Tag Archives: Cookies

Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (to be released March 17). The original is time honoured and perfect. Frankly, I’m worried. Sometimes you shouldn’t mess with a classic. Remember Lindsay Lohan in the remake of Parent Trap? Jackie Chan as the updated Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid ? Billy Bob Thornton in Bad News Bears? Enough said.

But sometimes messing with the classics works. Traditional hamentashen are filled with either prune or poppyseed filling. In this updated version, apples are cooked down to a thick sauce. A big scoop of dulce de leche and a judicious sprinkling of salt are added and the resulting filling is quite sublime. I have to give credit for this filling to the talented blogger Tori Avey. It was her genius idea. I just took it and wrapped it in a buttery almond shortbread shell.

Click here to print recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen.

Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen

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Hamentashen are the traditional treat baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which falls on Sunday March 12 this year. Essentially, the Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient (4th century BCE) Persia were saved from extermination. If you’re curious to learn more about Purim, check out a more thorough post I wrote in 2012.

I’ve been busy creating and this year I have 3 delicious hamentashen recipes to share with you over the next few days. Dried Cherry and Pecan, Poppyseed and Salted Caramel Apple. My childhood Purim memories consist of store bought hamentashen. My mom bought them from Open Window Bakery in Toronto. They made two varieties, prune and poppyseed. My sisters and I vastly preferred the poppyseed filing. Home-made hamentashen didn’t enter my life until I got married. My husband’s aunts, Carol and Jenny, made their own hamentashen. Tender little triangles brimming with a prune-raisin filling and covered in honey and walnuts. I felt like I’d entered an alternate universe. But a universe I was thrilled to be indoctrinated into . All hamentashen should be topped with toasted nuts. Because, crunch!This hamentashen is my twist on their classic recipe. I halved the amount of prunes in the filling and replaced it with dried cherries. The original strawberry jam was swapped out for sour cherry preserves. And then I went really rogue with the dough! I used a butter dough. Carol and Jenny’s hamentashen dough is made with oil, so if you’re looking for a dairy free option, Aunt Carol’s Hamentashen Dough is a great option.This dough recipe comes from Uri Scheft’s new book, Breaking Breads. It is essentially an almond shortbread cookie dough which gets rolled quite thin.

I created this video to show you how to fill and shape the hamentashen.

Bite through the crisp buttery almond shortbread shell to reveal the sweet-tart dried cherry filling. The honey-pecan topping make these hamentashen very special.

Click here to print recipe for Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen.

Cultured Butter Cookies

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If there were a “little black dress” of the cookie world, this cookie would be it. Simple and elegant, much like I imagine Melissa Clark, creator of this cookie, to be. Cultured Butter Cookies, perfect for any occasion, need to become a staple in your cookie wardrobe.

A rather unassuming little cookie, but appearances can be deceiving. When a cookie lists flour, butter and sugar (along with a little salt, baking powder and an egg yolk), as the only ingredients, then quality matters. That’s where the cultured butter comes in.

For the uninitiated, here’s a little butter making history. (I always consider it a great day when I learn something new!) Many years ago all butter was made with “cultured” cream. After the evening milking the farmers left the cream to sit out overnight so that the milk would settle and the cream would rise to the top of the bucket. Without refrigeration, the naturally occuring bacteria in the milk caused it to sour slightly, giving it a tangy nuttiness. This cultured cream, once churned into butter, retained that delicious flavour.

Once dairy farmers began pasteurizing their milk, all the active cultures were killed and the cream no longer soured on its own. If they wanted cultured cream they would have to add an additional step in the butter making process and add live cultures back into the pasteurized milk. In an effort to save time and money, North American farmers skipped this step and made butter from sweet cream.

We grew accustomed to the mellow flavour of butter churned from sweet cream. But over in Europe, they never stopped adding live cultures back into the pasteurized cream. When we began importing these European cultured butters into North America people were surprised at how different this butter tasted. Cultured butter is a higher-fat product (86% butterfat vs 80% for regular butter), which in turns makes the butter more silky and gives it a richer taste. The complex tanginess is very pronounced.

When the flavour of butter is front and center, it’s worth the extra money to buy cultured butter. The dough comes together quickly and then it’s essentially a slice and bake cookie. The dough gets rolled in coarse sanding sugar for a little glitter, because even cookies need a bit of bling!These cookies are crumblier, crisper and more buttery in flavour than a traditional butter cookie. Sometimes simple is best.

Click here to print recipe for Cultured-Butter-Cookies.

Gingerbread Autumn Leaves (Gluten-Free)

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While the leaves have already finished falling where I live, I couldn’t resist making these gorgeous edible ones. It’s just too soon to start making winter cookies. I refuse to get sucked into that vortex this early in the season. I wanted to make the cookies gluten free since one of my sons follows a gluten- free diet and I was curious to try out Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free Baking Flour. It is a blend of white rice flour, brown rice flour, potato starch, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, and xanthan gum. You just substitute it cup for cup in your regular recipes.

I was inspired by Elizabeth over at lizybakes and crouton crackerjacks on youtube.

Roll out dough between two sheets of parchment paper and freeze for about 30 minutes before trying to cut out shapes.I got some beautiful copper cutters from coppergiftscom. They have thousands of different shapes. If you are a cookie lover it is easy to spend lots of time (and money!) over at their site. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I mixed up 4 colours of royal icing for my leaves. The formula to get these colours is in the recipe at the end of this post. I like to place the piping bags in a tall drinking glass. I place a crumpled up dampened paper towel in the bottom of each glass too keep the icing from drying out and getting all crusty, once you cut a hole in the piping bag. You can only decorate one cookie at a time as the icing must be wet to create the marbling effect. You will need toothpicks and a paper towel to wipe the toothpick off after dragging it through the wet icing. I created a video to show the technique.

The cookies will need to dry overnight before you can package them up. They will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 weeks. Perfect with a glass of milk or an afternoon latte!

Click here to print recipe for gluten-free-gingerbread-autumn-leaves.

Sweet and Salty Magic Bars

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These classic bar cookies have been around since the 1850’s! They also go by the moniker of Magic Bars, Hello Dolly Bars, Five Layer and even Seven Layer Bars. Essentially, they all begin with a melted butter and cookie crust, typically crushed graham wafers. This sweet base gets topped with more sweetness, usually chocolate or butterscotch chips, sweetened coconut and some type of nuts. A thick layer of sweetened condensed milk acts as the glue to hold everything together.

Whatever they’re called, they have never really appealed to me because they just seemed too tooth-achingly sweet. But last week I saw this charming video and knew I had to try this twist on these bars. In her new book, “Modern Potluck”, Kristen Donnelly solves the sickly sweet problem by swapping out a cookie base with a potato chip base. What??? Pure genius.

I had high hopes for these “potato chip crusted magic bars”. The combination of sweet and salty is my kryptonite. I went shopping for potato chips, because I rarely keep them in my house. Shockingly, don’t have much will power when it comes to salt. By the way, did you know that they sell unsalted potato chips? Chicken and waffle flavoured potato chips is one thing, but I draw the line at unsalted! I mean, salt is the whole point of potato chips, right?

I whipped up a batch of Kristen’s potato chip crusted magic bars. I was so excited I could barely wait for them to cool.The first bite was interesting. The crust was not as crispy as I thought it would be. Nor did it taste as salty as I was hoping for. The second bite left an almost rancid aftertaste in my mouth. I had eaten a few potato chips out of the bag as I was making the crust, and they tasted great. I suspect that cooking the potato chips a second time caused some kind of chemical reaction that changed the taste. I was so disappointed. I knew that Kristen’s idea of adding a salty crust was a great idea and I wanted to make these bars work.

And then I remembered these pretzel crusted treats I made last year. Why not trade potato chips for pretzels? Why not indeed? I topped mine with bittersweet chocolate chips, unsweetened coconut chips, salted cashews, almonds and macadamia nuts, and chopped vanilla caramels.

Watch the magic happen!

These bars have it all. A perfect sweet-salty balance and great textural contrast. Crunch from pretzels, nuts and toasted coconut, gooey sweetness from sweetened condensed milk, bittersweet from the chocolate, and chewiness from the caramel. A perfect treat.

Oh, and I figured out why they’re called magic bars. Set them out with some cold milk and watch them magically disappear. They are even more delicious straight from the freezer!

Click here to print recipe for Sweet and Salty Magic Bars.

Cookie Butter Rugelach

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If the title of this post has left you shaking your head, wondering what the heck I am writing about, let me enlighten you.I wrote about cookie butter last year. It is also known as Speculoos or Biscoff spread. Basically, we are talking about ground up spicy gingerbread cookies, mixed with additional sugar and oil, to create, a somewhat addictive spread, in the vein of peanut butter and Nutella.

Rugelach is a small Jewish pastry, of Eastern European origin. Traditionally they are made in the form of a crescent by rolling a triangle of dough around a filling. The origin of the name comes from the Polish word “Rog” which is the prefix for horn, (croissant shaped pastries kind of look like horns). “El” is used as a diminutive and the “Ach” ending indicates plural. So put together we have horn shaped little pastries –Rugelach.How this little cookie came to be made in a crescent shape is an interesting story. I have read several versions, but this is my favourite. In the 16^th Century, the Jews were living under the rule of the brutal Ottoman Empire. Life was not easy for them. A baker with a warped sense of humour, decided to create little pastries, shaped like the crescent that decorated the Ottoman war flags. With every bite of these delicious little noshes, the Jews imagined that they were “chewing out” their merciless oppressors.

Back in Europe, the dough for rugelach is light, airy and yeast raised. Somehow, when it arrived in North America, it transformed into a dense cream cheese based dough. This is the rugelach I grew up with and love. Rich and flaky, but not too sweet, the best rugelach let the dough be the star and the fillings play a supporting role.

Most often they are filled with jam, cinnamon-sugar, raisins and nuts. Often chocolate is thrown into the mix. Screwing with a 500 year old cookie could be a dangerous thing, but I like to live on the edge, so I played around with the traditional recipe and spread mine with Cookie Butter instead of jam.

The dough is simple to put together. I used the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated for the dough, with the addition of some cinnamon and ground ginger to mimic the gingerbread flavour of the cookie butter. The butter and cream cheese must be very cold.Only process the dough until it resembles small curd cottage cheese. Don’t let the processor form the dough into a ball, or you will have tough rugelach. I decided to make two varieties. The first, shaped in the traditional crescent, featured Cookie Butter and toasted chopped hazelnuts.These got treated to a shower of cinnamon sugar as soon as they came out of the oven. For the second variation I created little roulades. The dough was rolled into a rectangle, filled with cookie butter and chopped chocolate, and rolled and sliced, before baking.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter and Hazelnut Rugelach.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter and Chocolate Rugelach Roulades.

On the 7th night of Chanukah: Florentines

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On the 7th night of Chanukah I baked my true love Florentines. Thin, crispy, lacy, delicate and just drop dead gorgeous! I will warn you that these cookies are a bit of a pain in the ass to make. They require a candy thermometer and you will need to temper the chocolate for them, but they are so pretty (and delicious), that I think they’re worth the effort. Ever since I watched Anna create these on her show “Bake with Anna Olsen,” I became obsessed with making them. I have made similar lacy cookies with oats , but these are something totally different.These are essentially an almond cookie. Sliced almonds get coarsely crushed. Honey, cream and sugar are cooked until they reach 244°F.The almonds get mixed into the batter and then the cookies are formed and baked. The baked cookies are quite fragile, so they get a coating of melted chocolate on one side, to give them some extra strength. The cookies can then be embellished further, by placing the wet chocolate side of the cookie onto a chocolate transfer sheet. This is an acetate sheet embossed with cocoa butter and powdered food colouring. Once the chocolate hardens, you peel the cookie off the sheet and the design transfers to the chocolate, producing a stunning pattern. They come in a wide variety of designs. There are many different online sources for them.

Click here to print recipe for Florentine Cookies.

The possibilities are endless with Florentine cookies.

Emily, at a counter space created Potato Chip Florentines.

Sarah at strawberryplum made Pistachio, Orange and Honey Florentines.

Stella over at bravetart crafted Cocoa Nib Florentines,

On the third night of Chanukah: Macadamia Coconut White Chocolate Shortbread

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On the third night of Chanukah I baked Macadamia Coconut White Chocolate Shortbread cookies for my true love. This is a Martha Stewart recipe, from her lovely Cookie Book. Her recipe used coconut and macadamia nuts, but I added white chocolate to mine. These tropical shortbread cookies are buttery and crumbly, everything a good shortbread cookie should be.

Certain foods just belong together. I learned about the magic combination of white chocolate and macadamia nuts many years ago when I worked at The David Wood Food Shop in Toronto. I was pregnant at the time and consumed a very large quantity of pastry chef Daphna Rabinovich’s Macadamia and White Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I find it much easier to roll out the dough right after I make it, before chilling. Roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper. Then stick it in the freezer for about 30 minutes before cutting it into shapes. I love these fluted square cookie cutters. They remind me of Nice cookies from my childhood.

Click here to print recipe for Coconut Macadamia White Chocolate Shortbread.

Maple Macadamia Milk Chocolate Cookies

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My husband arrived home from work last week with a gift for me. From the sound of my squeal when I opened the package, you would have thought the box held a large square cut diamond ring. Nope. Just a jar of maple salt.

Yes, I said maple salt!! Who knew? My mind was reeling with the possibilities. Maple glazed chicken thighs finished with a sprinkle of maple salt, salmon with a maple soy glaze and strewn with a light dusting of maple salt, maple salted pecans? I settled on maple macadamia milk chocolate cookies, finished with a fine mist of maple salt. Maple syrup would be the natural addition to give these cookies a serious maple bent, but too much syrup would make the dough too soft and liquidy. The solution was to add maple extract to the dough. I added almost 1 1/2 teaspoons and it was perfect.

This recipe was adapted from the Lindt chocolate web site. The dough came together quite quickly in my stand mixer.I formed one round log and one square log (check out this video if you need help forming a square log). If you are impatient like me, freeze for 2 hours. If not, chill dough in fridge for 6 hours or even overnight. Slice, top with maple salt or just regular fleur de sel, and bake.Be patient and let them cool completely before tasting. They spread quite a bit in the oven. They are quite thin and you will be utterly surprised that such a thin and delicate cookie can pack such a wallop of deep maple flavour. Buttery and crispy, these cookies are really unique. The tiny crystals of maple salt crunch delicately between your teeth and keep you craving more. You can find maple salt online at Saltworks (in the USA), or at Maison Côté in Canada.

Click here to print recipe for Maple Macadamia Milk Chocolate Cookies.

Cookie Butter Hazelnut Chocolate Chunk Biscotti

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Before we get down to biscotti business, can we just chat for a few minutes about the PBS series “The Great British Baking Show“. Is anybody else as obsessed with with it as I am? I can’t seem to get enough of it. These are supposed amateur bakers who are blowing my mind with their sweet skills. Plus, the drama and controversy is really quite riveting to watch. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills have nothing on these Brits!

I was totally “Team Martha” until sadly, she was eliminated last week, Only 17 years old and already so accomplished. Creative, artistic and cute as a button, I predict big things ahead for her.

OK, now onto more important matters, Cookie Butter Biscotti! When I mentioned to my husband that I was planning to blog about biscotti this week he got very excited. Then I had to gently break it to him that I wasn’t planning to make those biscotti, but a new recipe instead, since I already posted about those biscotti already a few years ago. “Why bother making a different kind of biscotti, when your white chocolate, dried cherry, coconut biscotti are the ultimate?” he asked me. Not sure he really gets the concept of a food blog. You can’t post the same recipe over and over again. Oh well, I was convinced that once he crunched into one of these sweet and spicy babies, he’d come around.

The inspiration for this recipe came from my sister Bonnie. She is always sending me recipe ideas and photos. The original recipe was for peanut butter chocolate biscotti. But since I had lots of cookie butter in the cupboard, left over from making these, I decided to substitute cookie butter (speculoos spread) for the peanut butter.

Cookie Butter is just ground up Speculoos or Biscoff cookies (a gingersnap type Belgian cookie), sugar and oil. If you live in the U.S., Trader Joe’s carries their own brand. In Canada, the Lotus brand is available at Loblaws.

I thought that the buttery rich flavour of toasted hazelnuts would really complement the spicy ginger in these biscotti. And of course, bittersweet chocolate is always invited to any cookie party.Hazelnuts come with a thin skin on them, which can taste bitter. Removing the skin is simple. Toast hazelnuts on a baking sheet in the oven 10 to 15 minutes, or until lightly coloured and skins are blistered. Wrap nuts in a kitchen towel and let steam 1 minute. Rub nuts in towel to remove loose skins. Don’t worry about any stubborn skins that don’t come off. Let cool completely.

The dough gets divided into thirds and using your hands, form 3 flat logs. The logs spread quite a bit, so give each log its own baking sheet. Here’s a before and after shot of the first bake.
Cool the logs for at least 30 minutes and then slice on the diagonal into 1/2 inch thick biscotti.Back into the oven for a second bake (Hence the name biscotti – or twice baked!) While the cookies are baking, melt some bittersweet chocolate and grind up some Speculoos or gingersnap cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter Hazelnut and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti.

Oatmeal Lace Speculoos Sandwich Cookies

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I was first introduced to Speculoos over 20 years ago by my Belgian neighbour Brigitte. These were the cookies of her childhood. Imagine if you can, a gingersnap on steroids. Bolder and much more aggressive than typical gingersnaps, Speculoos are brimming with dark brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper. A few packages of these crunchy thin biscuits always made it into her suitcase to bring back to Ottawa to share with us after a visit home with her mom. Brigitte speaks with a bit of an accent and the first time she served us the cookies I thought I heard her say “Speculum.” Kind of an odd name for a cookie I thought! Sometimes my mind wanders to strange places. Then in 2007, something wonderful happened. Els Scheppers, a very creative Belgian woman, crushed up some Lotus brand Speculoos cookies and mixed them with sugar and oil to create a sweet, creamy cookie butter spread. Hearing about this delicious concoction, Lotus Bakeries got in touch with Els and collaborated to perfect her creation. When it was released for sale to the Belgian market, it promptly sold out. People went bonkers for this stuff. Reminiscent of Nutella or peanut butter, but way more delicious! There is no end to the creative uses for Speculoos Cookie Butter. I have also heard that some people just eat it straight from the jar.

Trader Joes jumped on the bandwagon in 2011 and Speculoos Cookie Butter was born. In 2013 they launched Speculoos Cookie and Cocoa Swirl and pretty soon after that they had to start limiting customers to 1 jar each. It got a bit crazy there for a while. Luckily, it has become so mainstream that you can find several brands of speculoos cookie spread on most supermarket shelves, right beside the peanut butter and hazelnut spreads. These oatmeal lace sandwich cookies are the creation of cookie wizzard Nick Malgieri. I may have mentioned him in a previous post! He sandwiched them with chocolate ganache. I decided to use speculoos cookie butter.

The batter for these gossamer thin lacy cookies gets mixed by hand in a bowl. Leave lots of room on the baking sheet as you form them. They really spread. Once cooled, pipe a generous dollop of speculoos cookie spread on half the cookies and then sandwich them.

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen

Tag Archives: Cookies

Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen

Click here to print recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen.

Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen

Click here to print recipe for Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen.

Cultured Butter Cookies

Click here to print recipe for Cultured-Butter-Cookies.

Gingerbread Autumn Leaves (Gluten-Free)

Click here to print recipe for gluten-free-gingerbread-autumn-leaves.

Sweet and Salty Magic Bars

Watch the magic happen!

Click here to print recipe for Sweet and Salty Magic Bars.

On the 7th night of Chanukah: Florentines

Click here to print recipe for Florentine Cookies.

On the third night of Chanukah: Macadamia Coconut White Chocolate Shortbread

Click here to print recipe for Coconut Macadamia White Chocolate Shortbread.

Maple Macadamia Milk Chocolate Cookies

Click here to print recipe for Maple Macadamia Milk Chocolate Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen.

Click here to print recipe for Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen.

Click here to print recipe for Cultured-Butter-Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for gluten-free-gingerbread-autumn-leaves.

Watch the magic happen!

Click here to print recipe for Sweet and Salty Magic Bars.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter and Hazelnut Rugelach.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter and Chocolate Rugelach Roulades.

Click here to print recipe for Florentine Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Coconut Macadamia White Chocolate Shortbread.

Click here to print recipe for Maple Macadamia Milk Chocolate Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Cookie Butter Hazelnut and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti.

Click here to print recipe for Oatmeal Lace Speculoos Sandwich Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar.