Category Archives: cookie

Cardamom coconut brownies with white chocolate.

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cardamom coconut blondies

A few weeks ago I was reading about Indian sweetmeats, as one does, and I thought, “These would make great cakes!” Not that they weren’t perfect in their original forms, I’m sure, just that some of the flavor combinations, and some of the interesting techniques seemed so inspiring to me, so full of possibilities. One in particular, a kind of fudge, with cardamom and coconut, became stuck in my craw as a perfect combination. Time passed, and the combination of cardamom and coconut haunted me…but I really felt that I wanted to make something with a different texture – not light and crumbly like a cake, but dense and tender, like the fudge that had inspired me. And then the whole thing with the brownies happened (I made 2 trays in 2 days…) And then it hit me!! These should be brownies!! But really blondies, because they wouldn’t have any cocoa in them! And they should have white chocolate chips, because brownies are required to have chocolate chips, but I liked the idea of all the wintery white colors in these. Before the last brownie was eaten, I got to work. And, let me tell you, these are the most ridiculously tasty, tender inside, crispy outside blondies I have ever eaten!!

Here’s Jole Blon by Harry Choates
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Mexican hot chocolate brownies – chewy v. cake-y

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Mexican hot chocolate brownies

Here at the test kitchens of The Ordinary, we do the hard work so you don’t have to. I made two big trays of brownies in as many days, and then I forced my poor beleaguered family to try both and decide which they liked better. It was an arduous job, I tell you! Why did we do this? In an attempt to determine why some brownies turn out chewy, and some turn out cakey. And why some have that crackly, dried mud looking top, which is so oddly appealing.

These particular brownies were inspired by Mexican hot chocolate, that completely perfect combination of chocolate, vanilla and cinnamon. More than that – they contain Mexican hot chocolate. That’s right, we didn’t just add vanilla and cinnamon, we melted one of the hot chocolate tablets with the butter, and stirred it right into the brownies. And then we added vanilla and cinnamon! And then we ate them with cream whipped with vanilla and cinnamon! These smell so ridiculously good when you’re cooking them that it will make you dizzy.

The results of our fiendish experiments were inconclusive, because everybody liked all of them. However, we have gathered a small amount of data. If you use white sugar, you will get a crackly top. If you use brown sugar, you will have a smooth and placid surface. If you add two eggs, you will have a cake-y brownie. If you use only one egg, you will have a chewy fudgy brownie. If you want a cake-y brownie, you should add a bit more baking powder – 1/2 t. as opposed to 1/4. I can’t guarantee the scientific reliability of these facts. You might have to make several trays yourself, purely for the noble cause of verifying this experiment.

Brownies are incredibly easy to make, which is a good thing when you’re making tray after tray of them, day after day. You simply melt some butter, stir some stuff in, put them in a tray and cook them for a while. The Mexican hot chocolate tablet I used was made by chocolate Ibarra. It contains cocoa nibs, sugar and cinnamon. It melted quite nicely in a few tablespoons of water, and then mixed well with the melting butter. I think you could probably use any brand, but you may have to experiment to find out! Oh, and I should add that, in my book, brownies have to have chocolate chips in them. It’s required!

Here’s Chocolate Caliente by Mike Laure
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Pumpkin chocolate chip spiral cookies

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Pumpkin chocolate chip spirals

These cookies are oddly addictive. Well – chocolate and cinnamon – I guess it’s not that odd. But it’s more than that, I tell you! There’s something about the subtly sweet pumpkin cookie part, which shines through the more assertive flavors of cinnamon and chocolate, that makes you want more. That, and, they’re spirals! With gooey cinnamon-y chocolate-y bits that you get to when you peel them apart. What could be more fun to eat than that? I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, I accidentally added too much pumpkin purée, which meant that I had to compensate by adding too much flour, which ultimately produced a very dense cookie. This recipe is adjusted to make a slightly lighter cookie, but it will still have that pumpkin pie-tenderness.
Here’s The Great Pumpkin Waltz performed by the Vince Guaraldi trio.
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Syllabub cookies

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Syllabub cookies

Every Christmas we have a special drink/dessert called syllabub. It’s from an old recipe – hundreds of years old! As with most old recipes, there are many variations, but at its simplest, syllabub combines cream and spirits. Our version combines sweetened red wine with whipped cream mixed with orange & lemon zest and juice and sherry.

These little butter cookies are based on this premise. The cookies themselves are made with orange & lemon curd and a little sherry. They’re iced with a red wine glaze. Their taste is unusual, but very good! A nice cookie to have in the afternoon with a glass of sherry, or after dinner with red wine. I should admit that when I made the curd, it didn’t quite solidify. I’m such a coward about cooking things with egg yolks in them on top of the stove. So I panicked and took it off the heat too early. But it didn’t matter! It worked in the cookies anyway. In fact, this is a good recipe to use for any sort of failed citrus curd experiment you might encounter.

Here’s Clash City Rockers, because they sing about oranges and lemons, of course!
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Oatmeal chocolate-covered-ginger cookies

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These might not be the most colorful cookies on your holiday tray, but they’ll be among the most flavorful! Spicy oatmeal cookies are crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and contain the irresistible surprise of chocolate-covered ginger! There’s just something cheerfully salubrious about them, as well. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that chocolate and oatmeal are natural anti-depressants. Ginger is good for everything. Molasses has lots of iron. So grab yourself a plate of these, a bottle of red wine and a big warm blanket, and head into hibernation for the winter!

I liked to half-dip them in melted dark chocolate. Because more chocolate is always better, they look pretty, and they reminded me of chocolate covered hob nobs, which is surely the most comforting cookie on the planet! They’re good without that extra touch, though, if you’re not in the mood to play with melted chocolate.

Here’s Michigan and Smiley with Little Drummer Boy. Rappa pom pom, eh!!
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Hazelnut/raspberry/dark chocolate bar cookies

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Hazelnut/raspberry/dark chocolate!

Oh, the tasty trinity of deliciousity that is hazelnuts, raspberries, and dark chocolate! I’ve combined it here in the easiest way possible…a soft hazelnut shortbread, covered with a layer of raspberry jam, and coated with dark chocolate. I think bar cookies are the simplest to make, because you don’t have to fiddle with each individual cookie, and they’re nice because you get the full effect of each individual flavor in each bite. A good cookie to make when you realize it’s December 21st and you haven’t made batches and batches of cookies, yet. I used seedless raspberry jam, but you could use any kind of jam you like. Apricot, strawberry, blackberry – even marmalade! All would taste good here. And I baked mine in a 8 X 12 inch brownie pan, but you could use something larger, or even a baking sheet, if you want your shortbread layer to be thinner. And you can omit the egg and add more flour if you want it to be crispier.
Here’s Fats Waller with Black Raspberry Jam
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Cherry coconut cookies with lime glaze

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cherry coconut cookie

Light, crispy on the outside, and chewy on the inside, these cookies are an antidote to all of the heavier chocolate desserts that abound during the holidays. They’re sweet, of course, because…well, they’re cookies! But they’ve got dried cherries in them, which are slightly tart, and a lime glaze, which is decidedly tart (though, oddly, made mostly of sugar!) Easy to make, and very pretty, with their lacy texture and flakes of green against pieces of red cherry. Do you remember cherry lime rickies? I have a vague memory of being told about them when I was a teenager and worked at a soda fountain. Are they real? What are they? These were the thoughts going around in my head as I made these cookies.

It’s got to be Coconut, by Harry Nilsson, doesn’t it? This song always scared me a little bit.
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Chocolate cayenne cutout cookies

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Chocolate cayenne cutout cookies


As I was making these, I said to myself, “Claire, you’re crazy!” Why? Because I made nearly the same cookie less than a week ago! And wrote about it here! Those were my spicy-hot dark chocolate cookies. As I mentioned at the time, they were like little cakes. Diabolical little cakes. Because they were a bit soft and had jam in the middle. I lay awake one night thinking these would also make good cookies to roll out and cut in cool shapes. And then coat with melted bittersweet chocolate. So I came up with this alternative recipe. The taste is very nearly the same – chocolate-y chocolate-i-ness with a spicy cayenne-ginger bite that sneaks up on you. But they’re a little harder and crunchier. And they hold the shape of your cookie cutters.

Here’s MF DOOM with Cayenne Pepper.
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Party!

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veggie party food!!

We had a christmas party in our store the other night. That’s right! We have a store. It’s called ANTICK, and we have beautiful furniture and built-ins, and all kinds of wonderful other things as well, from hand-blown wine glasses to the nicest cutting boards you’ve ever seen, to stuffed felt owls. But this isn’t actually an advertisement for our store. No it’s not. It’s about vegetarian christmas party food made by pastry-dorks such as myself!

I had the brilliant idea to try to serve red and green food. So we had red and green cerignola olives, which are my favorite kind of olives. And I made bright green chermoula sauce, which I dusted with bright brick red spanish paprika. Very pretty! (chermoula is a mix of cilantro, parsley, olive oil, lemon, garlic, cumin and, um, paprika) I served it with small slices of baguette.

And I made pretty rosy little paprika cracker cups with membrillo and manchego. And spicy dark chocolate cookies.

And I made chard rolls in flaky pastry. A little bit like vegetarian sausage rolls, with red and green swiss chard (I know, I know, it’s not so red and green anymore once it’s all baked in pastry). These had olives, capers, hazelnuts and mozzarella. They’re nice because they’re small enough that people can have one or two as a snack, but they’re substantial enough that you can have a few and call it dinner. If, say, you’ve been making party snacks all day and don’t feel like making an actual meal.

Here’s Antick decked out in holiday regalia.

Antick

And here’s my current favorite holiday song…The Ethiopians’ Ding Dong Bell. It’s the best!

Dark, spicy-hot chocolate cookies

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dark chocolate cayenne cookies


I have to come up with a better name for these cookies – but how to describe them? They’re made with extra dark cocoa, and flavored with cayenne, black pepper and ginger for a surprising little bite. They’re filled with tart/sweet unbelievably delicious black currant jam, and they’re topped with dark dark 60% chocolate. All together they’re surprising and addictive. I’d originally thought of this as a cake, and these are like little cakes. The cookies are quite soft, a little crispy and chewy, and the chocolate adds a pleasing crunch. But a soft crunch, if that makes sense? The cayenne is subtle, it sneaks up on you, and gives you a little kick moments after you’ve first tasted the cookie. And it makes the cookies extra-good with either coffee or red wine.

If you want cookies that taste like this but are a little crunchier and harder, try this recipe.

I love the flavor of black currants. (See my ravings in the quince post). I have a small bush in my backyard, but it’s only produced about 20 berries at a time. They’re pretty berries, though! The birds like to eat them right off the bush, which is a pretty sight as well. Did you ever wonder why black currant products, which are plentiful all over europe, are not as common in America? Apparently it’s because black currants, which used to be native, shared a disease with some kind of tree (I can’t remember which one!) so they were outlawed!! So sad. But they’ve come up with disease-resistant stains, now, so maybe they’ll make a comeback.

Here’s Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Pepper Stomp. I love stomps!!
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