What do architects know about cookies? A lot, I’m sure, since these chocolate chip oatmeal cookies won Best-Tasting Cookie at an architectural firm where my husband once worked. I had baked them early in the morning so they were still warm when he entered them into the contest, slightly crisp on the outside yet chewy inside. I suspect this structure may have swayed the judges as much as the flavor dimension added by an extra splash of bright vanilla and glug of bittersweet molasses. It was decades ago, but the construction-paper blue ribbon still hangs as a reminder in our Hall of Achievement. The award proudly holds its own in the swarm of diplomas,…
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Two Sisters’ Snickerdoodles
Soft, puffy, and slightly crinkly, these classic snickerdoodles deliver sugar ‘n’ spice all year ’round, not just at Christmas. But there’s no escaping that bit of Yuletide in this snickerdoodle. It is one of the irresistible treats my sister-in-law Chris heaps upon her splendid Christmas cookie tray. And Chris got this recipe from “Sister Santa Claus.” It goes back to Chris’s sophomore Home Economics class at Cathedral High School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Many of the nuns who taught her had a male name along with a female one—such as Sister Mary Timothy. So I took her literally when she mentioned Sister Santa Claus. “It wasn’t her real name, but we called her that because…
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Oscars 2017: La La Land O Lakes Old-World Raspberry Bars
IN A WORLD where mixed-up envelopes turn winners into losers and losers look like Matt Damon…comes one dessert that Price Waterhouse stands behind… one dessert that proudly proclaims itself a winner despite its name…La La Land O Lakes Old-World Raspberry Bars. Saskatoon Watch Parties presented this year’s Oscar gala, a “satellite feed” with “satellite dishes.” Don’t blame me and Dan entirely for the names, as my kids and their spouses also shaped the menu. Manchego by the Brie Casey At Bat Franks Ry-Krisp Gosling Emma Stone Wheat Thins Natalie Port Salut Violive Davis Florets Foster Jenkins Arrivioli filled with Isabelle Hubbard Squash, Boiled to Hell in High Water and served with Hackridge Slaw Salade…
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Palmiers in a Pinch
Need a quick yet impressive holiday cookie? Roll puff pastry dough in sugar, fold, cut, and voilà! Palmiers (aka elephant ears). I made a batch today from puff pastry dough I rescued from the dark recesses of my freezer. Months ago I mixed a lot of Joanne Chang’s easy, buttery Quick Puff Pastry from Flour for whatever might arise. Chang says you can freeze it for up to a month, but c’mon, you can even freeze fish for longer than that. Here it is almost a year later and the silky dough rolled out as smoothly as if it were fresh. Today I lost track of my folds and they came out more like…
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Recipephany #1: Little Snackers Peanut Butter Cookies
My mom, of Olympic Seoul Chicken fame, just turned 100. For most of my childhood, she shooed me out of the kitchen when she cooked, distracted when I was underfoot. Little Snackers is the first—and I think only—thing she ever let me bake by myself. Just the thought of Little Snackers sends me tumbling down the laundry chute of nostalgia. Here I go again, back in the kitchen with my mom in her yellow gingham apron, a jar of Skippy, and my thumb squishing the centers of little dough balls. This is my poodle skirt of recipes. Around the time I began baking these, my mom made me a charcoal gray poodle skirt with…
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World Peace, or Giant Meteor ’16, Cookies
Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan got this recipephany for intense double-chocolate cookies from Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé. When she published it in Paris Sweets, she called them “Korova Cookies.” Then her neighbor suggested “World Peace Cookies.” Smart move. This takes Brody’s Second Law of Marketing one step further: If you can name it better, you can sell it better. These are so luxuriously chocolatey, they could make people momentarily forget their hostilities. I’d be happy if they could just get us through the election season with a crumb of domestic harmony. Toward that end, I’m rebranding them “Giant Meteor ‘16 Cookies,” after the cheeky alternative that’s growing in popularity in the polls. Eat them…
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Oscars 2016: The Big Shortbread
The Big Short won best adapted screenplay for its crisp dialog and cleverly simple demystification of the financial meltdown of 2008. The Big Shortbread is also crisp and light, with simplicity at its core. And butter, of course. Dressed up with extra-dark chocolate chips or toasted pecans, it’s ready for any red carpet. This recipephany also has loose ties to the surprise best picture winner, Spotlight, about how the Boston Globe uncovered clergy sexual abuse. I adapted this from Cookies: 20 Recipes to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, a Boston Globe publication by Sheryl Julian. Ms. Julian is the source of many of my recipephanies, and I was sorry to see that she recently retired…
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Gardner Heist 25th: Isabella’s Stollen Pieces
On March 18, 1990, two guys dressed as Boston’s Finest pulled off the biggest art heist in US history. Holes in Gardner Museum’s so-called security led to holes in frames. I commiserate with those who may never tick that Vermeer off their bucket lists. But mostly I feel for Isabella. I’ve had a close, imaginary relationship with this woman since the day I arrived at college literally next door. Museum admission was free back then, so I frequently strolled through like an invited guest, taking in Sunday concerts that seemed arranged just for me. In my yearbook picture, I’m seated on a bench abutting the Venetian courtyard, my hair ironed and my glasses off,…
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The Great Molasses Flood and Mighty Molasses Clove Cookies
January 15, 1919. A bulging, overheated storage tank burst, spewing a towering wave of fast-flowing molasses into Boston’s busiest commercial district, killing 21, injuring 150, and wreaking tsunami-style devastation. The incongruity of “molasses” and “disaster” tends to rob the legendary Great Molasses Flood of its gravitas. Better viewed as a horrific industrial accident, it offers up five lessons worth mulling over on its 96th anniversary. 1. Heed warning signs. The massive tank, which held more than 2 million gallons, leaked so badly that neighborhood kids used to scoop up the puddles with pails. The owner, U.S. Industrial Alcohol (USIA) Company, chose camouflage as a solution when it repainted the gray tank to match the…
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Jimmy Bruic’s Banana Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
I wish to publicly thank Ellis Island for my Irish surname. Having walked the breathtaking landscape of my faux homeland, I will increasingly claim this island as my own. Actually, my kids are a quarter Irish, thanks to my husband’s great-grandparents who came from the Dingle Peninsula. So according to a Scientific American article (I’m not making this up), “Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains,” I may be part Irish after all! And why shouldn’t I claim Irish food as my heritage? Smoked salmon, for which my brain has a unique receptor, appears in convenience stores, for goodness sake. I breakfasted on sweet, freshly smoked kippers, a royal relative of the canned…
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Nocciola (Hazelnut) Biscotti Dipped in Chocolate
Proving that everything sounds better in Italian, “nocciola” rightly implies dark depths of flavor. The hazelnut grows abundantly in the Piedmont Region, and became a cocoa substitute as Italy rebuilt after World War II. This explains why nocciola gelato has the smooth richness of chocolate, and why Nutella tastes like chocolate spread with some hazelnuts, when it’s really the other way around. This recipephany produces a classic, crunchy biscotti with a toastier, more mouthwatering flavor than the almond variety. Because chocolate is hazelnut’s soulmate, I used to throw in mini chocolate chips. But the chips smeared when I sliced the warm cookies for the second baking. I found that a thin coating of melted…
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Jan Hagel Cookies, a Dutch Treat
No relation to Chuck, the Jan Hagel is as fun to make as it is to say (Yahn HAHgle). This traditional Dutch Christmas cookie is a crispy melt-in-your-mouth delight with cinnamon and toasted almonds. Curiously, this cookie makes me think of my college orientation week. A day in Harvard Square was on the schedule, including an exciting “Dutch Treat” lunch. Imagine my surprise when we ended up at the Wursthaus, a legendary spot with fabulous schnitzel, but no Gouda or Edam. I suppose I might have figured it out if it had said we’d “go Dutch,” but I was a teenager who didn’t get out much. Two years later, I had my first Jan…
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Fig Brooklines, Cookie Clusters, and the Possibility of Dark Batter
Newtonian Physics I steer away from the cookie aisle, since I prefer to bake, and who knows what’s in those processed things? Yet one packaged cookie always draws me in: the Fig Newton. Crunchy little seeds in moist jam, the tender crumb that doesn’t crumble—all stacked neatly in a sleeve that suggests how many you could (but shouldn’t) eat in one sitting. What’s more, they could have been called Fig Brooklines. The Kennedy Biscuit Works of Cambridge (a founding bakery of Nabisco) introduced them in 1892 using a new funnel-within-a-funnel technology that formed a continuous tube of dough filled with fig jam. Since the bakery named their products after nearby towns, they called this…
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Gary’s Date and Oatmeal Bars
Date and Oatmeal Bars may be the first recipe I ever got from Gary Isaacson, who passed away two years ago next week. A born chef, he was fluent in all cuisines. Yeast loved him as much as everyone else did, and he put the “art” in artisan breads. I hope to post more of his recipephanies, and I invite his friends and family to send me their favorites along with any Gary stories that go along with them. ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ I was in the slow checkout line at Publix a few years back when the woman ahead of me put three boxes of Betty Crocker’s date bar mix onto the stopped conveyor belt. Like…
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Kathleen’s Tiny Tarts: short and sweet
Tiny Tarts. I admit I love the nutty name as much as the nutty flavor. You’d think “pecan” would be the operative word, but no, the diminutive size gets top billing. This recipephany goes back to our first visit to the postcard-perfect Canadian seaside resort of St. Andrews in the ‘70s. We stayed at our friend Julie’s family home, a charming Cape Cod cottage that served as a dining hall for officers stationed at a nearby fort during the War of 1812. Julie’s mother Kathleen was a superb, versatile baker, ahead of her time with high loaves of molasses oatmeal and other whole grain breads. When she treated us to these delicate Tiny Tarts…
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Peanut butter beats the breakfast blahs
Try peanut butter in oatmeal, cream of wheat, pancakes -- and enjoy the surprise.
