Black and White Cookies

 23 October 2020

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, p. 237; recipe also available online.

In Central New York (CNY), where I grew up, people are familiar with half-moon cookies. While similar in appearance, the two cookies are apparently different, though the similar appearance can lead to confusion. I didn't eat much of either growing up as my mom didn't make them and you could only get them from the little bakery in town, Lynch's. My youngest sibling remembers my mom making these regularly, though, and I did have one from a bakery at a family reunion. As a CNY, or NYC, classic, I had to try making them.

There are two phases to making these cookies: making the cookies and making/applying the glazes. Making the cookies was straightforward. Dry ingredients—AP flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt—were whisked together in a bowl. Sugar and butter were beaten in a stand mixer until fluffy. Eggs and vanilla were mixed in. The flour mixture was added in three additions alternating with the addition of sour cream. The dough was dropped onto sheet pans using a #16 disher (about ¼ cup) and baked. This produced 10 large cookies and took about 45 minutes. After the cookies cooled the glaze was made and applied, this took about an hour. The glaze was made by whisking confectioners' sugar with whole milk, corn syrup, vanilla, and salt. (Sifting the large amount of confectioners' sugar took some time and made a bit of a mess.) This was divided in half and Dutch-processed cocoa and milk were whisked into one half. Using an offset spatula, half of each cookie was covered with the vanilla glaze, on the flat side. These were refrigerated for 15 minutes to set the glaze, then the other half was covered with the chocolate glaze. 

I have been enjoying these cookies and will make them again. The glaze is little sweet for my taste but that isn't stopping me. The cookies are tender and cakey. They keep well in the freezer and at room temperature. I cut these large cookies in half when I have one so maybe next time I'll try making them smaller. Of course, I will need to try the CNY recipe for half-moon cookies, too. 

November 2024

I made these again with a few changes:

• I made them smaller, using a #30 dishes rather than #16. 
• I made 24 cookies. They baked for 14 minutes.
• I did not sift the confectionery sugar or the cocoa. The glaze seems to be fine nonetheless.

Hemstrought's Half-Moon Cookies

 6 February 2021

Recipe from Home in the Finger Lakes

I knew half-moon cookies from the little bakery, Lynch's, in my Central New York (CNY) home town of Chittenango. My mom made them but not until after I had moved away from home. I recently made Black and White Cookies, thinking they might be the CNY classic, only to learn that they are a different cookie from New York City. Sometime previously I had saved a recipe for Half-Moon cookies claiming to be based on the originals, so I had to try it. There are two versions, chocolate and vanilla, and this recipe is for chocolate cookies,

The dry ingredients—flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt—were whisked together in a large bowl. (The online recipe neglects mentioning the salt in the instructions, so beware.) Softened butter was beaten in a stand mixer. Sugar and cocoa powder (I used Dutch processed) were added and beaten several minutes until fluffy. (The instructions say to add these with the mixer running. This would have spread cocoa powder all over the kitchen, so I turned the mixer off to add these then gradually increased the speed of the mixer to minimize the mess.) Eggs and vanilla were added and mixed until incorporated. The flour mixture was then added (with the mixer running) in portions alternating with milk and mixed until combined. The finished dough is thinner than most cookie doughs. It was portioned onto baking sheets using a #24 scoop then spread into a 3-inch circle. (I didn't have the #20 scoop suggested in the recipe so my cookies are a little smaller and I made 36 rather than 30 of them.) These were baked in a 350° oven until the edges were set. The finished cookies are soft and moist and stuck a little to the parchment paper. It was 80 minutes from starting to finishing baking. It took an additional 40 minutes to make the buttercream frosting and put it on the cookies, after they had cooled. The recipe didn't make enough frosting for 36 cookies.

As the article from which I got the recipe describes, these are soft, cakey cookies. They are almost fudge-like but not that rich. They are okay but not good enough for me to want to make them again. I guess I prefer cookies with a little more texture and cookies that keep better, these tended to stick to whatever they are stored on as does the frosting, even in the freezer.  They are not as good as the Black and White cookies that I made a few months ago.

M&M Cookies

March 2025

Recipe from Cook's Country, December 2020

I've had M&M cookies but I've never made them myself. They are similar to chewy, buttery chocolate chip cookies, which I make on a regular basis, with M&M's in place of chocolate chips the most obvious  difference. A recent episode of the Cook's Country TV show inspired me to make them myself. As a bit of a bonus the dough is made by hand, no mixer.

I used plain, dark chocolate M&M's because that's what we stock in our cupboard for snacking and for trail mix. Flour, salt, and baking soda were whisked together in a bowl. In a larger bowl melted unsalted butter was whisked with brown sugar and granulated sugar. An egg plus a yolk and vanilla were whisked into the butter mixture until fully combined. Half of the flour mixture was gently stirred into the butter mixture followed by the second half of the flour mixture and the M&M's. The dough was portioned onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet using a #30 scoop. (This is my favorite size for making cookies, the recipe specifies somewhat larger cookies.) I put 8 scoops of dough on the half sheet pan then flattened them to ½-inch disks. These were baked in a hot oven, 425°, for about 8 minutes.  The recipe made 28 cookies in about 65 minutes.

The cookies are blond with a crispy exterior and chewy interior. When I first ate them I thought they were a little bland, perhaps I was unconsciously comparing them to brown butter chocolate chip cookies. They are not very sweet putting a premium on the butter and chocolate flavors. As I've eaten more of them I have grown to like them more and more. These colorful cookies are worth baking again.

Recipe Notes: Classic Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

13 June 2018

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, p. 30; also available online.

We sometimes have oatmeal cookies, they are a favorite of Diane's. They almost always have chocolate chips, though, and tend to be small and crispy. I made a crispy chocolate chip oatmeal cookie several years ago and it worked out well. In working my way through The Perfect Cookie it became time to try the ATK recipe for a chewy oatmeal cookie.

Unlike most cookies, these were made entirely by hand, the stand mixer was not needed. The dry ingredients—AP flour, salt, and baking soda—were whisked together and set aside. Butter was carefully melted and browned in a skillet, transferred to a mixing bowl, and cinnamon was added to the warm melted butter to bloom its flavors. Brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vegetable oil were whisked into the butter mixture. An egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract were stirred into the mixture, followed by the flour mixture, then rolled oats, and finally some raisins. The dough was portioned onto baking sheets using a #24 scoop (about 3 tablespoons). The cookies were flattened to 2½-inch disks and baked until the edges were just set 11 minutes at 375°. It took just over an hour and the recipe yielded 16 large cookies.

These cookies are certainly different from other oatmeal cookies I have had. They are soft and chewy in the center with crispy edges, the texture is different than any others I remember having. They almost seem too dry, but this is a minor flaw. They taste very good, even with the raisins instead of chocolate chips, with a stronger flavor of oats than other recipes provide. They are big cookies, but I can always eat just half of one, though I rarely do that. These cookies were easy to make and are worth making again, though I might try substituting chocolate chips for the raisins. I know that Diane would vote for that modification.

Update: 30 June 2023

I made these again with a few modifications. I substituted 1 cup of chocolate chips for the ½ cup of raisins. I used a smaller #30 scoop (about 2 tablespoons) to portion the dough rather than a #24. Twelve cookies fit on a baking sheet and the recipe made a total of 28 cookies. They cookies baked for 10 minutes. These were both good modifications and I will probably make these changes when I use this recipe in the future.

Recipe Notes: November 2016

13 November 2016

Deep-Dish Apple Pie

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated Baking Book, 2013,  p. 378

I don't make pies as often as I might because I lack confidence in my pastry skills. I just cannot roll out the dough to form a nice circle of uniform thickness! Nonetheless, I hadn't made a pie in a while and since I was not planning to spend time making something new for dinner, I thought I would make something for dessert. I haven't written about this recipe before, thus this essay.

I used the Test Kitchen recipe for "Foolproof Pie Dough" which I have used before. It substitutes vodka for some of the water so the dough is wet and easier to work but still tender. The trick with the filling is cooking the apples in advance to remove moisture. This prevents the pie having a large air space between the filling and top crust. The filling has five pounds of apples: half Golden Delicious and half Granny Smith. It has just a little sugar and a little cinnamon and a little lemon. I made a mistake in the way I added the lemon juice and ended up having more than the recipe called for.

All in all, the pie came out good. I still had trouble rolling it out. It would have helped if I had worked more quickly, I think it became a little too warm as I worked with it. Nonetheless, the final result is tender enough though perhaps not as flaky as it should be. The bottom crust was a little soggy. The filling was good. The Golden Delicious apples broke down providing a nice base for the firmer Granny Smiths. Diane thought it could have used more cinnamon, and I agree. She also thought it had too much lemon. Perhaps I should try a different recipe for the dough next time, maybe look to see what they have at Serious Eats.

20 November 2016

Cast Iron Steak and Baked Potatoes

Steak recipe from Cook's Illustrated, December 2016

Best Baked Potato recipe from Cook's Illustrated, January 2016

Steak is an easy entree to fix for dinner. Good cuts of steak, though, can be expensive, so a good cooking method is required to get the best return on your bovine investment. I have written about steak several times before in this blog but wanted to try a new method.

Cast iron holds heat very well so is good for searing steak, but it does not heat up quickly or evenly. To get around these issues,  you can heat the skillet in the oven and use a generous amount of oil when cooking the steak. Also, after the steak is seared on both sides it is flipped every two minutes until it reaches the desired internal temperature.

I purchased a one-pound strip steak, but I didn't do a good job choosing my steak. The one I got was too thin and the thickness varied. Thus it would be impossible to cook it to uniform doneness. The steak reached an internal temperature of 140° after just two minutes on each side, a little higher than desired. 

Heating the pan in the oven and using a lot of oil did help. Not only was the steak seared uniformly across its surface, but the oil minimized smoking and setting off the smoke alarm. Since the oven had to be on to heat the skillet, I baked potatoes; the potato-baking temperature of 450° was close enough to the 500° recommended for heating the skillet. The recipe called for an herb butter garnish, but I skipped that.

Despite the issues with the steak, both it, and the potatoes, came out well. The potatoes were nice and creamy inside with a crispy skin. The steak was OK, not great, but a thicker, more evenly cut steak would solve that problem. All in all, this was a good method for cooking steak, though the preheating of the pan means you have to plan ahead. The side benefit to this, of course, is great baked potatoes.

24 November 2016

Thanksgiving

Easy Roast Turkey Breast recipe from Cooks Illustrated, November 2007

All-purpose Gravy recipe from Cooks Illustrated, November 2003

I prepared our Thanksgiving dinner for two this year. On the day before Thanksgiving, Diane fixed a vegan Thanksgiving dinner for four as Caryn and Brandon were in town. With just two of us cooking a whole turkey makes no sense. Even a full turkey breast, which can weigh upwards of 7 pounds is too much, so I purchased a three-pound half breast.

The recipe to roast the turkey was, as advertised, easy. The turkey was brined for about three hours. A butter/salt/pepper mixture was rubbed on the breast under the skin. The turkey was roasted in a 325° oven for about 90 minutes with the roasting pan filled with water (the turkey was on a rack above the water). It then rested for 20 minutes before carving.

A disadvantage to cooking a small amount of turkey this way is the lack of drippings for making gravy. I found a recipe for an all-purpose gravy that is made without meat drippings. It uses onion, celery, carrots with a mixture of beef and chicken stock.  I halved the recipe which worked out pretty well for this size turkey.

Thanksgiving dinner was good. We enjoyed the turkey. The gravy was passable though it was not the same as having turkey gravy. We had leftovers for one sandwich, one dinner, and then several nights of our Almond Turkey with Peas.

27 November 2016

Broccoli and Feta Frittata

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, November 2016

Diane frequently makes us frittata for dinner. She will use whatever leftovers we have in the fridge as the filling, often using greens that came in our monthly CSA box of produce. Thus I was excited to try my hand at making one myself when this recipe was published in a recent Cook's Illustrated.

The recipe uses a dozen eggs, more than Diane usually uses, but for the first time making this recipe, why not. We had broccoli from our CSA box so it made sense to use it as the filling. (The magazine and web site also have recipes using asparagus and goat cheese, chorizo and potato, and shiitake mushrooms with pecorino Romano.) The broccoli and seasonings are cooked first, then the eggs are added with milk and the feta. This is cooked on the stovetop for about 8 minutes and then finished in the oven. This meal took less than 45 minutes to prepare, so it is pretty quick. 

The frittata came out good! The eggs had a very nice texture and the ratio of eggs to broccoli to cheese was just right. For our Sunday dinner I served us each one quarter of the frittata, which was too much. For the two meals when we had leftover frittata we had half as much with some bacon or sausage on the side. This is a recipe worth repeating, perhaps trying some of the other fillings and the "for two" version of the recipe from the web site.

28 November 2016

Molasses Spice Cookies

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated Baking Book, 2013, p. 202

With cooler temperatures, a spicy molasses cookie seems right. I went to the Cook's Illustrated Baking Book and found a recipe that looked promising and which I had never tried. 

Preparation was straightforward and standard. Butter and sugars are creamed together, then dry ingredients and molasses are incorporated. The cookies are formed into balls, rolled in sugar, and baked. The dried spices are cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, and black pepper. The recipe calls for each cookie to be made with one tablespoon of dough with a yield of about 22 cookies. I used a #60 disher and got more than 40 cookies.

These cookies are really good! They are crisp on the outside, chewy in the middle, and taste great. They keep well, too, and have maintained their consistency for several days.  They are pretty small and I usually eat two at a time. I could try a #30 disher to have cookies closer in size to those specified in the recipe. The recipe also includes an optional dark rum glaze which I did not use and which is probably worth trying as well as a variation that includes "orange essence".

Quick Chicken, Quick Cookies, Quick Cookbook

September 26, 2012  
Not a Sunday, not for two

• Quick Orange Glazed Chicken
• Steamed Rice
• Peas
• Vella Chardonnay
• Quick Chocolate Chip Cookie with Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

The new America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, has arrived. It's a big book with over 750 recipes in a ring binder. I appreciate this format in our kitchen where counter space is at a premium: it's easier to find a place to put a few pieces of paper than it is to find a safe, clean place to put a cookbook. In addition to recipes the book includes summaries from Test Kitchen reviews of kitchen equipment and common ingredients, a section on knife skills, and "Test Kitchen Tips" scattered throughout. Every recipe in the book can be completed in 45 minutes or less and some are labelled as "super fast", designed to be completed in under 25 minutes. This book reminds of the Betty Crocker Cookbook that we've had on the shelf for over three decades and which is still Diane's favorite, the book that was so worn I recently went online to buy a replacement copy of the same edition. 

This dinner was not prepared on a Sunday as I was at the California International Air Show in Salinas with friends, an event I've attended every year since 2001. This was a full-day outing and we had dinner at an Outback Steakhouse on the way home. Thus, this meal was prepared on a weeknight and it took just 40 minutes to complete; the chicken recipe was categorized as "super fast". I would have been faster but for the thickness of the chicken and pausing to take photos along the way. Buying boneless skinless chicken breasts at the supermarket that weigh less than 8 ounces was nigh on impossible. I ended up buying a tray pack containing three "Breast Fillets" weighing a total of 1.5 pounds. What is a chicken "breast fillet" or, for that matter, a "breast steak", which they also had for sale?

The chicken was very easy to prepare, requiring a small number of ingredients and no complicated techniques. I didn't have any apricot preserves so I substituted orange marmalade in the glaze. The chicken took an extra five minutes for the thinnest piece to reach 160° because the "fillets" were so thick. It came out really well, moist, juicy, and tender. The simple glaze provided a nice, bright accompaniment though the mustard might have been a little too strong, dominating the orange flavor. I prepared steamed rice as I had described recently, however I rinsed the rice before cooking it as suggested in the comments to my post. This removes starch from the surface of the grains, which acts like glue when it is cooked in water. Thus the cooked rice grains don't stick together so much ... I liked the result. The meal was finished with frozen peas and a glass of our standard box white wine.

This recipe even works with some significant changes. Diane, still out of town, fixed this dish without shopping, using what she could find in the kitchen. Bone-in thighs instead of boneless breasts, so it needed to cook longer (probably no longer "super fast"). Blackberry jam replaced the apricot preserves and produced a pretty pink sauce. Finally, spicy jalapeño mustard instead of Dijon which made the sauce spicy but not too much.

For dessert I made Chocolate Chip Cookies using a recipe from the Quick Family Cookbook. This recipe differs in several ways from the standard cookie recipes. For example, instead of creaming together the sugar and butter in a stand mixer, the butter is melted and just stirred into the sugars. This not only allowed me to make over two dozen cookies in 40 minutes (and this counts picture taking) but it also generates far fewer dirty dishes to wash. The cookies are very good. They are soft, chewy cookies with just a bit of crispness. I accidentally cooked a few longer than the recipe calls for, cooking them until they were set almost all the way through instead of just at the edges, and in some ways I like these crispier cookies better. Are these my favorite chocolate chip cookies ever? No. Are they my favorites that can be made in 40 minutes. You bet!

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Recipes
Quick Orange Glazed Chicken from The America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook
Quick Chocolate Chip Cookies from The America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook

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Leftovers
The Meatier Meatloaf is very good left over. To reheat, I cut ½-inch slices and warmed them gently in a small skillet with a little vegetable oil. If the sides browned a little bit, that was OK, it added a little extra flavor and texture. The result was still flavorful, tender, and juicy. I froze about half of the meat loaf and I expect it will continue to be good when thawed.

Notes: March 2016

13 March 2016

"All American Beef Stew"

Recipe from Serious Eats

I tried a new recipe for beef stew, this one from the Serious Eats blog.  I didn't note how much time I spent cooking it, but between the stew and the pie (below) and the relaxing I killed a whole Sunday afternoon.

The stew didn't take all that long,  I started with a three-pound chuck roast and it spent about 2½-hours cooking. I followed the times in the recipe and it probably would have benefitted from another half hour or so as some of the beef wasn't as tender as it might have been. The 1-½-hour estimate in the recipe for active time seems about right.

The stew tasted good! I used Thai Fish Sauce, instead of anchovies, in the "umami bomb" that was part of the recipe. We thought it could have used more carrots and some more potatoes would have been okay, too.

The recipe called for cutting the roast into three steaks and browning these all at once in a Dutch oven. However, three steaks were too big and I should have browned them separately. which would have taken some more time.

The sauce was a little thin, it could have reduced more. The stew cooks with the lid only partially covering the stew and I could have exposed more of the stew than I did during cooking.

This stew is worth making again.

Lemon Meringue Pie

"Lemon Meringue Pie" recipe from Cook's Illustrated Baking Book, p. 405

Crust recipe, "Classic Single-Crust Pie Dough for Custard Pies", ibid., p. 373

This is the second time I have made a lemon meringue pie. While it has been too long since the previous pie to make a comparison, I can say this pie came out great. I made it this month because lemons seem to be in season. But that's silly: lemons are available all year and you only need three or four of them to make the pie so there is no reason to make it at any time of year. (And it allowed us to have pie on Pi Day.)

The crust recipe is pretty standard, using a mixture of vegetable shortening and butter which are mixed with the flour in a food processor. The interesting part is that the use of graham cracker crumbs instead of flour when rolling out the chilled dough. You get a classic flaky pastry crust plus the flavor of graham crackers.

The filling is easy to make. The meringue was fun because it was the first time I've made an Italian meringue. A hot sugar syrup is slowly added to the whipped egg whites in the mixer with the mixer running. This cooks and stiffens the meringue. The end result is smooth and sweet. And it made for great licking of the bowl and other tools used to make the meringue.

This pie is worth making again. I think, though, that I should try making a lemon chiffon pie next.

20 March 2016

"The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies"

Recipe from Serious Eats

The title of the recipe is pretty boastful. I have tried many different recipes for chocolate chip cookies and the New York Times recipe has been my favorite for some time. But perhaps the King is dead, long live the King! I'll have to try a few more to be sure, but the initial impression of these cookies is excellent. They are crispy and chewy with large pockets of chocolate throughout. Like the America's Test Kitchen recipe these use brown butter to give them a nutty toffee flavor. But unlike the ATK cookies here the toffee flavor is more subtle, which I like.  I baked these cookies for about 16 minutes which may have been too long ... next time I should go for 14. The recipe made 28 cookies.

"Better Chicken Marsala"

 Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, November 2015

For the second consecutive month we had chicken marsala. It's a favorite of Diane's and a recent recipe from Cook's Illustrated magazine was worth trying.

The two boneless, skinless chicken breasts were larger than the upper limit in the recipe even though I purchased the smallest ones available: 1.6 pounds. I made a few changes to the recipe:  The Marsala was a mixture of our old bottle (which was not marked "sweet" or "dry" and our new bottle of dry Marsala; the recipe specifies dry. I used dry parsley and oregano because the amounts needed were too small to purchase fresh herbs. The pancetta was thinly sliced rather than the ½-inch pieces in the recipe. I didn't pay close attention to the time but it was probably about 90 minutes in the kitchen to prepare this dinner.

The result, though, was good. The sauce was more richly flavored than the recipe I used last month. In part this was because some of the chicken burned and the sauce was probably over-reduced. The chicken was also a little over cooked and dry. Nonetheless, despite the flaws in execution, this is a recipe worthy trying again because of the rich flavor of the sauce.

"Perfect Quick-and-Easy French Toast"

Recipe from Serious Eats

I have written in this blog several times about French toast. I have not had any for a while and so while home alone for a weekend I tried this recipe. Like most people I didn't usually follow a recipe when making French toast. In this recipe, the author ran various tests to determine the best ratio of milk to egg, for example, as well as optimizing other variables. 

I halved the recipe, making four slices, though I had enough batter to make at least one more. I used homemade sandwich bread which I dried in the oven. I cooked the toast using a square griddle on a round burner on the stove top.

The result was very good. The toast was nicely flavored by the vanilla with hints of spice from cinnamon and nutmeg. It took longer to cook than the recipe said. Perhaps I should have used a higher setting on the stove, though much higher and the butter would have burnt. The slices did not cook evenly because the pan was hotter in the center than in the corners which were not near the heating elements. Cooking just two slices at a time might help with this.

Read the recipe all the way through, in advance

May 26, 2012

• Fajitas
• White corn
• Refried beans (vegetarian)
• Sangria
• Banana pudding

For the second week in a row I cooked on Saturday instead of Sunday and a baseball game was again partly responsible. Every Memorial Day weekend the power is shut off at IBM Research -- Almaden, where I work so the Facilities folks can do maintenance. When the power comes back on I need to go to work and power up some servers so Researchers can resume their calculations. While power was planned to back at 5 PM Sunday, it is not unusual for it to be ready either earlier or later, depending on the progress of the maintenance work. We had tickets for the Giants game on Monday and I planned to go with Diane but Caryn was standing by in case I needed to work on Monday. To allow me the maximum flexibility to go into the lab on Sunday to complete the work, I decided to cook on Saturday.

As we had some plans for Saturday, too, I wanted a fairly simple meal. Recently, Dr. Dan had published a simple recipe for Beef Steak Fajitas on his blog, 101 Cooking for Two. Not only could the fajitas be prepared without spending a lot of time in the kitchen, the recipe was easily adapted to provide food for vegetarian and omnivores alike. The filling  consisted of sirloin steak (I purchased a 1.2 pound "Top Sirloin Steak"), peppers and onions, plus condiments. I made the mistake of not carefully reading the recipe in advance so I missed the part about marinating the meat. The recipe calls for at least a 1-hour marinade but overnight is preferred. I ended up marinating the steak for only an hour due to my lack of planning. The marinade added good flavor to the steak and perhaps helped keep it tender. I had been concerned the fried steak would be tough but this turned out not to be the case as it was nice and tender. The recipe called for 1 onion, 1 green pepper, and 1 red pepper. Since Caryn would be having no meat with her fajitas, I added another pepper, choosing yellow for the color, and another onion. These were fried in some oil and were served alongside the tortillas, steak, and condiments.The fajitas were assembled at the table. For condiments we had tomato, avocado, sour cream, mango salsa, and tomato salsa. The salsas were fresh, purchased at the supermarket.

The side dishes all came from the supermarket: vegetarian refried beans and fresh (more or less) white corn, both of which were cooked in the microwave. I considered other options, making refried beans from scratch and grilling the corn, but in the end I used the time-saving microwave oven. I remember a time before every home kitchen had a microwave oven. There was a time when they were so rare that only a few restaurants had them. In my home town there was a restaurant called "The Electronic Kitchen" because it used microwave ovens. I never ate there and the building has been a Vet's office for many years.

I made banana pudding on Saturday afternoon but, again because I hadn't read the recipe all the way through in advance, it wasn't ready to eat until Sunday. The recipe calls for 7 large bananas, 8 egg yolks, 6 cups of half-and-half, half a box of vanilla wafers, among other ingredients, and it is serves 12. Even after halving the recipe we ended up with a tremendous amount of pudding. The instructions also call for using a "3-quart trifle dish". Maybe you have a collection of trifle dishes, but we do not, so I used a 2-quart glass casserole. This may have affected the end result as this wider, shallower bowl led to me using more than half a box of vanilla wafers.  Like most puddings, this one is pretty easy to make as you combine most of the ingredients on the stove and heat until boiling, with constant stirring. The pudding is assembled in layers, alternating pudding with layers of sliced banana and the cookies. It then sits in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours so the wafers soften. While the pudding has a good banana flavor I doubt I'll be making it again. Even halved it makes way too much even for three of us. The softened cookies lead to a pudding that is less smooth, less creamy than most and you lose the crispness which is one of the appeals of these wafers.

The weekend plans worked out well. I went to work after Sunday supper and was there from 6 to 10 PM bringing up computers. With a little coaxing and a little patience they all came back up. Diane and I enjoyed a day in the sun watching the Giants play the Diamondbacks at AT&T Park. The USS Nimitz was anchored in the Bay beyond the right field wall, an appropriate reminder of what Memorial Day is all about.

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Recipes
Beef Steak Fajitas from 101 Cooking For Two
Banana Pudding from Cook's Country
Some America's Test Kitchen recipes require registration before they can be viewed on-line. You may be able to find these recipes on other web sites.

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Leftovers
Last week's Pasta Caprese was reheated in the microwave. It made a good meal again but not as good as the original. The cheese, which was in nice, firm pieces, originally, melted into a bit of a gooey mess in the microwave. It didn't taste as fresh and the texture was certainly not as pleasant as in the original.

Recipe Notes: Snickerdoodles

 5 August 2020

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, p. 53; recipe also available online.

What a great name for a cookie! Even though snickerdoodles are popular in New England, near which I grew up, I don't recall ever having them as a kid. It was only after moving to California and getting married that I eventually had some made by Diane's grandmother, who was born in Montana and lived in Washington. I was also surprised to find I had not written a blog entry about them. I'm sure I have made them but apparently I didn't write anything. Until today.

Making these cookies uses standard cookie techniques, with a couple of twists. First, half of the fat comes from vegetable shortening rather than butter. Second, the recipe includes cream of tarter and no baking powder, just baking soda. The dry ingredients—AP flour, cream of tarter, baking soda, and salt—were whisked together in a bowl. Using a stand mixer, shortening and butter were creamed with sugar. Several eggs were added, one at a time with the mixer running, followed by the flour mixture. A #30 disher was used to make balls of dough approximately two tablespoons each. These were rolled in cinnamon sugar and baked at 375° until the edges were just set. The cookies cooled for 10 minutes on the baking sheet before being moved to a cooling rack. The recipe made 27 cookies and, except for cooling, took 50 minutes to finish.

These are good cookies. The have a soft interior, crispy edges, and a distinctive crinkly top. They are slightly tangy from the acidic cream of tarter and this is complemented by the spicy cinnamon coating. 

Main Course: Blueberry Muffins

August 4, 2013

Menu

Blueberry Muffins

Crispy Fried Bacon

Scrambled Eggs

Home Fries

Mimosa 

Recipe

Blueberry Muffins from Cook's Illustrated

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Breakfast pastries: I like to make them, I like to eat them, and I'd like to write about them. But I cook dinner, not breakfast, and getting up several hours early to bake before breakfast does not appeal to me. The solution, of course, is to have breakfast for dinner. There are several things on my list of breakfast pastries to make including doughnuts, beignets, monkey bread, and morning glory muffins. (Will cronuts be added to the list?) With plentiful fresh fruits available, though, from all of these delicacies, I elected to make blueberry muffins.

I reviewed several recipes and ended up adapting one from Cook's Illustrated that was designed for frozen blueberries. In the original recipe half of the berries are cooked to make a jam which is swirled into the batter just before the muffins are baked. Rather than do that, I added all of the berries to the batter whole. One concern when doing this is that the berries will all sink to the bottom of the muffins. Happily this did not happen; coating the berries with flour may well have prevented them from sinking. This recipe uses the classic muffin method where the wet ingredients are gently mixed into the dry. Some other recipes creamed the butter and sugar together.  The muffin method leads to a coarser crumb while the creaming method gives more uniform cake-like crumb.

The muffins were good, enjoyable, and well worth making, but they were nothing extraordinary. They have a wonderful crispy top that is rich with lemon flavor that greatly enhances the muffins. There were a lot of blueberries in the muffin, perhaps even too many if that is possible, so they had a lot of summer-time blueberry flavor.

The rest of dinner was standard breakfast-for-dinner fare: crispy fried bacon, scrambled eggs, home fries, and mimosa (half orange juice, half Champagne). I plan to publish a home fries recipe but this attempt came up a little short so I still have work to do on that, though I made some good progress. If I can have a Sunday Dinner with blueberry muffins as the main course, there is nothing to say I couldn't have a meal with home fries as the main course, too.

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Leftovers
I froze half of the muffins and stored the others in an air right container the same way I would store cookies. While they didn't have the crisp top of the fresh muffins they kept well and I enjoyed them for breakfast all week. I warmed them in the microwave and anointed them with butter.

Kitchen tip
When spraying a baking pan with vegetable spray, open the dishwasher and hold the pan over the open door. Any stray spray then goes in the dishwasher and not on your counter tops.

Notes: July 2016

24 June 2016

"Santa Rosa Plum Compote"

Recipe from Epicurious.com

This was a good way to preserve excess plums from our one plum tree. By no means is it better than eating the ripe plums right off of the tree. It is probably also not as good as using the plums to make jelly. But it is better than throwing away good fruit and less work than making jelly. 

We were preparing to be away from home for a week towards the end of the plum season and made the compote to use up the plums. The ingredients (plums, sugar, cinnamon sticks, and vanilla) were combined per the instructions; I had just the right amount of plums. Lacking a vanilla bean I substituted 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. The mixture was brought to a simmer over medium heat, simmered on low for about an hour, cooled, and frozen. 

Upon returning home it was thawed. We ate it as is and served over vanilla ice cream. The compote is tarter than ripe berries and is lacking the fresh sweet taste of ripe fruit. (Some of the fruit was ot quite ripe, perhaps this contributed to the tartness.) Nonetheless, it was good with ice cream and would probably go well over shortcake or angel food cake.

Postscript: I learned from Phil Cosentino that Santa Rosa plums are not grown commercially any more. They used to be the most common plums in the supermarket, but no longer. They have a fragile stem and so fall from the trees easily, thus losing money for the growers.

23 July 2016

"Sweet and Tangy Grilled Country-Style Pork Ribs"

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, September 2015

This was a quick and easy recipe for grilled pork ribs. Country-style ribs aren't really ribs, they are from the shoulder. I was concerned about finding these in the supermarket so I had them cut to order at Whole Foods. I should have paid more attention because I got "ribs" with much too much fat, my bad. I didn't even try to trim them, there wouldn't have been much left! It turns out the supermarket had plenty of country-style ribs for sale so my concerns were not borne out.

The ribs were treated with a dry rub and refrigerated for 4 hours. They were then browned over direct heat on the grill and moved to the cool side of the grill to cook to an internal temperature of 150°.  Because of all the fat I had some problems with flare ups and the meat was blackened on one side rather than browned. I used Bullseye Barbecue sauce for basting (after browning) and serving rather than making my own sauce.

Despite the poor quality meat and flare ups, these were pretty good. The meat was tender with a little chew and had good flavor. The investment in time and effort was minimal, they were very easy to make and quick to cook, so worth making again, but with better meat.

31 July 2016

"Chocolate Crinkle Cookies"

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, November 2014

I made a similar cookie once before using a different recipe. I didn't say much about it in my blog but I recall it was pretty good, so it seemed worthwhile to try it again with a different set of instructions.

I followed the recipe and instructions pretty closely. It is nice that a mixer is not required, the relatively-thin dough can be mixed easily by hand. I used Dutch process cocoa, the recipe says either Dutch or natural is OK. I substituted bittersweet chocolate for half of the unsweetened chocolate because I did not have enough of the latter. Finally, I used only 1 teaspoon of the optional 4 teaspoons of instant espresso powder.

The resulting cookies look really good. They have a very thin crisp coating and a soft, sweet interior. Diane thought they were too sweet, perhaps because of the chocolate substitution I made. I thought the coffee flavor was OK, not too strong. The cookies are good and I will enjoy eating them (the recipe makes 22 cookies). But they're not great and so probably not something I will make again, except maybe as a showy holiday cookie.

P.S.  After eating these for a while I am becoming more of a fan. They keep really well, both at room temperature and frozen. They maintain their texture well, even the thin crust.

May 2024: I made these using just the unsweetened chocolate and 1½ teaspoons of expresso powder. They are still good but Diane still thinks they are too sweet. This may be due to the double coating of sugar. The amount of expresso powder could be increased to counter the sweetness.