawed puff pastry onto a lightly (very lightly) floured surface and roll it out a little bit. You don’t need it too much bigger, just like an inch on each side is good. Move the puff pastry somewhere else, sprinkle the surface with about 1/3 of the lemon sugar, and then put the puff pastry back on top of it, pressing it down a bit to get the sugar to stick. Once the puff pastry is down, spread the rest of the sugar and the rosemary over the surface.

Now tis time to roll. Roll the long side in towards the middle. Then roll in the other long side to the middle. Gently press the sides together so they stick a little bit (though the outside will be covered with lemon sugar, so mine didn’t stick crazy well). Wrap this in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about an hour, or until it’s cold and relatively firm.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Remove dough from the fridge and slice in about 1/2-inch thick slices.  Place on lined baking sheet (think silpat or parchment paper – I used foil and buttered/floured it, which work well).  Bake for 10 to 15 minutes of until golden brown.  You’ll probably want to rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking.  Keep a close eye on the cookies after about 11 minutes.  They might burn quickly because of all the sugar. Actually, because of the burning sugar, I replace the foil between each batch so it didn’t smoke. Remove the palmiers from the pan pretty much immediately after baking, and put them on a wire rack to cool. Once they’re cool, dig in and enjoy!

Lemon Baked Cod

Lemon Baked Cod

Lemon Baked Cod

The other day I went to the grocery store in search of something to make for dinner. There was this lovely cod fillet that looked especially appetizing, and, knowing there was a lemon in the fridge with which to dress it, I bought some. After looking at a few recipes online, I decided to make up my own little recipe for lemon baked cod. It was really light and delicious AND easy.

Lemon Baked Cod

Ingredients

1 lb of cod fillet (I actually used about 3/4 of a pound, but this rounds things out and you’ll have leftovers)
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 Tbl lemon juice
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
a pinch of pepper
paprika

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut the fish into serving sized pieces. In a small bowl, mix the butter and lemon juice. In another small bowl, combine the flour, salt, and pepper. Dip each piece of fish into the butter mixture to coat, and then into the flour mixture, turning to coat. After dipping, you can put the fish on a baking sheet or dish. Pour the rest of the butter/lemon mixture over the fish and sprinkle it with paprika. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Enjoy! We served ours with couscous and spinach. Yum.

Carrot Miso Soup

Carrot Soup

Carrot Soup

Last week Jonah and I were feeling like soup. I had seen a carrot soup with miso recipe on Smitten Kitchen and decided that we should make it because a) it’s healthy and b) I love miso. It’s always nice to find recipes where you either don’t have to go to the store at all because you have everything or you only need to buy one or two things to make it. That was the case, so I was happy.

I’m going to be honest with you guys. I didn’t really like this soup. I liked the taste and everything fine, but I had a lot of trouble with the texture. Kind of reminded me of baby food, which isn’t so great when you’re not a baby. But I’m going to give you the recipe anyway because I think with a little adjusting here and there, the texture problem could be fixed. Whether the solution is more broth or cooking the carrots longer or having a better blender, I’m not really sure, but next time I might even try all of the above.

Carrot Miso Soup

Ingredients

2 Tbl olive oil
2 lbs carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves (6 if they’re small), peeled and chopped
1 Tbl finely chopped ginger
4 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup white miso paste
Toasted sesame oil
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion, and garlic and cook for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is translucent. Add the ginger and the broth, cover the pot, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are tender when poked with a fork, about 30 minutes.

Now, it’s time to puree the soup. You can either do this in batches in a blender or with an immersion blender. I used an immersion blender, which worked pretty well, but as I said above, maybe not well enough. In a small bowl , whisk the miso together with about a cup of the soup, and stir the mixture back into the pot of soup. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon into shallow bowls and top it all off with a drizzle of sesame oil and a sprinkle of the scallions. We also added a slice of bread. Enjoy!

Beet Tart with Goat Cheese and Greens

Beet Tart

Beet Tart
Beet Tart

Last week, I was in the mood for something light but nice for dinner. After a little hunting, I found a recipe on Desserts for Breakfast for a delicious looking beet tart with goat cheese. Sounds good, no? And, the other great thing? It was super easy. Really though, I’m not just saying that.

Beet Tart with Goat Cheese and Greens

Ingredients

6 large or 4 GIANT beets
olive oil
8 – 10 sprigs of fresh thyme
salt
pepper
1 sheet of puff pastry
1 small package goat cheese
1 small package blue cheese
frisee or mixed greens
freshly squeezed lemon juice

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prepare two baking sheets: line one with foil and the other with parchment paper, a silpat, or just grease it with some olive oil. Peel your beets and slice them into slices about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Remove the thyme leaves from the sprigs, and toss with the beets, olive oil, and a little salt and pepper. Lay the beets on the foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.

While the beets are roasting, roll out the puff pastry so it’s a little thinner (into a 10 by 10 inch square or comparably sized rectangle). Also, I didn’t really think about that whole thawing thing, so remember that, otherwise the time will come to use your puff pastry and it will still be a big hunk of ice. I mostly just stretched mine out because I was in someone else’s kitchen sans rolling pin. Anyway, once you’ve rolled or stretched it or whatever, transfer it to the other baking sheet (the one lined with parchment paper or greased). Arrange the beet slices on the puff pastry, leaving a nice edge around the beets, 1-2 inches. Roll the edges of the puff pastry up to create a little crust.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 350 and bake for another 25-30 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and puffed up and the beets are tender. Remove from the oven and let cool for a little bit.

While the tart is cooling, mix together some of the goat cheese and blue cheese with a fork. I didn’t give exact measurements of how much cheese because you know what cheese you like and how much cheese you’ll want on your tart, so I’m not gonna tell you how to do it. You can figure it out. Toss the greens or frisee with lemon juice, olive oil, and pinch of salt to coat it evenly and serve it alongside or over the tart. Enjoy!

Easy Peasy Cranberry Scones

Cranberry Scones

Cranberry Scones
Cranberry Scones

The other morning, before Jonah went to work, I decided to whip up some cranberry scones. There is no better way to start your day than with a fresh, warm, baked good. I found an easy recipe on Martha’s website (marthastewart.com) that didn’t require me to go out and buy anything, so it’s the one I went with in the end. Although, I’ll tell you it did call for fresh cranberries, but I substituted dried because it’s what I had.

Cranberry Scones

Makes 8 scones

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more rolling out
5 Tbl sugar, plus 1 tablespoon for sprinkling atop
1 Tbl baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbl chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2/3 cup, plus 1 tablespoon milk or half-and-half
1/2 cup cranberries (halved if fresh, or dried)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. I used my food processor, and combine flour, 5 Tbl sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add in the butter and pulse until you’ve got coarse crumbs. Now pour in 2/3 cup milk and pulse again until the dough comes together.

At this point, I dumped my dough out onto a floured surface and folded in the cranberries by hand by throwing them on top in a pile and then kneading the dough a few times. Now pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick disc. Cut the disc into 8 wedges and put the wedges on a baking sheet a couple of inches apart. Brush the tops of the scones with the remaining milk and sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake them for 12-15 minutes or golden brown.

After removing the scones from the oven, transfer them to a wire rack to cool. But don’t wait too long to eat them! These are best warm with some butter, jam, and accompanied by a nice mug of tea. Enjoy!

Another Easy Bread Recipe

Bread
Bread

Bread

It has been so long since I’ve posted. I’m so sorry. It’s been a little busy around here! Here’s what I’ve been up to: applying for a new job, getting a new job (doing social media for a local nutritionist), going to a big scary audition (and a big scary callback, with another one tomorrow night), and having Jonah’s mom and sister in town!

I know, excuses excuses! But hopefully this post is me getting back in the saddle. So this is another venture into the world of bread. I promised myself that I would finally make a starter, but of course, I didn’t because we’ve been so busy. Maybe next week? Or something?

Anyway, this bread is easy. Easier than all the other breads. No kneading, no let it rise, beat it down, let it rise again, do all this fancy stuff. Put everything in a bowl, let it rise, split it up, let it sit again for a bit, then bake. Can it get any easier? I’m gonna go with…not really.

No Knead Bread

Makes 2 loaves

Note: I didn’t want 3 loaves of bread, so I made 2/3 of the recipe. I’ll give you the full recipe though, and you can decide how much you want to make! I’ll put the amounts I did for 2/3 of the recipe in parentheses.

Ingredients

3 cups lukewarm water (2 cups)
1 1/2 Tbl granulated yeast (1 Tbl)
1 1/2 Tbl kosher or other course salt (1 Tbl)
6 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour (4 1/3 cups)
a handful of cornmeal for the pan

Instructions

Ok, put the yeast, flour, and salt in a bowl (I used my electric mixer with the dough hook). Pour the water over the dry ingredients and mix until it’s combined, a few minutes. Now cover your mixing bowl with foil or oiled plastic wrap and let it rise for 2-5 hours (I went with 5 because I was out doing stuff all day).

Now, cover your counter with PLENTY of flour. The dough is crazy sticky and wet, so be prepared for that. Dump it out onto the counter and separate the dough into however many loaves you’re making (original recipe: 3, my recipe: 2). Spread your handful of cornmeal over you baking sheet. Using lots of flour, form the dough into balls and place them on the baking sheet. The easiest way to form the balls is to pull the edges of the dough and tuck them underneath. Hopefully that makes sense. Once they’re on the baking sheet, you can let them rest for 30 minutes.

About halfway through the resting process, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Once they’re done resting, slash your loaves with 3-4 lines. You can do whatever design you like, as long as you do something! The slashes allow the loaves to expand while they’re baking in a kind of designated way rather than just exploding however they want. When your oven is heated, put the loaves in! On a lower rack, put a pan filled with about 1 cup of water. This will create steam which will make the crust crispier. Bake the bread for 30-35 minutes.

After removing the bread from the oven, put it on a wire rack to cool. Try to let it cool all the way before cutting a slice, slather it in butter, and chowing down. Enjoy!

Gnocchi with Spicy Tomato Sauce

Gnocchi
Gnocchi
Gnocchi
Gnocchi
Gnocchi
Gnocchi
Gnocchi

I’ve been lusting after the pasta attachments for my KitchenAid. Dreaming of them, of all the beautiful pasta I would make if I had them. Oh man. I want them so badly. But I don’t have them. And I probably won’t for a while. But I want to make pasta, so I after eyeing a few gnocchi recipes, I thought, hell, I’ll try it.

This may not have been my best decision ever. I mean, you have to start somewhere, right? But I decided to do it when we had a friend coming for dinner. But she was supportive of my endeavors. After reading many recipes and such about how to handle your potatoes and how much flour and egg to add, onward I went. One important thing is you don’t want to put your potatoes in a food processor or use an immersion blender or anything like that. You want to put it through a ricer or a grater or mash it with a fork. I chose the last route.

These gnocchi were pretty good for a first try. As I mentioned before, I think they were a little over-cooked. They also were a little dense, and I’m not sure why. There are a few possible explanations: 1) boiling them instead of roasting them? 2) added to much flour? 3) added too much egg? Who knows, but all of these are variables I plan on futzing with the next time around.

Potato Gnocchi and Spicy Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Potato Gnocchi

2 lbs russet potatoes
1 tsp salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups flour, plus some for rolling/dusting

Spicy Tomato Sauce

1 tsp butter
2-3 large shallots
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes, drained
1 15-oz can tomato puree/sauce
a pinch (or two) of sugar

Instructions

Potato Gnocchi

Cut your potatoes in half and put them in a pot of water. Bring the pot to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender throughout. This will take about 40-50 minutes. When the potatoes are cooked, remove each half one at a time onto a cutting board and peel each piece before you move onto the next. Be careful as they’ll be very hot! But the skins come off pretty easy, and if not, just use a paring knife. Once all the potatoes are removed and peeled, mash them. I used a fork so that I could be more thorough and make sure there weren’t any big clumps. Anyway, mash the potatoes and spread them out on the cutting board so that they can cool.

Once cool, put the potatoes in a bowl, add the egg and salt and mix together. Now add the flour a little bit at a time (I probably did 1/4 cup at a time) and mix it in. You don’t have to add all the flour. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t (I don’t know this for a fact) because I assume the gnocchi will be less dense when cooked. Just add flour until the dough doesn’t stick to your hands anymore. Now dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface (read: counter) and knead it gently for a few minutes, incorporating more flour if necessary.

After kneading, divide the dough into 6 equal parts, and roll each chunk one at a time into a rope about 3/4 inch thick. Cut each rope into 1 inch pieces. You’ll want to be sure to do this on a floured surface, as the rolling and cutting especially can result in the dough stick to the counter, which makes it hard to…ya know…remove them.

While you’re rolling out your dough, you can bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When it’s boiling, add the gnocchi in batches. I made the mistake of putting all of mine in at once and I think this caused the ones that were put in at the beginning. So do it in batches. After a little bit, your gnocchi will rise to the top of the pot. Let them cook for another minute after they do that, and then remove them with a slotted spoon to a bowl or colander or whatever. Do the same with the rest of the gnocchi.

I also decided to cook them in a pan after boiling them for 2 reasons: 1) they were pretty mushy and I wanted to dry them out a bit, and I knew this would help. 2) I love gnocchi that has that little bit of crunch from being lightly seared in a pan of butter. Yum. So if you want to do that, melt a bit of butter in a pan and cook the gnocchi in batches until it’s lightly browned on each side.

Spicy Tomato Sauce

Be warned, this pasta sauce has quite a bite to it from the chili flakes. I thought it was a perfect amount of spiciness, but if you are nervous about it, add less than 1/2 a tsp and add more till it suits your tastebuds.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the shallots, pepper flakes, and salt. Cook until the shallots are translucent and beginning to brown. At this point, add the wine and let it cook down. Now add the whole tomatoes and tomato puree, breaking the whole tomatoes up with a wooden spoon as they cook. Taste the sauce, and if it’s a little too spicy, add some sugar (a little bit at a time) and perhaps some wine. Allow the sauce to cook down until it’s the right consistency and put it atop your favorite pasta (or perhaps the gnocchi you just made).

Granola by Orangette

Granola
Granola

Granola

I am a big fan of homemade granola. I used to not like granola very much. The stuff you buy in the paper bags at the store was just too hard and crunchy for me, and I didn’t like not knowing what all the seeds and dried fruits in it were. This all changed when I had a roommate for a summer who made her own granola. The stuff used to make our entire house smell like heaven for days. It was amazing. So then I started using her secret recipe (secret being the operative word here, otherwise it would be on the blog, trust me) to make my own as well. I added some flax seeds here and some raisins there, and before I knew it, I became a lover of granola.

Remember those salted chocolate cookies I made last week? Well on the same blog, the post before those cookies is a recipe for Olive Oil and Maple Granola. That sounds…um…heavenly. Right? Am I right? You will, especially after I tell you the ingredients. Anyway, so I decided to make it. I love having granola around, it’s another quick alternative to cereal (try this granola with some Greek yogurt and slices of banana).

Olive Oil & Maple Granola

Ingredients

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup raw hulled pumpkin seeds
1 cup raw hulled sunflower seeds
1 cup unsweetened coconut chips
1 1/4 cups raw pecans, whole or chopped
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup olive oil (plus some for coating the pan)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet by spraying it with baking oil or just pouring on a little olive oil and spreading it around.

In a bowl, combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut chips, pecans, light brown sugar, and salt, and mix it all up.  Add the olive oil and maple syrup, and stir until the dry ingredients are evenly and well-coated.

Spread the oat mixture onto your baking pan in one even layer. Put it in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, stirring around every 15 minutes. When it’s done, the granola will be golden brown and toasted. Take it out of the oven (add more salt if you want to, but do a taste check first), and set the pan on a wire rack to cool. If you want to stir in any dried fruit – think cherries, raisins, or cranberries – now’s the time.

The granola will store well in an airtight container. It’s delicious, perfectly sweet, and nutty – try not to eat it too quickly. One great thing about this recipe is that it makes about 7 cups, so plenty of granola to last you at least a couple weeks. Enjoy with some rich greek yogurt!

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

You’ll notice that this is my second chocolate cookie recipe within a week. I know, I know, why Annie? Why do you tempt yourself with these delicious chocolatey cookies? First, I can’t help it. Sometimes I just want something fudgy and gooey and crisp around the edges. Second, I don’t eat all of them myself. The first cookies (the salted chocolate cookies) were mostly consumed by a bunch of friends we had over, and the second cookies (the ones I’m about to tell you about) I brought to Jonah’s boss. We’ve started a little tradition that whenever I make cookies, Jonah takes some into work so that we don’t eat them all, and his coworkers are loving it. Jonah works at a great start-up company in Portland that does internet radio, and we may be hitting the airwaves ourselves soon with a food/cooking show. We’ll see what happens, but we’re talking about it. Thoughts?

Anyway, now onto some chocolate crinkle cookies. I wanted to make something that did not require me to buy anything since we have so much baking stuff in our apartment. So after some searching, I found this recipe on 17 and baking for these. Easy, delicious, and pretty. I halved the recipe because, well it supposedly yields 7 DOZEN COOKIES and let’s face it, we really didn’t need that many. So I’ll give you my miniature version.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4-1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar

Instructions

In a bowl (or in the bowl of your electric mixer, if you’re using one) combine the cocoa powder, sugar, and oil. Scrape down the sides, and add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Add the vanilla. Now throw in the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix to combine. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. I let mine sit in the fridge overnight because I didn’t feel like starting the baking process at 11 p.m.

When you’re ready to bake the suckers, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and pull out the cookie dough. Put the powdered sugar into a shallow bowl, and roll the dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter or about a rounded teaspoon. You’ll want to lightly oil your hands so the dough doesn’t stick to your palms when you’r rolling it. After making the balls of dough, roll them in powdered sugar to coat evenly, dusting off any extra, and put them on the cookie sheet at least an inch apart.

Now put them in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes (mine were perfect at 11). Let them cool on the cookie sheet for a minute before moving them to a rack to cool completely. These cookies look like cookies you see in the magazine. They cracked beautifully and looked so pretty with the contrast of the white powdered sugar and the dark chocolate insides. Enjoy these treats with a glass of milk!

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls
Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

The other night, dinner rolled around, and I was feeling incredibly lazy. Nothing that I could think of eating actually sounded good to me, so I put Jonah in charge. There’s a restaurant here in Portland called Por Que Non that has really good Mexican food. They have this dish called a Bryan’s Bowl that is just a bowl of delicious rice and beans and meat and cheese and guacamole and salsa and everything you could ever want in a little bowl. It’s incredibly good. So Jonah suggested making something like the Bryan’s Bowl, and I was not particularly optimistic, because usually when restaurants have something like that they have some secret delicious sauce they pour over it to make it so freaking good. And we didn’t. But…oh well. So he searched something or other on the internet and found this recipe for Cilantro Lime Rice to use as the base for our Mexican bowls. And man oh man, it made all the difference.

Mexican Rice Bowls

Ingredients

Cilantro Lime Rice

1 cup uncooked white rice
1 teaspoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp plus 1 Tbl lime juice, freshly squeezed is highly preferred
1 15-oz can vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup water
2 tsp granulated sugar
4 Tbl fresh chopped cilantro

Mexican Rice Bowl

Cilantro Lime Rice
Black Beans
Chopped Red Onion
Chopped tomato (or salsa)
Chopped avocado (or guacamole)
Sour Cream
Hot sauce
Lime wedges
Chopped cilantro
Tortilla chips

Instructions

Cilantro Lime Rice

Let’s start with the rice. Put the rice, butter, garlic, 2 tsp of lime juice, broth, and water in a pan. Bring the contents to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and cover and cook the rice until it’s tender (about 15-20 minutes). While the rice is cooking, mix the leftover Tbl of lime juice with the sugar and cilantro. When the rice is done, remove it from the heat and stir in the cilantro/lime mixture.

Mexican Rice Bowl

While the rice is cooking you can also prep the rest of your ingredients for your bowl. We drained the beans and just heated them in the microwave, chopped the onions, and got out the salsa, guacamole, sour cream, cholula, and some tortilla chips.

Now it’s time to assemble your bowl. I did mine kind of like you would if it were the filling of a burrito, making even layers of all the ingredients I wanted. I also used my bowl as kind of a layered dip and ate it with tortilla chips for an added bit of crunch. Oh man. I may not have been in the mood for this meal at the beginning of the evening, but it really hit the spot! Enjoy!

Cheese Straws with a Bite

Cheese Straws with a Bite

Cheese Straws with a Bite
Cheese Straws with a Bite

For some reason I’ve been in the mood to make some kind of cheesy snacking food lately, like crackers or something. So this weekend when I was up in Seattle, I took the opportunity to make these cheese straws from Smitten Kitchen. They are ridiculously easy and have quite a bite to them due to the red pepper flakes. If you don’t want to risk them being too spicy for you (or whoever else may be eating them), you can easily reduce the amount of red pepper flakes, but I thought it was quite delicious.

Cheese Straws

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
4 tablespoons (1/2 a stick) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into 4 pieces
3/4 cup flour, plus some for rolling out the dough
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon milk or half-and-half

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, pulse the cheese, butter, flour, salt, and pepper flakes. Pulse it until the mixture is in coarse crumbs.

Now add the milk until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Lightly flour a cutting board or your kitchen counter, dump the dough out, and roll it into as rectangular of a shape as possible and about 1/8 of an inch thick. With a sharp knife slice the dough into 1/4 inch – 1/3 inch strips. I left some edges ragged and trimmed others, I don’t think it really matters.

Now you can gently put the strips onto a cookie sheet (no need to grease it because of the butter). You want to leave a little space between them, but they don’t need much (1/4-1/2 an inch is plenty). The dough is fragile, so they might break, but don’t worry about it. The cheese straws can be any length really.

Bake them in the oven for 12 – 15 minutes (I think I baked mine closer to 15, I like the ends nice and brown). Remove them from the oven, allow to cool for a minute or two on the baking sheet, and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Good luck keeping these around for long. They were gone pretty quickly. They’re perfectly crispy and cheesy with a bit of spice… Mm! I love them. Enjoy!

Salted Chocolate Cookies

Salted Chocolate Cookies

Salted Chocolate Cookies
Salted Chocolate Cookies

Salted Chocolate Cookies

If you are into salt, and want to venture into the world of fancy salt, a good start is Maldon. This salt is the saltiest, crunchiest salt I’ve tasted, and made from the sea! Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, there are members of my family who are in love with salt. So when my dad came across a recipe for salted chocolate cookies, we decided we had to make them the next time we were together, which happened to be this past weekend. I mean, come on, the recipe even calls for Maldon.

Another wonderful thing that comes from this recipe is the discovery of the wonderful blog Orangette. I knew I would like this blog immediately for 2 reasons: 1) the salted chocolate cookies you will see below. 2) it is written by Molly Wizenberg, one of the founders of Delancey in Seattle. If you live in Seattle, I recommend that you immediately stop reading this blog, get in your car, and go to Delancey. Delicious salads, delicate and scrumptious pizzas, and lovely desserts. It’s ok, the blog will be here when you get back. Just go.

Now that you’re back, let’s continue. So these cookies are rich and light at the same time, and I am recently of the impression that salt makes everything better, so it’s a good sign that they’re decorated with fancy salt. Right?

Salted Chocolate Cookies

Makes 5 dozen cookies

Ingredients

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 2 Tbl unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
8 Tbl (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup plus 2 Tbl sugar, plus more for rolling the logs
2 large eggs
¼ tsp table salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole milk
Maldon salt, for finishing

Instructions

First thing you’ll need to do is melt your chocolate. After you’ve cut it up, put it in a heatproof bowl that will fit securely on a small saucepan you’ve got. Put about 2 inches of water in the saucepan, bring it to a simmer, and put the bowl of chocolate on the pan. The bowl shouldn’t be touching the water, just getting the steam. You also want to make sure that no moisture gets into the chocolate as this will make it seize, which isn’t really good for anyone. Anyway, heat the chocolate and stir it occasionally until it is melty and smooth. Remove it from the heat (carefully, the bowl will be hot) and set it aside to cool.

Now, in a medium mixing bowl (not your electric mixer, mind you, if you’re planning on using one), combine the flour, cocoa, and baking powder. Set aside. In your electric mixer, beat the butter on a medium speed until it’s nice and creamy. Slowly pour in the sugar (perhaps even while the mixer is going, just be careful not to get sugar everywhere), and continue to mix until the butter/sugar mixture is smooth and soft. Now add the eggs one at a time, mixing well to incorporate after each one. Add the salt and vanilla, and, making sure it’s cool (you don’t want it to cook the eggs), the melted chocolate. Beat to incorporate all of these things into one beautiful mixture.

Now beat in the milk, and lastly, the flour mixture. Beat on low speed until it’s just incorporated. Here’s a little note about electric mixers: sometimes I turn mine up higher to fling off the stuff stuck on the paddle or whisk and get it mixed in. I should not do this unless the recipe I’m following specifically tells me to turn the mixer up high. Why? Because by doing this, I’m adding air to the dough/batter, which can make the cookies (or whatever I’m making) a different texture than they were intended to be. So now you know.

Now comes a fun/weird part. Dampen a counter and lay out a big piece of plastic wrap (dampening it – wiping it with a wet sponge – will help keep the plastic wrap in place while you work) and dump 1/2 or 1/3 of your dough onto it. Now you’re going to have to mush and mold and roll the dough using the plastic wrap to shape a log. The size of the log totally depends on how big you want your cookies to be. Mine was probably about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Anyway, after you’ve smooshed it into a good log, you can wrap it up in the plastic wrap, twist up the ends, and stick it in your fridge to chill overnight.

When you’re ready to make some freaking cookies, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Also, remove your dough from the fridge. You’ll need that. Now, the recipe says to put parchment paper on your work surface, make a pile of sugar on it, and roll the dough in it. That did not work for me, though I did try. It probably would have worked better to put a cup of sugar in a shallow bowl and dunk the logs in that, but because I already had sugar all over my work surface (I also just used a cutting board instead of more parchment paper), I just decided to sprinkle sugar over the logs. Anyway, however you do it, coat your dough logs with sugar, and then slice them with a sharp knife into 1/4-1/3 inch slices. Put the cookies on the cookie sheet about an inch apart, and sprinkle each cookie with some Maldon salt. Note: the amount of salt we put on the cookies increased with each batch because we love the stuff so much.

Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes. The cookies should still feel soft to the touch, but look set. After allowing them to cool on the sheet for a minute, transfer them to a wire rack to cool. This recipe made SO MANY COOKIES. Seriously. Like… 5 or 6 dozen. And they are hard to stop eating, so be warned. Make them for a party or a gathering or something.