My Week In Cookies....yummy!!!

Honestly I figured waiting out a four-day week to post wouldn't leave me that much catching up to do. Not quite. We made lots of cookies this week!!! I've said before that I have gone into this program disliking certain items, which we then make, and I come out realizing I've just been eating crappy versions of this or that. Such a revelation occurred again this week. We started the week off with shortbread cookies. This is a cookies I generally find to be too dry and quite boring...well I used to think of it like that:

From upper left to right we have Lemon Shortbread cookies (two kinds side-by-side), Spritz Rings (also a shortbread type cookie), then Pistachio Shortbread (in the bottom right corner)

Simply mixing the batter for the lemon shortbread cookies was heaven! As far as I could tell we used a pretty basic shortbread recipe and added the zest of one lemon to it. We coated them in sugar a couple of different ways, and who would've thought I actually prefer them being coated one way over another (I prefer the sides coated rather than the tops), first brushing them with cream. We did this with scones also and I know that sometimes people will do this with milk rather than cream when making something similar. I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you switch to using cream, the heavier the better. It makes such a difference! I promise.

Having previously stated my, prior opinion on shortbread, eating these was like lemon butter melting in my mouth. OMG!!! I had to consciously stop myself from eating each and every one. It's hard to pay attention when they're so small :( Not only was the cookies soft, which was great, that lemon was such a romantic touch. My sister took a huge bag of cookies to work with her and everyone gobbled them up, of course, and one woman requested a copy of the shortbread recipe. Apparently they were the biggest hit!!! I'm telling you...Y-U-M-M-Y...too bad they haven't figured out how to transmit taste over the Internet.

Anyone care for some Biscotti?:

Pistachio/Almond Biscotti

I was also not a fan of biscotti coming into class. Another cookie I generally find to be too tough and unappetizing. These, however, I didn't even try. I will say this though...tough they were not! It seems biscotti are generally as tough as they are because they are "twice-baked", or toasted would be another way to describe it. While these were dense, mine were so crumbly before toasting. This is commonly a good thing. After toasting, before coating them in chocolate, they were stable (none fell apart in the bowl of chocolate or anything) and the toasting seemed to add a crispness to them. Again I didn't try a single one. I'm not much of a fan of pistachios and Chef is so we make lots and lots of pistachio stuff, which I hardly ever try :( Rumor has it they are crumbly and tasty. I'm good with that.

Good morning Madeline!:

I was sooooooo excited to make Madelines. We prepared the batter at the end of class one day and allowed it to rest in the refrigerator overnight to let the flour absorb as much liquid as possible. The following morning the first thing we did was prepare our pans and bake up some madelines....ohhhh yummy! One kid in my class didn't even eat breakfast because he knew we'd be making these. They were quite scrumptious! Again the batter had lemon, which in my opinion could be added to almost anything and enhance the heck out of it! These were so dense and cakey and delicious.

As you can see mine are quite dark on one side. I think this is because we used dark coated madeline pans rather than the shiny, silvery ones. Chef said he knows nothing of one having any difference in cooking temps. but I'm going to call foul and go on record saying that "it does make a difference using dark pans vs. lighter, or glass, pans". Not a huge deal, while these are as gorgeous to look at as we're used to they were definitely fun to eat. Again, I had to consciously stop myself from picking up one after another after another.

The other thing I wanted to note was while we were standing back in the oven area I was mentioning to Chef that the ones we were baking had huge domes on the backs while Madeline's that you purchase at say Starbucks, have flat bottoms. He said that's because Starbucks doesn't know what they are doing. I love when the "French-righteousness" comes out in Chef!

Our next cookie is a Baton Marechaux and is basically a sponge cookie:
Similar to how we would make a sponge cake; make a meringue and fold in dry ingredients and bake, we made these. We made a basic meringue and folded in almond powder and baked. I'm a complete and utter sucker for ANYTHING with meringue and so these just kept making their way into my mouth. We piped all these little rounds, baked them, then filled them with our freshly made berry jam and topped them of with a second cookie. They sort of look like mini-hamburgers to me, though taste nothing like it. Super sweet...between the meringue, the jam and the powdered sugar topping they are outrageously sweet! And small, which doesn't help my lack of ability to gauge how many I've actually consumed. I think cookies is going to be another 10 pounds on my body if I don't begin to check myself! (P.S. I am going hiking after this entry!!!)

Ok, we're almost caught up for the week...

On Tuesday, as we didn't have class Monday :), we made some inverted pastry puff (remember this is the pastry with the butter on the outside, making it much more delicious as classic puff pastry! With that pastry dough we made an "interesting" version of palmiers (if you recall these were my absolute favorite of our first journey into puff pastry), some "thing" called a William Tell, which I found not just difficult to make but also to eat (no pic) and bow ties. The bow ties were a bit more complicated than I would've guessed initially but I had a few come out right and they are quite cute:

Friday was filled with Oatmeal R....wait a minute...where is the pic of my Chocolate Chip cookies???? Hang on...

Ok, let's back track for just a moment. Chocolate Chip cookies:
I have two Forever Favorites when it comes to the pastry world. One is the brownie and while it is highly unlikely that we're ever going to make brownies in class we did make my second favorite which is chocolate chip cookies. I mean really, who doesn't like a chocolate chip cookie? Or two or even three of them!!! I really like the texture of these, they were soft and chewy! That's a very important part of the chocolate chip cookie to me. I know some of you like a tough and crispy cookie but you're crazy and there's probably some type of medication that you should be on. But that's just my opinion...a clinical one, don't forget my degree in psychology prior to this one ;) I did not like that the batter was very saturated with the flavor of baking soda...no good! I am going to make these again and either sift the dry ingredients two or three times total or see what happens if I lessen the amount of baking soda. I'm guessing the sifting won't make much difference seeing as how almost every bite was full of baking soda right on the tongue, but I'm willing to try! Also these weren't super sweet, which I liked. There was more to this cookie than just SWEET!!! And I like that in a cookie. We'll see how it goes next time...I have high hopes for this cookie.

As we were...Friday morning we made Oatmeal Raisin cookies and these were so yummy! We used these big ice cream scoops to measure out the cookie sizes and ended up with these gigantic cookies:
Lots of oats, again not too sweet, and chewy!!!! OMG! They are sitting on my dining room table as I write this and it's taking almost everything I've got to not devour a bunch and call it breakfast!!! The funny thing with these is after we pulled them out of the oven we had to deal with the fact that as they spread out the edges got all crispy (use double sheet pans when baking to avoid this problem) but Chef was curious why we didn't press them down and mark them with a criss cross for pattern. I explained to him that traditionally we only do that with peanut butter cookies, it wouldn't have occurred to us to do that with any other type of cookie. It made me think, what would someone think if they saw that criss cross pattern on a cookie in a display window...wouldn't you just think it's a peanut butter cookie with oatmeal in it? Huh.

Lastly we played with different types of coconut macaroons yesterday. These are a meringue based macaroon which actually was air dried out at room temp. before being baked, which I found to be an interesting technique, granted I've never made macaroons before.
Allow me to guide you through what you're looking at here. No they are not burnt! Some of us decided to put chocolate chips in our macaroons. To make these type we heated up some egg whites and sugar over a double boiler to 140 degrees, and then added all the dry ingredients. I was the first one to finish my egg whites and was quite "out of it" by this point in the day and my fellow students were helping me by reminding me to add ALL my dry ingredients, as I was leaving some out. Someone went to remind me about my chocolate chips and without thinking I dumped them all in to my 140 degree solution...NOT the smartest idea I've ever had! They quickly began melting all over the place and my batter began looking less and less appealing. Rest assured, while not pretty they are tasty!

Next is a Rocher Coco (more of a wet macaroon):
These are right up my alley. They are moist on the inside and oh so coconutty. They almost remind me of the coconut tarts we made a few weeks back. The recipe is similar but not exact. And the best part is how easy these are to make...too easy, and no fat (lots and lots and lots and lots of sugar...but no fat).

So that's my week in cookies. We also made some savory petit fours, none of which I found to be great. We'll continue next week with more cookies and add in some sweet petit fours...oh goody!
Must leave you now and go for a hike...I'm about 15 pounds heavier than when I initially began class and the time has come to put my foot down. Besides I want to be able to enjoy what I'm making, not feel guilty and lazy for not figuring out how to make my life workable!

Peace and love to you!