Not savory cookies – no, these are the real deal – walnut cookies with a moderate jot of black pepper.

Needing some cookies to serve to my friends who were coming to play Scrabble, I saw this recipe online and thought what a wonderful combination – WALNUTS and BLACK PEPPER. And different, for sure. They were SO easy to make – I had them mixed and baked in a little more than an hour, and my hands-on time was probably no more than 20 minutes. The cookies are baked low (at 300°F) for 25 minutes. That’s a long time for cookies. I could smell the butter browning as they baked – I almost thought they were burning, but they weren’t. They bake until the bottoms begin to turn a golden yellow.

The recipe was adapted by one of the chefs at the James Beard Foundation (until today I’d never looked at their website). The original recipe came from a cookbook called Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily. I don’t own that cookbook – it sounds like a wonderful one to browse through.

Actually, because I was still in the midst of remodeling the day my friends were coming, we ended up going to one of the other gal’s homes. I didn’t think they’d want to hear the pounding going on. My decks are getting completely re-done (yet more dry rot discovered), and the roofers are still pounding away. By the time this recipe airs, the roof, decks, and everything else should be finished. Thank goodness.

This is a crispy crunchy cookie (no eggs in the batter) – just butter, sugar, honey, black pepper, a dash of salt, finely pounded walnuts and flour. It mixed up in a jiffy in the stand mixer, and as usual, I had a hard time keeping my fingers out of the batter. I love cookie dough.

What’s GOOD: the combo of walnuts and pepper was different, but really good. The heat from the black pepper is subtle – don’t expect it to assault your taste buds – it doesn’t, but you’re barely aware of some residual heat once you’ve chewed and swallowed a bite or two.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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Finally, I made time to do a little baking. I was all out of cookies in the freezer, and I could have made some chocolate chip ones, which seem to be everybody’s favorite, but I looked elsewhere first. Since I still don’t have my “old” bunch of to-try recipes for the last few years (my computer guru guy is trying to make the time to find out if the files are lost), I’ve been adding new ones. I’ve probably added about a hundred recipes to my to-try ones, and they’re all kinds of things from lamb roast to rosemary oil to this, a cookie recipe. The original recipe came from Food & Wine, about a year or so ago, and that recipe was a chocolate pine nut recipe.

We make all kinds of compromises in life, don’t we? I sure do, on a daily basis. Most are easy; a few are harder. This one was easy – the recipe called for bittersweet chocolate, and the only kind I had was Trader Joe’s big block that contains chunks of almonds. I suppose I could have removed the almonds once I melted the chocolate, but I just decided to make these with almonds rather than pine nuts. See? Easy compromise. I love almonds. Below you can see the glob of batter before baking, and then after baking.

These cookies could be a version of cloud cookies since they’re almost flourless (there is 1/4 cup added flour). They have the consistency of really chewy brownies on the inside, but the outsides have a crackly crust. But a thin crust for sure.

The batter is simple enough – eggs and sugar, then the melted (and cooled) chocolate, then the tiny amount of flour, baking powder and salt. Then the toasted almonds are added in at the last. Took no time at all to put together. The batter is fairly liquid – it barely holds together. I noticed that after I’d baked 2 pans of cookies, the batter still remaining in the bowl had firmed up a little bit – made it easier to scoop and put on the cookie sheets. They’re baked 12 minutes, rotating the pans half way through. At the halfway point they were still VERY soft – I mushed one with the hot pad and it was like a glob of hot molten chocolate. Fortunately it didn’t get to my fingers or it would have burned! The cookies are very tender once you remove them from the oven. The recipe didn’t say when to remove them to a rack, so I tried right away and wow, it was hard. The ones that sat on the other baking sheet for 3-4 minutes were easier to remove. So I’ve added that info to the recipe. I think I’ll need to put each cookie on waxed paper because I think these will stick to each other if stacked. Or else freeze them on a baking sheet, then put them into a plastic bag and they’d be fine.

What’s GOOD: For sure this is chocolaty. The texture is delicious – the bit of crispy on the outside (but I imagine that would soften if left out at room temp). And the insides are chewy, fudgy almost. Stick to your teeth type. But still, it IS a cookie. The crackly top is interesting. Altogether good. Rich. I like that each cookie is only about 100 calories.
What’s NOT: they’re a bit fussy – or maybe fragile is a better word. Cooling and packaging them for freezing is a little bit of a nuisance. Or else freeze them on a baking sheet, then pile them into a freezer bag.

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The other day I decided I really needed to make some chocolate chip cookies. I haven’t made any in a long, long time and I do like to have some in the freezer. I guess I was craving them. There were some other cookies left over from Christmas still lurking in freezer corners. I tasted one and threw out the bag – they had zero flavor. That’s what you get for freezing cookies for 7 months! So new cookies were in order, but I wanted to do something different. Enter almond paste.

The original recipe came from Cheryl Sternman Rule’s blog, 5 Second Rule, one I read regularly. And her epiphany about these cookies is a bit round about, but she ended  up making little tiny balls of almond paste to mix in with the cookie dough at the last, so there would be some little pockets of straight-shot-almond-paste mixed in. A little flavor explosion. I thought I was going to make them the same way.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep almond paste on my pantry shelf. It just dries out. So, no, I didn’t have any almond paste. So, I’ll just make some. Hmmmph. I’ll only make enough to use for this recipe, since almond paste is really expensive stuff. I know from experience that using a part of a tube of it isn’t a good idea either, because then it really dries up fast.

So I researched almond paste recipes. That led to determining the difference between almond paste and marzipan (usually it’s the amount of sugar – more in marzipan according to several sources). But I went through my pantry and lo and behold I found a package of toasted almond flour (from King Arthur Flour). I opened it to see how it smelled – it smelled great, like toasted almond flour should. So I made almond paste with 3/4 cup of that flour, 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, a tetch of almond extract and one egg white.

That got whizzed up in the food processor and that’s what I ended up with (at right). A little bowl – exactly the 2 ounces I needed for the cookies. I thought.

Mixing up the cookie dough was simple enough. Cheryl explained that it’s basically the Tollhouse recipe, but she was so enamored with almond paste that she decided to incorporate the almond paste in little tiny balls. She had a tube of commercially produced almond paste. A product that is firm and will actually make into little balls. If you look at my bowl of home made almond paste, can you imagine trying to make little balls out of that? Impossible. I added more almond flour assuming it would firm up some. Not much. I tried to make it into little balls again. Nope. No luck at all. After adding yet more almond flour, I gave up and just added the paste into the cookie dough so it was mixed in totally. No little balls – it simply was too wet to work with that way.

So, I made a bigger recipe than Cheryl did (double, actually) and I got about 50 cookies. She made hers a bit smaller, I think. I should have gotten 60. I used my handy-dandy cookie scoop, so they were all uniform.

The recipe said 10-14 minutes baking time – mine took 6 minutes, then I turned the sheet around 180° and another 6 minutes and they were done. So 12 minutes.

We’ve been having really humid weather – as I’m writing this it’s still morning and it’s 75° and 78% humidity outside and the A/C is already running. If nothing else the A/C helps lower the humidity. When I’m cooking I just have to keep the temp down – I’m miserable otherwise. That said, I left these cookies to sit out for about 2 hours on the kitchen island, on a rack. That was a mistake, because they became quite soft. Since I eat them frozen anyway, I probably won’t notice, but I should have packed them up as soon as they cooled. Lesson learned.

The day after I made these I took a bag of about 12 of them to a friend. He’s my financial adviser, but he’s almost more a friend than a financial adviser. He emailed me this morning – this is a guy who professes to not like sweets (i.e., when we go out to lunch he never orders dessert), and he thanked me for the cookies and said by far the 4th cookie he ate out of the bag was the best. Ha!

What’s GOOD: I really like these cookies – the almond paste adds a totally different flavor to choc chip cookies and I really enjoyed it. They’re simple – well, except for making the almond paste as that was an added step. Buy the paste if you want to, and refer to Cheryl’s recipe to add the little balls of paste inside the cookies.

What’s NOT: it’s a little bit more work than a traditional choc chip cookie recipe, but very worth it. No down side to me!

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Do you have food in the freezer that calls out to you? That sings your name and says “come hither?” Well, there’s a little box of these in my freezer and in the mid-afternoon when I need a pick-me-up, I swear, they start beckoning.

Not really, but they certainly could sing to me. These brownies. Oh my goodness. I’d forgotten all about these, about how fantastic they are, how chocolaty they are. I cut them into small pieces so I wouldn’t get carried away and I do take just ONE of them. I baked them for an event recently and hoped most of them would be eaten, but alas, there were about 15 of them left over. Oh, sigh. They’re in my freezer.

I posted this recipe back in 2007, a couple of months after I started writing this blog, and I waxed glorious about them then, and hadn’t made them since. It’s a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated – according to my notes it was published in 2004 and I think they call them Classic Brownies. The link at left is to my original post. The only thing different about this one is that I used walnuts instead of pecans.

There is one important point – DO use really good quality chocolate. I’m not sayin’ that these won’t be good if you use grocery store, cheaper chocolate. I had a chunk of Valrhona in my pantry and that’s what I used. It calls for unsweetened chocolate. Nothing about the preparation of these is difficult. There are dry ingredients.There are eggs, and then chocolate and butter that are melted together.

You can bake these in a 9×13 pan. Mine?: I used an odd shaped one. One of my cooking teachers recommended Magic Line, a U.S. company that produces real solid aluminum pans. They’re available on amazon in oodles of shapes and sizes. This one I used is a jelly roll pan, but I wasn’t making a jelly roll, obviously. What’s unique about Magic Line is the nice little lip they put on the edges, which makes it much easier to grab the hot pan out of the oven. Anyway, Parrish Magic Line 10 x 15 x 1 Inch Jelly Roll/Cookie Sheet is the one. In the photo at left I’ve lined the pan, both directions, with foil, with edges sticking out, to make it easier to remove once the brownies are cooled.

I wanted to have thinner brownies and more of them; hence I decided to use the larger pan. I baked them slightly less time, about 29 minutes, rather than 30-40 in the 9×13 pan. I used my Thermapen to check the internal temp and took them out when they reached 200° F. And, I used walnuts. I didn’t toast them – I was running low on time that day, so I took a shortcut. But toasting walnuts, or any nuts, before baking with them is a good idea.

What’s GOOD: everything about these is good, providing you like chocolate. The brownies are dense, but not gummy, and they’re just overflowing with good chocolate flavor. Now I remember why they’re called “best ever.” That was a designation from the folks at Cook’s Illustrated. You’ll hear raves, I promise you.

What’s NOT:  nothing, unless you don’t have any good unsweetened chocolate on hand. These are worth making a trip to a specialty store to find the Valrhona. Or Scharfenberger  would be fine too. Just use good chocolate, that’s all I ask!

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Can I just tell you that you have to make these and leave it at that? No, you probably won’t believe me, will you? I don’t use that kind of forceful declaration very often. Well, just believe me, okay?

Often I’m led down a cooking path by the description of a recipe. Maybe it’s something unusual about it – or in it – that piques my interest. Other times it’s because there’s such an interesting background story about it. Or maybe it’s a homegrown recipe from way back. In this case, it’s Molly Wizenberg, of Orangette blog, cookbook fame, and her husband’s restaurant Delancey fame too. I’ve always admired Molly’s writing – she has a gift of building up a great story and I was following her long before she became famous. I read her blog and liked it. This recipe came from her column in Saveur.

And I got hooked on it because of the story. She and her family were on a drive in Washington, and her daughter was hungry. So was everyone in the car and most of the stores were closed in Edison. They found Breadfarm was about to close – they grabbed some things and dived into the bags as they stood in the parking lot. What emanated from them all were ooohs and aaahs. But it was the little package of freshly baked graham crackers that made the biggest impression. They were gone before she arrived home. And, because you’re Molly Wizenberg, you obviously can pick up the phone and tell the people at Breadfarm that you want to feature them and their recipe in an article in Saveur.

I’m ever so glad she did. Normally I’d probably not make home made graham crackers. Crackers, in general, are a lot of work, and one meal, usually, and they’re gone. But Molly just made this graham cracker/cookie sound so divine that there just wasn’t anything to do but make these. First, however, I had to go shopping. I don’t stock whole wheat flour much – it turns rancid so quickly (the remainder is in the freezer for now). And I certainly had never used whole wheat pastry flour. Had to go to two stores before I found those items. It also uses wheat bran – another thing I don’t keep on hand because it doesn’t keep all that long, either.

Fortunately I read and re-read the recipe before I began to make them. Making these requires several visits to the freezer as the precious little graham cracker cargo are chilled and slightly frozen before baking. I was home anyway, so I was certain to make these at a time when I would have no distractions.

My kitchen freezer is very full. (Actually, this is a mini form of hoarding, I think – I can’t seem to ever get my freezer to some manageable amount of fullness – it’s always chock full.) So I had to slide the cookie sheets with the rolled out cookies/crackers on parchment into my garage freezer (yes, there is room there). It required 2 visits to the freezer, and technically they were supposed to have a 3rd visit, but I did a shortcut on that one.

The batter is easy enough to make – you cream the butter, sugar (she calls for cane sugar, I used moscovado) and honey for awhile, then add the dry ingredients in 3 separate additions and continue mixing until it pulls away from the workbowl using the stand mixer. The batter is divided in half and pressed into a 1-inch thick rectangle on parchment. A 2nd piece of parchment goes on top and a rolling pin is used to squeeze down the dough to 1/8 inch thickness.  The recipe says to keep the dough in its rectangular shape. Well, I couldn’t do that – I was handling it too much, so I just lived with the results of an oval shape and re-rolled the scraps. Some time was spent in the freezer, then you poke the crackers with a fork and either perforate the dough into squares, or in my case, I used a square cookie cutter, which worked just fine. Back into the freezer they go, so they’re cold-cold before you bake them. They are separated and placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet. And they’re baked.

And I remind you – you have to make these. They’re just SO good. They’d be loverly with cheese as an after-dinner course. I’m serving them with my lemon velvet gelato on Father’s Day – this won’t post until a week or so later.

What’s GOOD: the taste. Oh my yes, they taste wonderful. And although you will have spent more time than usual making a batch of these, you’ll be glad you did, if you can make the time to do it. They make a very nice snack, or a straight-out cookie. And maybe you’ll think it’s not so bad because it’s almost all whole wheat flours.

What’s NOT: nothing whatsoever is bad about the cookie/cracker. It just takes a bit of time to make. And they’re a little bit fussy – trying to get the dough flat and square as you roll it out – you don’t want them to be thicker on one side than the other, not only would they not bake evenly, but they’d look funny.

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This was a Christmas cookie my friends Cherrie. Jackie and I made when we got together and baked nearly all day in mid-December. I still have cookies in the freezer from that. This cookie isn’t quite what you think – the macadamia nuts are ground up to a paste and become the fat, (in lieu of butter) in the dough, but they’re enhanced with dried cranberries AND chocolate chips. All things to like!

When Cherrie and I were planning what cookies we were going to make this year (we’ve been doing this for about 5 years, I’d guess), we have some favorites. Always we do the Chocolate Almond Saltine Toffee. It’s always #1 on our list. We make a double batch, although we do it one at a time because the caramel is hot and a bit unwieldy.  it’s our all-time favorite cookie. We usually make Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies for my cousin Gary because he’s GF. We always make Cranberry Noels also – they’re #2 on our list, always. And we usually make Mexican Wedding Cookies too. This year, by special request from Cherrie, I made one of her favorite things, my Brandied Apricot Bars. You can see photo at right. I took new photos because what I had on the blog post was a really old and needed some updating.

Cherrie had mentioned to me that she had a can of macadamia nuts she wanted to use up, so shouldn’t we add a new cookie to our list. I said sure – found this recipe I’d saved from a few years ago. It was on Bake or Break’s blog. We decided to double the recipe. Hers made 30. We doubled it and didn’t get quite 60, more like 50 (obviously we made them a bit bigger than she did). We also added a few mini chocolate chips. Just because. They were sitting out on the kitchen counter, so we threw them in.

The cookies are easy to put together. But, there’s no butter in this recipe. As I mentioned above, the macadamia nuts, which are naturally high in fat, become the fat for these cookies. So they’re a bit healthier than some.

These do require a bit of chilling time. We let them chill for half an hour or so, but 10 minutes is all that’s required. I don’t know how much good 10 minutes does since it definitely wouldn’t read the middle of the chunk of cookie dough, but anyway, that’s what it says.

The little one-inch balls get dipped in granulated sugar, pressed down onto parchment-lined baking sheets with a fork and baked. That’s it. These are good. Different. Perfect with a cup of tea or coffee, or for a cookie exchange. Easy too.

What’s GOOD: they’re easy to make. Tasty with the dried cranberries and chocolate chips. You really don’t taste the macadamia nuts, just so you know. If I make these again I think I might add some chopped macadamias just because. I like their taste, and you don’t have any sense that you’re eating them in this cookie. Don’t, however, leave them in chunk form as the ground up nuts provide the glue to hold these cookies together. You’d need to substitute butter in lieu of the nuts if you wanted to change that part. These are very low in fat – only 3 grams per cookie.

What’s NOT: nothing, really.

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So, I wasn’t home for Halloween. I drove to San Diego to spend a few days with daughter Sara and her family. Got stuck in a gosh-awful traffic jam that had the northbound freeway completely closed down for over 12 hours. I was already en route southbound when I heard about it on the radio and within about 5 minutes my side of the freeway was creeping along at about 5-10 mph for about 15 miles. Two lanes were closed on my side because the big-rig that jackknifed not only went over on its side, but it hit the center divider (thank goodness for that as it might have kept going across 4 more lanes!) and sent debris into 2 lanes of the southbound lanes. . . .  . photo at left is my friend Cherrie’s coffeepot – she doesn’t use it – it’s just for decoration.

The traffic jam, though not fun to go through, didn’t seriously affect my drive other than delaying it by about 45 minutes – I had dinner with my friend Linda. We went to a favorite restaurant, Blue Ribbon Pizzeria that I’ve written up here on my blog long time ago. It’s in Encinitas. Every time we go there we order the same thing – the Signature (white) Pizza (fresh ricotta, lemon zest, basil, oil) – and we ask for their home made fennel sausage on it as well. Then we order the BLT Salad with the buttermilk dressing. So good. My friend, Linda, recently had heart valve replacement surgery, and I was so glad to see her up and around and looking great. She can’t drive yet, so she was happy to get out of the house.

Later in the evening I drove to Poway to stay with Sara and family. On Friday (yesterday) we drove to Point Loma to show Sabrina (granddaughter) my alma mater (the campus itself). It’s now a college called Point Loma Nazarene University, but when I went there in the 1960s, it was California Western University. Anyway, the campus has grown a lot, but the basics are still there. The dorm I lived in is still there, so I pointed out to Sabrina where my room was the 3 years I was there (I graduated from college in 3 years, by taking 20-22 units per semester and going to summer school, double sessions). We drove past the buildings where I attended most of my classes. We drove down to the beach (well, within about 600 feet of the cliffs there) too. Sabrina and her mom walked the “mall,” the long path that wanders through the middle of the campus. It’s not a huge school.

We had lunch at Dave’s/my yacht club where Dave’s sailboat is still sitting, waiting for the right people to buy it. Sara and I just couldn’t walk out to the slips, the docks, to see the boat – too emotionally tough for both of us – from the clubhouse we couldn’t see it. Probably a good thing. I would have broken down in tears, I know.

Returning to Poway after lunch, Sara needed to make chili for a group of friends who were coming over for dinner that evening, and between us we made these sugar cookies. Sara told me she’s been making these for years and years and years. I must admit, I’m not much of a sugar cookie fan. To me, they’re just blah. Sugar, flour, baking powder, shortening and salt. Maybe some vanilla. Kids love them – maybe because they’re bland, but also because they’re a blank page upon which to decorate. I’m not even much of a fan of sprinkles, but gosh, nearly every kid I’ve known loves them.

BUT, these sugar cookies are a bit different than most – these contain egg and milk, so they produce a more tender cookie. Sara had mixed up the dough the night before, so she rolled out each section (4), cut them out using a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter, and I (from a bar stool so I could rest my foot) decorated them with – you guessed it – sprinkles.

Do watch the baking time – as you’ll read in the recipe, if you roll the dough thinly, you’ll end up with thinner/crisper cookies. I prefer them that way, but if you want softer cookies, merely roll the dough thicker and bake them longer, but don’t over-bake them. You’ll need to use a bit of trial and error. When you take them out of the oven they’re still soft, but within a few minutes they’ll firm-up. They really should be cooled on a rack, but just be gentle with them as you use a spatula to get them off the cookie sheet. They take 8-10 minutes, or more depending on the thickness or the size cookie you cut.

What’s GOOD: well, they’re sugar cookies. If you’re a fan, you’ll love them. I liked them a lot, considering that sugar cookies aren’t something I ever make, or order, or even take from a plate of cookies if they’re offered. But these – they’re good. Tender yet crisp. You can color them for whatever season you’re in and cut any kind of shape.

What’s NOT: nary a thing. Easy to make. Easy to bake. Easy to decorate if you’re into that. Do start the night before if possible as the dough does need to chill.

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Oh my goodness are these ever good. I clipped the recipe out of a recent Food & Wine magazine, thinking well, maybe sometime I’d make them. They may have to become part of my annual Christmas cookie menu. We’ll see.

I have new neighbors. We share a driveway, and so the residents in these two homes need to – for sure – be neighborly. My house actually has an easement on their property so I have ingress and egress (isn’t that the legal language?). They moved in about 10 days ago but I’d actually met them several weeks before because their realtor, Celine, is a friend of mine, and she brought the whole family to my house to see the difference in my view vs. the view next door. We talked about the driveway – I can imagine some people would have concerns.

Anyway, they’ve moved in now and are settling in. They’re a much younger family with two daughters, 9 and 11. The Mom and I have been texting frequently as she’s had lots and lots of questions about numerous things regarding our adjoining properties. She’s not a cook. Well, let’s rephrase that – she cooks – but only because she needs to feed her family. And because I’ve been kind of stuck in my house the last 12 days healing my foot, she asked if I’d like some company – she would send her two girls over to do something with me – to entertain me. She suggested they could teach me French (Mom is French Canadian and the girls go to a French school). Or I could give them an art lesson. Or, perhaps I’d like to teach them how to make cookies. Imagine your surprise? – I chose the last option. The Mom bought stuff for us, and we made two things, these cookies you see and also a pumpkin chocolate chip cake with a cream cheese frosting, which I’ll post in a few days.

I sat here at my computer in the kitchen, which is right by my baking center area. And I became the instructor – mostly from a seated position. They did all the work including most of the cleaning up. The girls don’t know too much about cooking, although the older one, Felicity, makes numerous breakfast things for the whole family. She makes eggs in various ways and omelets and French toast. But baking? No. I needed to give them lessons in how to use (and be careful of) a stand mixer. How to measure dry and wet things. How to scoop and scrape flour measurements. How to use a plastic spatula, spreading batter, all about scooping cookie dough (and yes, they ate their fair share of dough) and how to bake and turn the sheet half way through. Felicity, the 11-year old, did that part and was duly fearful of the hot oven. I taught her how to do the pulling out and turning. Felicity learned how to chop nuts using a rocking motion with a big butcher knife and the flat of her other hand holding down the blade. She did well. Both girls did a great job and we had so much fun!

Most of the cookies went home with them, but I have about a dozen. So now, about the cookies. They’re an easy cookie to make – the batter/dough is a bit on the dry side, but they are light and crispy when baked. The Nutella – oh gosh – what a great addition to an oatmeal cookie.  (You know what it is, right? A mixture of chocolate and hazelnuts?) The only unusual thing (other than using a full 13-ounce jar of Nutella) is that the cookie uses shortening. I buy the non-hydrogenated stuff and have been on the same small container for about 3-4 years, I think. I almost never use the stuff. It does create a different texture in cookies – a more neutral flavor, I think, and it acts differently in a chemical way, I believe.

Felicity and Juliette used my cookie scoop, placing about 12 cookies on each sheet pan lined with parchment paper. The girls made larger cookies than I might have, but it probably “makes no never-mind” in the flavor. Really large ones would take more baking time, I’m sure. They spread a little bit, so do leave 2 inches of space between the cookies.

What’s GOOD: oh, the flavor of the Nutella. It’s wonderful. And certainly a whole lot easier (and more tasty) than using expensive hazelnuts themselves. Loved the combination of the Nutella and oatmeal. Crispy (which I prefer anyway) and a bit chewy. Warm, they almost have a chewy fudgy quality, but once they cool they’re definitely a cookie. A keeper of a recipe.

What’s NOT: maybe finding Nutella? I think my major grocery stores carry it. Trader Joe’s also makes their own version. I am not a connoisseur of Nutella so I don’t know if TJ’s is as good or not. Also the use of shortening might mean a trip to the grocery store. I was lucky, I had Josee, the girl’s Mom to fetch the grocery list of stuff for me! Hooray!

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I don’t recall when it was that I first read about Earl Grey (tea) cookies (oops, I see I misspelled Grey in the photo). But I remember thinking hmmm, that might be very interesting. So, when I ran across a recipe for them at Food52 not so long ago, I decided to try them.

As it turned out, I came down with a cold 2 days before I was supposed to hostess a group of friends at my home for a book review. In this group the hostess obviously IS the hostess; she also selects the book, and she reviews the book too. So if the hostess gets sick, well, there’s trouble in River City! And I was sick. I’m sick as I write this – on day 3 of this cold. One of my friends agreed to have the group at her home. I took these to her – these cookies and the new cream cheese brownie batch I made also (all prepared a week ago before I had any symptoms, even, of a cold). I also took her all my notes so she could try to lead the discussion. It all worked out fine, she said, and everyone really enjoyed both cookies.

These guys were truly easy to make. But, you do need a coffee (spice) grinder, or in my case I have a coffee grinder that’s used only for grinding up herbs and spices – it’s never used for coffee. So, first off, I selected which Earl Grey tea I was going to use (Republic of Tea) and I put the amount needed into the grinder, and let it whirl. Make sure you grind the tea into a complete powder – not just ground up like coffee. You want it to almost disappear in the dough – although with a dark color, of course you can’t do that. In the cookies in the photo, you can see the tea in it, obviously.

There at left you can see the tea ground to a fine powder. It probably could have been chopped even finer. Remember, Earl Grey has bergamot in it – and I don’t know whether they use bergamot flowers or also some of the twigs. If there is any question in your mind about whether it’s ground up fine enough, grind it some more. In a cookie I ate, I did find a little tiny bit of grit – so perhaps I didn’t grind it enough myself.

In the original recipe you were offered the choice of using coconut oil as the fat in it, or butter, so since I couldn’t find my coconut oil, obviously I had to use butter. There’s also 2 ounces of cream cheese in this. Otherwise, it’s a relatively standard shortbread kind of cookie. It was chilled for awhile (I ended up chilling it for a couple of days). But it does need to be warmed slightly in order to roll it out. I didn’t get it rolled out uniformly (see picture) but it didn’t seem to matter to the flavor. The dough was quite sticky, so I had to use flour with every smaller amount I rolled up.

The cookies are baked at 375°F for 10-12 minutes. Mine were done at 11 minutes, but your oven might be different. They are baked on parchment paper and you do have to allow them to rest for 10 minutes or so before removing them from the pan. I was able to fit this batch onto two half sheet pans. They freeze just fine too.

In the original recipe the originator of the recipe likes to make sandwich cookies with chocolate ganache in the middle. That sounded richer than I wanted for a morning event, so I just left them as is, and I was certain the chocolate would overpower the tea. They were delicious as is.

What’s GOOD: the subtlety of the tea – you have to concentrate to even taste it. I think it would be really nice with some Earl Grey tea – I haven’t tried it that way as yet, but I have some in the freezer, so I will on some cool morning. They were easy to make and certainly different!

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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Since I’ve made cream cheese brownies by an age-old recipe for a lot of years – and liked them – I thought why should I try something different? But as I read about the development of the recipe, I concluded that there probably was sufficient reason to try them.

With an upcoming group of ladies coming to my house for a book review, I decided to make these a week or so ahead. As I read the article in Cook’s Illustrated, the recipe developer talked about never being completely satisfied with the old recipe – it produced either a dry-ish brownie with a soggy kind of cream cheese middle, or the cream cheese part was chalky and tasteless, or the brownie part was wet and too dense. Or even worse, she found the brownies overpowered the subtle flavors of the cream cheese layer. So, off she went to figure out how to make these a better way. And indeed she did.

The pictures at left: (1) the foil slings; (2) the brownie bottom layer with the cream cheese batter poured over the top; (3) the cream cheese layer has been spread out, then a reserved amount of the chocolate batter is poured on top and then – (4) it’s swirled just 10-12 times, and (5) baked.

Here’s the more detailed directions. First off, you prepare a foil sling for the 8-inch pan (no, don’t use a 9-inch, please!). Get those foil liners folded just right and they fit perfectly. Pressed into the sides and corners, you spray it with baking spray or grease it with butter if you’d prefer.

Then you make the cream cheese filling – it’s easy – the cream cheese is briefly warmed in the microwave, then mixed with sugar, sour cream and a tablespoon of flour. That gets set aside.

Next is the chocolate – it’s melted in a small bowl in the microwave with butter. Then you mix up the main part of the brownies and add in the chocolate. This 8-inch pan uses just 4 ounces of chocolate. That’s all! A small amount of the batter is set aside, then you spread the cream cheese filling on top and dollop the remaining chocolate batter in 6-8 blobs and using a kitchen knife, you swirl it all, leaving a 1/2 inch edge unswirled. Into the oven it goes for 35-40 minutes and they’re done. The brownies need to cool for an hour in the pan, then once removed from the pan still in the foil slings for another hour. So, NO, you can’t eat these immediately! I let them cool a couple of hours, then cut them into smaller than the directed size. I thought my book group friends might like a smaller sized brownie, so I cut the pan into about 1 1/4-inch squares.

What’s GOOD: indeed, these cream cheese brownies had just the right distinction of brownie (chocolate) and cream cheese (filling). You could definitely taste the cream cheese part, but you could also taste the chocolate, but it wasn’t overpowering at all. I used Valrhona chocolate (just about the best out there). These were just delicious. Definitely worth making again.
What’s NOT: nothing in particular – it does take a few extra dishes to make the 2 different layers, though.

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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open recipe in MC)

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