Feral Cooks

Some years back when my wife and I used to throw annual Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve parties, I used to cook many many different dishes and serve food buffet-style, as people would randomly come and go during these hours-long parties. Part of that would involve serving desserts, which, for practicality’s sake, involved several types of cookies because they could be made well ahead of time, saving me time at the party for cooking the main dishes.

One of the types of cookies I would make are what this posting is all about. I feel these are about the best cookies I’ve ever tasted, either home made or store bought. They were quite popular at the parties, so I thought I’d share the recipe here. It actually dates back to a 2009 Food & Wine issue, and I haven’t had a better cookie since.

So, forget about the huge amount of butter and sugar in these, and indulge yourself and your family in a truly special batch of cookies. This recent batch I made resulted in about 40 or so paired sandwich cookies.

What you’ll need for the cookies:

• 1.5 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 0.5 cups light brown sugar
• 0.5 cups granulated sugar
• 6 oz high-quality milk chocolate, melted and allowed to slightly cool
• 1T vanilla extract
• 1.75 cups all-purpose flour
• 2T unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1t baking soda
• 0.5t salt

What you’ll need for the filling:

• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
• 0.5 cups chocolate malt powder (think Ovaltine)
• 0.5t vanilla extract
• 2 cups powdered sugar

What to do for the cookies:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line to baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl beat the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the melted (and somewhat cooled) chocolate and vanilla, then continue to beat until smooth.

In a different bowl, whisk the flour with the cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet mixture and slowly beat until all the dry ingredients are just incorporated.

This is an important step: roll the dough between two pieces of parchment paper until about 0.25-inch thick. You may have to split the dough in half and roll out two sheets of it. Refrigerate 15-30 minutes or until firm.

When firm, remove from the fridge (one sheet at a time, if two) and using a two-inch cookie cutter, stamp out as many cookies as possible, transferring them to the parchment-paper-lined baking sheets, about an inch apart. Gather the scraps, re-roll between parchment paper, refrigerate again until firm, then stamp out more. Continue this cycle until you’re out of dough. When I was doing this step, I would let one sheet of cookies cook while stamping out another sheet. There was just enough time between the batches cooking to do this.

When ready, cook in the lower rack(s) of the oven for about 10 minutes, or until they’re dry. When done, cool the cookies on a rack.

What to do for the filling:

Begin making the filling while the cookie rounds are cooling.

In a medium bowl beat the butter and chocolate malt powder at a medium speed until well mixed—takes about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar and beat at low speed until the sugar is incorporated into the butter and you now have a frosting the consistency of Oreo cookie filling.

Now you’re ready to assemble the cookies. Pair the cookies on your work surface bottom-side up. The reason you need to pair them is because it is almost impossible to make the dough a uniform thickness, so some cookies will be thicker than others, and the thicker ones spread out a bit more than the thin ones, so the cookie size will vary a bit (see photos).

Using a frosting bag (or whatever they’re called) pipe a glob of frosting on one of each pair of cookies. The Food & Wine instructions say a 1-inch mound, but I’m not sure that’s the best guide. Rather, put a dollop of frosting on the pair halves, erring on the side of too little. If you don’t assemble them as you go, you can quickly evenly distribute all of the frosting. Depending on the frosting bag you use, I highly recommend wearing nitrile, latex or vinyl disposable gloves, which will help keep the heat from your hands from melting the frosting in the bag.

When all the frosting is piped, assemble the pairs by gently pushing them together in a slight twisting motion to spread the frosting. They can be a bit fragile so take care that you don’t break them. On the other hand, if you don’t like serving broken cookies, you’ll have to eat the ones you break, so maybe don’t be too careful.

Enjoy!

 

 

I was talking with my boss the other day about muffins, bars and other baked foods from our cafeteria, and he mentioned that he’d eaten some muffins and scones with a lot of cinnamon, which were outstanding (NOT from our cafeteria). He also mentioned that cinnamon frosting is the best.

He’s right. And that set me thinking about a desert bar with lots of cinnamon, so I grabbed a couple of the ubiquitous recipes for “blondies” (hate that word, it’s creepy) and a crumb topping, altered them for my tastes and the result is what’s posted here.

The idea of cinnamon bars with a coffee-cake-style crumble topping may seem too over the top with sugar and cinnamon, but it actually needed MORE cinnamon than what I had originally added. The bars were good, but all who ate them agreed that more cinnamon would make them better. Please keep that in mind if you make these. And the crumble recipe is the perfect amount for the bars.

Here’s a note for after reading how to make these: if I were to make them again, I would first make and cook the crumble top. Then, mix a double batch of the bars and pour half in the baking dish, sprinkle on the crumble top, then add the rest of the batch and bake. When cooked and cooled, cover with cinnamon frosting. That seems like it would be delicious.

What you’ll need for the crumble:

• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (this could be 1.5t for more flavor)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons table sugar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons light brown or brown sugar
• 1/4 cup melted butter

What to do:

Whisk the flour, cinnamon and two sugars in a medium bowl. Stir in the melted butter and mix until the four starts clumping up. Spread the crumbs/clumps into a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper and back at 325 degrees (preheated) for about 20 minutes or until crisp. Let them cool while you’re making the bars.

What you’ll need for the bars (based on a recipe by SimplyRecipies’ Garrett McCord)

• 1 stick of butter, melted
• 1 cup (220g) of tightly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1t flavor extract (vanilla, almond, etc.)
• 1/2t baking powder
• 1/8t baking soda
• 1t cinnamon (2 or maybe even 3 would be better)
• 1 cup (128g) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup any flavored chips, but chocolate—I used white chocolate, but would use toffee chips next time

What to do:

Start heating your oven to to 350°F.

Lightly butter an 8×8-inch pan (or other-shaped 64 square-inch pan).

In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter into the sugar, then add the beaten egg and flavor extract, then whisk some more.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, in a separate bowl, then add them to the other bowl and mix well. Add the toffee or whatever chips you chose and mix them in, too.

Pour into the pan and spread evenly. Bake for 10 minutes, then take out and sprinkle all of the cinnamon crumbles over the top and lightly press them into the batter. Continue cooking for another 20 minutes, then begin checking for doneness every 5 minutes (a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean) until done. The original cooking time for these bars is 25-30 minutes, but the crumbles added to the top really adds to the cooking time. Be patient.

When done, cool, cut and serve.