Food and Things » cookies

These Rich Sugar Cookie Sandwiches Got Raves

Laura Weiss — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:02:14 +0000

I almost tossed the sugar cookies I baked for New Year’s Eve into the garbage. The recipe was from Mark Bittman, the NY Times food writer and cookbook author. The round-faced Bittman is usually a reliable source for most cooking and baking challenges—from how to prepare kale to putting together a no-fail buttery pound cake. But this time, it looked like the trusty Mark had failed me.

A few minutes out of the oven, this particular batch of sugar cookies could have passed for water crackers they were so bland and tasteless. Since I was baking treats for a New Year’s Eve party at Chef Renee Marton’s, I set to work to try to rehabilitate them. (It wasn’t Bittman’s’ fault it was mine; I over-mixed the batter.) For sure, when you bring a dish to a chef’s house, you want to get it right.

I thought to myself, OK, add some sugar and fat. So I rolled each cookie in powdered sugar. I whipped up some chocolate ganache and smeared it between two cookies to create a richly fudgy sandwich. That was the only filling I made. Everything else—the nutella, the dulce de leche, I pulled from my fridge. Then I glommed a tablespoon or so of sauce onto each cookie, smoothed it with a spatula, and smushed two cookies together to create a sandwich.

The result? The powdered sugar boosted the drab little ovoid’s richness and heightened the sweetness just a tad. The filling seeped into the cookies transforming them into sumptuous little morsels. By the time midnight rolled around, my near-disaster cookies were fit to be eaten—even by a chef.

What was the best part of this cookie-making enterprise? When Chef Renee drifted by a little after midnight and announced, “Everyone’s raving about your cookies.”

Click here for Bittman’s sugar cookie recipe or use your own.

The Best Rugelach and Croisaants: Two New Bakery/Cafes Open on the Upper East Side

Laura Weiss — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:22:43 +0000

Rugelach via flckr by by Soup Spoon Blog

Two new bakery/cafes have opened in the last several months on the Upper East Side. Le Moulin a Cafe, a French spot on York Avenue between 76th and 77th streets, serves up some of the best croissants I’ve eaten in the city. Plenty specializes in homey desserts like rugelach and crumb cake, along with cakes and cookies.

Le Moulin a Cafe

Forget all those leaden faux croissants on offer at your neighborhood bodega. Instead, head for Le Moulin a Cafe. The cozy spot opened over the summer when it started dishing up croissants that are as flaky and tender as any I’ve had in France.

The reason? Nicholas Lecuq, the co-owner, imports frozen dough from Brittany. Lecuq’s chef then bakes the dough in-house. Who would think pre-frozen croissants could turn out so well?

The weekday morning I stopped by, the place was hopping. Stroller moms who had dropped their kids at the Lycee Francais de New York across the street, flooded the cafe’s tables. Neighborhoods folks were stopping by too. And I’ll bet there’s more than a few NY Presbyterian docs–cholesterol be damned—who are sampling Le Moulin a Cafe’s offerings as well.

In addition to pastries, there’s a menu of quiche ($10), salads ($11-$12), and entrées (skirt steak with fries ($21) and the like, and wine is coming soon.

Plenty

If it’s old fashioned cakes and cookies you’re hankering for, Plenty is your spot. Arrayed in glass cases, the pastries are pretty much like grandma used to make—and there’s a reason for that. Jessica Weiss, the proprietor and a lapsed MBA, earned her chops baking alongside her grandmother Hannah, one hell of a baker judging by the fare at Plenty.

The crumb cake was light and moist with a buttery, tender topping. Delicious but not for me. For me, the chewier and doughier the cake, the better. The rugelach? I wish that my grandma who’s ruglach were reliably uneatable, had taken some lessons from Hannah. Plenty’s were flaky and not too sweet, just about a perfect bite.

Along with these homey standards, Weiss also offers chocolate cake ($4.75), cinnamon sugar donut muffins ($1.75) and homemade Oreos ($2.50). There are whole cakes for $35-$40 that can also be ordered by the slice.

The place sports a few tables and you can purchase various coffees and teas to go with your pastry.

Le Moulin a Cafe
1439 York Ave
New York, NY
212 288 5088

Monday – 7 am – 9 pm
Tuesday-Thursday – 7 am – 10 pm
Friday – 7 am – 11 pm
Saturday – 8 am – 11 pm
Sunday – 8 am – 9 pm

Plenty
1457 Third Avenue (82nd Street)
New York, NY
212 628 2110

730 am to 730 pm 7 days/week

Black Cat Halloween Cookies

Laura Weiss — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:15:45 +0000

While researching Halloween, Chef Renee Marton came across these Black Cat Cookies, a very easy way to make cookie with a black cat design.

For Candy C0rn Halloween Cupcake recipe, click here.

Black Cat Cookies
adapted from Betty Crocker’s Cook Book
for Boys and Girls, 1957

Ingredients

1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten 
2/3 cup honey 
1 teaspoon vanilla 
2-3/4 cup flour 
1 teaspoon baking soda 
1 teaspoon salt 
flat bottomed glass or small rolling pin
chocolate peppermint wafers - round
semisweet chocolate chips 
toothpick

Thoroughly mix first 5 ingredients. Stir flour, baking soda and salt together and then add to mixture. Blend all together, but don’t overmix. Chill for one hour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease baking sheet. Roll dough into balls the size of walnuts. Place on cookie sheet. Dip bottom of glass in flour. Use bottom to flatten cookies. Bake for about 8 minutes.

As soon as cookies are removed from oven, place a peppermint wafer slightly off center of each cookie (this will become the main body of the cat). Place two chips close together next to top edge of mint wafer and one at the center of the bottom edge of wafer. With toothpick, using a circular motion, stir the two top chips—one at a time—and drag the toothpick upwards to form the point of the cat’s ear. Repeat. On the bottom chip, with toothpick, shape the melted chocolate into a long tail by pulling the chocolate down and to angle.

Upper West Sider Creates Chip n’ Etzel—Pretzels and Potato Chips Team with a Cookie

Laura Weiss — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:00:34 +0000

Do you crave potato chips? How about pretzels? Wouldn’t you love to plow through a box of cookies? You could gorge on all three snacks at once. But that would be a bit piggy.

Chipnetzel cookie. Photo: Sara Snacker.

What to do if you’re hit with a mega-snack attack?

Upper West Sider Sara Leand, aka Sara Snacker, has come up with a novel solution. She’s created the Chip n’ Etzel, a crunchy cookie married to those salty snack favorites, pretzels and potato chips.

How did the Upper West Side entrepreneur come up with the idea for the salty-sweet treat?

As a college student, Leand sold baked goodies out of her college dorm room. Then came a 15-year stint as an entertainment executive, producing TV shows for major networks like E!, Lifetime and TLC. Now, Leand, married and the mother of a 13-month old, has returned to her original passion—baking.

But the decision to switch from TV honcho to full-time commercial baker wasn’t an easy one.

“It was a pretty difficult choice,” she recalled of her leap into the cookie business last June. “I was pregnant with my first child…When I got pregnant, I saw it as a sign. I wanted to be close to my child and it seemed like the time to do it.”

Leand wanted to create a product that evoked nostalgia for childhood sweets. Thus was born the Chip n’ Etzel. At the Fancy Food Show in New York, the TV exec-turned-baker found a distributor. She rented space from a baker in New Jersey, where a team of around five workers helps her crank out her baked product. Soon, Chip n’ Etzels were showing up in a number of Upper West Side emporiums, including Zabar’s, Westside Market and Garden of Eden.

Though running her own baking business gives Leand the flexibility to spend time with her daughter, the demands can be daunting.

“It’s 24/7,” she said. “It’s about sampling, tasting, and getting the word out.”

At West Side Market, at 2840 Broadway at 110th Street, the cookies which have been on the shelves a couple of months, are ” doing good,” says Efren Mones, the store’s bakery manager. “People buy them to drink with tea,” he said. Down the street, Garden of Eden bakery manager Rita Shabnam reports the store has sold six-to-eight cases of the snacks over the past month-and-a-half.

The Chip n’ Etzel comes in four varieties, dusted, in sugar, coated in white or dark chocolate and bite-sized. Meanwhile, Leand is busy testing recipes for additional treats that she plans to roll out in retail stores and on her website. Among them are lemonade, vanilla milkshake, and cotton candy cookies.

Where to Get Holiday Cupcakes, Gingerbread Houses and More at Upper West Side Bakeries

Laura Weiss — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:00:41 +0000

Christmas cupcakes. Photo: CRUMBS Bake Shop.

Gingerbread brownstone. Photo: Bakery Soutine.

By Miriam Gottfried

Upper West Side bakeries are ramping up for the holidays, adding various seasonal items to their menus. Here’s a look at the December goodies at a few of them:

Bakery Soutine will be offering various gingerbread constructions, honey bourbon fruitcake, Royal Navy plum pudding, croquembouche and Buche de Noel. www.soutine.com

Buttercup Bake Shop will be selling special gingerbread cupcakes with pumpkin icing as a seasonal holiday treat. www.buttercupbakeshop.com

Holiday cupcakes, including a Christmas confection with green cream cheese frosting and red sprinkles, a blue-and-white Hanukkah rendition, and a treat topped with eggnog frosting are on the holiday menu at www.crumbs.com

Magnolia Bakery will have red velvet cupcakes, topped with edible chocolate disks bearing pictures of dancing Rockettes. Other seasonal cupcakes include ones decorated with snowmen and snowflakes, and the Sno-Cap—devil’s food cake with meringue-icing peaks. www.magnoliabakery.com

Among many other holiday items, Silver Moon Bakery makes jelly doughnuts and Star of David layer cake for Hanukkah, a fig tart and traditional Stollen bread for Christmas. There’s also a triple chocolate bavarois to help ring in the new year. www.silvermoonbakery.com

COOKIES: Buy or Bake These Tea Cookies for the Holidays

Laura Weiss — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:14:53 +0000

Dana Jacobi, an acclaimed food writer and cookbook author, will be contributing posts and recipes to Food and Things. Dana has written 10 best-selling cookbooks. Her latest is The Essential Best Foods Cookbook: 225 Irresistible Recipes Featuring the Healthiest and Most Delicious Foods.

Let us know how you like this recipe

Send us your holiday cookie recipes

A good cookie helps me chill out when holiday overload approaches.

When I can get to Amai Tea and Bake House, 171 Third Ave. (between 16th and 17th Sts.), I order their Tea Sweets—superb tea-flavored shortbread cookies. Together with a tea latte, they are as restorative as a yoga class.

Each shortbread tea flavor—from buttery green tea and spicy chai almond, to fruity white tea and strawberry—is filled with aromatic flavors. The individual flavors also boast unique shapes. For instance, the green tea ones are designed to look like a tea leaf.

And Amai’s decor, with its dark wood and exposed brick, is as soothing as its baked goods. The amiable service is calming, too.

When I cannot get to Amai, I make my own Green Tea Shortbread, from a recipe in the Essential Best Foods Cookbook. Putting a batch of this indecently rich treat together takes a total of 10 minutes. And there’s a bonus— your house will smell heavenly.

GREEN TEA SHORTBREAD
Makes 8 pieces

(Get matcha powdered green tea at most Japanese market, including Katagiri, 224 East 59th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Ave.) www.katagiri.com, Sunrise Mart (29 Third Ave) or the tea and coffee counter at any Whole Foods Market.)

3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon powdered matcha green tea
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup superfine or granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut in small pieces
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

2. In a small bowl, combine the flour, tea, and salt.

3. Place the sugar in the bowl of a food processor. If using granulated sugar, whirl it for 1 minute to turn it into superfine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture looks like pebbles. Add the flour mixture and pulse until a coarse, loosely granular dough forms.

4. Turn the dough into an ungreased 8-inch round cake pan. With your fingers, quickly work in any powdery bits then press the dough into an even layer in the pan.

5. Bake for 15 minutes. Make a border by pressing the flat bottom of the tines of a fork in a circle around the outside of the dough. With the tips of the tines, prick the dough all over. Using a sharp knife, score the dough into 8 wedges.

6. Return the shortbread to the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden. Do not let it brown.

7. Place the pan on a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Rescore the wedges and run a knife around the edge of the shortbread to loosen it. Invert the pan and gently unmold the shortbread. Cool and break into wedges. Serve the shortbread warm or at room temperature. The shortbread keeps in an airtight container for 5 days.