My friend Molly is both a regular friend and a foodie friend. We met in Portland after both of us had just moved back, and became fast friends. In addition to hanging out and doing things, we discovered we both love to cook. When we lived in the same city we would often get together to make dinner or bake. And it was Molly who first taught me to can.
As has been mentioned on other posts, I find many recipes because I get an idea and I go searching online. In this case, I had some sunflower seed butter that I needed to use up and so I went looking for a basic peanut butter cookie recipe to adopt. After finding my recipe, I realized I needed to check Smitten Kitchen and stumbled on the Ovenly three-ingredient peanut butter cookie.
I made a test batch with real peanut butter, just a half recipe, and I really enjoyed it. However, the molasses flavor was so prevalent that I thought the cookie was too sweet and the peanut butter a little bit muted.
As you could tell from the top photo in this post, I usually make both raspberry macaroons and chocolate macaroons for Passover. They have the same characteristics – easy to make, moist, and truly delicious.
These macaroons get their flavor from two sources of chocolate – cocoa powder and melted chocolate. The melted chocolate helps keep them moist, and the cocoa gives a good depth of flavor.
Like many Jewish kids, my family always had a can or two of macaroons during Passover. I certainly enjoyed them, and as an adult I continued to buy them in addition to the sweets I would make.
In 2012, I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, and it totally transformed my thinking. It had never occurred to me a) how easy it is to make macaroons* and b) that I could make my own macaroons for Passover!
I don’t remember how I managed to stumble upon this recipe, easily five or six years ago. However, it instantly intrigued me – a naturally gluten free chocolate cookie made entirely with cocoa powder? Plus the addition of cinnamon and chili to give it a little complex flavor? Sign me up!
I make this quite often, it is a go-to any time I need a gluten free cookie. But it is also a huge favorite with gluten eaters, because all that cocoa powder packs a huge chocolate wallop without being too sweet.
Every Tuesday night I play mah jongg with a group of women. It’s a four person game; there are 5 of us and every four turns we sit out a game. Some weeks I bring one of my myriad of cooking magazines with me to thumb through. This past December while thumbing through Bon Appetit, I came across this recipe for pistachio thumbprint cookies, and immediately showed it to my friend Carol, who loves pistachios.
Everyone ooh’ed over the photo, and it went into my mental “make – this” file. Fast forward, and my friend Shoshi, who is Carol’s daughter, had just given birth to a baby boy and I helped bake sweets for the bris. You better believe this was one of the first cookies on the list!
Some time in middle school, I discovered English Breakfast tea, and it became one of my favorite beverages. On and off for years at a time, my day has started with a large mug of dark-brewed tea, with milk and sugar added.
As I mentioned in this post, I found a recipe several years ago for Black Tea Cardamom Cookies and was instantly intrigued. The first year I tried them, the cookies were so crumbly as to be almost impossible. The flavor seemed good, and I decided it was worth tinkering with the recipe. The second year I adjusted the dough, I believe by adding an extra egg and reducing the flour. The cookie definitely worked better, but the tea wasn’t necessarily the highlight. It was a decent spice cookie, but didn’t make a huge impression on myself or my friends.
Stumbling upon a new recipe is sometimes a grand adventure, starting in one place and ending somewhere you never had even thought of. The cookie-baking bug largely passed me by in December – I watched my friends baking with enthusiasm, but had little desire to do my own crazy baking.
But with New Year’s approaching, and with it my friends’ annual party, I started brainstorming what I wanted to bring. The last two years I have brought my version of a tarte soleil along with an assortment of cookies and sweets. I went looking through my notes for previous cookies I’ve brought, and various recipes I’ve saved over the years. Continue reading “Vanilla Platzchen”
How fun are these? This past summer there was a large bat mitzvah celebration at my synagogue, and most of the cookies were white or brown. I decided to make a brightly colored cookie that would help brighten up the cookie trays.
I found these cookies in 2012, when I was looking for Valentine’s-themed recipes for a work bake sale. They were so simple, and yet had amazing flavor, I was seriously impressed.
It took me a couple of tries to successfully tweak it, but I also started making them at my shul and they became a favorite there, too. Since 2012, I make them faithfully every year for our work bake sale (in addition to other treats) and also make them during the year at the synagogue. Continue reading “Raspberry Swirled Heart Cookies”
