Friday Night Cookies

The first Friday night at college. Hot, sticky air. Lots of noise. Cramped spaces. Peanut butter cookies from scratch.

Yep. That would be me! I spent my first Friday night not in search of a wild party, beer, or a bed. I spent it making peanut butter cookies... well, I guess 8pm could be considered the evening here, in which case I did spend my Friday night doing other things... like playing Twister, card games, and getting pink grapefruit gelato and trying to figure out how inebriated the person limping down the hallway really was ("I'm fine, really, I'm fine." "Okay... if you say so.")


I fought with an oven that I couldn't figure out how to turn on, leading someone else to push buttons randomly and get it to work after I pretty much murdered the first batch of cookies. I panicked that I would set off the fire alarm when I forgot about the third batch, which someone else wanted to happen to see how many people came out of the building. All in all it was a good experience. Nobody complained nor went into anaphylactic shock. I'd say that's a sign of a successful night.


Milk Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
from the back of a bag of Target chocolate chips

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
12 oz (1 bag) milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375.

Beat butter, peanut butter, sugars, and vanilla on medium speed until creamy. Beat in egg.

Mix in flour, baking soda, and baking powder with a spatula or on a slow speed until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on cookie sheets. Press down with a fork to flatten.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until light golden brown. Let cool on cookie sheet slightly before transferring to a cooling rack or somewhere else. Do not eat directly off cookie sheet or you will be in pain and learn a lesson.

Raspberries, Sorbet, and Fudge: A Temporary Goodbye

I've left home and at college now. It's a little weird. I don't start classes for over a week, my roommate isn't here yet, and the campus is fairly quiet. That, and I'm not at home where the kitchen is. This could take some getting used to.

Right before I left, I tried to take advantage of the kitchen I was neglecting, because I know that I'm going to miss it. I made zucchini bread, but not as much as I intended to, raspberry sorbet, and fudge. I was going to make tofu with bok choy for lunch one day, but I never got around to it with the leftover gormeh sabzi in the fridge. Hopefully someone in the house uses the tofu before it goes bad. But the best received thing I made was the dessert I made the night my aunt and Ed came over for dinner. I'd made the raspberry sorbet earlier in the day, and wanted something to go with it. Cookie cups would have taken a little too much time since I made it back to the house 5 minutes before my aunt showed up. Aunt B really likes chocolate, so I settled on fudge.

It was a tasty pairing. And super simple as well.


Almond Topped Fudge
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
3 cups (18 ounces) chopped bittersweet chocolate or chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup slivered almonds

Line a baking sheet with or 9" square pan with parchment paper.

In a saucepan or in the microwave, melt the chocolate. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla.

Spread the fudge into a 9" square. Top with almonds and press down lightly. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Cut into squares and serve!

Since Everybody Could Use Another Potato Salad

Just in case a lack of words and pictures hasn't made it obvious, I haven't been cooking much lately. Or at least not much new or noteworthy, and if it has been new and noteworthy, there weren't any pictures to back it up. That, and I just haven't been able to come up with much to say.

But here's something. And I didn't make it, which makes me sad. But it's an idea, from a potato salad at Whole Foods. Something different for the last month of potato salads.

Grilled (or cooked however) potatoes, tosssed with crumbled blue cheese, torn watercress and sliced scallions in a vinaigrette of olive oil, red whine vinegar, shallots, dijon mustard, honey, salt, and pepper.

How's that for simple and different sounding? Not that I could get the proportions right. Maybe I'll try sometime this week. Or not.

About a year ago I purchased some buckwheat to make this buckwheat and calamari salad. The salad was delicious and one of those things on my list of things to write about that I just never managed to post about. But back to the buckwheat. I bought far more than I needed, so it just sat around, waiting to be used.

Enter Luisa, The Wednesday Chef. She posted about some delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies with Buckwheat Groats. I read the post and was immediately curious. She said they were good, and everything she'd ever said was good that I'd tried so far had been a success. So I bookmarked it, and thought about it, but for some reason, seemed to avoid making the recipe or touching the sad bag of kasha. Until nearly half a year later.

I sniffed the bag of buckwheat, deemed it acceptable, and set off to make the cookies right before entering my last week of school. While they weren't the prettiest of cookies, they were fairly tasty, with an unexpected crunch. Nobody who tried them disliked them. And I'm sure they won't disappoint you either if you give them a try. And then, with that leftover buckwheat, you really should try the calamari salad.

Recipe on The Wednesday Chef

A Vessel For Your Treat

Friday night I decided I wanted to make dessert to take over to my aunt and uncle's house. There was only one problem: I couldn't decide what to make. So I flipped through some magazines and cookbooks, still was undecided, and looked at my watch. That made it easier. With an hour and a half, going to the grocery store was out of the question. I was limited to what I had in the house. I opened the fridge, saw some orange juice, and decided to turn it into sorbet. But it needed something more.

A pretty bowl.

With David Lebowitz's The Perfect Scoop in hand, I set off to find something to go with the sorbet, and settled on the Almond Butterscotch Cookie Cups. And I had everything I needed to make them, leaving me with enough time to make the batter (which can be made up to a week ahead of time), and then bake it and shape it!

I then proceeded to make them again for memorial day.

Almond Butterscotch ...
I'm trying to be better about copyright laws. So the recipe, since completely unaltered, does not appear hear. I'm thinking of trying one out with pepitas to go with mango sorbet, and if I succeed, that will show up. That and trying for ones without corn syrup, but I'm not sure if I'll be successful in that endeavor.

Failure Cookies, With Potential

Sunday night I wanted to try the chocolate chip cookies in the February issue of Vegetarian Times, because they didn't look like normal chocolate chip cookies at all. They actually look pretty ugly, all thin and sort of brownish with the oats. But I thought they could taste good, and I'd never made cookies with oat flour before, I had everthing necessary to try to make them, and I really didn't want to go to bed and face the reality of spring break being over. Not yet.

But as soon as I put all the ingredients on the counter and chopped up the chocolate, it was too late to start. I'd be up far later than I wanted to be, and that would be bad. So I put everything away, and tried again on Monday.

Monday went a little better. I managed to get the batter made, but as soon as I went to open the oven, the door fell off.
And that should have prevented me from messing the cookies up. But it didn't. Impatient me figured the batter felt cooler, and tossed in the chocolate while my dad struggled to fix the oven door (I was helping him, a little...)
Chopped up chocolate + warm cookie dough = chocolate cookie dough.
That wasn't exactly what I was going for. But as soon as the oven door was back in place, and the oven preheated, I baked them off anyway. I thought they were too chocolaty (did I mention the dough was based off of ground walnuts) and masked the tasty cinnamon-hinted dough.

Unsatisfied with the results, though my friends kept assuring me they were tasty, I tried again Tuesday afternoon. I figured I had a foolproof solution to turning it into a chocolate batter: leave out the chocolate.
Well, I will admit that I liked the second batch of cookies better... well, sort of. I liked their potential better. I just didn't bake them long enough, frazzled in the face of an English paper about Billy Budd and rushed them as soon as my mom walked in the house and I realized it was already 6 o'clock. Oops.

But they'll be good. Next time.

Asparagus Salad

Spring is was in the air.
Those blue skies, pleasant breezes, temperatures in the 50s and 60s, the sound of lawnmowers, and the smell of green. But that's gone now. Today was overcast, gray, and okay, maybe the temperature was right, but the mood wasn't. Until dinner that is. This salad spelled SPRING. Maybe not really (I don't think there's any way I can make an acronym with it. I could try. Or an acrostic with: aSparagus, pecorino Romano, lemon juIce, bostoN lettuce, eGgs.)

It was a very green dinner we had tonight. And I'm referring to it's color. An amazing and light asparagus salad and pasta with arugula pesto. What better way to mark spring than that?


Roasted Asparagus Salad with Pecorino, Lemon, and Olive Oil
from Cooking Light April 2009

The link to it is here: Roasted Asparagus Salad

I actually followed the recipe exactly as written. So I think it would be illegal to rewrite it.

A Cherry Birthday To You

Among my friends I'm known for my baking. Most possibly because in the past year or two, I've been making more cookies and other treats that are easy to transport and share. So when I asked my friend last week what she would like me to make her for her birthday, her reply was "Not cupcakes." Which let me with far too many possibilities and far too many ideas. I asked her for a direction - something more specific, an ingredient, a flavor, a color, anything! A few days later, she came up to me and said, "Cherry." It took me a second to realize what she meant, but it worked out. I had a jar of cherries at home.

The first thing that came to my mind was cherry cheesecake, but I needed something more portable and fridge free. I remembered the cream cheese blondies with kumquats that I made a month or two ago, and since we had cream cheese, I figured I could make a thicker and less cakey version of them. So I tried. And failed. Well, the first time at least. They didn't cook all the way through, and the graham cracker crust seemed to insulate the insides. So the next day, I tried again. Only that time I had to go to the store. I traded the jarred cherries with frozen ones (practicality) and lost the graham cracker crust (it wasn't necessary, and I was out of graham crackers.)

I would say the results the second time were better. Gooey from the cherries, chewy from the cream cheese and brown sugar, and portable though sticky. And my friend, well, she told me she liked them, so I'd say they achieved their purpose.

Gooey Chewy Cherry Bars

8 ounces frozen cherries

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons (3/4 stick, 3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
6 ounces cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temp

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped pistachios

In a small saucepan, combine cherries and 1 Tablespoon sugar. Cook over medium heat until thick and syrupy (not watery!),about 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325ºF. Line a 9x9 inch pan with foil (optional) and butter. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer at medium speed until the sugars have dissolved and the mixture is smooth and thick, about 2-4 minutes, scraping sides of bowl as necessary.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Stir in flour mixture until just incorporated, followed by pistachios. Spoon half batter into prepared pan, spreading gently to corners. Top with cherries. Top with remaining batter.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the top is light brown and toothpick or tester comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Set the pan on a rack to cool for at least 30 minutes.

Warm Spinach Salad

So I've been seriously neglecting my blog this year. Seventy days into the year, and there are barely a handful of posts. I've started cooking more, but when it's "let's throw these things together and hope it turns out tasty," precise measurements are neglected, and therefore recipes do not result. But I'm trying to make amends. It's much easier to blog when dinner starts with a recipe that I just failed to follow correctly - erm, made preferential changes to - like the tasty spinach salad I made Saturday night.

Saturday was spent knowing I needed to get a lot of homework done so that the week wouldn't be stressful, and simultaneously doing absolutely nothing productive - no baked goods, n o cleaner room, no organized cabinets, no ironed clothes, no meandering walks - to avoid it. In all honesty, whatever I did was so mind-numbing that I don't remember what it was - until my friend called at two asking if I wanted to see a movie. Yes, a legitimate way to procrastinate! Count me in. An hour and a half later I was settling into the recently renovated theater with the permanently reclined seats as the opening credits blasted Bob Dylan's "The Times Are A-Changing." Three hours after that, my dad picked me up and -surprise! - two more guests for dinner. I relayed to him the contents of our refrigerator and my original plans for our dinner, and since I had planned for leftovers, it was easily adapted. We had plenty of food.

Oh, the salad. While it was the risotto patties I was the most excited about, misinterpreting the word "has" and "can" led to a change. And while everyone loved the risotto, it was the salad that I found to be much more exciting. With just fifteen minutes, a flavorful, warm side salad resulted. I think I'm discovering warm salads a bit too late, considering it was in the 50s and 60s, but today it dropped back down to 20s.

Regardless, the salad with the crisp spinach, mellowed fennel and onions, and sharp sweet balsamic is a keeper.


Spinach Salad with Fennel-Red Onion Dressing
adapted from Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen

6 ounces baby spinach
3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small fennel bulb (about 8 ounces), stalks and fronds discarded or saved for another use, bulb thinly slices
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
black pepper

Place spinach in a large bowl.

Heat the oil in medium skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add fennel, onion, salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened and carmelizing, 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in the vinegar and cook just until syrupy, about 30 seconds to a minute. REmove the pan from the heat and stir in ground black pepper to taste.

Scrape the fennel mixture into the bowl with the spinach, and toss to combine until spinach wilts slightly, about one minute. Serve immediately!

A Sweet Potato Salad for a Sweet Weekend

I've already made this salad twice. And I ate 3/4 of it the first time. If that doesn't attest to it's tastiness, then I'm not sure what does. Or, I suppose, you could argue that I ate it out of convenience since it was already made and in the fridge. Which is true, but it wouldn't explain why I made it again for dinner tonight.

It took me three days to make this salad. I bought everything on Wednesday with the intent to make it that night, but it took me until Friday night to make it. It was the first thing I did when I got home, along with a double batch of banana-oatmeal cookies with chocolate-covered espresso beans. Actually, it was the only thing I did at home. After making dinner and eating some, I packaged some up in a container, threw it in a lunchbox with a fork and some cookies, and headed off to pick up my friend to go to a concert. Which would be another highlight of my night. In all of its loud glory (despite my purple earplugs), That Was Something and Go Crash Audio were the highlight of the evening, despite my chronic tardiness causing us to miss half of it.

And along for the joyous occasion on Saturday, my lunch was once again this salad, in between the actual competing at regionals and learning that we placed first. Meaning that the entire math team is going to state for a fourth consecutive year! That's not a bad streak. Though I doubt I have much to do with it.

But that has little to do with the salad. I just think you should give it a try. Even my dad gave it approval. It was much better than last night's not-so-succesful attempt at Saag Paneer. Anyone have a good recipe for that?


Sweet Potato Salad with Apple and Avocado
adapted from Vegetarian Times February 2009 p.67
serves 6 as a side salad, 3-4 as a main course

1 lb sweet potatoes (about 1 big one), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1 medium red apple, diced (1 cup)
1/2 small onion, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/3 cup lime juice (from about 3 limes)
2 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 avocado, finely diced (mine was a small avocado, so I used the whole one)
4 cups mixed salad greens, baby spinach, or arugula
salt and pepper

Place sweet potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook about 3 minutes. Add corn and cook 1 to 2 minutes more, or until potatoes are tender. Drain in colander and rinse under cool water.
Meanwhile, toast pumpkin seeds in dry skillet over medium-high heat 3 to 4 minutes or until seeds begin to pop. Keep and eye on them, they burn easily. Transfer to a plate to cool.
Combine apple, onion, cilantro, lime juice, sweet potatoes, corn, and oil in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in avocado and toasted pumpkin seeds just before serving.
Divide greens among 4 plates and top with sweet potato salad.

Despite stirring in the avocado and pumpkin seeds just before serving, I think that this salad seems to hold up fairly well for about 2 days. It doesn't age well; the seeds just get soggy and the avocado browns a bit, but it doesn't turn absolutely gross and disgusting either.