Yet another chocolate chip cookie recipe.

A post from Carolyn. What’s there not to love about chocolate chip cookies? These are good ones, something different to add to your repertoire. I started with an online recipe I found years ago and tweaked it just a bit. I used some artificial sugar (for half of the brown sugar and half of the white sugar) in the batter, and since I love walnuts, I used them rather than the pecans that were part of the version I read about.

I come from the camp that cookie batter is good to eat/taste. That’s one of my favorite memories of cooking with my mother when I was a young child, and I eat cookie batter every time I make cookies, no matter the type. But when I dipped a spoon into this one I wasn’t so sure. The spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger) were overwhelming. Obviously once  you add the spices, it’s a bit late to remove them! So I went with it. I figured I could always give them away if I didn’t like the finished cookie. Lo and behold, once baked, these cookies turned out to be lovely. The warm fall spices add a delicious hint of themselves and were not overwhelming in the slightest. These may not be to everyone’s taste –  I’m the first one to tell you that for decades I made the Nestle’s printed recipe on the chocolate chip bag – for all of my chocolate chip cookie baking! (Not anymore – as you can see if you merely look at my recipe index and search the cookie section, you’ll find oodles of chocolate chip cookie recipes. The ones in red print are my favorites.)

These look like “regular” chocolate chip cookies, but they’re definitely different. I liked using the bar chocolate, chopped up, instead of chips. You COULD use regular chips, but the irregular crags of chocolate in the cookies make them different.

What’s GOOD: definitely different. If you’re a purist when it comes to chocolate chip cookies,  you might not like these at all. They grew on me as time went by – as I write I still have a couple dozen of them in the freezer (I like frozen cookies). If you’re intrigued, but a bit scared to try it, make a half batch.

What’s NOT: only that these are very, VERY different than regular chocolate chip cookies. Some people might find the flavors of the spices off-putting. Maybe these are in the “Mikey, try it, you might like it” camp.

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Certainly I’d never heard of chocolate salami before, but was intrigued when I read the story about them. Italians claim the origin of the recipe, so do Germans, but so do Russians. Mine weren’t as round as the pictures online, but hey, made no difference to the taste!

A post from Carolyn. I think I mentioned recently that I decided to subscribe to the New York Times Food Section. It’s not a cheap purchase, but they offered it for half price ($20/year). If you’re interested, it’s still on offer at that price. I have nowhere near discovered all there is to know about their recipe archives, but this cookie recipe popped up and it’s just so different I had to try it.

So I read, back during the Soviet Russia era, some foodstuffs were hard to come by like cookies and cocoa powder. An ingenious cook combined shortbread cookies and cocoa along with chocolate (available) and hazelnuts (available) to spread the wealth, so to speak. Both the cocoa powder and the cookies then were enjoyed for a longer period of time. Although I have to say, eating one of these is nearly impossible.

A package of hazelnuts was staring at me, so I toasted them up first (about 5-7 minutes in my toaster oven at 375). Then I opened the package of Walker’s shortbread and used my meat pounder (flat) to kind-of mash up the cookies. In the photo above you can see toasted hazelnuts and pieces/crumbs of the cookies. The recipe suggested you sieve the cookies because you don’t want many crumbs. I didn’t wish to waste the crumbs, so I used them anyway. Just make sure you leave some little chunks – more chunks than crumbs if you can do it (and no, it’s not easy to do that).

Meanwhile you melt butter, sweetened condensed milk and bittersweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli, bar type) and unsweetened cocoa powder. Once melted, it’s poured into the cookies and nuts mixture and after it cools a bit. Then you roll it into logs, trying to get them into a rounded shape, then seal up in waxed paper and foil for a longer chill.

My salami were not very round, so a day later I let the logs warm for about 45 minutes at room temperature and then rolled them on my countertop until they formed a more rounded shape. But, as you can see, I didn’t succeed very well with that! You sprinkle the logs with powdered sugar when you’re ready to serve them, then slice. I sliced mine thinner than the 1/4″ recommended. If you use a very slim knife you can do it. Don’t lay the slices in the sugar, however, as that messes up the visual of “salami.”

Oh my goodness, are these ever good. I suppose you could say they’re a variation of fudge, but with the addition of hazelnuts and cookie bits, they’re really not fudge.

What’s GOOD: well, I’m going to be adding this recipe to my regular Christmas cookie rotation. Or maybe not rotation – it’ll be a regular every year here on out. I liked that they were easy – EASY – to make. They’re a real keeper in my book. And, I’ll be adding this recipe to my favorites. Does that tell you how much I liked them?

What’s NOT: nothing whatsoever, other than you can’t eat these immediately – requires overnight or several hours of chilling to make the logs firm enough to slice.

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It’s holiday time, and my cousin Gary visits most years, and he’s gluten (or at least he’s for sure wheat)  intolerant.

A post from Carolyn. My cousin and I share one very important trait (hmmm, maybe it’s genetic?) – we love chocolate. He will always tell me, “no, don’t bake cookies for me,” but then I think, yes, I should. I didn’t ask him this year, I just made them. It’s the holidays. A reason to try a new GF recipe for him.

Recently the New York Times offered a subscription to their food section and archives (not the daily newspaper) at half price, for $20/year. I don’t know about you, but I think newspapers should offer recipes for free – maybe not the stories, but at least the recipes; but they don’t. Or at least most newspapers don’t. And particularly the New York Times. But at half price I thought it was a good buy. In the past when I’ve discovered the NYT had printed some great sounding recipe, I’d do a search all over the web, and sometimes I’d find the recipe somewhere else. But not always. One of my very favorite cookbooks I own is Amanda Hesser’s gigantic tome, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: The Recipes of Record, a 2021 re-release with new added content. I have the older edition – the one here is the recent one. The older one must be out of print already!

With that in mind, and my new subscription available, I decided to search for GF cookie recipes for Gary, and downloaded this one and made them for him. They’re very straight-forward. No unusual ingredients, providing you have almond flour on hand already. I do. I keep it in the freezer. Do use the pure almond flour – not the one from Trader Joe’s that has the skins included. I buy my blanched almond flour at Costco. I had a small bag of Bob’s Red Mill almond flour in my pantry (that had been there for well over a year) and it smelled just fine, so I’m not sure almond flour needs to be kept in the freezer after all. Might open up some new real estate in my jam-packed freezer.

In this case I used half artificial sugar, half real sugar; the recipe calls for both light brown and granulated; I use half Swerve brown, and half So Nourished erythritol granular. In sampling the finished cookies, I cannot tell there is any artificial sugar in them.

First it’s butter and sugars to be mixed, then eggs, then vanilla, and lastly the dry ingredients. With most new cookie recipes these days, I bake 2-3 of them first to make sure they’re the right consistency. These were; I made no adjustments except for the baking time. The cookies are scooped onto baking sheets and lightly flattened before baking for 13 1/2 minutes (in my oven, anyway). The original recipe made gigantic ones. I made traditional sized, and that’s the time they needed. These cookies were plumper than the ones shown in the newspaper photograph – theirs were very spread out, but still in a nice round shape. Mine were thicker – they barely settled a little in height when baked. That may be why they required a bit more baking time.

What’s GOOD: well, obviously, that they GF. GF cookies (at least those made with almond flour) tend to be a bit more “sandy” in texture. From a frozen state, I liked these better. They’re pretty fragile at room temperature. They’re still a bit fragile from frozen, but manageable. My cousin ate a few every day and liked them.

What’s NOT: nothing really, other than GF cookies tend to have a different texture. If you prefer tender, soft cookies, these will be perfect.

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No, those aren’t biscotti. I know they look like them, but they’re not.

A post from Carolyn. A dear friend passed away recently at 96. Such a sweet PEO friend; she’ll be missed. Our PEO chapter offered to bake cookies for the reception, so I looked through my to-try files and this one seemed to fit the bill. They would transport well (with waxed paper between layers, that is) and they weren’t all that difficult to make. Plus they had fall, spicy flavors in them. A win-win.

This is a Dorie Greenspan recipe that I’d downloaded a year or two ago, but after reading the comments, I changed the recipe some. Many said they were too sweet. So I reduced the amount of brown sugar and the amount of molasses. I didn’t have enough golden raisins, so I used half of them and half currants. I also added some ground cardamom. I think you could still reduce the sugar in these, especially because of the icing, which is 98% sugar. I also have reduced the quantity of icing – it made too much.

They are baked in long logs – they seemed quite thick – I should have made the logs thinner, so because of that, I cut the pieces (after they were cooled and iced) into smaller ones. Usually hermits are kind of oblong-ish squares. Oblongs would have been way too big. So, therefore I cut them into thinner biscotti-like pieces.

The icing, Dorie said, could be made with lemon juice (in the powdered sugar) or rum, or milk. I opted to do two of the logs with lemon juice and two with dark, spiced rum. There is a difference in the color of the icing if you use spiced rum. I liked both, so use your preference.

What’s GOOD: easy to make, great for fall. Would be nice as Christmas cookies too. You can make the batter several days ahead. Am sure these would keep well – layer with waxed paper, though, so you don’t damage the icing.

What’s NOT: nothing, really .. . make sure you have golden raisins and/or currants.

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Oh so tender little cakey bites with dried apricots and golden raisins plus a brandy syrup poured over the top. And then a lemony drizzle on top of that.

A post from Carolyn.  This isn’t a new recipe here on the blog, but it’s been years – YEARS – since I made them. And because I did – make them last week, that is – any of you who weren’t around in 2008 should know about them.

Originally the recipe came from a 1996 issue of Sunset Magazine. I’d put it into my recipe program way back then, and have made them many times. What appealed to me was the combination of apricots and brandy. And that’s still the same thing that encourages me to make them.

You mix up an easy batter  – kind of a cake type, not cookie type and pour it into a buttered 10×15 pan. You can do it in a 9×13 pan, but they’ll take a bit longer to bake. The cake is baked for about 25 minutes. Once out of the oven you pour over a syrup made up of sugar, apricot brandy and lemon juice. Once the bars have cooled, you drizzle on a lemony icing. That’s what you can see in the photo – the icing. The syrup completely soaks into the cake. Although the bars are not soggy or wet at all – you can taste the brandy, certainly, and you might think the brandy is in the icing. But no.

They keep at room temp (sealed in a container, of course) for three days, but after that you should freeze them, using waxed paper to separate the layers. When you store them at first you should separate them with waxed paper also.

What’s GOOD: Love the tender cake rather than firm, chewy cookie-style bar, exactly. Love-love the brandy in these (not much). Definitely something for adult palates. You probably don’t give your children bourbon balls – so you might not want to give them these bars either. So, so good with a cup of coffee or tea. They freeze well (separate with waxed paper). They lend themselves well to fall flavors or Christmas, but you could make them any time of year.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. Absolutely wonderful little nuggets.

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A winner of a good cookie.

A post from Carolyn. In my recipe program, MasterCook, I have 344 cookie recipes. I’ve probably made half of them; maybe more. And, of course, I keep adding to the list. Last week I was preparing some food to ship off to my granddaughter who is in medical school in South Carolina. She’s been there for about 6 weeks now – loving it as far as I know. I’ve texted with her a few times. She studies a lot. Obviously! And although she likes to cook, she’s learning that she just doesn’t have much time to cook because of the amount of studying she must do. Fortunately, there’s a Trader Joe’s in her neighborhood. But food from home is always welcomed. I hope the cookies survive the flight across country in a box that may get thrown and tossed.

I made a batch of granola bars (with dried cranberries and walnuts). Not sure they will ever make the rotation again (they were all for her), but we’ll see what she says. They were very sticky and not as firm as I’d hoped. They were altogether too sweet for me, but then she’s young and needs nutrition in any form she can get it.

Then I made these cookies. I had started out with a recipe from Half Baked Harvest, but I altered it some. I’m not such a fan of cookies made with all brown sugar, so I used about 2/3 brown, and 1/3 regular white sugar. I’d debated about adding walnuts, but ended up not; I also reduced the quantity of chocolate chips. Otherwise, the recipe is mostly the same. Butter gets gently browned in a skillet. Be sure to use a light colored pan so you can SEE how brown the butter is getting. It goes from looking like golden melted butter to dark in a matter of about a minute. It needs to cool awhile before being added to the cookie batter.

I kept the dough in mounds (I thought they would ship better), but you can also flatten the dough on the pan too. In mounds, the cookies took about 13 minutes to bake (until golden brown). If flattened, they’d probably bake in 2-3 fewer minutes.

What’s GOOD: loved the crispy texture and taste. Good and nutritious. The chocolate doesn’t overwhelm the cookie but you know the chips are there. The browned butter adds a rich flavor. Yes, I’d make these again.

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of . . . they’re really delicious.

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Bars that are kinda cookie, kinda dessert, a happy match of the two.

A post from Carolyn. It’s been years ago that I downloaded this recipe from a now-defunct food blog called Alpineberry. It’s been long ago enough that I don’t remember the writer’s name, just that I remember her blog’s name, and I’d made a note of it in my recipe, and I have a few other recipes from that blog too. This recipe is a keeper, for sure.

It does require the making of three layers (a crust, an apple layer and a cream cheese filling). None is hard to do – the most tedious is probably the peeling, coring and slicing (thinly) the apples. The crust contains the usual things plus some cream cheese AND both almond and vanilla extracts. Some of it is set aside to make the topping. The filling is a cream cheese, egg, sugar and lemon juice combination. You can barely see it on top of the apples in the picture above. It’s not a thick filling – just enough to provide some nice creamy texture to the finished bars.

The crust is baked, cooled some, then the apples are added (you use Granny Smith so the apple filling doesn’t turn into applesauce) and gently smoothed out. Then the cream cheese filling is poured on top and gently spread out. Then the topping (the remainder of the crust plus some almonds, flour and more sugar. Sliced almonds are added on the top. That’s it. Baked for about 50 minutes.

What’s GOOD: loved the apple flavor, the texture, the little creamy layer and the crunch of the almonds. Altogether delicious bar or dessert. My granddaughter Taylor loved these. They’re especially nice served with some vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream. But they don’t need embellishment – served as is would be fine too, even out of hand.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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Have you learned to trust Ina Garten’s recipes?

A post from Carolyn. If you haven’t, you should trust Ina’s recipes. I’ve not ever thought of making a grand statement about Ina’s recipes, but here goes: I’ve never made an Ina Garten recipe that hasn’t been spot-on. She’s a genius in the kitchen. And almost never are her recipes difficult or laborious. Some are expensive since she uses nothing but the best ingredients like pounds of fresh crab right off the boat, or beef tenderloin, or imported cheeses. But many of her recipes are simple. Easy. And many use ordinary ingredients.

So speaking of lemon bars here . . . have you ever eaten some that were not quite up to snuff? I sure have. And I’ve made them too, and not been happy with the results. I mean – they were okay, but not exceptional. These – this recipe – goes into the exceptional category. Just the right amount of sweet to tart, and just the right amount of lemon filling to the sugary topping. And the right amount of crust too.

One time, years ago, I was making a recipe for an appetizer. Don’t even remember what it was, but it was a loosey-goosey kind of recipe – a little this and a little of that. Oh, I remember, it’s on my blog already, they’re called Ginger Picks. It required a little square of ham, a fresh piece of pear and a little nub of crystallized ginger. In making them, I needed to taste it to see if the flavors worked. They did, but I figured out that you needed a piece of ham in a just-so size, a piece of pear in a just-so size, and a piece of crystallized ginger in a just-right size. In order to be perfect, each needed to be a very particular size, otherwise it didn’t work. Hence the same with these lemon bars. They need to have each part – crust – filling – topping be just right.

What’s GOOD: that they’re perfect. Just the right amount of tart to sweet, filling to crust, all in one bite. Make these.

What’s NOT: really, nothing at all. Ina Garten is a wizard.

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A post from Sara: I’ve always been a huge fan of chocolate and peanut butter. And when you use chewy brownies and melted peanut butter? Well, simply fantastic. I made these little jewels to ship to my kids in school in the South. It packages and ships well enough. I do put each in its own cupcake paper so they don’t stick. Then I boxed them up in aluminum 8×8 throw away containers with lids before packaging in a shipping box.

I used my go-to recipe for chewy, dense brownies. They’ve been posted here on the blog before. After pouring the batter into 9×13 pan, melt 1/2 cup peanut butter. I use a glass measuring cup and heat it gently in the microwave so it’s easy to pour onto the brownie batter. Then use a knife and swirl peanut butter into brownie batter for a marble effect. (See photo at left)

Bake according to directions. Once cooled, frost with a basic peanut butter frosting recipe.

I use a Betty Crocker recipe, and once frosted you need to place the pan in the freezer for a few hours. Then I cut out the shape I wanted using a cookie cutter. Since it was Easter, I chose egg shapes. You freeze again for at least 30 mins. Then use a chocolate glaze made with dark chocolate chips and a smidge of margarine. Using your hands, each one is dipped into the chocolate and set on a rack to dry, then sprinkled with decoration before the chocolate sets.

What’s GOOD: I was really surprised at how easy and professional they looked. They were a huge hit as every bit of leftovers pieces (photo above right) were consumed at Easter. I guess everyone loves peanut butter and brownies as much as I do! The number of servings is based on cookie cutter size. In this case the batch made about 32. Would make a great gift in an Easter Basket.

What’s NOT: it takes a bit of time to make the various layers, but altogether they’re very easy to make. Allow for freezing time in between.

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Ah, yes, yet another chocolate chip cookie recipe. Hope you’re not tired of them.

A post from Carolyn. Until recently I’d never heard of Zoë Francois. That is until I began watching Magnolia Network where she has her own show call Zoë Bakes. She’s a baker of high esteem and her shows are filmed (I’m assuming) in her home kitchen in Vermont (so quaint). 90% of her recipes are sweets. Some of them are quite fussy (well, they are to me, who doesn’t really like fussy cooking or baking). But hey, I’m always on the lookout for a new or different chocolate chip cookie recipe.

So what’s different about this one? (1) she uses some shortening in it – mostly butter as the fat quotient, and just a little shortening (which supposedly helps the cookies not spread); and (2) she has you chill the cookie balls, on the sheet, before baking. If you are at all interested in reading the ins and outs of chocolate chip cookies and the ingredients that go into them and how they make a cookie react, you should read the long intro to the recipe. It’s quite detailed and unless you’re a professional baker, I’d guess you’d learn something from it. I certainly did.

My granddaughter Taylor loves chocolate chip cookies. And if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you’ve learned that I do too. As I write this up, Taylor’s been home in Northern California for 2 weeks on a spring break and will hit the grindstone tomorrow with new nursing classes and two different hospitals where she’ll be learning clinical skills. I wanted her to be able to take a few cookies to school or to snack on when she’s studying here at home.

Who doesn’t like a good chocolate chip cookie? Maybe some of those rare people (I know one person – yes Kerry, that’s you) who don’t really care for sweets. I dug out my stand mixer and started in on these. I actually 1 1/2 times the recipe, but the recipe below is the original, which makes 36 cookies regular sized, or 18 if you like the giant ones. I did measure the ingredients carefully, even using my scale for the chips and flour.

For quite awhile I’ve not been doing any baking (trying NOT to), and when I dug out my brown sugar I discovered every speck of brown sugar I had was hard as a rock. Oh dear. I wasn’t about to make a trip to the grocery store. So I googled “how to rehydrate brown sugar,” and there are plenty of recommendations. The one that worked for me was to measure out about 1 cup of the hard brown sugar (first I had to break it up with a mallet) and it went into a sealing type plastic bag, then I added exactly 3/4 tsp of water. You just throw it in the bag and zip it up. It went in the microwave for 15 seconds, then you mush it around by hand, in the bag, breaking apart any of the hard chunks. Then back into the microwave for 10 second increments (it took just one more 10 second round) to make this brown sugar as soft and pliable as a fresh one from the store. At first there was a wet streak (that’s normal) in the middle of the sugar, but as it warms up, it absorbs into the whole lot. Just keep massaging it around. Who knew?

As it turned out, I was lazy and didn’t do the chill-in-the-frig part. I just scooped them and baked them. The recipe indicated 375°F for 8-9 minutes (using the chilled ones), but after making several trays straight from the bowl, I settled on 355°F for 12 minutes exactly. My oven runs a little on the hot side, I’ve learned. I made some of them without walnuts and some with them (the baker didn’t add them, but I prefer with walnuts). I added a measurement of walnuts in the recipe below, so you can choose to or not. I also didn’t add the flaky sea salt to the top. When I tasted the dough I thought they were plenty salty, so didn’t want to add more.

What’s GOOD: really good choc chip cookies. Are they better than others? I liked that they held their shape. They were a little on the brownish side underneath – that’s why I reduced the oven temp a little bit. Try a test batch when you make them. My favorite chocolate chip cookies still remain the ones from the Silver Moon Bakery. Click the link to read my post about them.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. These were delicious. Over the top? Maybe not. Certainly good, however.

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