Sunday Night Cookie Blogging: Kitchen Crapshoot Edition

No matter how skilled you are (and I make no claims to being anything more than an enthusiastic and fairly competent amateur), cooking is always a crapshoot. You increase your odds by having the basic skills down, choosing your ingredients well, and using reliable recipes, but some element of chance always remains. Sometimes it's happy serendipity and you get an outcome even better than you anticipated, and sometimes it all goes disappointingly wrong. Today, I got lucky.

For this week's cookie blogging, I tried to re-create a biscotti recipe my mother used to make when I was a kid, but has long since lost. They were walnut biscotti with the sharp, earthy bite of a significant quantity of black pepper, which sounds very odd but, in fact, worked wonderfully well. I've madly Googled "walnut pepper biscotti" and endless variations thereon for months, but none of the recipes I've uncovered have gotten the "eureka" from Mom, so I decided to try winging it to see how close I can get. Having had good results with the last batch of biscotti from a Todd English recipe, I decided to modify the recipe for Cardamom Almond Biscotti from The Figs Table. I figured cardamom and pepper were similar enough that they could be swapped 1:1, and almonds and walnuts are equally easy to exchange. Although I knew the original recipe did not have espresso powder in it, I decided to leave it in, just to see how the combination would work.

The raw dough was lovely to work with, very pliable and easy to shape, and because you don't have to soften the butter, it's great for impulse baking. It was also very tasty, buttery and warm from the coffee and pepper, with a slow cumulative burn rather than a nose-tingling initial bite. I sneaked a few bites of the still-warm dough after the first baking while I was slicing it for the second round, and it was even better. The end product is fantastic. It's almost nothing like the taste I was originally going for, because the original did put the black pepper front and center, but it's absolutely great in its own right. Here, the coffee marries with the pepper, the vanilla, the orange, and the walnuts to make a full, deep, round combination that is much more than the sum of those parts. I am really pleased. I can even see these becoming something of a signature cookie, if I can come up with a sexier name than "Black Pepper Espresso Walnut Biscotti". (Maybe something like Indonesian Biscotti, since black pepper and coffee are both grown there.)

Here's the recipe:

Black Pepper Espresso Walnut Biscotti
(Makes 4 dozen)

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 extra-large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon dried orange rind (available through Penzey's), rehydrated (or 1 tablespoon fresh orange zest)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

In the bowl of a mixer, beat the butter and sugars together until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating thoroughly, then mix in the vanilla and orange zest.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, espresso powder, and black pepper until homogeneous. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture in two or three batches, mixing just until combined. Stir in the walnuts.

Divide the dough into two equal batches. Shape one half into a log 12 inches long by approximately 4 inches on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until evenly golden brown and slightly cracked on top. (While the first half is baking, refrigerate the remaining half.) Set aside to cool, and repeat the baking process with the remainder of the dough.

Lower the oven to 300 F. Using a serrated knife, slice the mostly-cooled logs on the diagonal into 1/2-inch thick slices. Place the biscotti on an ungreased, unlined cookie sheet, flat side down, and bake for 20 minutes, flipping the cookies halfway through. Allow to cool completely on the sheet, then store in an airtight container.

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I had these biscotti for dessert tonight, along with the leftovers of an equally experimental mascarpone-based mousse I threw together on a whim yesterday. Since that showed definite promise but still needs a little tweaking, I won't post the recipe yet, but I hope to perfect it very soon. Since coffee was also a major flavor element in the mousse, it went beautifully with the cookies, which provided a lovely crisp contrast to the cool richness and creaminess of the mousse. I think combining the two elements with a third (perhaps poached pears or something similar) might make for a really elegant special-occasion dessert.

Just to show that not all my experiments go that well, I'll also share my most recent cooking faux pas. Two weeks ago, I bought a beautiful basket of fresh purple figs. As I always do when I buy figs or similarly pricey, relatively rare, short-season produce, I got ambitious. I decided to try for something like a spectacular dessert I had several years ago at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco (thankfully, on someone else's dime), a napoleon made with fresh figs and a honey mousse. I knew I wasn't going to be able to reproduce that recipe, but I thought I might make something evocative, if simpler, by baking the figs with port and making a frozen honey mousse I'd been eyeing for a long time in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The mousse was very simple: egg yolks, honey, and cream, with some flavorings and pistachios mixed in before freezing. Since the recipe called for a strong-flavored honey and I only had very mild varieties at home, I went to the honey vender at the farmer's market, and asked for a strong one for cooking. He gave me a smartweed honey that was almost molasses-dark, recommended for baking. When I got it home, I opened it and gave it a taste while preparing the rest of the ingredients. It was strong. Really strong. A little alarm went off in my head, that while this might work in baked goods because it could stand up to the heat, it might be too medicinal for use in that recipe. I didn't listen to that instinct, though. I figured all the fat and the freezing would dull the flavor, and that I should just give it a chance.

Well, I was wrong. Even after mixing with the egg yolks and the whipped cream, even after freezing, it was way too pungent for even the most assertive fig. It had an almost menthol-like top note which, although it did fade after the initial taste, still killed the flavor of the fruit. We didn't even finish the batch, and I had to toss out the remaining half. The moral of the story? Cooking is as much about listening to your instincts as it is about honing your skills. If it doesn't smell or feel right, don't trust the recipe to fix it for you.

Next weekend, schedule permitting, we'll have another installment of Celebrity Chefs I Hate.

Sunday Night Cookie Blogging

For some reason, I always develop a mad desire to bake on Sundays. Maybe it's a desperate attempt to stave off Monday for a little longer, or perhaps it's just that Sundays are the only day of the week I really have the leisure to bake, since Saturdays are usually taken up with errands and eating out and movies and the million other things you feel you have to cram into your two days off. By Sunday night, you've given up on having the time of your life, and you're happy to settle for the small and quiet pleasures you can fit into those last few hours.

Since even I am not ambitious enough to bake a cake or eclairs at the last minute and for just two people, it's almost inevitably cookies that I end up making on Sundays. Cookies are fast, easy, and endlessly varied, so I can usually indulge whatever particular craving I have with ingredients I already have on hand. The other nice thing about cookies is that I can bake as many as I think the Lord and I will actually eat, and put the rest of the dough in the freezer for another day. Most of the time, I end up freezing half the batch and taking all but about a half-dozen of the baked cookies to work with me on Monday, which provides the dual benefit of getting all of those calories out of the house and ingratiating me to the coworkers.

(I'm a firm believer in the power of bribery through baked goods. I have shamelessly exploited my ability to bake on many an occasion, and I'm convinced that it was a flourless chocolate cake made with an entire jar of Nutella that really started the ice breaking with Lord Disdain's extended family, which had previously spent a long time pretending I didn't exist. If, like me, you are lacking in a certain degree of social finesse, you can't go wrong by getting in the habit of bringing attractively-packaged homemade carb-loaded treats to gatherings.)

Tonight, I felt like chocolate, so I flipped through my latest favorite baking book, The Village Baker's Wife, and found a recipe for Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies: chocolate cookies with pecans and semisweet and white chocolate chunks. Since I'm not a great fan of white chocolate, I decided to substitute the Guittard butterscotch chips I bought a few weeks ago on a whim, thinking that the chocolate, pecan, and butterscotch combination would be reminiscent of turtle candies. The raw dough was absolutely divine; it tasted like a very thick chocolate cake batter or buttercream frosting. The baked cookies are very fudgy and brownie-like, especially if you underbake them slightly. They're really, really rich, though, so the three dozen I've baked so far will be going to work tomorrow, and the remaining half of the dough will be portioned out with my miniature ice cream/cookie scoop and put into freezer bags for the next time I have last-minute guests or a frantic chocolate craving that the cocoa recipe can't satisfy.

Turtle Cookies
(makes approximately 6 dozen)

7 oz semisweet chocolate
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 oz semisweet chocolate chips
8 oz butterscotch chips
1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted and finely chopped

Preheat oven to 325F.

Chop the 7 oz of chocolate with a serrated knife and melt, either in a double boiler or in the microwave. (If the latter, use 20-second increments and stir between blasts to make sure that you don't burn the chocolate.) Let cool slightly.

Cream the butter and sugars together in a mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating the first one thoroughly before adding the second one, then the vanilla and melted chocolate, mixing until blended.

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together, and add it to the creamed mixture in two or three batches, being careful not to over-mix. With a spatula or spoon, stir in the chips and pecans.

With a spoon or cookie scoop, drop 2 tablespoons of the dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets, leaving two inches between scoops. Bake for 13 minutes.

Notes: Next time, I might reduce the quantity of chips and chop the pecans more coarsely. I prefer a cookie with chips in it to a mass of chips and nuts bound by a web of dough, and this recipe is pretty close to my overload point. I bet kids would love the fully-loaded version, though. One advantage to being so chip-heavy is that the dough doesn't spread very much, so you don't have to be overly scrupulous about spacing with these cookies.

This recipe makes a huge amount of dough. You could probably get away with halving it if you're not in the mood to feed an army or stockpiling for a cookie emergency.


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Last weekend's Sunday cookie was almond macaroons, because I had three egg whites left over from making an egg yolk-based frozen honey mousse (about which I'll blog separately when I have a moment, as it was an object lesson in Choosing Your Ingredients Carefully ). These cookies, from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, come in handy whenever I have egg whites to get rid of immediately but don't want to bother with meringues, pavlovas, or anything else that will require getting out the Kitchenaid. They're also great last-minute lazy treats, provided you have ground nuts on hand.

Almond Macaroons
(makes three to four dozen)

2 1/4 cups ground almonds
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 egg whites
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons almond extract
Slivered almonds or blanched whole almonds for decoration

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Combine the ingredients into a thick paste, and drop with a small cookie scoop or two spoons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Press a few almond slivers or a whole blanched almond into each cookie, and bake for 20 minutes, or until set on the outside but slightly soft when pressed. Allow to cool on a rack before eating.

Notes: Trader Joe's now carries ground almonds (and, sporadically, ground hazelnuts, which also work beautifully here if you substitute vanilla extract or Frangelico for the almond extract), which makes this recipe practically effortless. If you can't find pre-ground nuts, you can make your own in a food processor by processing whole nuts with a few tablespoons of sugar, taken from the quantity required in the recipe, until finely ground. The sugar acts as an abrasive and makes sure the nuts maintain a flour-like consistency, preventing them from turning into nut butter.

The original recipe used two egg whites. I've scaled it up to three, since I had three whites to use up.

Obligatory Puppy Picture

Between the horrors in New Orleans and a rough week at work, I haven't felt much like food blogging in recent days. I may report on what I'm making for dinner tonight (a Nicoise salad and a dessert recipe from Deborah Madison), but in the meantime, I thought I'd provide a little spiritual nourishment of a different variety. This is my baby, when she actually was a baby.


It may not be chocolate, but it can still fix a crappy day.