Double chocolate chunk cookies

B does most of the baking around here. When I asked him about these cookies, he said: "Take a normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, using larger chocolate chunks instead of the small chips, and add about a quarter cup of cocoa powder."

Mussels with cream sauce

For each person eating, buy a pound of mussels. Wash and scrub them well, removing the beards, while you bring a large pot with a few inches of water to a boil. Set the cleaned mussels in a colander or steamer insert and steam them covered until they open up wide. Meanwhile, prepare a sauce with cream, garlic, salt, and white wine. Pour the sauce over the steamed mussels, and serve with sourdough bread.






Finish the meal with chocolate-chip cookies.

Pig cookies

One of our favorite people at the market is Dana, who manages the Riverdog stand and thus hands us our vegetable box every week. Dana's other job at Riverdog is to take care of their pigs (for pictures of the pigs, check out the Hog Blog).

We wanted to bring Dana cookies, and found a wonderful pig-shaded cookie cutter at Sur La Table. Unfortunately, the cookies expanded a bit in cooking, but they were still delicious.

2 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/8 tsp baking soda, 1 cup butter, 1 1/2 cup sugar, 1 egg, a few drops red food coloring; roll out dough with rolling pin and cut with cutter, bake 7-8 minutes at 350 degrees.

9 October 2008: Oysters!

At the North Berkeley farmers' market, we're blessed not only with Hudson Fish Company, but also with Hog Island Oysters. This was our first time having oysters, and we've become hooked.

If you're afraid of shucking oysters (get a good shucking knife, have someone explain how to do it, and hold the oyster in a folded kitchen towel), you can try, as we did, to broil the oysters open. Place the oysters round-side-down in a single layer on a cookie sheet directly under the broiler. After a few minutes, the water inside each oyster should evaporate, killing the oyster and forcing open the shell. With a sharp knife, finish prying open the shells, cutting the muscles. Be sure to save the juice in the shells: it's the best part. Pour a sauce of butter, garlic, and white wine over the oysters, and serve the broiled oysters on the half-shell.

Here we have the oysters paired with a leek-and-mushroom risotto and steamed silver chard. The whole meal ended with chocolate mint cookies, made by my boyfriend.

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

My roommate is on a low-iodine diet for the next few weeks. It turns out that "low iodine" means, among other things, vegan: egg yolks and all dairy are out. But so are soy (all soy products are out except soy oil and lecithin), most beans, all sea foods (including sea salt), potato skins, and rhubarb.

Since she isn't feeling well, and most desserts are out, cookies seem in order.

Preheat oven 350°. In order, combine in the standing mixer with paddle on low:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup unsalted peanut butter
• 1 cup sugar
• A splash of vanilla
• 1/2 tsp non-iodized salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup flour

Roll out by tablespoons, and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet 15 minutes. Let cool before removing from pan: cookies will fall apart easily.

Cookies and Cheesecake

For my review session yesterday, I made cookies for my students. I more-or-less followed this recipe, although I did not chill the dough at all. Instead, the very moist dough I plopped onto parchment-lined cookie sheets by the Tablespoon. I also over-worked the flour and eggs a bit, because I made a single batch, and then decided to double it. The cookies were tasty, and not quite as crisp as they'd be with less beating and more chilling.

The recipe is a standard one. Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl. Combine wet ingredients in standing mixer with paddle, and then add dry to wet. Dry ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp cloves

Wet ingredients:

• 8 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp milk
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp lemon zest, lemon extract, or orange extract

My boyfriend had an end-of-term party for one of his classes, and wanted to bring something showy but not too difficult. "Theo, will you bake me a cheesecake?" he asked sweetly. This one is from Betty Crocker's Best of Baking, which he had got me for Christmas.

Preheat oven 275°. Grease a springform pan, the bottom lined with parchment. In double boiler, or otherwise, melt and allow to cool slightly

• 8 oz dark chocolate chips.

In a standing mixer, beat together

• 16 oz cream cheese
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 3 eggs
• the chocolate,

adding ingredients one-by-one in the order listed, and scraping down the bowl each time. Pour into prepared pan, and bake 75 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature uncovered, then cover and cool in the refrigerator at least three hours.

Because I had accidentally added two Tbsps flour and then worked the batter too much, my cheesecake puffed up in the oven and then deflated, developing a large crack. Ah, well.

Pour over cheesecake a sauce made in double boiler from

• 6 oz white chocolate chips
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup whipping cream

melted but not boiled, and allowed to cool at least two hours before use. Decorate cake with strawberries and shaved chocolate.

Peanut-butter-cup cookies

I highly recommend this recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies with peanut butter filling. The dough is moist and highly pliable, making it a treat to work with. The filling, however, needs some adjustment (perhaps the proportions work with Skippy or Jif, but not with MaraNatha). The flavor it fine, but even after adding another 50% peanut butter, the filling never gets smooth. I think that one should use less sugar all together, and regular sugar, not powdered sugar. I would also add a pinch of vanilla to the filling.

But, in any case, make these cookies.

Brown sugar cookies

For my calculus class tomorrow, since they have a midterm, I plan to bring in cookies. I chose a very fine recipe form Cook's Illustrated.

In a cast-iron pan, melt

• 10 Tbsp unsalted butter

and, swirling, continue to cook one to three minutes to a dark golden and nutty aromatic. (Why use cast-iron? The butter doesn't care, but, short of rendering lard, this is about the best thing you can do for your cast-iron.) Remove from heat, transfer to a large heatproof bowl, and stir in

• 4 Tbsp butter

to melt. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to middle and middle-high, and preheat oven 350°F. In a medium bowl, combine

• 2 cups plus 2 Tbsp (whole wheat pastry) flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt

and set aside.

To cooled butter, add

1 3/4 cup packed brown sugar

and mix until no lumps. Scrape down bowl. Add

• 1 large egg plus 1 yolk
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• optional: 1 tsp molasses

and mix to fully incorporate. Add flour mixture, and mix, scraping down bowl.

Roll into small balls, and toss in a mixture of

• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

and place on baking sheets. Bake 13 minutes, and do not overbake.

The number of cookies made by a particular recipes depends dramatically on the size of the cookies. In my notes, I wrote in "makes 2 dozen", presumably making largish 2-Tbsp cookies. This time, worried I wouldn't have enough for my sixty students, I made a double batch: I made just over 180 cookies.

Post-Christmas cabbage and cookies

Originally posted on 26 December 2007.

Possibly my favorite Christmas gift was Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables, an indispensible reference. I've been reading it non-stop: each vegetable (sorted alphabetically) is described, including how to judge freshness, how to store, how to prepare, and how to grow in a kitchen garden, and many recipes are suggested. Tonight and tomorrow we will be eating leftovers before leaving for a family trip to the Coast; tonight's dinner was lasagna. But dinner should include a fresh vegetable. A trip to the local organic grocer yielded a gorgeous and very fresh and sweet red cabbage. What, we asked Alice, should we do with it?

After removing the outermost leaves and washing the cabbage (I would only save cabbage for a beef stock; it's fine to compost this), remove the core and slice into very thin strips, a few inches long. Thinly slice a leek, and in the bottom of a heavy large saucepan, cook the leek in three tablespoons butter or duck fat for five minutes. Add the cabbage along with a large spoonful of sherry vinegar, a healthy handful of salt, some black pepper, a bay leaf, and half a cup of water. Stir, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and let the cabbage reduce for twenty minutes.

While the cabbage cooks, wash, peel, and grate (with a coarse grater) an apple. Toss with a little sherry vinegar to keep the apple from oxidizing, and eat the peel and core. When the cabbage has cooked for twenty minutes, stir in the grated apple and cook another five minutes. Serve hot.


In the days after Christmas, one should never be long without a good cookie. The following is from The Joy of Vegan Baking, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau:

Three cups flour should be combined in a large bowl with a quarter teaspoon salt, one and a half teaspoon baking powder, one tablespoon aniseed, and one cup pine nuts. In a separate small bowl, whisk to combine seven eighths of a cup of pure maple syrup with half a cup canola oil, one quarter cup water, two tablespoons anise extract, and one teaspoon vanilla extract. Combine wet into dry, roll by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined cookie tray, and bake twenty minutes in a preheated three-hundred-fifty-degree oven.

Addtionally, after Christmas we eat an endless supply of pfeffernusse, gingerbread, and the many cookies left with us after our annual Cookie Party, a wonderful potluck at which we have eggnog with and without rum, hot mulled wine, ciders, and homemade cookies with all our friends and neighbors.