I think I just ate the last of these. And boy, do I miss them already.

Some cookies are destined to the holiday ghetto: unique and lovely, yet irretrivably intertwined with Christmas. Cookies like Mexican wedding cakes, or rum balls, or nut cups only make an appearance in December.

These chocolate sandwich cookies with peppermint filling are different. Grandma D. made them every year for Christmas, but their warm chocolate and fresh mint flavors work anytime. They’re made from an easy-to-work-with rich chocolate dough, rolled out and cut out and baked, and then paired to sandwich a peppermint-flavored buttercream frosting filling.

How do I love thee, choco yum yum?

I like them because they’re versatile. The recipe normally calls for using a 2-inch round cutter, which is the size pictured. This makes a good-sized sandwich cookie somewhat bigger than an Oreo. In the past I’ve done 1-inch rounds — bite size! yummy! — as well as 3-inch huge rounds and cutout shapes like animals or holiday theme shapes.

I like them because they make a lot. I don’t know the origin of this recipe, but I get the feeling Grandma doubled it when she typed it up. Yes, she typed up recipes. On a typewriter; this was ancient times, remember.

Sheesh. And you people call me anal. Where do you think I get it? It’s not my fault!

I like them because squirting frosting onto cookie halves is a kind of fun everyone should get to experience.

I like them because Chocolate. Sandwich Cookies. With Peppermint Filling. That’s why.

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with Peppermint Filling Recipe

I haven’t put it through its paces yet, but the chocolate dough for these cookies feels very versatile. I bet it could easily be rolled super-thin for crisp chocolate wafers. The dough should be refrigerated before rolling, but let it rest outside the fridge for 10–20 minutes to let it warm up enough to roll out. I’ve made a lot of adaptions to the original — we don’t use oleo (margarine) anymore, and I made my own frosting, for starters. I did use shortening as the recipe calls for, but feel free to sub all butter.

oven: 400°F
special equipment: A stand mixer is very handy.
yield: An awful lot. Several dozen. Cut the recipe in half if you’re scared. But try the whole thing if you have room to freeze some!

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies:

4 cups all-purpose flour, preferably unbleached
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 squares unsweetened chocolate (6 ounces)
2 cups sugar
½ cup vegetable shortening or unsalted butter
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
½ cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Melt chocolate in the microwave in a glass (or otherwise microwave-safe) container. It should take 20 to 45 seconds or so depending on your microwave’s power. Stir to get remaining clumps to melt. If they don’t, microwave a few seconds longer.

Cream sugar, shortening, and butter, preferably using a stand mixer. Mix in the eggs. Add melted chocolate, milk, and vanilla extract and mix. Add half the dry ingredients (the flour, baking powder, and salt you sifted together earlier), mix until incorporated, and add the rest of the dry ingredients until well combined.

You should have a smooth, dense, somewhat dry, dark brown dough. Separate dough into four pieces, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour. After removing the dough from the fridge, let it warm for 10 to 20 minutes before trying to roll it. Super cold dough will be a pain to roll!

On a floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/8-inch thick. Cut with a 2-inch round cookie cutter, or any cookie cutter you desire. Gather and re-roll scraps.

Place cookies on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 400°F for 6 to 8 minutes, or to desired crispness. Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks.

At this point, the chocolate cookie wafers can be stored and/or frozen until you’re ready to make sandwiches of them, or you can make them into chocolate sandwich cookies right away!

Peppermint Filling for Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

This is a basic buttercream frosting.

⅓ cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
¼ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon peppermint extract
drop or two of green or pink food coloring

In a large bowl, beat the butter all by its lonesome until it’s kind of fluffy. Add 2 cups of the powdered sugar, and mix until well-combined. This always takes longer than I always think, so be patient — it really will all mix together eventually.

Add the milk, vanilla, and peppermint extract and mix well. Beat in the rest of the powdered sugar, bit by bit. Add 1-2 drops of green or pink food coloring and blend. If the filling seems too thick, thin by adding more milk a teaspoon at a time.

Spread frosting on chocolate sandwich cookie halves, either with a knife or with a pastry bag. I borrow Sis’ decorating set and use the flower tip because it’s wide and because we only have like 3 tips. It makes filling go much faster than if you use the slow old knife.

Top filled halves with another cookie and there you have ‘em: chocolate sandwich cookies with yummy peppermint filling.

Time now to quit with the endless family stories and begin slamming out these cookie recipes. Today I made progress on this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. It’s a secret, to be revealed on the 27th. Which is a shame, because it’s sort of festive. :p

Also began filling the chocolate mint cookie sandwiches. Damn, those little chocolate disks taste just like Oreos. And I learned why Grandma made them so honkin’ big (I made them about 1-1/2 inches round instead) — the recipe made approximately 270 cookie halves. Yes, that’s 135 sandwiches. I’ll post a final total when I finish and get the recipe up. Of course, it will be a tad off due to shrinkage. Shrinkage in this case being little (and big) hands snatching them up and popping them into mouths during the filling process.

bake, gingerbread man, bake

And tomorrow evening I’ll be decorating these chewy oatmeal cutouts with Justin and Maggie. What a pleasant surprise these were. Thumbs up from kids and adults alike, and that was just the ones I tossed cinnamon sugar onto. Crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle, easy to roll and a good deal of whole grains inside.

If you’d like a cutout cookie alternative to the basic sugar cookie, this is the one you seek.

chewy oatmeal cutouts

Reprinted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, aka My Favorite Baking Cookbook Ever.

bake: 9-10minutes
servings: about 3 to 6 dozen cookies, greatly depending on size
oven: 350 degrees

1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (5-5/8 ounces) packed light or dark brown sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups (8 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (2 ounces) whole wheat flour, traditional or white wheat

1 cup (3-1/2 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats

cinnamon sugar (optional, recipe follows)

To prepare the dough:

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the butter and sugar, then add the egg, vanilla, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger, beating until smooth. Beat in the flours and oats; the mixture may look dry at first, but don’t worry, it’ll come together. Divide the dough into two pieces, wrap each piece in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.



Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.



To shape the cookies:

Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll it into a circle about 14″ in diameter. Use your favorite cutters to cut out cookies, re-rolling and cutting the scraps. Place the cutout cookies on lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets; set them fairly close together, as they don’t spread.



To bake the cookies:

Bake the cookies for about 9 to 10 minutes: the shorter amount of time will make softer cookies, the longer amount of time, crisper cookies. Remove the cookies from the oven, sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar, if desired, and transfer to a rack to cool. Repeat with the remaining dough. Decorate as desired.


If decorating with cinnamon sugar (easy and highly recommended), sprinkle warm cookies with the cinnamon sugar right out of the oven, or it won’t stick.

cinnamon sugar

It’s a basic, but you know what? I had to look up proportions. Here they are.

1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Mix together. Top cookies just out of the oven, or toast, or whatever you desire. Store forever in a sealed container.

Man, the Christmas cookie recipes and pics are piling up. Hmm, I seem to have developed an obsession with them this year.

I had some trepidation about posting this particular Christmas cookie. As I wrestled with rolling out endless walnut-sized lumps of dough, making crescents seemed a lot fussier to me than it did last year. I distinctly remember the dough being a joy to work with: smooth and pliable, not like silly putty, but better.

This year the dough was still quite pliable, but behaved much more stickily. Rather than flour, this recipe uses confectioners’ sugar to smooth out handling and rolling, and I found myself using the powdery stuff quite liberally.

However, the end result? “This is the cookie Grandma was trying to make,” intoned my aunt Linda. “These are lighter, flakier, and…mmm….” and her speech devolved into sounds of food enjoyment.

The cookie she speaks of is descended from the eastern European “kipfel” — a barely sweet dough made with sour cream that is wrapped about a walnut filling. They’re a relative of rugelach, if you’re familiar with those. Unlike rugelach, they’re more demanding: rather than roll out a large circle of dough, spreading filling and cutting it into wedges which are then rolled, nutty crescents are made from individual balls of dough, rolled into 6-inch circles and then filled and rolled into a crude crescent, or horn, shape.

The main difference is both the lack of fruit and that the filling is (mostly) contained. In spite of a bakers’ best intentions, a bit of filling often oozes out the ends. But you know what? That’s okay, because the tidbits of caramelized filling on the ends are tasty in themselves.

Nutty crescents aren’t hard, per se; beyond beating the egg whites, there are no complicated maneuvers. However, you should set aside a good couple hours of pure hands-on time for rolling and filling.

And I’ve gone ahead and decided to post them because, in spite of feeling they were a bit fussy, the end result is so delectable that the trouble is worth it.

nutty crescents

You’ll need 4 eggs total. Three separated for the dough and filling, and one beaten egg on its own in the filling. Recipe source: Grandma D. Transcribed from chickenscratch and edited for clarity.

prep: 45 minutes, then waiting for dough/filling to chill
bake: 15-20 minutes
servings: about 3 dozen cookies
oven: 350 degrees

Dough:

1 cup butter, softened
3 beaten egg yolks (reserve whites for filling)
1 cup sour cream, room temperature
3 cups of flour
1-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt

———-
Filling:

1-1/2 cups of chopped nuts (I use walnuts)
1 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon butter, softened
2 teaspoons milk (water is all right too)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 egg whites, stiffly beaten
copious amounts of confectioners’ sugar, for rolling out the dough

Make the dough:

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

In a large bowl, cream the butter, three egg yolks, and sour cream. The mixture won’t be smooth; the sour cream will persist in remaining in small bits. Just keep mixing until the bits are pea-sized or smaller. Mix in the dry ingredients. Separate dough into two pieces, wrap each piece securely in plastic wrap, and chill for at least two hours, or overnight. Keep dough cold.

Make the filling:

If you haven’t yet, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. In a medium bowl, mix together chopped nuts, sugar, one beaten egg, butter, milk, and vanilla. Fold into the stiffly beaten egg whites. Cover and chill for at least two hours, or overnight

Get ready to bake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment.

If you let your bits chill overnight, the egg whites in the filling may have begun to destabilize. Don’t worry; it won’t affect the finished product. Gently stir the re-liquefied egg whites back into the filling using the same motions you do when folding, so as not to disturb the still-intact beaten egg whites too much.

Keep dough chilled as much as possible while putting these together. When the dough warms, it gets sticky and difficult to work with. Use one half of the dough at a time, leaving the other in the fridge.

Preparing each crescent:

Using your hands, form a walnut-sized ball from the dough. You’ll be rolling this out. Dust your rolling surface with confectioners’ sugar, and the rolling pin as well. A cloth rolling pin cover and mat are very helpful here. Roll out the ball of dough as thin as it will go — about 6 inches in diameter. Use confectioners’ sugar liberally if the dough seems to be sticking at all. Don’t worry; you really can’t use too much.

Spread a teaspoon of filling, covering about 2/3 of the dough circle and keeping clear of the edges. Roll up the circle around the filling, saving the 1/3 empty side for last. This is to compensate for the filling spreading a bit as it’s pushed by the rolling. However, just roll gently; it’s counterproductive to roll it super-tightly. With your fingertips, pinch the edges of the dough closed, bend it to form a curve, if desired, and lay seam-side down on a baking sheet.

Repeat until sheet is filled, leaving an inch or two space between each nutty crescent.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Guess what? I actually got off my arse and did some research for y’all this time.

moops?

See, the cookie we call Mexican wedding cakes, or Russian tea cakes, or polvorones in Spain, or melting moments in Australia actually has a common descendent: the “sandie” type cookie first developed by the Moors in the Middle Ages, medieval Arabs being very fond of sweets.

Most commonly known as Mexican wedding cakes or Russian tea cakes here in the U.S., they’re a buttery, not-too-sweet cookie made with finely chopped nuts. The cookie is shaped like a ball, and rolled twice in powdered sugar after baking. The first dusting of sugar is done while warm, which allows the sugar to absorb slightly into the cookie and keeps its crust from getting hard. Since the first sugar dusting usually melts into near-invisibility, a second coating of sugar is applied to make the cookies pretty.

It’s important to note that Mexican wedding cakes are never baked until browned (else they’d be dry and overdone), so one has to trust one’s recipe for the time and one’s nose for clues as to when they’re done. It’s amazing how many things, when cooking, are “done” when you begin to smell them.

I’ve never seen them in Mexico (someone can correct me if I’m wrong), and in fact the first recipe by this name began appearing in community cookbooks in the 1950s. My mom has it in the out-of-print and highly sought after Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book, originally published in 1963.

I’ve been making Mexican wedding cakes as a Christmas cookie for a few years now, after Mom dropped them from her repertoire. Unlike nutty crescents or miloste they’re not a longstanding family tradition, so I felt safe in trying the barley flour version in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook.

I asked Mom if food photography was really this ugly back in the day, or whether I’m just being overly critical and the photos had faded over time. She said no, it was that way when new, too. Nice.

sexed up

This is a sexed up Mexican wedding cake cookie. The regular version is spiced only with vanilla. This one not only has a tablespoon of vanilla instead of a teaspoon, it adds almond extract and lemon zest. The two new flavorings broaden the spectrum of this delicate cookie, adding notes both deep and tangy. I like it, but if you prefer your MWC unsexified, leave out the almond extract and lemon zest and cut the vanilla in half.

This recipe calls for processing the nuts with the oats and barley flour to a very fine consistency. My taste tester, Dad, said he missed biting into walnut pieces. You could finely chop the walnuts separately instead of processing them into the flour.

However, I recommend trying them this way, since I found this version to be a reliable recipe, good-tasting, and close enough to the original that guests will simply think, “Wow, this is a really good cookie,” and not, “My gods, what have they done to this cookie!?”

Mexican wedding cakes, or Russian tea cakes cookies

This recipe is adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, aka My Favorite Baking Cookbook Ever. Reprinted with permission.

prep: 30 minutes
bake: 15 minutes
servings: about 41 cookies
oven: 325 degrees
special equipment: food processor

1-1/3 cups (4-5/8 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup (4 ounces) whole barley flour
2/3 cup (2-5/8 ounces) walnuts
11 tablespoons (5-1/2 ounces) unsalted butter
1/2 cup (2 ounces) confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
grated zest of 1 lemon, chopped finely
1 cup confectioners’ sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Get out two baking sheets. Leave them naked. You may wear clothes if you like.

Optional: toast the walnuts before processing. Put the walnuts in a pan over medium heat, shaking occasionally. Heat several minutes, until you begin to smell walnuts. It’s better to remove the nuts from the heat sooner rather than later, because overheating the oils in the nuts results in a burnt flavor, while a nut that’s a bit undertoasted is much more minor, and still better than one that hasn’t been toasted at all.

Place oats, barley flour, and walnuts in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds, or until everything is finely ground.

Beat the butter, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl until smooth. Beat in vanilla extract, almond extract, and lemon zest. Mix in the processed oats, barley and walnuts.

Using your hands, roll bits of dough into teaspoon-size balls, no more than an inch around. Place the balls on your baking sheets, leaving about 1-1/2 inches between them. The original recipe says it yields 41 cookies; I got 51. Whichever end you tend towards, you will fill up two baking sheets.

Bake both pans at once, one on a top rack and one on a low rack, for 15 minutes. Switch the pans around midway through baking, to ensure evenness. They won’t have begun to brown, except perhaps very slightly around the bottom edge.

While the cookies are baking, spoon about 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar into a gallon-size plastic bag.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes. Place the warm cookies in the bag and shake gently to coat with sugar. Remove the cookies, allow them to cool completely, then shake them in the powdered sugar again, adding more sugar to the bag if necessary. Place the cookies on the rack once more, to allow time for the sugar to adhere, before serving or storing.

okay, fine, “macarons”

Well, en français they’re called macarons. Silly Frenchies. Macarons were October’s Daring Bakers Challenge. I filled them with lime-colored peppermint buttercream, and decided they looked like little hamburgers, and since it’s that time of the year, they’re now officially Halloween Boo-Burgers. Yay!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I must be a real hick, because I’ve participated in Daring Bakers challenges two months now, and I’d never heard of either month’s baked good. Vols-au-vent? Macarons? Double-you-tee-eff, mate?

Turns out macarons aren’t those coconut cookie things. They’re simple-looking cookies made of almond flour and powdered sugar folded into egg whites that have been beaten into a meringue and slightly sweetened with granulated sugar. As a result, they’re kind of nutty and kind of sweet, but not overly so. A perfect macaron will have a thin crunchy outside, chewy inside, and crunchy “feet” at the base.

It’s quite easy to become obsessed with achieving the perfect feet.

Word among the Daring Bakers was that this particular macaron recipe was a bit finicky. My first attempt, plain macarons, came out pretty well….

So I decided to try a cocoa-flavored version. Oops! That didn’t work out very well. They did get a thumbs-up from everyone who tried them. I told them they didn’t have to be nice. They said they actually really liked them. I was meh about the whole deal.

the traveling macarons

The macarons and I went with Linda this evening to see local bluegrass superstars The Doodads.

We met up with Debi and several of her family and friends.

See the macarons on the table? That’s my excuse for these two pics.

the nitty gritty

Back to basics. Each of these attempts I made using a scaled-down one egg white version of the recipe. I was just too scared to try more; I’d read too many disaster stories. Since I needed to beat only one egg white, my stand mixer was overkill, and its whisk attachment wouldn’t even be able to do the job properly as it doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. It was time to break out the trusty old hand mixer. I hadn’t used it in years. Good thing the pack rat in me made me keep it, eh?

Old egg whites are supposedly better. That egg white has been sitting on the counter for two days, covered in a paper towel secured with a rubber band. Then you have the powdered sugar and almond flour, sifted together. And the teensy bit of granulated sugar the one egg white recipe requires (a bit over a teaspoon).

That egg white sure got a lot bigger! Hey, is that meringue too wussy? I think I’m scared of overbeating.

Now this next pic is from the cocoa disaster, but I wanted to show you what folding in the dry ingredients looks like, and the gooey final product.

Shh, I know, I told you the cocoa ones came out badly. That’s still how the dough is supposed to look. Both my successful batches were just like that.

If you don’t have a squeezy pastry bag, just put a plastic bag in a glass and fold the edges over, and put your batter in that. Then snip off a corner of the baggie to squeeze through.

Just out of the oven.

macarons

Recipe adapted from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern. Directions are as provided by Daring Bakers. Have 5-6 of these for a 100-calorie snack.

prep: 20 minutes
bake: 5 minutes, then 7-8 minutes, approximately 13 minutes total
servings: varies by size of macaron; 1-inch (tiny!) macarons will yield 2 dozen per egg white in the recipe
oven: 200 degrees, then 375 degrees

Full recipe:


Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)

Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)

Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)

Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

1 Egg White version:

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 7 tablespoons (1.6 oz.)

Almond flour: 1/4 cup + 2-1/2 tablespoons (1.3 oz.)

Granulated sugar: 1-1/4 teaspoons (0.2 oz.)

Egg whites: 1 (Have at room temperature)

2 Egg Whites version:


Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 1 cup (3.2 oz.)

Almond flour: 3/4 cup + 2-1/2 tablespoons (2.7 oz.)

Granulated sugar: 2-1/2 teaspoons (0.35 oz.)

Egg whites: 2 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.


2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.


3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.


4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.


5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).


6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.


7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Here’s one amazing thing to do with leftover scraps of puff pastry: make mini palmiers. A good idea for snacks for a crowd. They’ll go fast, though!

Warning: drunken post ahead

My cousin Tone is in town, and he brought a big ass RV and several other modes of transportation with him. I countted five: the RV, the pickup, motorcycle, 4-wheeler and…kayak.

He’s set up house across the driveway. Yay.

He’s from Texas, like his mom —my aunt — who paradoxically was originally from right here. Like, right in this house. The oldest of my paternal triumvirant, Geriann, is his mom, and okay, this is getting both involved and a bit pedantic.

He came over tonight and we played 500 rummy. Four times. He completely, totally obliterated my ass the first two times. He played it a bit gin rummy style, holding things back to kick my ass, playing mind games, and so forth.

I fixed that right quick

Here, have some Wal-Mart wine, Tone.

Did you know that Wal-Mart, like Trader Joe’s, has a house brand of wine that will blow you away? In fact, I think the Wal-Mart brand is even better. It must be, because I’m having to spell-check this very carefully, and I don’t get this buzzed unless the alcohol is very good.

Wal-Mart markets two (at least) wonderful varieties under the Oak Leaf label: cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc. Since I’m partial to reds, I buy the cabernet quite often. It used to be $2.97, and therefore comparable to two-buck chuck. I think it’s better. They just raised it — today— to $3.49, but I still think it’s a steal.

And I’m not some rube. I’ve had some very good wines in my day. This compares.

The first two games of rummy he smoked my ass. However, he was drinking this lovely cabernet the whole time, and by the third game I was able to smoke him, 605 to 390. Yay! I have to say he was a good foil; I’d never played 500 rummy with someone who played so strategically.

And man that was hard to spell.

Ultimately, we went through 2 and a half bottles of Wal-Mart cabernet. He is going to go buy more tomorrow if he knows what is good for him.

As for snacks, we began by stabbing, literally, at a pink brandywine. My tomatoes just succumbed to late blight, and I’m pulling all the tomatoes off the vines. It is very sad, and let us all share a moment of silence for them. He loved it; it was nearly as flavorful as my previous crop of pink brandywines, which means very smoky and rich.

A bit afterwards, in the third game actually — coincidentally, the one where I smoked him — he got peckish again. The cad.

how dare he get peckish

I had a smallish pat of scraps of homemade puff pastry in the fridge, and I whipped it out, sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on it, and made a bit over a dozen mini palmiers from it.

He snarfed them.

Granted, anything puff pastry is going to be melt-in-your-mouth delicious, but include cinnamon sugar and you have little bursts of melty spiciness.

P.S. Did I mention I won the third game? Yeah, the one where the mini palmiers came out.

Song for this recipe: Carrion by British Sea Power.

mini palmiers

oven: 400 degrees

You might not use all of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Simply follow the recipe and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar in a thin, but complete, layer over the rolled puff pastry. Do not ball puff pastry scraps. Instead, stack them before rolling again. They will not rise as much as the original puff pastry, but they work excellently in recipes like these palmiers.

leftover scraps of puff pastry dough
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

With a rolling pin, roll the stacked puff pastry scraps in a rectangle roughly 1/16 of an inch thick.

Sprinkle cinnamon sugar in a thin layer over the rolled puff pastry, covering it completely.

With your hands, roll one side of the sugared puff pastry to the middle of the rectangle. Repeat on the opposite side.

With a sharp knife or pastry scraper, cut the rolled pastry in 1/8 of an inch wide increments. You now have your raw mini palmiers!

Place the mini palmiers on a parchment paper-covered baking sheet. Leave ample space between them; they may still expand quite a bit as they bake.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, or until very lightly browned.

Ignore the “gluten-free” in the title. These are not some saintly cardboardy cookie things.

And I’m really not trying to be All About Baking here. Honestly.

And I’m not trying to be all health nut vegetarian gluten-free, either. FSM knows I’m a crappy vegetarian and an even more piss-poor health nut.

But you know what? These cookies are really good. I don’t even care that as far as cookies go, they are on the saintly side. They’re vegan. They’re whole grain. They even have ground flax seed.

These cookies have no right to be as yummy as they are. They should taste like nice healthy cardboard, but instead they have some kind of awesome nutty oaty crunchy thing going on.

I ran across them a while back when I didn’t have eggs, and I didn’t have the time or the patience to wait for butter to soften, but wanted chocolate chip cookies. You know when that is. At night, in winter, when some horrid wind is howling outside and PMS is prodding you to find something sweet and chocolate now or it’s going to get really cranky and take you along with it.

Oh, look. I had a helper. This is why these cookies happened today. Little voices.

“AUNT AMY, CAN WE MAKE COOKIES? I WANT TO MAKE COOKIES. LET’S MAKE COOKIES. I WANT TO HELP. I CAN HELP. LET ME POUR THAT IN. I DIDN’T SPILL IT ON PURPOSE. I DON’T KNOW HOW THE DOUGH GOT ON THE FLOOR. THIS LOOKS FUNNY. HOW CAN YOU MAKE COOKIES WITHOUT BUTTER?”

Let’s see. These chocolate chip cookies bake pretty flat. They aren’t fluffsters. They are also better crunchy; when you bake them til they are medium brown. They’re good with nuts but I also think they’re good without nuts, which is rare — I tend to prefer nuts in my chocolate chip cookies. The recipe only makes about 18 cookies, so double it up if you want lots.

To be sure about the gluten-free-ness, make sure to use gluten-free vanilla, and check your canola oil and oats. Oats are naturally gluten-free but apparently some cross-contamination can occur or something in processing bla bla.

gluten-free chocolate chip cookies

Two notes: One, if you don’t have flax seed and soy milk, replace those two ingredients with one egg. That’s basically what the ground flax seed and soy milk are standing in for. Two, I make my own oat flour. Run regular or quick oats through the food processor for about 30 seconds, until a floury consistency. Store unusued oat flour in an airtight container.

I’ve only ever made these with homemade oat flour, and it’s nowhere near as fine a consistency as a store-bought flour would be, so the cookies have a kind of nutty oat crunch to them. If you make them with some fancy oat flour, let me know how they turn out in comparison.

prep: 15 minutes
into your mouths: 40 minutes
servings: 18 cookies
oven: 375 degrees, bake 10-12 minutes

1-3/4 cups oat flour (see notes)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
1/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1/3 cup walnut oil or canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

In a large bowl, mix together oat flour, soda, and salt.

In a small bowl, whisk together ground flax seed and soymilk. Stir in white and brown sugars. Add walnut or canola oil and vanilla and whisk together until the mixture is emulsified (the oil is no longer separate).

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir until moistened. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts, if desired.

Scoop onto cookie sheet. I use a medium size cookie scoop. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Let cool for 2 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool. If you let them sit on the pans too long, they’ll be really hard to get off.