Oye Cookie!

Slow Food Nation '08

I'm super excited about this event at the end of the month in San Francisco. I want more than anything to be able to participate because it really is a fantastic event. However, my mother, grandmother and aunt will be in town that weekend and I don't think I'll be able to make it. I encourage all of you to check out their website, attend and volunteer your time if possible.

We've been eating a Locavore diet for almost two weeks now and not only do I feel great, but I really feel I'm making a difference. I'm lowering my carbon footprint, supporting local farms and feeding myself and my household fresh foods.

Slow Food Nation is an event that I'm sure will encourage hundreds of thousands to eat more locally produced foods and be more conscientious about where their food comes from.

 

Apricot Ginger Scones

I don't like scones to be too dry. I think some people like super dry scones they can schmear stuff on and that's fine, but if I'm going to have a sweet scone that has chunks of stuff in it, I think it should be moist.

There's a Berkeley institution called The Cheeseboard Collective that we like to frequent (sometimes waaaay to often) that has the most amazing ginger scones in the fall/winter. Not too dry and full of flavor. During the summer they have blueberry or corn cherry scones but no ginger. Having some candied ginger pieces at home I thought that might go well with some apricots Ken brought home from work.

The Cheeseboard has a cookbook that features a great many of their most famous recipes. Sadly, the ginger scones I love so much aren't in it, so I used one of their other scone recipes and messed with it a little.

Apricot Ginger Scones

3 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 Tb baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup cold butter

1 cup chopped apricots

1/2 cup candied ginger pieces

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 375*. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt in bowl. Cut up butter into small cubes and add to flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter, cut butter into dry mixture til butter is incorporated and is size of small peas.

Drop in apricot pieces and coat well with flour mixture. Add candied ginger pieces.

Making a well in the center of the dry ingredients, add the cream. Mix briefly just until eveything is mixed well. Dough will be pretty moist.

Shape scones into balls of about 2 inches or so in diameter. Drop onto prepared pan about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Half way through the baking brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake the remaining amount of time.

Let me introduce you to my old friend

Ashley over at Eat Me, Delicious cracks me up. "And what -- no recipe??" I read it at work and had to quietly keep my composure. Uh, yeah. I don't blame her. I went on and on, blah blah blah. No recipe. Pft.

So here they are, Mikey's Favorite Cookies. Don't tell Katie I gave you this. Shhhhhhhh.

Mikey's Favorite Cookies

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 cup butter room temp

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup (plus a few more) milk chocolate chips

1 cup (plus a few more) semisweet chocolate chips

 

1. Preheat over to 375*

2. Mix butter, sugars, vanilla and egg in a large bowl on medium speed until well combined and creamy.

3. Sift flour, salt and baking soda.

4. Add dry ingredients to wet mixture.

5. When combined, turn off mixer and stir in chips by hand with a rubber spatula. (I sometimes need to get my hands in there to make sure they're well incorporated.)

6. Drop dough in rounded tablespoon-sized balls (i usually use a scoop) onto ungreased cookie sheets. Space cookies aobut 2 inches apart. Squish them down slightly.

7. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes until they're done and browned to your liking.

8. Gobble up!

This recipe is super easy. Wet, dry, combine, add chips, bake, eat.

When I first started baking I always messing up cookies cause I had no concept of carry over cooking time. I kept making the mistake of getting the cookie as dark as I liked in the oven. Of course they were burnt. So if you know cookies and make this recipe, you'll get it just fine. There's nothing fancy or complicated here. If you need help, just keep checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Once the bottoms get a light nutty brown TAKE THEM OUT!

Old Friends

I think it's safe to say that most good bakers have standbys. I'm sure Dorie's got them, David's got them, Julia had them. A good recipe is like an old friend. You know they're always there, they're always comforting and you know that no matter what kind of day you've been having they will always make you feel better.

A friend of mine by the name of Katie Keach used to make the most amazing chocolate chip cookies in the world. I never dared ask her for the recipe, because I didn't want to invade her privacy... or maybe it was because I didn't want to break the illusion that these cookies were sent from heaven on little bunnies with wings. Aaaaanyway,a year or so after I moved up to the Bay Area I finally asked Katie for her recipe and she gladly gave it to me. Of course she made me swear that I would always bill them as "Mikey's Favorite Cookies" (Mike was our old boss who L O V E D these cookies). I gladly abliged.

 

Anyway I love them. And everyone that's ever had them loves them. Especially our beloved boss Mike Zucchet.

 

So I know it's been a while since I've posted and yes, I do have an excuse. A few weeks back I woke up with a terrible pain in my left wrist. It hurt to move it but since I hadn't fallen or hurt myself, I figured I had just slept wrong. The next day my wrist was in excrutiating pain and was swollen to almost double its size. I couldn't keep it still without it hurting. Very long story short, after a trip to the ER, x-rays and three doctors, I finally saw a hand specialist who immediately diagnosed me with a Ganglion Cyst. Believe me my wrist looked a whole lot worse than those pictures and hurt like you wouldn't believe. Apparently the cyst was pushing the bones in my wrist apart, thus the pain. So as you can imagine, no baking.

 

My wrist now is back to normal. Thank you to all of you who sent me inquiries and best wishes. I am grateful to all of you who take the time to come back and visit my site.

 

Back to baking. I've been working on several projects and have been a busy little bee. In the last couple of weeks I've made quite a few things, but sadly I've either been so stressed out that I've forgotten to take pictures (ahem, wedding cupcake job) or I've totally spaced out and cut things up and made a mess before remembering that I had a baking blog to take pictures for (rhubarb summer tart with cream cheese filling). My apologies.

 

This past weekend though I had some of my favoritest folks in town from San Diego. In honor of our picnic in Dolores Park I made my good old standby chocolate chip cookie recipe. Heeeelllooooo delicious.

 

Enjoy!