Live Every Week Like It's Cake Week

It lives.

I haven’t been doing a whole lot of baking lately, actually. In July, I went to Ecuador on vacation and in August I moved from New Jersey to Queens with my new roommate. I’ve baked since I got here, but it’s been stuff I’ve posted before – chocolate spice loaf – made the right way this time, cinnamon chip bread, blue cheese scallion biscuits, toffee blondies – so there hasn’t been a reason to post. And also, I’ve just gotten out of the habit. It happens.

But there is one thing I baked that isn’t on this blog, which is a shame, because it’s a classic, classic recipe from my childhood: snickerdoodles. A lot of people have some kind of variation on this cookie, but as my mother says in her completely unbiased way, a lot of them are pretty bad. This one is not – it’s basically the perfect cinnamon-sugar cookie.

They make about six dozen, which is why we just finished them after having them for a full month – I have excellent tupperware – so this is a great cookie to share. If the guys I work with weren’t on perpetual diets, I would have taken a few dozen to them. Alas.

Snickerdoodles

1 C butter
1 ½ C sugar, more for rolling
2 eggs, beaten
2 ¾ C flour
2 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda
½ t salt

Cinnamon

Cream butter, sugar and eggs. Set aside. Meanwhile, sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Mix with cream mixture until thoroughly combined, and cool in the refrigerator overnight.

When ready to bake, mix sugar and cinnamon to taste in a bowl. Roll dough into balls the size of walnuts, and then dredge in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place on greased cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room – if the kitchen is warm, the dough will spread out more. Place in a moderate oven – 375° and bake for 9-10 minutes, shifting the cookies from the bottom to the top shelves approximately halfway through.

Let cool completely on wax paper, and then store in an airtight container.

Wow, so it’s been a while. Work has been nuts since mid-February, and I took a vacation in the middle of March to visit my girlfriend in California – we actually did bake there, but nothing new. But now it’s April, and Easter Sunday, and since I had no intention of cooking a holiday dinner for myself and the cat, I baked coconut macaroons instead.

Coconut macaroons shouldn’t be confused with French ones – you know, those fussy as all fuck sandwich cookies that are the trend du jour in the baking blogosphere. The most complex part of this cookie is separating the eggs. The only problem I found with this recipe was that the two hours prescribed wasn’t long enough, and I had some pretty runny pools under my coconut clusters. I’ve amended it to overnight, which should get the batter nice and stiff.

Macaroons are pretty popular for Passover because most versions don’t use flour, but this particular one is not kosher, as it’s got half a cup of cake flour in the mix. It is a very easy cookie, though, and I might dip some of mine in chocolate later today.

Coconut Macaroons

4 egg whites

1 C sugar

1/4 t salt

1/2 C cake flour

1 t vanilla extract

3 C coconut flakes

Whisk egg whites, sugar, and salt in a metal bowl placed over a saucepan of gently simmering water until the mix is warm to the touch and creamy. Remove from the heat and stir in flour, vanilla, and coconut. Cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight.

When batter is chilled, preheat the oven to 325F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Drop batter by the heaping tablespoon full onto the cookie sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes. Let cool on the pan for 10 minutes, and then remove to a rack to cool completely.

My mom has promised to send me her recipe, which skips the double boiler and thus doesn’t require chilling, so there may be a redux of this recipe in the future.

This is based vaguely on a Paula Deen recipe, except I doubled the spices, changed molasses for maple syrup, and switched the vegetable shortening for butter (Yes, I too was shocked at the existence of a Deen recipe without a pound of butter.) They turned out well, heated the apartment on this extremely cold December day, and made my kitchen smell like Christmas, so I consider it a success.

Ginger Spice Cookies

3/4 C butter, softened

1 C brown sugar

1/4 C maple syrup

1 egg

2 C AP flour

2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon

2 t ground ginger

1 t cloves

1/2 t salt

Granulated white sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven and either grease cookie sheets or line with parchment or a Silpat. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar. Add maple syrup and egg and mix until smooth. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices and salt. Add to wet ingredients and mix.

Form dough into 1″ balls and roll in white sugar. Flatten gently with the heel of your hand and bake for 12 minutes, rotating once.

They’re quite spicy and the maple flavor I was expecting was nonexistent. If you want a milder, sweeter cookie, halve the spices – it probably would have a more maple-spice flavor then.

This, my friends, is the best blondie you’ll ever make, period. It starts with my mother’s basic caramel brownies recipe – which, like many of my mother’s best recipes, comes from the 1955 edition of the Minonk United Methodist Church Cookbook – but instead of the prescribed nuts, add a cup of heath bar crunch bits. The kind with chocolate, although the brickle bits would probably be awesome in their own way.

I used the Heath bits the first time I made these, and though I’ve made them since with chocolate chips and with walnuts, and with pecans, nothing really comes close to the rich sweetness that toffee brings to the party.  This is the epitome of blondies, and I probably would have finished my latest batch already except for the fact that I’d sent them to California for someone’s birthday.

Heath Bar Crunch Blondies

1 1/2 C AP flour, sifted

1 t salt

2 C brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 t baking powder

2 t vanilla extract

1/2 C butter, melted

1 C HEATH Bar Crunch Bits

Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Add melted butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs and stir to combine. Fold in HEATH Bar Crunch pieces.

Spread in a well-greased 8×8 pan and bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Excellent warm or cool, but somehow the most decadent when still soft from the oven.