December 2011
1 post
September 2011
1 post
When I take cookies out of the oven I put the pan down to free my left hand to move the cookies off the spatula (in my right hand) and on to the cooling racks. I have tried to use just one hand to accomplish this, agitating the spatula in various ways to coax the cookie to slide off, except the hot, moist underside sticks more often than not - I concluded, it could not be done with one hand...
April 2011
3 posts
The cookie container is full. Of peanut butter cookies, knock-off chocolate fire cookies and “Stewart pie strips.” A lot of things came together: I went to a Passover seder on Tuesday, at which I made almond-coconut macaroons, which are all egg white and so I had six yolks in a jar in the fridge. Also, I’m going to New York this weekend and hoping to try, at long last, Four...
I made vegan, gluten-free coconut chocolate chip cookies (ack, not quite vegan, I forgot there is milk fat in those Ghirardelli 60% chocolate chips, damn). Anyway, I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies; I’ve been eating Petit Écolier with my roommate, and once you’ve had one of those you can never get enough chocolate in a cookie. I am out of butter and used coconut oil in its...
I was making these sesame peanut butter cookies that are really fussy: I refrigerated the dough for four hours, formed each cookie into a ball, flattened them with a fork, and then sprinkled their tops with sesame seeds and coarse sea salt. It took a long time and it was late and I was getting frustrated. I do not usually use a fork to flatten peanut butter cookies, even though it is the...
March 2011
2 posts
Everything but cats
Today, a visiting artist was teaching class in the studio so I asked if she had any allergies. No, she told me, I can eat anything. So I made everything cookies. I brought some to give to Aki Sasamoto who was also at Harvard today. These are everything cookies, I explained, I hope you’re not allergic to anything. Just cats. Are there cats in them? The complete ingredients:
coconut...
My professor is in Chicago today so I was teaching class alone and I thought it would be nice to make my students cookies. I thought, straight forward chocolate chip cookies would be a crowd pleaser BUT I don’t like the chips we have (Ghirardelli semisweet, I prefer the 60%ers, but the semis are dairy-free, more inclusive). AND I’ve been wanting to try a recipe without leaveners (no...
December 2010
2 posts
Ginger Chocolate Understated Feel-Good
Stewart and I were feeling low today, Providence’s been hollowed out by this snow storm; we walked a friend to the train station and walked back to the apartment and it wore us out, the sidewalks are unplowed and my socks got wet from the holes in my boot heels. I napped and we baked bread and made plantains and finally resolved to bike, despite the slush, to the supermarket for butter and...
August 2010
1 post
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
3 posts
May 2010
2 posts
MILITARY SPECIFICATION: COOKIES, OATMEAL; AND... →
“3.4.1 Palatability. The finished product shall be equal to or better than the preproduction sample (see 6.1) in palatability and overall appearance.”
I’m adding that to all my recipes.
I keep forgetting ingredients. Last week, I made mint chocolate chocolate chip cookies for a friend in Somerville but first I forgot to add the melted chocolate when I mixed in the flour — I was able to mix it in after and it was OK — then I baked the first twelve cookies without adding chocolate chips! I was talking a lot, I guess I was distracted, it was disconcerting BUT it...
April 2010
1 post
I’m headed to New York next week for more chocolate/ranch dressing work and I’ll be staying with a friend who has celiac disease, so I’ve been experimenting with gluten-free baking. I bought two Bob’s Red Mill products (although that Wikipedia article does not inspire confidence in the “gluten-free” label) “Sweet” Sorghum Flour and Gluten-Free...
March 2010
4 posts
I made coconut cranberry chocolate chunk cookies again for a potluck on Friday. And one of the friends I went with also made cookies, from a Fannie Farmer recipe close to the Tollhouse recipe. They really looked like cookies, with the little fissures on top, smooth edges, the light brown color of semisweet chips. My cookies looked at best weird, at worst pretentious, next to them. It is odd...
I made mint chocolate chocolate chip cookies in New York Sunday night, cranberry walnut chocolate chunk in Providence Monday night, and coconut cranberry chocolate chunk Thursday night in Somerville. Stewart travelled with me from Boston to Providence to New York to Providence and back to Boston again. Now he’s in New York and tomorrow I return to Providence. In my mind, hobos are...
February 2010
2 posts
I know: I don’t update this blog enough. I’m sorry. Mostly, it is because I am all blogged out from writing about my other passion here. Also, because I have been moving around a lot recently. Currently, I am living in Providence with David. We moved in on Monday and because we are both “cash poor” we can’t buy food. Thus, tonight, we made gumbo from the canned...
December 2009
2 posts
I made a half batch today with half brown sugar and half white. To give them some texture without the full on chew or crunch of oats or groats, respectively, I added a 1/2 cup of wheat germ. 60% dark chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. The only usual ingredient I was missing was vanilla. Recently, my uncle sent me a link to a blog that said the perfect cookie should be crunchy, chewy and...
October 2009
1 post
When I paid my rent last week, I brought the check to my landlord with a plate of cookies. The rent due and it being the end of the month, we were a little thin on ingredients. But my roommate had gone apple-picking, so to replace the egg I whipped up some applesauce (3 apples and one overripe peach). We didn’t have any butter so I used canola oil (1/3 cup as per PPK recommendation for...
September 2009
2 posts
I just moved into a new apartment this week. We don’t have any furniture yet but we are fully-outfitted for cookies. The last ingredient we needed, baking soda, I picked up on my way home tonight. I watched some videos online, cleaned up my room (no furniture, folded clothes into piles on the floor), brushed my teeth and prepared to make my first half batch of cookies, to be delivered in the...
I made my version of the chocolate salty oat for my friend’s last radio broadcast. The show is called Sworn to the Dark and the dark-colored, almost savory cookie seemed appropriate. I put in a cup and a half of oats, a tablespoon of sea salt and chopped the chocolate more coarsely than usual. They came out well, with gooey veins of chocolate, maybe a little too salty, but they were eaten...
August 2009
3 posts
I made cookies from the ingredients I found at a friend’s house: vanilla-flavored turbinado sugar, whole wheat pastry flour, no baking soda or powder, everything else she had except I had to bake them on a cast-iron skillet, six at a time. For whatever reason — I left the butter out for perhaps too long and the sugar was very weird with chunks of vanilla bean in it — they bubbled...
Independently of one another, last Wednesday and Saturday respectively, two friends of mine suggested I make maple syrup cookies. Coincidences like this demand action: so tonight, I embarked with the mobile cookie unit in tow, supplemented for the occasion with a bottle of maple syrup. I also brought a bottle of Jim Beam that had been a prop in a movie I made two years ago and which I realized...
“I’ve never really seen single purpose flour but if it exists I don’t...”
– Mr. Chi City
July 2009
1 post
I am going to visit my friend during her radio show tonight and wanted to bring some of the banana bread I made yesterday but her co-host is vegan. I bought some Earth Balance last week and made a batch of pretty yucky-tasting cookies with it and with eggs, so not even vegan (they were gobbled up no problem by me and my mom). So I turned to the Post Punk Kitchen, internet repository of all...
June 2009
3 posts
My dad used to take me to a bakery … this isn’t a very good story because I don’t remember where it was, what it was called or what I got there (maybe he’ll comment and clue me in), but he would get hermits (which always looked unappetizing to me). So for Father’s Day, I found a recipe online and made a batch. They turn out to be molasses cookies with cinnamon,...
It’s been a hard couple of months: one night in April, I was reduced to making a quarter batch, only enough cookies for one. In May, moving from couch to couch, I rebuilt the mobile cookie unit to include every ingredient and a bowl, cookie sheet and half cup measure. We’ve hit some kind of watershed in New York and many of the people I know are leaving the city; tonight I went to a...
April 2009
2 posts
Made some cookies at home for my mom, she didn’t like the applesauce, complaining: “I can taste the applesauce, these are applesauce cookies.” It didn’t help that I didn’t bake them long enough; they tasted to me like ice cream. The second part of the batch I pressed down per my mom’s instructions, and baked longer, until browned on the bottom: these came out...
Flash flood of guests last night after dinner: new roommate moved in, his girlfriend stayed the night, Aurora, our other roommate and four guests beside. Had to whip up cookies in a flash. Applesauce molasses etc. cookies minus walnuts (a concession to a friend with an allergy) plus a teaspoon of cinnamon (a step in the direction of the cayenne chocolate chocolate cookie I am thinking about...
March 2009
9 posts
When I first moved to New York, I would beg Aurora to make cookies for me because I didn’t know how and lacked the confidence to try. Eventually, she got me started making them on my own but she had to write down the recipe for a half batch (that is, do the math) because I kept putting in too much sugar or flour. When Stewart first arrived on the scene — although he had been making...
I. Stewart drove me back to New York yesterday. We made peanut butter cookies with roasted nibs, coconut and sesame seeds. The roasting made for divine crunch and flavor. But the cookies were still too crumbly. And someone thought not peanut buttery enough.
II.Today we went for broke, I planned a dinner for ten at least. 3 people showed, I reduced the menu but still made three kinds of...
At home in Boston, I baked a loaf of no-knead bread with my mother yesterday. Stewart and David came over and ate it with us. Then we made a half batch of chocolate chocolate oat cookies per Stewart’s recipe, I didn’t like them as much as I do sometimes, I think because I’ve gotten used to a fruitier chocolate and less oats. We put cookies aside to bribe various parties later,...
Yesterady, I made the rest of the dough around lunch time, one of the guests was still here and we enjoyed them over a discussion of the financial situation, national and personal. So engrossing was the conversation that I forgot to note how the cookies had changed (and burnt them a little). Our guest is still here this morning and says, “they were airier but more tough, less fresh and,...
WatchThe former members of Cuban Wessels Crisis (including Stewart) make some cookie-like concoctions.
I spent all day inside. I have a new writing regime that’s working out but basically consists of sitting in my desk chair all day long, so at quarter past twelve Aurora and I went for a midnight constitutional. When we got back our roommate had returned with three guests. Naturally, I broke out the big glass bowl, a stick of butter and the heavy unbendable fork I keep separate for mixing...
me: you bake cookies in seattle?
Stewart: three kinds
me: do tell
Stewart: regular salty chocolate oat with cocoa nib
me: you buy them at theo?
Stewart: oatmeal pecan coconut (after a hi-rise cookie i enjoyed)
me: hi-rise?
Stewart: lastly, pecan coconut cocoa nib with no melted chocolate but some cinnamon
and the molasses white sugar combination
hi-rise in cambridge
me: pecan interesting
im scared of other nuts
although i looked at a bag of pistachios today
and dreamed
i love my walnuts
AND
we need to figure out a peanut butter cookie
Stewart: I am done with pecans I think and back fully to walnuts
me: during the depression my grandpa got into bike dealing bc you had to do whatever
you could for money
this is depression 2.0
we should cookie our way through
!
i might change the URL
to cookieexchange
after the bicycle exchange
Stewart: make cookies at the bard co-op on saturday night, real butter but egg-replacer and walnuts and coconut and molasses and white sugar and spelt flour and they were fine at first but hardened into candy shortly after, carmelized or something
cookie exchange sounds good
me: spelt flour
whats that like
Stewart: a necessity at the time, couldn't tell if it was to blame for anything, maybe as a
partial flour it would be good
me: i bought those cacao beans we were contemplating at the coop
to impress the mast bros
not sure it worked
chopped them up into nibs
worked well
Stewart: were they raw or roasted?
I think I am partial to roasted nibs, the unroasted ones are powerful and good but I don't
know how to keep them underwraps
me: raw
BUT
Stewart: potent
me: indeed
we should roast them ourselves
in the oven or in a frying pan
Stewart: I was going to say the same thing
but I was going to say it like this
we should roast them ourselves
Last night I met and made cookies for the proprietress of Cookie Couture — needless to say I was a little intimidated. I didn’t have enough advanced warning to make apple sauce, but I made a half batch of the molasses coconut walnut dark chocolate chunk oat cookies with an egg instead. They came out well, nicely bitter, and I had enough to bring some to a going away party for my old...
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