December 06, 2021

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

December 06, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Heading to the spice cabinet can up your cookie game considerably! A subtle hint of anise elevates this basic chocolate crinkle cookie, but is still chocolate-y enough to be a crowd favorite.

Take me to the recipe!

I used to hate the flavor of licorice. HATE with a hard H, long A, and hard T. Hate. But somewhere between kid one and kid two, I had a weird impulse to try black licorice again and…I love it. I can eat a whole bag in one sitting. I can’t explain it. Except to say that tastes change and I’m not sure I ate a piece of licorice between the ages of 5 and 37, so I may have been unnecessarily denying myself for years.

So, if you think you hate the taste of licorice, maybe try again? Or try these cookies instead? The anise flavor is VERY subtle. It’s just enough to make you take another bite and wonder, “What is that? Licorice?”

The chocolate is still the star of the show and the texture is her very talented co-star.

This recipe is BARELY adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s one for Snowy Topped Brownie Drops from her cookbook Dorie’s Cookies. I made about 1 million of these cookies before circling back to this base recipe. I swapped in bread flour for the AP, tried a combo of melted chocolate and cocoa powder, and fiddled with many ingredient ratios. Nothing beat the original, which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s baked or tasted one of Dorie’s recipes.

What I love about these cookies isn’t just the taste and texture. I also love how they are SO EASY to make. Nothing needs to come to room temperature. You don’t need a mixer. You only need one pan. There are only a handful of ingredients, all of which you probably have in your cabinets right now. They are perfect.

A quick note about oven temperatures: If I’ve said in once, I’ve said it 1,000 times: Get to know your oven. It will make you a better baker and save you heartache and wasted ingredients. I bought two cheap oven thermometers and placed one in the back of my oven and one in the front. Wouldn’t you know it, the back of my oven is about 25 degrees warmer than the front. So now I always set the oven slightly below whatever temp the recipe calls for and rotate my pans halfway through baking. Works like a charm!

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Time: 20 minutes of prep, 30 minutes of chilling, 12 minutes of baking
Yield: 12 cookies

2 1/2 Tbsp butter
4 oz chocolate chips
6 Tbsp granulated sugar (75 g)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 - 1 tsp ground anise
Heaping 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
6 Tbsp AP flour (51 g)
Powdered sugar for rolling

In a large bowl, melt the butter and chocolate chips in the microwave or over a small pan with 1/2 an inch of simmering water. If using the microwave, start by heating on high for 30 seconds. Stir, and then heat in 10-second bursts until everything is nearly melted. Stir well to let the residual heat finish the job.

Let cool for about 5 minutes.

Add the sugar and mix well with a spatula. Add the egg and the vanilla and mix well.

Add the anise, salt, and flour and mix well. If you are feeling fancy, you can whisk the dry ingredients together separately and then add them to the wet ingredients, but I have not had a problem with distribution when dumping everything into the bowl together.

Cover and freeze for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350. (See note above!)

Scoop about 1-2 Tbsp of batter and roll into a ball between your palms. Drop into the powdered sugar and cover completely and liberally with the powdered sugar.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. The cookies should be slightly under-baked because we want them to have a gooey, brownie-like texture in the middle.

December 10, 2019

Coconut and cardamom alfajores

December 10, 2019/ Rebecca Davis

Alfajores made easier with store-bought dulce de leche and a streamlined recipe and method. Save time AND make delicious cookies this year! #meandthemoose #holidaybaking #Christmascookies #alfajores #shortbreadcookies #dulcedeleche #cookierecipes #b…

You may think you don’t need another holiday cookie recipe, but these are subtly spiced, barely sweet, and super easy. Win, win, win!

Take me to the cookies!

First of all, who’s had Alfajores before? If not, get thee to an Argentinian bakery because they. are. delicious. This South American staple uses dulce de leche in between two soft, cakey, vanilla cookies and is then rolled in shredded coconut.

In the US version, we often swap the softer cookie for a crispier vanilla shortbread, which I prefer. Also, I decided to skip the shredded coconut on the outside and opt for a coconut-flavored shortbread because, while I love the taste of coconut, I don’t always love its texture.

I started with this Coconut Shortbread recipe from Food52, but simplified the method, dialed down the sugar, swapped two egg yolks for one whole egg, and added a tiny bit of cardamom for a warmer, spicier flavor that felt right for the holidays.

You know what else feels right for the holidays? Shortcuts. In this version of the recipe, we use only one bowl and mix up cold fats with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor instead of a mixer.

AND, this part might seem like sacrilege to some, but I used jarred dulce de leche. I know, I know. Bad food blogger, bad! I like this one the most and found it at World Market, but you can also find it online. If you feel like making your own, here are some options:

Smitten Kitchen’s stovetop dulce de leche
Displaced Housewife’s olive oil dulce de leche
Live Well Bake Often’s oven-baked dulce de leche
The Spruce Eats boiled condensed milk dulce de leche

Here we go!

Coconut and cardamom alfajores

Yield: 24 cutout cookies; 12 sandwiches
Time: 90 minutes (about 30 active)

½ cup (1 stick) butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
6 Tbsp coconut oil (solid)
½ cup cane sugar (can substitute granulated sugar if necessary)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp cardamom
¼ tsp sea salt
1 15-oz jar of dulce de leche

Cube the butter and add it to a food processor. Add the coconut oil (making sure it’s solid). Run the food processor until the butter and coconut oil have combined and are smooth, about 30 seconds. You may have to scrape down the sides.

Add the sugar, vanilla extract, and egg. Run the machine until the ingredients are well combined. Again, you may have to scrape down the sides.

Add the dry ingredients and pulse just until the dough comes together. I often need to scrape the sides once. The end result of the dough should be a crumbly wet dough that’s in large and small sandy chunks that come together easily when pressed. The dough should be wetter than a pie dough, but slightly more crumbly than your typical sugar cookie dough.

Divide the dough roughly in half and place one dough chunk on a sheet of parchment paper. Using the paper or your hands to form a ball. Place another piece of parchment on top of the dough ball and roll out to a ¼-inch thick disk. Repeat with the other half of the dough. Chill both dough disks in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

When the dough has chilled for about 25 minutes, preheat the oven to 325.

Working one disk at a time, remove the top parchment sheet from each half and use it to line a cookie sheet. Cut out as many shapes as possible and gently transfer them. Re-roll the dough to cut out more shapes. For the cookies that will be the base of each sandwich, score gently with a fork. For the top cookie, cut out any shape you like from the middle.

Bake the cutout cookies for 14-17 minutes, turning once during baking to ensure even cooking. The cookies are done when they just begin to brown. Let cool.

When the cookies are cool, top each bottom portion with 2-3 Tbsp of dulce de leche and top with a cutout cookie.

March 20, 2019

Lemon poppyseed hamantaschen

March 20, 2019/ Rebecca Davis

Don’t hate me, but my favorite cookie holiday is Purim. Not Christmas. Not Valentine’s Day. Purim. I love a hamantaschen almost more than any other cookie. Is that weird? I don’t care.

Jump to the recipe!

Why do I love these cookies so much? I think it’s because Purim means that spring is FINALLY here. I reached the nadir of my winter depression last week but we’re making our way back. I can see grass again! We have an extra hour of light! We have green buds popping up despite still-freezing temperatures!

I rejiggered my hamantaschen dough recipe from last year because I wanted the cookie to be slightly more crumbly. I also left out the baking powder because my (and probably everyone who’s ever made hamantaschen) biggest pet peeve about this cookie is that it can open up during baking and lose it’s shape. Whelp, if you leave out the baking powder, there’s a lot less leavening happening. Problem solved.

Also, I stand corrected about one hamantaschen-related statement: Last year I didn’t think that freezing the dough after forming the cookies made a difference, but this year, it did. Go figure.

A couple of notes:

I used a store-bought lemon curd, but feel free to make your own. It will bubble out while the cookies bake, but you can always fill in any holes that develop with a bit more curd once the cookies cool.
There is a teeny amount of cardamom in this recipe because I didn’t want the cookies to taste too strongly of cardamom. The little hint of it actually makes the lemon taste more lemony.

Lemon poppyseed hamantaschen

6 Tbsp butter, melted and slightly cooled
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 heaping tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
Heaping ¼ tsp salt
2 Tbsp poppyseeds
1/8- 1/4 tsp cardamom
2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp lemon curd per cookie

Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl in the microwave until half melted (heat on high for 30 seconds and then in 10 second bursts until your butter is only half formed). Stir the butter to let the residual heat of the melted half take care of the half that is still solid. Let cool slightly.

Add the sugar, vanilla, and eggs and whisk to combine thoroughly.

Add the salt, poppyseeds, and cardamom, and stir again.

Add ½ of the flour and stir with a spatula until just combined. Add the rest of the flour and mix until the dough comes together. Use your hands to get the last bits of flour to come together in the dough. If it feels too flaky or dry, mix in some water, 1 Tbsp at a time, until the dough feels slightly wet, all of the flour is easily incorporated, and there are minimal cracks along the edges of the dough when squished down.

Divide the dough into two discs, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and chill for 20 minutes in the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 350.

After 20 minutes, roll out the dough to 1/8th of an inch on a floured surfaced with a floured rolling pin. (Be liberal with the flour as this is a sticky dough. If it feels too sticky to work with, put back in the freezer for 5 minutes and try again.)

Cut out 2.5-inch circles and transfer them to a parchment-covered baking sheet.

Fill the center of each circle with ½ tsp lemon curd.

Fold the cookie dough into a triangle by folding and pinching three sides of the circle together.

Bake the cookies for 5 minutes and rotate in the oven. Bake until the bottoms of the cookies are browned but the tops are still light, about 4-5 minutes more.

If lots of the filling has bubbled out, let the cookies cool and add another ½ tsp of the lemon curd.

Yield: 36 cookies

March 27, 2018

Almond cookies

March 27, 2018/ Rebecca Davis

Easter and Passover fall during the same weekend this year, so why not bake a dessert that fits the bill for both? They're a little like a French Macaron, but with a lot less work. They're also a little merengue-y, but much less tricky and far quicker to bake.

I first made these Chewy Almond Cookies for the holidays a few years ago. My mom loves a Linzer torte and my father-in-law loves anything with marzipan, but I needed something a bit simpler to add to the cookie tray. The original version called for store-bought almond paste, but it's expensive and sometimes hard to find, so these cookies sub in almond flour (NOT almond meal) and powdered sugar.

Skipping the almond paste also makes these kosher for Passover because the paste uses some kind of gluten-derived syrup as a sweetener.

I've fiddled with the technique a bit as well. Adding the egg whites to the food processor first and whizzing them until they're thick and white makes the cookies lighter, airier, and more chewy. You don't need to go for stiff peaks or even soft peaks, but just a frothy milky mixture.

The only tricky part of this recipe is getting the texture of the batter right. Too thick, and it's hard to pipe, but too thin and the cookies spread out and get too crunchy. You want to be able to run a finger through the batter and the indentation stays put. (See the photo below.)

The original recipe also calls for raspberry jam, which is delicious. But I used lemon curd here because it felt more springy. Also, it seemed like an apt use of the leftover egg yolks. However, I confess that I've never actually made my own lemon curd before and my first try was...not great. The taste was delicious, but it was entirely too runny. So, I bought some at the grocery store and called it a day. No shame.

Almond Cookies

2 large eggs, white and yolk separated
1 cup almond meal
¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ tsp almond extract
½ tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cardamom
¼ tsp salt
2 cups sliced almonds

Preheat the oven to 350.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Make 9 small piles of almonds roughly the size of a quarter. Set aside.

Add the egg whites to a food processor. Whiz on high speed until the whites look frothy and milky, about 1-2 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and whiz to combine. The batter will likely form a ball. Keep processing until the ball smoothes back out. If the batter is too thick (stays in a ball after another minute of processing), separate another egg white and yolk and add ½ of the egg white to the batter and process again.

Add the batter to a large zip lock bag or a piping bag and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 1 day.

Once chilled, pipe about 2 Tbsp of batter in a circle over each pile of almonds. The batter will be thick, so feel free to use your fingers to help it out of the bag. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little wonky because the cookies spread out while baking.

Top with more sliced almonds.

Bake for 5 minutes and rotate the pan. Bake for 5 minutes more. Be careful not to overbake these cookies. They’re done even when they look slightly raw in the middle. You want just a hint of color around the edges. Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan and move to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: 18-20 cookies

March 01, 2018

Halva Hamantaschen

March 01, 2018/ Rebecca Davis

I meant to post this recipe yesterday, but after turning my kitchen into a veritable Hamantaschen factory testing different dough recipes, I had to take a break.

I love love love a good hamantaschen, the traditional cookie of Purim. When done right, the cookie part isn't terribly sweet and hovers somewhere between tender and snappy and, most importantly, lets the filling shine. My personal favorite is plain old apricot jam, but I was inspired by Molly Yeh's sprinkletaschen and knishentaschen to make my own frankentaschen with a halva filling.

I'm always intrigued by halva, but never really like it. The dry, chalky texture really throws me, but I like all of the ingredients, which is what leads me back time and again. Instead of making actual halva or using a store-bought version, I just used the basic ingredients (honey, tahini) and added some other favorites like lemon zest and pistachios. I also threw in an egg and the tiniest bit of flour and baking powder to make the filling more batter-like.

The real trick was finding a dough recipe that I liked. I nixed all of the cream cheese-based doughs because reviewers complained that the dough often doesn't hold its shape in the oven. I also thought the tang would compete with the filling.

Next, I tried Bon Appetite's and Smitten Kitchen's hamantaschen doughs. I liked them equally, but I ultimately prefer Smitten's because the technique (with some of my lazy-person changes) is quick and easy.

Internet research led me to fiddle with oven temperatures and try resting the formed cookies in the fridge for 20 minutes before baking, but ultimately, neither significantly changed anything for the better. My cookies aren't going to win any beauty contests, but the all more or less stay together.

Halva Hamantaschen

For the dough:
4 Tbsp butter, melted and slightly cooled
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 heaping tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
Heaping ¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 ¼ cups + 2 Tbsp flour

Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl in the microwave until just melted. I like to melt the butter about 2/3 of the way and then stir it to let the heat from the melted part take care of the rest. Let cool slightly, about 3 minutes.

Add the sugar and vanilla extract and whisk to combine. Let the teaspoon runeth over slightly to add extra vanilla flavor.

Add the eggs one at a time and whisk each one until fully combined.

Add the salt and baking powder and stir with a spatula.

Add 1.5 cups of flour and stir until just combined. Add the other 3/4 cup of flour and stir again. Add the final 2 Tbsp and, either working hard with the spatula or using your hands, mix until just combined. The dough should feel very dense and not sticky.

Divide the dough into two discs, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and chill for 20 minutes in the freezer.

For the halva filling:
1 cup raw, shelled pistachios, toasted
¼ cup tahini, well mixed
5 Tbsp honey
1 large egg
¼ tsp baking powder
1.5 Tbsp flour
Zest of 1 large lemon

Preheat the oven to 350. Toast the nuts for about 5 minutes or until they become fragrant and slightly darker. Transfer to a food processor

Add the other ingredients and pulse until the mixture becomes a paste. Some of the pistachios will remain whole or in large pieces, which is absolutely fine. The batter will seem too loose, but don’t worry: This is about to chill in the fridge while you roll out and cut your cookie dough and will tighten up quite a bit.

To assemble the cookies:
Preheat the oven to 350 (if not already done when toasting the nuts).

Roll out your cookie dough on a lightly floured surface or a piece of parchment paper until about 1/8 inch thick. You want the dough thin-ish because it puffs up in the oven, but not see-through because it will become crunchy.

Cut out 2 ½ inch circles. Each disc of dough should yield about 24 circles. I would discard the rest because it will likely be overworked and have too much flour after being rolled 2-3 times.

Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place 1 SCANT tsp of the halva filling in the center of the circle and then pinch all three sides together to form a triangle. Pinch the corners tightly so that no seems are left and a fair amount of the filling is covered by dough to avoid spillage during baking.

Sprinkle the tops generously with coarse sugar (demarara or turbinado work best) and bake for 110-12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. You are looking for light browning on the corners and a puffed up, dry-looking center. These cookies go from perfectly cooked to overbaked quite fast, so if your oven runs hot, you may want to check them at 8 minutes.

Yield: 48 cookies