Milk & Cookies

Random Caption... SUPER DONKEY BUSINESS MAN! I'm pretty sure no one reads these anyways...

These are the types of mistakes that I love.  I was most of the way done making these “Lime Tea Cookies” when I realized we didn’t have any real limes to zest.  We had some left over ginger on hand (see previous cookies), and I thought, “Hey why not.”  Lucky me, these cookies are great!  They are light and moist and  you can easily eat like 10 before you realize what just happened.  They are very quick and easy to make and they taste great.  They are definitely not as comforting as chocolate cookies, but they are perfect for a spring day or for taking on a picnic.

I didn’t end up taking a bunch of pictures this time around, so I am gonna steal a page from Zoe and put random pictures in my post to make up for it.

LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY…

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tspn. lime juice
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tspn. minced ginger
• 1-3/4 cup flour
• 1 tspn. baking powder
• 1/4 tspn. baking soda
• 2 Tblsn. lime juice (for the glaze)
• 1/4 cup sugar (for the glaze)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 350°F and prepare a baking tray with parchment paper.

In a small bowl combine the lime juice and milk and let stand for 5 minutes.  In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until its fluffy and smooth.  Add the egg and beat it in.  Then add the lime-milk mixture and the ginger.  Finally mix in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.  That’s it for the dough. (optional) Let it cool briefly in the fridge (1-2 hours).  This will result in softer cookies.

When you are ready drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the tray and bake them for 8 minutes or so.  The edges will just start to brown when they are done.  Let them cool for a few minutes on the tray before moving them.

The last step is to glaze the cookies.  The glaze is made by mixing the remaining lime juice (2 Tblsn.) with the extra sugar (1/4 cup).  Just brush the glaze onto the cooled cookies and let it sit for a few minutes.

Ok I lied, the last step is to see how many of these you can get into your mouth at one time!  I’m pretty sure I saw Zoe with at least 8…

Cookie Action Shot!

Today is a special day. It marks one of the most frightening and fulfilling days in my life. A day that I will cherish forever, as a moment when I felt completely full of love and completely loved in return. I am talking of course of my wedding day three years ago. Thank you, Zoe, for making me as happy today, as I was when you first entered my life some 8 years ago.

As a special treat for Zoe, this weeks cookies feature an ingredient that I usually shun from being in my cookies. I am talking about nuts. But as all things should be, I compromised, by making sure that the cookies selected this week are also full of rich dark chocolate so that I will also be unable to resist them! I guess this weeks cookies are a match made in heaven.

INGREDIENTS (makes 35-40 cookies)

• 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, 60%-72% cocoa (chopped)
• 4 Tblsn. butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tspn. espresso powder
• 1 tspn. vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tspn. baking powder
• 1/4 tspn. salt
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup golden raisins

DIRECTIONS

These cookies are very straight forward to make, just like any chocolate cookies. Start off by setting up a double boiler to melt the bittersweet chocolate and the butter together. Be sure to keep the temperature low so not to burn the chocolate. Mix these two together until evenly melted and creamy.

In a separate bowl combine the sugar and eggs. Beat them together until smooth and a bit frothy. Now add the melted chocolate and butter mixture and mix it in. Finally, stir in all of the remaining ingredients.

Refrigerate the dough if you like, to make the cookies a bit softer and chewier, as well as easier to scoop.

Preheat the oven to 325°F and line a couple trays with parchment paper.  Start placing tablespoon sized scoops onto the trays with a least an inch of clearance around the dough.   These cookies will spread a bit, but not as much as many other cookies.  Cook each tray for 11-13 minutes until the tops just start to crack like brownies.

cocococococonut

Last minute coconut cookies is a much better post title this week. Zoe decided Wednesday afternoon that she wanted me to do the cookies for her this week. Such is the life of an overworked grad-student. This week’s cookie is in honor of my sister, who just got hired on as the executive director of the new mexico wine growers association. Congrats Olive!

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cup flaked coconut
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1-1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 tspn baking soda
• 1/2 tspn vanilla
• 1/4 tspn salt

Directions

Before you get started mixing ingredients do the following:
Soften the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Ok, to make the dough start by combining the butter, sugar, and eggs in the mixer. Blend them up until they are nice and fluffy. Now add in the flour, baking soda, salt, and vanilla. Finally, add in coconut flakes and mix them in well. Set the dough in the fridge for a while and take a break. You earned it!

Get the oven preheated to 375°F, and prepare some baking sheets with parchment paper. Start plopping down teaspoon sized balls of dough about 2″ apart on your sheet. I was managing 24 cookies per batch. Let them bake for 8-10 minutes. This week I actually followed my own advice from last week and I melted a little bit of chocolate chips down in the microwave to drizzle on top of the cookies. Unfortunately, I did it with 100% cocoa chips thinking that it would be rich and dark and delicious. Instead I managed to turn one tray of cookies bitter. Oh well, I learned my lesson well. Use 70% cocoa or less unless it is being mixed in with something sweet. I still plan on eating those chocolate covered cookies though.

Stay tuned for a future post about making home-made samoa’s. You know, those delicious coconut, caramel, chocolate girlscout cookies.

Lemon zest

Well this baking session went about as well as everything else has been going for me this week, the main difference being that all the problems here were entirely my fault and preventable, like starting out without any butter in the kitchen, not being prepared for the 2 hour wait while the dough sits in the fridge, leaving out 33% of the sugar, and fatally burning 15% of the cookies. Whoops!

Before I manage to explode this blog post somehow, I’ll get to the recipe, from Joy the Baker. You can get the directions from her too, I won’t write them out because they’re so long.

• 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter (preferably high-fat, like Plugra), softened at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted before measuring
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
• 2 large egg yolks, preferably at room temperature
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• zest of 1 lemon and zest of 1 lime

For the decoration (optional):

• 1 egg yolk
• Crystal or dazzle sugar

Not part of the unlucky 15%

Now here’s what I actually did:

• 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter (preferably high-fat, like Plugra), softened at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted before measuring
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
• 2 large egg yolks, preferably at room temperature
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• zest of 1 lemon and zest of 1 lime 1 lemon…. that is 2 lemons (Meyer lemons from my aunt Beth’s lemon tree in Berkeley)

For the decoration (optional):

• 1 egg yolk
• Crystal or dazzle sugar regular sugar
• that confectioner’s sugar from above, dusted over the cookies

The cow is back from haitus

As you can see, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. And they get this ringing endorsement from Jason: “They taste a little like cardboard.” I actually think they taste fine. Maybe they’re not as good as the past few on here but hey, they can’t all get 5 stars.

Objects in oven may be smaller than they appear.

Last weekend Zoe’s parents came out to visit us and we spent some time hanging with the family. Some how we ended up inheriting a bag of fresh juicy lemons. How does that saying go? “When life gives you lemons…. you make lemon cookies!”

The recipe this week comes from AllRecipes. There are many variations on the internet for a recipe very similar to this one, so I wasn’t afraid to take some liberties to make it my own. Sadly, I couldn’t find any recipes that used fresh lemons very much in them, so even this recipe I substituted lemon extract for a combination of lemon juice and lemon zest in order to utilize our abundance of lemons.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package lemon cake mix
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 2 tspn. lemon zest
• 2 tspn. fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar (for decoration)

DIRECTIONS

The dough for these cookies takes almost no time at all, so go ahead and start off by preheating the oven to 350°F.
To make the dough, get out a medium mixing bowl, and your favorite rubber spatula. Combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix them together until the dough is smooth and consistent. You will have to mix by hand because this dough is pretty thick stuff.
On the side, prepare a small bowl with the powdered sugar, and lay out a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie tray. Take a teaspoon and scoop out dough balls one at a time. Roll each ball around in the powdered sugar bowl until it is nice and coated, and then place it on the cookie tray. These cookies expand a bit, but not too much, so you can place them about 1-2 inches apart. (I got ~25 per tray)
Once the tray is loaded up, pop the cookies into the oven for 7-9 minutes. They will start to brown just slightly around the edges when they are done.
Let them cool a bit and then start inhaling them. They are very small cookies so you probably want to eat like 3 or 4 cookies along with your glass of milk… maybe even more.