Amateurs with Knives

Around this time of year, most bakers and cooking websites all talk about apples. I already gave you one so, unless one of our other authors decides to indulge you, I’m afraid you’ll have to get your apple fix elsewhere. Here, my fellow ninjas, we will be talking about cookies.

That’s right, it’s time to bring out the recipes you’re thinking about making as Christmas gifts and giving them a whirl now. Don’t take a chance on that unknown recipe - sure, the picture looks good, but the outcome may be disappointing. The last thing I want is for anyone to be screwed when baking crunch time hits.

If you haven’t yet been to the grocery stores and noticed, the holiday cookie publications are already coming out. Now’s our chance to get in on the action. I usually pick up Martha Stewart’s (haven’t seen that one yet) and the Better Homes & Gardens cookie mags. We’ll be delving into those as we progress. Today, we’re starting off with a classic: Peanut Butter Cookies.

Why a classic? Well, a classic cookie is a sure thing. Also, I was in the mood for peanut butter.

Choosing a classic cookie recipe is a problem for anyone because there are always a million of them and it’s hard to tell which recipe would be better than the other. Not only that but, let’s face it, I’m not going to make twenty different cookie recipes and then subject myself to a taste test. I’m also not the greatest at making my own cookie recipes and, since there are pastry chefs in the world who far exceed my talents, I am happy to use theirs.

Still, with my cache of cookbooks, I have a million peanut butter cookie recipes. So then I narrowed it down to two peanut butter cookie categories: salt or sweet?

I’ve been on a juxtaposition-fix with my desserts for a little while now, where I like to have salt and sweet mixed in together with my cookies. The fixation came to me after talking to a friend who said his wife loved sweet, while he liked salty. It reminded me that a cookie that contains both wins over both palettes. A salty/sweet peanut butter cookie fits perfectly. If I were to go with a honey-sweet cookie, sometimes it can go too overboard on the taste.

We’ve talked before about Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking, From My Home to Yours, an award winning compilation of must-haves for any baker’s repertoire. This is where I dug out a fantastic recipe for a salty-sweet peanut butter cookies. It isn’t too sweet or saturated with peanut butter, and the texture is crisp on the edges and chewy on the inside. It has the added bonus of looking really beautiful when it comes out of the oven - something else to keep in mind for the holiday season.

I shared one other recipe from Dorie Greenspan and, after having delved into the rest of her book, I strongly encourage all AwK ninjas to pick up a copy. That said, this will be the last recipe of hers that I share on the site.

Peanut Butter Crisscrosses
Courtesy of Dorie Greenspan and Baking, From My Home to Yours
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup peanut butter - crunch or smooth (not natural)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups chopped salted peanuts
1/2 cup sugar for rolling

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. As with all basic drop cookie recipes, the next step is to take the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, ground nutmeg) and mix them together in a bowl. I’ve said before that I don’t do that - to me it’s an added step. I skip that and do extra mixing later.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter for about two minutes, until light and creamy. Add the peanut butter and mix. They will be light and fluffy goodness.

Resist sticking your fingers in that and add the eggs, one at a time, and mix for 1 minute. I did do the eggs separately because I really wanted to make sure the eggs were thoroughly combined and that the fluffy egg whites give me the most bang for my buck.

Add the dry ingredients. Because I don’t combine them separately, I add the smaller ingredients first (baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, salt) and the half cup of flour. I mix those thoroughly with my mixer, then I add two cups of flour and mix until it just disappears into the rest of the batter.

Mix in the chopped peanuts.

Now put the 1/2 cup of “rolling sugar” into a small bowl, or something you can use to roll balls of the cookie dough in. Using a spoon (I use a regular dining spoon) measure out a flat tablespoon of cookie dough and roll it into a ball. The important thing here is to try and get your cookies to be the same size. Don’t get lazy toward the end and start dumping whatever into your spoon just to get this baking over with! You’ll be disappointed later when you have a million different sized cookies. It just doesn’t look as good when you’re giving them as gifts.

Put the ball of dough into the sugar and roll it around, giving it a light coat.

Place the balls two inches apart on parchment or silicone covered cookie sheets. With a fork, press a crisscross pattern on the top of the cookie balls. Bake for about 12 minutes Usually I have to watch the cookies carefully after they go into the oven, but these kept to the time limit. To accomplish this, it’s important that you keep all of the cookies the same size, as I said earlier. When done, the cookies will be slightly colored and a little soft. Allow them to sit on the cookie sheets for a minute or two before transferring them to a cooling rack using a wide, metal spatula.

Get a copy of Dorie’s book, and don’t forget to keep an eye out for the holiday cookie publications!

I’m a serious baker. You might even call me hardcore. I don’t walk around wielding a spatula in one hand and a hand mixer in the other, but I do feel pretty hardcore about baking - and even more so about cookies.

Photograph courtesy of Dorie Greenspan and Alan Richardson

Everyone loves cookies. No one is unhappy when they see them. They’re compact and portable and can be picked up and eaten like finger food. Sure, you could make a cheesecake - but you have to put it on a plate and eat it with a fork, making it difficult to stand and eat at the same time. A cookie, for the most part, can be held in one hand and nibbled on. It’s a happy treat.

Like every connoisseur, I’m picky about the kind of cookies I make. Every Christmas I make a few different kinds, box them up and send as gifts. A lot of love goes into making food for friends and, if you’re looking for a treat to send, cookies, for the most part, travel well. Also, myriad of different kinds exist to suit everyone’s taste: chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, fruited, nutty, shaped, rolled, dropped, spicy, creamy, chunky, crispy, filled, frosted - and more.

My preference is drop cookies. In case you’re unsure of what that means, a chocolate chip cookie is a type of drop cookie. Using a spoon, you scoop up the batter and drop it on the baking tray. The reason I like drop cookies is that, once you’ve made one kind of drop cookie, you’re ready to make ‘em all. They’re also sturdy, meaning if you pick them up there’s not much of a fear of them falling apart. People who aren’t as accustomed to fussy baking that involves twisting, rolling, freezing and cutting, or futzing would do well with drop cookies. Most baking is an exact science, but most drop cookies are very forgiving.

I purchased a new baking book called “Baking, From My Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan. Dorie, and her book, received a James Beard Award. For the unfamiliar, it’s like the Academy Awards of food.

The cookie section is substantial and looks amazing. Ninjas, our mission is clear: Attack the cookie and brownie section and leave no survivors. Or, at the very least, no leftovers.

The first cookie I baked caused me to think of some friends of mine that I started sending cookie boxes to. He loves salt, she loves sweet and a lot of chocolate. This cookie marries both tastes perfectly.

Chocolate Chunkers
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped into chunks, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips or chunks
6 ounces premium quality milk or white chocolate, chopped into chunks, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips or chunks
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped nuts, preferably salted peanuts or toasted pecans
1 cup moist, plump raisins (dark or golden) or finely chopped moist, plump dried apricots

The list looks intimidating, but it’s not. I promise.

The instructions in the book say: Set your oven rack in the center and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line your baking sheet with parchment.

After that, I start to diverge into some shortcuts that I’ve developed over the years.

A drop cookie recipe will usually start off by telling you to take the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder) and sift them together. I don’t. There’s definitely a reason for sifting the ingredients together, creating a beautifully light and lump-free structure to your cookie, but it is time consuming and messy, and makes for more clean up. For now, I’d say skip it. Just trust me.

No? Okay, I’ll tell you what. The next time I make these (it will be very soon) I’ll sift and then come back to tell you of any significant difference in the cookie. For now, skip it.

Set a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. You only want a couple inches of water in the pot and do not let the bowl touch the water. That’s very important.

Blurry pictures. Also very important.

Turn the burner on to a medium low setting. Into the bowl put your butter, bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate and stir occasionally, just until melted. For you short-cutters out there, if you turn the burner on to medium, you’ll need to stir it constantly. When it’s done, the chocolate and butter should be “smooth and shiny but not so hot the butter separates.” Remove the bowl from the heat and set it on the counter to cool.

In a new, large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar for 2 minutes, until they are a pale yellow and foamy. If you’re using a stand mixer, set it to medium-high. If you’re using a hand mixer like I do, you really only have two options for speed: Off and Flinging Batter Everywhere. So, hand held mixer ninjas, please be careful. What I do is scrub out my sink and then put my bowl in it. This lowers the batter to wall ratio while increasing the batter to bowl ratio.

I don’t have a mathematical formula to explain that. Sorry.

When you’re done with that, beat in the vanilla extract, then scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula, making sure you get all of the sugar granules. Reduce the mixer to speed (or, for hand held mixers, change the setting and pretend something different is happening) and add the melted butter and chocolate mixture. Mixing only until incorporated. So, barely a minute of mixing. Scrape the bowl again, then on low speed (or imaginary low speed - whatever you’ve got) start adding the dry ingredients.

Ok, because we skipped the dry ingredients in the beginning, we have to make sure everything is completely incorporated and mixed up. What I do is, add the smaller amounts of ingredients first.

Toss in the salt, baking soda, and cocoa. Mix it with your mixer. Scrape it down and add the flour. Scrape again, and mix for a few minutes more.

This “technique” (aka shortcut) really comes in handy when you’re working with a cookie that calls for more flour. A good example is your basic chocolate chip cookie, which can call for 2 or more cups of flour. In that case, add your smaller ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly. Then add one cup of flour. Mix thoroughly. Add the second cup. Mix thoroughly. A baker would probably tell me what I’m doing is wrong but for our purposes, it’s fine.

By now the dough is thick, smooth and shiny. Using the rubber spatula, mix in the semi-sweet and milk (or white) chocolate chunks, nuts and raisins. Don’t use the mixer!

The dough will contain more “crunchies” now.

About the nuts. Most recipes say nuts are optional, and they certainly are. However, to get the full wow factor of this cookie, you’ll really want to add the nuts for salt.

Now, about the raisins. My raisins were old and dry. They looked like - well, I won’t bother telling you. To plump them up (and I really wish my picture of this had turned out) take a bowl of hot water and put your raisins in them. Let the raisins sit for a few minutes, then drain and pat dry (very gently so you dry them and don’t squash them back into their previous state). The hot water will plump them up, and they’ll be ready for your cookie.

Now, drop the dough onto your cookie sheet. Using a tablespoon, take heaping scoops of cookie dough and put them onto the sheet, a couple of inches apart from one another. These cookies will not spread, so whatever shape you leave them in on the cookie sheet - that’s what they’ll look like when you take them out. My suggestion would be to put them on the cookie sheet, then very gently mold them into a relatively round shape so they look pleasing.

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 10 - 12 minutes. The tops of the cookies will be a little dry, but the interiors will be soft. Remove them carefully with a metal spatula and let them cool on a cooling rack.

Grab a glass of milk and enjoy.