eat make read

My lovely friend Samantha of Maquette asked me to contribute a recipe for her week of Valentine’s inpsiration. I immediately thought of my favorite homemade caramels. They are perfectly decadent: buttery, sweet and chewy with a hint of sea salt to jazz things up. Make them for your favorite love or the one you’ve been trying to rope in and you’re sure to win them over with this recipe.

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With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I’m already beginning to think about holiday goodies. My favorite holiday cookie, and anytime cookie for that matter, is a ginger cookie. In particular, my mom’s recipe. Oh how I love them, all sugar-coated and molasass tinged. I decided to participate in a little holiday bake-off and as I was thinking about what to submit, I came back to my favorite. Everyone loves a ginger cookie, but how could I push it even further… That’s when a little light bulb popped up. Mini! Everything’s cuter in mini version, right? How about mini ginger cookies sandwiches with cinnamon cream cheese filling?! Whoa! Heaven!

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It’s recipes like this that I wish you could reach right through your computer screen and have one of these cookies. It also makes me want to give martha stewart and her team a great big hug. I mean buttery maple cookies with maple reduction and salt on top? How could they not be good? If you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to get a napkin to wipe that drool, then walk yourself into the kitchen and get the syrup out of the fridge. These cookies are a must-make.

This recipe is really simple, having a mere six ingredients. Simply whisk the flour and salt together, whip the butter and sugar together and lastly add some egg yolks and maple syrup. See? Easy, right? Next you simply spoon them onto baking sheets and use a glass to flatten them into lovely little rounds. Pop them in the oven and prepare yourself for a whole lot of goodness.

Once the cookies are done baking, it’s important to let them cool a bit so you can pour a maple syrup reduction over each one. I was not so patient and the syrup soaked into most of my cookies. Sprinkle a little coarse salt over top and you’re all set.

Just imagine a small, dense and buttery pancake. Add in a little salt and these cookies are elevated to a whole new level. Maybe it’s my sweet tooth, maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s just that these are unlike any cookie I’ve had, but I think I’m in love with them. They’re dangerous and delicious all in one bite and I just can’t get enough.

glazed maple cookies
from everyday food, november 2009
makes 40 cookies

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt + 2 Tablespoons for sprinkling on top
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
2 large egg yolks

Preheat oven to 350° with racks in the upper and lower thirds.

1
IN a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.
2
In the bowl of a mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3
Beat in 1/2 cup maple syrup and egg yolks.
4
With the mixer on low, beat in flour mixture.
5
Using a Tablespoon scoop, drop batter 3-inches apart onto to baking sheets.
6
Using a flat-bottomed glass dipped in flour, flatten cookies to 1/4 inch thickness.
7
Bake 12-15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through.
8
Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.
9
In a small saucepan, simmer 1 cup maple syrup until reduced to 3/4 cup. When cookies are cooled, spoon the syrup over the cookies.
10
Sprinkle each cookie with a little salt.

Sometimes a good old crisp just hits the spot. They’re so simple and versatile and just plain tasty. I decided to make this one after I picked up some lovely little seckel pears at the market this weekend and needed something to do with them. I looked for inspiration in one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply Organic and quickly found this one for fall fruit with the addition of cranberries for tartness and color. Mmmmm, sounds good to me.

After peeling and slicing the fruit, I simply placed it in the baking dish and tossed it with some sugar. The topping is made from a mixture of flour, oatmeal and butter with a bit of cinnamon and cloves… the perfect fall combination. I added a little butter over the fruit, then the oatmeal mixture over top. To be honest, I think there was a little too much of the oatmeal mixture, it was really piled on. I popped it in the hot oven and let it be.

When I pulled it out of the oven my suspicions of too much crumble were right… there was just a bit too much dry flour, so I added a bit more butter over top to just give it a little crispness.

I served up two slices and we dug right in. I have to admit, I wasn’t quite sure how the cranberries would work but man are they the perfect fruit to combine with the apple and pear. They bring a lovely tartness and bright red color that contrasts the warm, fall flavor of the apples and pears. The oatmeal mixture over top actually isn’t as overwhelming as I thought it might be because there’s enough for every bite. I still think I’d reduce it though. The oatmeal is an easy fix for a dessert that is sure to be a fall favorite.

pear, apple + cranberry crisp
adapted from simply organic
I’ve adjusted the oatmeal mixture so that it will be a better ratio.

topping
……………………………………………
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, slightly softened and cut into pieces

fruit mixture
……………………………………………
2-3 fuji apples, peeled and cut into thin wedges
6 seckel pears or 4 larger pears, peeled and cut into thin wedges
1 1/2 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 350°. Butter a 9×9 inch baking dish.

1
To make the topping, combine the flour, oats, cinnamon and cloves in a medium bowl.
2
Using a pastry blender or your hands, work the butter into the mixture until the pieces are pea-sized. Set aside.
3
To make the fruit mixture, I just combined the apples, pears, cranberries and sugar right in the baking dish, because I’m a little lazy and I don’t like to do dishes.
4
Cut the butter into small pieces and sprinkle evenly over the fruit mixture.
5
Crumble the oat topping over the fruit.
6
Bake for 40 minutes or until the fruit is soft and the topping lightly browned.

I’ve started to notice something about myself since I began this blog. I get hooked on something and just run with it, particularly a single ingredient. Often it’s something that I never would have thought I’d be super into. Apples are this years seasonal addiction. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I’ve never quite enjoyed their splendor like I have this year, especially apple cider. Oh how I love apple cider. As I was sipping away at yet another mugful, I had a bright idea to make apple cider cookies because I love apple cider and I love cookies, so it’s got to be good, right?

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A while back I made these oh-so-good pancakes with caramelized apples and it got me wondering what else I could sneek those delicious apples into. Then it came to me as I was flipping through last months Bon Appetit and saw rice pudding with caramel apples. That sounded pretty dang good, but perhaps I could tweak it a bit and create my own version with the carmelized apples. That’s what I did and it was awesome.

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It’s funny, growing up I turned my nose up to pancakes. Waffles? Oh yeah, I’d eat those like nobody’s business, but there was something about pancakes (flatness? stacking? who knows!) that just didn’t work for me. Well now whenever I’m trying to decide on whether to make pancakes or waffles I usually go for pancakes, I think because it seems simpler to me. These pancakes take the genre to a whole new level, so much so that the recipe says they can be used for breakfast or dessert. Is it bad that I had them for dinner? Read more

This weekend I was in the mood for cookies. With the weather transitioning to Fall, cookies just felt like the right thing to make. It didn’t hurt that I had a bag of chocolate chips burning a whole in my pantry. I was a little apprehensive to just make chocolate chip cookies because I was sure I’d already posted a recipe but I soon realized I’d never made a batch for eatmakeread and it kind of seemed like I couldn’t not make them. I did some playing around with a recipe from the Baked cookbook and holy moly, a little brown butter and sea salt take the classic chocolate chip cookie to a whole new level.

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So, I had these berries sitting in my fridge, both raspberries and blackberries, and I just didn’t know what to do with them. They’re like special little gems that I didn’t want to go to waste, nor did I want to waste them on something hum drum. I pulled out my Baked cookbook and that is where I discovered the slump. What a sad name for an amazing dessert. All I need to say is berry goodness topped with doughnuty biscuits. I mean, come on.

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Oh how the peaches have been calling my name. Each Saturday I find myself piling those fuzzy little orbs into my bag. I’d been thinking about spiced or poached peaches for a while and then as I was flipping through Debra Madison’s Local Flavors I found this recipe simply titled “Spiced Peaches”. It included cardamom and balsamic and that just sounded too good to pass up.

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