cookies and lemonade

chocolate finger prints

It's holiday cookie exchange time! I always imagine I'm going to bring something fancy and elaborate, but in the end I usually fall back on something simple and yummy that we can put together the morning of the party, like these thumbprint cookies rolled in turbinado sugar and filled with shiny chocolate ganache. My son has loved making these cookies (and their jam-filled cousins) since he could sit upright in a chair. It's easier for kids to make the impressions in the dough with a finger, rather than a thumb— hence our renaming of this classic cookie. Enjoy!

chocolate fingerprint cookies

ingredients

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

About 1/4 raw or turbinado sugar

Chocolate Ganache (recipe follows)

directions:

Beat butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla until well blended, scraping sides of bowl as necessary.

Stir flour, baking powder, and salt into butter mixture until well blended. Cover and chill until dough is firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325°. Pour turbinado sugar into a shallow bowl.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll to coat in turbinado sugar. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Press your finger into the center of each cookie to make a 1/2-inch-deep imprint.

Bake until lightly browned on the bottom, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely. If the indentations have disappeared, you can make them again while the cookies are still warm (grownups should do this!).

Carefully spoon about a teaspoon of ganache into the center of each cookie. Let stand until ganache is firm, about 30 minutes.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

chocolate ganache

6 ounces chopped bittersweet chocolate

2 tablespoons cream

1 tablespoon corn syrup

1 tablespoon butter

Bring a small pot of water to a boil and then remove from heat. Place all of the ingredients in a heatproof bowl and set on top of the pot of hot water. Stir occasionally until the mixture is melted and smooth. Remove from heat and let cool until slightly thickened but not firm, about 15 minutes.

wake up call

  In one of those life-changing epiphanies, I realized that the same sort of cheesecake-swirl mixture that goes on top of cream cheese brownies can be used to add a cheesecake swirl to lots of other things, too. Like these raspberry muffins. The basic recipe is a slight variation on an old standby from my favorite bakery in Seattle, Macrina Bakery. It’s such a lovely, homey place, it just feels good to be there. You can tell everything is made with love and care.  There’s a recipe for Squash Harvest Loaf in the Macrina Bakery & Café Cookbook that is another revelation. But this recipe is just a nice, basic, tender, not-too-sweet muffin that’s quick to mix up for a lazy weekend breakfast or a morning play date at the park (when you really like the other moms). Over the years we’ve made it with all kinds of berries, chopped plums, chopped pears and dates. But I think this version, with lots of raspberries, a little orange peel, and a tangy cheesecake swirl, is my favorite so far.

 

raspberry cheesecake muffins

Like most muffins, these are best eaten the morning you make them.

ingredients

for the topping

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

for the muffins

3 cups flour

1 1/3 cups sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 tablespoon finely chopped orange zest

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries

directions

Preheat oven to 375°. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a bowl, beat the cream cheese and 1/4 cup sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and set aside.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In a third (and final!) bowl, whisk together 4 eggs, vanilla, orange zest, and milk. Add to the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just until evenly moistened. Slowly add the melted butter and mix until batter is smooth and no visible streaks of butter remain. Gently fold in the raspberries.

Scoop into paper-lined muffin tins, filling almost all the way to the top. You’ll have a little batter left in the bowl. Spoon the cream cheese mixture over the muffin batter. Now spoon the remaining batter on top of the cream cheese, leaving some of the cream cheese mixture showing. Use a knife to gently swirl the two mixtures.

Bake until springy to the touch, 25 to 30 minutes. Let muffins cool in the pan for about 5 minutes and then remove from pan and cool on a rack.

Makes 12 muffins

pie plant

Rhubarb is one of those fruits I always worry I’m going to miss, its season is so short-lived. I’m glad we didn’t miss it this year—I found the most beautiful cherry-red stalks at the farmers market last weekend. Since rhubarb baked on its own can be a little pallid, I paired it with raspberries to give this crisp a boost of red-berry color and flavor. The result was tangy, tart and delicious, especially with a scoop of whipped cream. And I'm a little embarassed to say that we ate the leftovers for breakfast.

Raspberry Rhubarb Crisp

ingredients

topping

1 1/4 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks

1/2 cup chopped almonds

 filling

3 cups chopped rhubarb (from about 1 pound stalks)

3 cups fresh or frozen raspberries

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

directions

In a bowl, mix oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers or a fork until the mixture forms coarse, uniform crumbs. Stir in the almonds.

Preheat the oven to 375°. In a large bowl, stir together the sugar and cornstarch. Add the rhubarb and berries and mix well.  Pour the fruit mixture into a shallow 2 to 3 quart baking dish. Sprinkle the top evenly with the oat mixture.

Bake until the topping is golden brown and the juices are bubbling, 35 to 40 minutes. Let stand at least 10 minutes before serving.

Makes 8 servings

 

oh baby!

I was thrilled to find out that The Baby & Toddler Cookbook, co-written by Karen Ansel and I, was a finalist for an IACP cookbook award this year. Winners were announced this week at the IACP conference in Austin, Texas. Thanks, academy!

strawberry milk

I got the best kind of phone call last night—my neighbors had gone strawberry picking in Dixon and had 30 pounds of strawberries, did I want some? What a question! I froze a few pints to make ice cream later in the summer.  A handful of them were so ripe you couldn't pick them up without bruising them, and we turned these into strawberry milk. I confess I was thinking of Nestle Strawberry Quik (remember how those preternaturally pink sugar granules settled at the bottom of the glass, and crunched between your teeth?), but I'm happy to report that this sweet, frothy, berry-flavored milk is nothing like that.

strawberry milk

ingredients

6 or 7 very ripe strawberries

1 cup whole or 2% milk

honey to taste

a few drops of vanilla extract

directions

Wash and hull the berries and then place them in the blender along with the milk, vanilla, and about a teaspoon of honey. Blend until smooth and taste for sweetness, adding a little more honey if you like. Pour through a fine strainer into a tall glass and enjoy immediately.

 

perfect pops is here!

My advance copies of my new cookbook just arrived!  I have to say, this is the most excited I've ever been to see a book come to life! I think it's partly because this is the first book my son really remembers me working on, and he got to be a pretty significant part of the process. The look on his face when he tore open the package, opened up the book, and started exclaiming over the pictures and reading aloud from the introduction! Well, it doesn't get much better than that.  Leigh Beisch's amazing photos and Emily Dubin's super hip design make this a book I'm just so thrilled about. Kudos to all the amazing peeps at Chronicle Books, nobody does it like you guys! I'll be posting some of my favorite recipes throughout the summer, so stay tuned!

pinkalicious

Happy Birthday to Rebecca, my beautiful sister-in-law! We could not decide how to decorate these cupcakes for our family dinner party. With sparkly pink sugar sprinkles? With fresh berries? With flowers? So we went for all 3!

granola for mom

Happy Mother’s Day! My wish for today is simplicity and ease.  No expensive crowded restaurant brunches, no getting pancake batter all over the kitchen while mom “sleeps in.” Which is why we gave this amazingly simple granola to the moms in our family. It’s a basic recipe that you can customize any way you like. Cacao nibs and dried strawberries? Golden raisins, chopped dried apricots, and toasted coconut? Hazelnuts and dried cherries? The choices are endless. Best of all, it’s a breakfast or snack that kids can serve themselves.

basic granola

Use any nuts you like in this recipe. If you want to add dried fruit, stir it in after the granola has cooled.

ingredients

1/4 cup canola oil, plus a little more for the pan

1/2 cup grade B maple syrup

1/4 cup honey

1/4 teaspon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup whole or roughly chopped nuts

directions

Preheat the oven to 325°. Lightly oil a large baking pan (a jelly roll pan works well, or any cookie sheet with sides).

In a large bowl, whisk together oil, syrup, honey, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in oats and almonds, mixing to coat completely. Spread the mixture evenly in the pan and bake, stirring every 10 minutes, until golden brown, about 30 to 35 minutes total. Cool completely and store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

Makes about 5 1/2 cups

happy organic strawberry season

We’ve been eating organic strawberries every day for the last few weeks, buying baskets and baskets of them everywhere we see them. With yogurt at breakfast, with sliced oranges in the lunch box, dipped in almond butter after school. But I wanted to show my appreciation for these sweet beauties with a really fabulous dessert, and this is it— a flaky, super chocolately, not too sweet biscuit with a filling of whipped cream and strawberries. I like Dutch processed cocoa powder for this recipe—the flavor and color are just so much more intense. Like Oreo cookie-intense. Droste is my favorite brand, and Valrhona is a good one, too.

chocolate strawberry shortcakes

You can make a quick strawberry sauce by puréeing 2 cups of hulled berries with a few tablespoons of sugar.

ingredients

About 2 cups flour

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup Dutch process cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold butter, cut in small pieces

2 egg yolks

3/4 cup buttermilk

 whipped cream

sliced strawberries

directions

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a food processor or a bowl, combine 2 cups flour, 2/3 cup granulated sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; mix until blended.

Add the butter and pulse or rub it in with your fingers until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. If you used a food processor for this step, pout the mixture into a bowl.

In a small bowl or a glass measuring cup, whisk the egg yolks with the buttermilk; add to flour mixture and stir just until evenly moistened.

Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead it lightly, just until it comes together. Pat out to about 1 1/4 inches thick. With a 3-inch round glass or cutter, cut out rounds; gather your dough scraps and pat them together to get six rounds total. Place the rounds a few inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet.Sprinkle a little granulated sugar over the tops.

Bake until the tops look dry and feel set when pressed, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the shortcakes to a rack and let them cool completely.

Carefully slice them in half horizontally (a serrated bread knife works best) and place the bottoms on plates. Top with a big dollop of whipped cream and sliced berries, and set the top over all.

child's play

My friend Debbie, who finds the most amazing vintage cookbooks, gave me a gorgeous book for my birthday (published in 1966—three more years and it would've been the same vintage as me!). La patisserie est un jeu d'enfants. It's written in French by Michel Oliver, with an English translation on the flip side of each page, and the back cover has the title in English: "Making French Desserts and Pastry is Child's Play."  It's got these big bold illustrations, and little notes sprinkled throughout that say things like "mettez toujours une pincee de sel dans tous les gateaux" (always put a pinch of salt in all of your cakes!) and "ayez toujours les ongles propres" (always have clean fingernails!). Truly a book after my own heart. Recipes I want to try out: the enormes brioches, the madeleines, and the choux à la crème. Maybe with strawberry ice cream and chocolate sauce.

I heart Blue Chair Jam

I love love love the new Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. The luscious photography, the matte paper, the inspired flavor combinations, the little glimpses of author Rachel Saunders’ groovy vintage dresses and red peep toe shoes. I’ve already bought three copies of this book (one for me and two for gifts) and I don't buy cookbooks very often. After reading this book, I am so fired up for summer fruit. I have new hope for the future of the cookbook publishing industry. I even learned something about myself!

What I learned is that I am constitutionally unable to follow someone else’s directions— unless I’ve tried every other way I think it might work, first. So the marmalade pictured here is NOT a recipe from her book, and I emphasize that because I have no doubt (thanks to my neighbor Mike who followed the BCJ recipe for Seville Orange Marmalade to the letter and it was absolutely delicious) that the ones in the book are far superior.

Marmalade is a tricky beast. You want peel, but not too much peel. You want the peel chewy, but not too chewy; tender, but not mushy. You want the surrounding jelly to have just the right balance of sweet and bitter. I like a bright, fresh tasting marmalade, so I’m wary of overcooking the fresh juice and pulp. Saunders’ method involves soaking, cooking, and straining two separate batches of fruit over the course of some 3 days. My method involved throwing sliced kumquats and the pulp and zest of some navel oranges in a pot with sugar and cooking it for about 25 minutes. (There was a little more to it than that, but honestly not much.) Saunders’ directions are elegant and precise.  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. It’s just that sometimes you have to learn the why of it all the hard way.

 In the end, my marmalade is bright, and sweet-tart, and tasty, but it is more jelly than marmalade. It doesn’t have enough tender, chewy pieces of peel, and it could use a tiny bit more of the bitterness that comes from the pith of the orange. I just bought some tangelos and some beautiful meyer lemons, and I’m going to try again, this time with one of Saunders’ recipes.