Surely I’m not alone in having an occasional baking failure. I rarely have an actual cooking “failure.” But, this was a close call! One of my greatest cooking failings is that I don’t read the directions completely before plunging into the preparation. This time was no exception. But, hey, it’s a cookie, and what’s a little extra sugar, right?

Last time I made these, probably two years ago, after they were finished I even went into my recipe software and re-arranged the recipe, separating the ingredients for the bar part, the syrup part and the glaze part. So that I wouldn’t do exactly what I repeated – again – today. But did I print out the recipe and toss the old one? You can guess, can’t you? No. I didn’t. Dummy. Idiot that I am. So this morning, as usual, always with 101 things on my mind (gotta finish this quickly, need to pay some bills, make the bed, finish my makeup) before I leave for a luncheon. I did READ the ingredients. But I glossed over the directions about separating the sugar portion (some of the sugar goes in the syrup).

This recipe is a favorite (when I make it) of my friend, Cherrie. She’s an excellent cook, but she isn’t a baker, so she relies on her friends who are bakers (uh, that’s me and others, I assume) to give her some goodies now and then. And sometimes I give her a little bag of cookies which she parcels out in her DH Bud’s lunch bag. I gave her one of my Bishop’s Breads I made before Christmas. (I don’t mean to be going on and on about my Bishop’s Bread – it’s just that Cherrie has learned to love this like I do.) Just a slice with her afternoon tea. So when one of her friends called to tell me she was having a birthday luncheon for Cherrie today, I thought – oh, I’ll make a batch of those Brandied Apricot Bars for her. That will make Cherrie very, very happy. She adores these things. More than I do, actually. I mean, they’re really good, but she would happily cross a glacier to get ahold of these, and she doesn’t “do” cold. Of all the things I bake, these cookies may be her very favorite. It could be the little rolling warmth that emanates from your gullet after chewing one – after all, it does have brandy in it. Not cooked much, either. Supposedly the alcohol is cooked off when you heat alcohol to a boil, but since this is apricot brandy you use, it’s potent stuff and I’m sure there is still alcohol remaining, because I sure do get warmth in my mouth, throat and tummy when I eat these. Back when I made these the first time, Cherrie was actually staying with us for awhile. She and I were both having sleeping issues, often waking up in the middle of the night, not able to sleep (my reason was that I was taking Claritin-D; once I stopped taking that, I began sleeping better). But back then, if she heard me up, we’d meet in the kitchen, whispering so we wouldn’t wake up my DH, and tiptoe with a tea tray into our living room, light the fire and have some Earl Gray and one of these bars. Or maybe two. At 6:30 am, or so, my DH would wander out, sleep in his eyes and say what in the world are you two doing? He learned eventually – if I wasn’t in the bed with him when he awoke, I’d be in the living room with tea and a fire, or in my office playing some mindless solitaire.

So, back to today and too much sugar. What to do, what to do? I was already fully into the batter when I re-read the directions. That’s when I discovered my mistake. Oops. I had put a scant cup of white sugar into the batter. So, I cut down some on the brown sugar (about half) and used less sugar in the brandy mixture. The lemon juice topping requires a certain amount of sugar – otherwise it would turn out too sour, so I really couldn’t reduce the powdered sugar there. I also made these in a 9×13 Pyrex pan, so baked them slightly longer, and it made 32 bars, not 36. But even with all my bad reading and chemistry juggling, they turned out just fine. Amazing. And Cherrie was really tickled (see big smile below) with my plate of cookies. All for her, with a little bite for everybody else at the luncheon.

So, the recipe below, for these tummy-warming bars, is the corrected one. Note to self: print out the gosh-darned corrected recipe and put it in your file! (done!)
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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open in MC)

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Most likely many of you, who read other food blogs, have heard about the macarons. That’s not macaroons, but macarons. I think that would be pronounced, in the French, like mac-a-rown. The s is silent, and you’d nasalize the rown too. Very swishy. I’d seen pictures of these gems on some other blogs, but two weeks ago when DH and I drove through Yountville and stopped at Bouchon Bakery, they had bunches in their display case. I had to try one, in chocolate. It was only (ha) $3.00 for one. It stayed in the car for 2 days before I brought it into my cousin Maxine’s house, where we were staying in Walnut Creek. We cut it in 4 quarters. I ate my two quarters in a jiffy. They’re hard to describe, other than luscious. Soft. Smooth. These had a lovely chocolate flavor. Ideal with a hot beverage of some sort.

Probably only upscale bakeries will have these, and I’d guess Bouchon’s would have ranked up there with the best there are outside of Paris. This macarons was absolutely to die for. If I see them again I’ll definitely buy more. Well, maybe just one. They’re quite rich with the filling in the center. Who knows how many calories there are. I don’t want to know! The meringue-like outside cookie part is not crunchy or chewy, but has just a little bit of texture. And the filling was so utterly smooth. So, there’s your lesson in French and pastry for the day.

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Oh, this cookie recipe is a keeper. It’s from a cooking class I took with Tarla Fallgatter. I don’t know where she got the recipe – I didn’t find it on the internet, so perhaps it’s a family favorite of hers. They’re not difficult – but there are a few steps: chilling the dough, rolling into balls and coating with hazelnuts, making depressions in the dough balls, then the chocolate kiss or nonpareil pressed into the hot, just-baked cookie, then letting the tray cool before you remove them from the baking sheet. But they’re really, really GOOD.

You must know by now that I like chocolate. This cookie satisfies fully in that department. Tarla said when she makes these for children, she always uses chocolate kisses (Hershey’s) but for adults, she uses the nonpareils. This batch pictured was done with the latter, half of them with the white up, others down. When you press the candy onto the hot cookie, it slightly melts the chocolate so it sticks to the cookie top. But of course! Add this to your cookie list.
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When I tell you this is yum – easy – simple – quick – believe me. It is all of those things. But the YUM part is what you need to remember. This Rocky Road recipe isn’t all that different from others you may have read. Until a few years ago I’d not had this, but the addition of butterscotch chips and peanut butter gives rocky road a whole different taste. Time? My guess is that making it takes a total of about 10 minutes.

My friend Chris H. gave me this recipe, and she makes it all year around, I think. What it is, is delicious. Great for the holidays. I’m making it especially for my cousin who is gluten intolerant. He enjoys Christmas goodies, but can’t have most of them – like cookies, etc. – because he can’t eat anything with flour in it. Rocky Road has no flour. He’ll be a happy camper. We’ll just have to keep the grandchildren to stay out of it. This will be just for Gary.
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Oh, just looking at the photo of these makes my mouth water. This is an older picture in my archive, and I don’t think I took this one, but yep, that’s them. In some parts of the world these are known as Nanaimo Bars (Nanaimo is a small city in western British Columbia). Some recipes contain mint. Mine do not. I don’t like the mint version at all. But if that intrigues you, do a Google search for Nanaimo Bars and you’ll find lots of variations. I haven’t made these yet this year, but didn’t want to dilly-dally around waiting in case you wanted to make them.

I got this recipe in 1963. My first husband and I had moved to Washington, D.C. and stayed briefly with family friends of my parents who lived in Virginia. The wife introduced me to a neighbor of hers, who told this unbelievable story about this recipe. It bears a resemblance to other stories you may have heard. But in this case I MET the woman who’d been “done in,” so to speak. She and her husband had celebrated a milestone anniversary and had gone to New York. They’d stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, and had dinner in their fine restaurant. After dinner, she’d ordered this dessert, titled on the menu as New York Special Slices, and was blown away by the taste, so asked the waiter for the recipe. The chef said, through the waiter, get her address and he’d send it to her. It arrived, but with a bill for $200. Now back in the 1960’s, a $200 recipe would set anybody back more than just a little bit. So, this woman consulted her attorney, found out it was useless to argue. Pay it, he said. So, she gave it away to anybody she could find. Our friends served these bars to us, and I fell in love. Right there, on the spot.

These aren’t hard to make, although they do take a bit of time in or around the kitchen because you need to chill the layers in between creating them. Overall, though, these will come together in a jiffy. They need to be refrigerated – you can’t leave them out at room temp for very long or the unsweetened chocolate on the top layer gets soft. And it will come off in your hands if you pick it up.

These became a Christmas tradition in my family from then on. You can cut them into very small pieces, or into large squares to serve as a dessert. They’re very rich, very chocolatey, so might not be appropriate to serve at the end of a very heavy, rich meal. I usually serve them as you would a cookie, allowed to warm up at room temp for just 5-10 minutes only. I recommend that these be cut into bars ahead of time, as they’re a bit tricky to cut. Best not to do that while your guests are waiting at the dinner table.

First you make a graham cracker, coconut and chocolate base, chill it. Then you make a custard filling. Bird’s Dessert Mix (Powder) is a dry mix, similar to instant pudding mixes we’d buy at our local market, BUT, Bird’s does not have any sugar or butter in it. My local Ralph’s carries it, and I’ve found it at some specialty markets too. It’s British in origin if that helps you find it. If you can’t find Bird’s powder, use instant pudding mix, but don’t add the sugar or butter, just the milk noted in the filling ingredients. You’re after a thick filling, not a soupy one, so be careful and don’t add too much milk. That gets spread on top of the base, and is then chilled. Wait a bit for the next step, then gently melt some unsweetened chocolate and a bit of butter, cool it a few minutes, then pour it over the custard and carefully spread it over the the top, filling in any spots. There is just barely enough chocolate to cover. Chill again, then use a knife dipped in hot water to cut the cookies. They will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.
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If you’ve never done a cookie exchange, you should. I’ve done more of them than I can count, and these days I try NOT to have too many cookies around, because then, guess who eats them? We don’t have floods of friends or family in the house during December like we used to, unless we host a party ourselves, so it’s best that I just make a few of our family favorites and call it quits with the cookie baking.

These cookies are just as pretty as the picture and would make a great cookie exchange contribution. They look like you’ve slaved, but you really didn’t. They aren’t hard to make, although they do take a bit of patience to roll up. It’s a 2-step process to make the dough (the cookie dough and the filling), then you have to create the rolls, and freeze them. You defrost the rolls a bit before slicing and baking. It’s a good cookie to make over a 2-day period. Make the dough and filling, roll them up and freeze them the first day, then the next day slice and bake them. Only one caution: don’t over bake the cookies. If you do, the chocolate filling turns into hard candy and is not easy to eat or very tasty either. You need to allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet. If you try to remove them early, you’ll smear the filling and they may break apart. (Trust me, I know this from experience – grin.)

Clockwise top left: the filling melting in bowl over hot water, the filling spread on top of the cookie dough, the finished rolls ready to freeze, and the dough with nuts, before rolling up.

A former employee of mine, Vicki, brought these to our office cookie exchange many years ago, and from then on, each year she had to bring them again. She wasn’t much of a cook or a baker, but this was her mother’s favorite Christmas cookie. It’s become one of mine, too. They’re not decorated, and they’re not prissy or fancy. Chocolate? Yes! They don’t keep long once baked – I stick all my cookies in the freezer once they’re baked so I don’t have to worry about the shelf life of the cookies. But because the filling becomes almost candy-like, you need to defrost these for 10 minutes or so, before eating them.
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It may be a bit hard to see here, but those cookies are thin. THIN. Really THIN. But chocolately, rich, just like eating the top off of a rich brownie. Or maybe the very top of a muffin, even.

Usually when we return from a European trip, I’m craving salads and greens, and vegetables. Not so this time because we had ample on the ship. In fact, Lucy and I raved about the quality of the designer lettuces they served at the salad bar every day. Absolutely fresh from the fields that very day. And delicious dressings, all home made. But what I did crave upon our return was chocolate. We had almost none on the trip. A couple of times we had chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream, and we had something similar at the dinner at Gundel. And one night they offered a chocolate terrine. I was sad to decline that but I knew the caffeine would keep me awake that night. But otherwise, chocolate didn’t figure much in the shipboard menus.

So, since the cookie barrel is empty around here, I decided to make something chocolate. I was leafing through the December issue of Bon Appetit (how come I’m getting the December issue in the first or 2nd week of November, I ask you?), and spotted these chocolate thins.

These are made in a bowl, so quite easy. It couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes to complete the preparation, and another 20 minutes max to bake them all. Pretty cinchy. And, they are really delicious. But I do warn: they’re very fragile. I’ll have to figure out how to package these carefully so they don’t break – they tend to break in half very easily. But they’re very tasty.

Added note 3 days later: these cookies are so, SO thin, they’re not easy to serve. You pick them up and they break apart, I’m sad to say. So, make them a bit thicker when you pat out the dough, and make sure they are getting browned around the edges. These are soft cookies – there’s nothing crispy about them. But the chocolately taste is wonderful.

You whip these up in a bowl – no mixer needed. I used good Scharffen Berger unsweetened chocolate in these.

There they are on the Silpat before baking. It’s a bit tricky spraying the plastic wrap, laying it over the little blobs of dough, then very gently patting the cookies out thin. I wonder if I made them a tad too thin? Maybe next time I’ll try them a bit thicker just to see. Once you remove the plastic wrap, you add the nuts. I used walnuts because that’s what I had on hand.
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Normally I wouldn’t bake cookies again for awhile, because I made cookies for Todd, our son-in-law, a few days ago. He likes soft cookies. Although the almond-cranberry cookies I made were nice enough, they don’t make my heart sing. They’re soft. He, however, loves them. AND, he told me last night that his cookies are all gone already.

I, on the other hand, prefer crisp and crunchy. So when I spied the photo of these Chocolate-Almond Biscotti over at Acme Instant Food, they called out to me. They’re low in fat (with only 6 tablespoons of butter in the full recipe) and rich in chocolate and almond flavor. These are really cinchy to make. I kid you not. Just have everything at room temp when you begin, and you’ll have these in the oven in about 10 minutes. They do bake for 35 minutes, cool for another 15 (then you slice them carefully), then bake again for another 10 minutes. That’s less than an hour.

These get their chocolate flavor from both cocoa powder and chocolate chunks or chips, so they’re truly chocolate-y. They also keep well, and would travel well too.

I certainly don’t know about the cooking experience level of my loyal readers, but if you’ve never made biscotti, there are just a couple of things you need to know. You make a dough-type cookie batter. Usually, the stickier the better since you don’t want the resulting cookies to be too heavy (read: hard) so you can’t even eat them unless you dunk them in coffee or tea. But, making them too wet and sticky is next to impossible to manipulate (roll) into logs. A happy medium is what you’re looking for. These were quite easy to mold, although I did have some difficulty with the crumble factor once they did their first baking, as Kevin mentions in the recipe.

Biscotti are drier to begin with – you bake them in logs (pictured right) until they’re more than “cooked,” then you allow them to cool some so you can handle the logs. Then you cut them into longer sticks. They must be thick enough to hold together, but this is always the tricky step for me.

One great helpful hint from Keven, though, that I’d never tried before, was to use a serrated knife only to cut through the crust, then use a flat bladed knife to finish the “cut.” That worked like a charm. Then you bake them a bit longer to completely dry them out. Cool, package and store in plastic bags for a few days (or a tin) or freeze. These cookies have a very nice deep chocolate flavor. Satisfies my chocolate cravings and my desire for crispy/crunch cookies.
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Well, the Heavenly Cream Cheese Brownies disappeared in a flash around here, what with DH’s Bible Study Group yesterday and our son-in-law having a snack now and then. So, back to the drawing boards to make some more cookies.

I’d earmarked this recipe for Almond-Cranberry Cookies nearly a year ago, from the blog The Wednesday Chef. She’d taken a Regina Schrambling recipe and made it her own (pistachios to almonds). Regina Schrambling is a food writer for the New York Times. And if you haven’t ever read The Wednesday Chef, it’s a blog about food recipes from both the N.Y. Times and the Los Angeles Times (both papers having had a long-time rivalry, everything from editorial to recipes).

Written by Luisa Weiss, The Wednesday Chef is somewhat of a face-off between the food sections of both papers. Luisa chooses recipes from both papers and prepares them with commentary. I thoroughly enjoy reading Luisa’s blog and have done so for about 18 months. She does like Regina Schrambling, and features her recipes with some regularity. She also likes Russ Parsons, from the L.A. Times.

Cranberries in cookies are a favorite for me. The dried kind that go into everything from trail mix to salads to cookies. The recipe is very easy. I did use my Kitchen Aid mixer, but Luisa’s recipe just mixes it up in a bowl with a wooden spoon. Very easy. The cookies have a crisp bottom, but they’re tender and soft everywhere else. They’re made with all brown sugar, which gives them a caramel-y taste too. Delish.

Todd, our son-in-law, who said he’d sure like to have a cookie now and then (hint, hint, he was implying) while he’s staying with us, likes SOFT cookies. If you read my about 3 weeks ago about chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, you will know that I like crisp cookies. But I’m making these for him. Todd, they’re in the plastic bag in the freezer door, bottom shelf.
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It all started when I was sifting through my file for cookies to bake. Our son-in-law, Todd, asked about the chocolate-chocolate chip cookies I blogged about 2 weeks ago. I don’t suppose Todd reads my blog normally. But my laptop that lives here in the kitchen is the one he uses in the evenings to catch up on his email. My blog was up, front and center last night, so he started glancing through it, spying things he’s eaten in the last couple of weeks. He spotted the picture of the cookies. There’s just one measly cookie left in the freezer, I was sad to tell him.

So I wanted to make something for him to snack on while he’s here. Nothing jumped out at me amongst my stand-bys, so I went to my file. The 100+ clippings I have from over 40 years of saving recipes. I used to be in an annual Christmas cookie exchange, so I have all those recipes. And little slips of paper from friends and acquaintances. Plus the bulk of magazine and newspaper clips, and a few taken from the internet. I had so many that some years ago I had to divide them up by cookie type (chocolate, bars, brownie type, holiday, spice, candy-type, etc.).

(this is my old recipe notebook circa 1965)

But, in looking through the very large stacks, I spied a photo of a cream cheese brownie which brought back a flood of memories. I went to my old binder where I used to hand-write all my favorite recipes. Went right to the page where I had my recipe for “Heavenly Cream Cheese Brownies.” The recipe is not there. The yellowed scotch tape is still there, but the recipe, a magazine clipping, is missing.

I knew the name was exactly “Heavenly Cream Cheese Brownies”. Figuring I’d find hundreds of listings on the internet, I put exactly that phrase into my google search box. Nothing. Huh? How can that be? There’s a site that tries to recreate or house archives of “lost” recipes. It’s called astray. I was certain it would be there. No, not by that name. After spending far too much time looking at various “cream cheese brownie” recipes I went to my cookbooks and figured some of those home-spun cookbooks I have would list this. Nada.

I don’t remember what type of chocolate the recipe used, but it seems to me that it was German’s sweet chocolate. The method: you poured some of the brownie mixture in the bottom of an 8×8 pan, then poured on the cream cheese batter that had a tad of flour in it (there wasn’t enough to cover the chocolate layer), then you blobbed on the last of the chocolate batter, which also didn’t cover completely. Then you ran a knife through it to swirl it around. Bake, slice and eat. I always loved that recipe.

I dug out my box of chocolate ingredients. Actually I have more than one, but this one contains the myriad of bar chocolates I use for baking. Thankfully, there was a bar of German’s sweet chocolate amidst this pile. I do eat chocolate too. But I diligently limit myself to about 1 ounce when I do. My preference for eating is the low-effective carb bars from Trader Joe’s. The dark chocolate type. I wanted to stock up on them (to take on our upcoming trip), but TJ’s is currently out of them. Hope that’s not permanent.My guess is that the cream cheese brownies recipe was first published (in a magazine ad) in the 1970’s. My recollection is that it was an ad for Knudsen Philadelphia style cream cheese. I remember reading it and thinking, what a novel idea. I tried it right away, and was very pleased with it. Over the years I probably made it more than 20 times. Now, of course, that I don’t have the original recipe, I was feeling bereft.

I finally found a recipe on allrecipes for a cream cheese brownie. It does use the German’s chocolate, and looks much like the one I remember. And the directions seem to ring a bell. Many of the recipes I found used a brownie mix. I didn’t want to do that, since I was sure the chocolate wasn’t cocoa, or Hershey’s liquid. So I wanted the real thing. So this one, submitted by a gal named Rosina, fit the bill. I also found a couple of recipes on the astray website that called them German’s sweet chocolate cream cheese brownies. They’re identical to this one, so I think I found the recipe. I’ll hope so. Here’s the batter all ready for the oven. I did use about 7 ounces of cream cheese. The original recipe calls for just a 3-ounce package. So mine have more of that light cheese swirl.

The report: excellent. They were exactly what I remembered. Bereft no longer, am I.
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