Category: Dorie

Mmm, cookies.

I love cookies.

The only problem with cookies is that I eat them. And eat them. And eat them. It’s only another cookie — what can it hurt?

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was Coconut Butter Thins, chosen for us by Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. Coconut. Butter. What’s not to like? I was very much looking forward to them.

Anyway, I made these. I made them exactly as written, except I used orange zest rather than lime, because the label on my coriander said it had hints of orange, and I thought it might work well. I even used coriander, which in previous days I would have left out (along with the zest).

My palate is what you might call unadventurous. #1 Son calls it boring. I tend not to like anything weird, which includes anything, you know, weird. Like coriander.

But the lemon zest worked so well in last week’s Blueberry Crumb Cake that I threw caution to the wind and decided to trust Dorie.

Good call.

I loved these cookies. They’re just buttery shortbread, but with really interesting flavors underneath. Must be the coriander and orange. Who knew?

They’re very easy to make, although not as easy as Dorie’s food processor recipes; the only hitch was my last-minute discovery that we had no shredded sweetened coconut. Husband was happy to oblige (luckily, he and #1 Son had just gotten home from a weekend away), and the dough was soon all mixed and pretty.

I really like the technique of rolling the dough in a ziplock bag. Rolling has always been my nemesis; I absolutely hate it. The bag was neat and easy, and after I refrigerated it for three hours the dough was easy to plop down on a cutting board and cut with a pizza wheel.

I was working on a couple of other recipes at the same time as this one, and somehow I managed to reuse the timer while the first batch was in the oven. I have no idea how long they were eventually in there; they weren’t at all burnt, but there was definitely browning around the edges. I took the second batch out at 17 minutes, with just the merest hint of darkening at the edges.

The difference was amazing. The well-done cookies were crispy and delicious. The rare cookies were chewy and delicious. OK, maybe it wasn’t so amazing. My point is that it’s hard to screw these up. They were great the second day, too: completely different, much softer, but delicious. (I keep using that word. But I do think it means what I think it means.)

Family liked them too:

Husband: I thought the dough was a bit iffy — had a bit of a flat, almost metallic taste — but the baked result was quite gratifying. It was quite a feat to have a chewy center (thank you, shredded coconut) in such a thin, crisp cookie.

#1 Son: Tasty but ultimately unspectacular. I didn’t get any of the special flavors I was promised. It was just a butter cookie, but a good butter cookie.

#2 Son: I like them. They were not very coconutty, and I didn’t get any coriander or orange. To me they were basically butter cookies with coconut in them — which is not bad. I look forward to having more.

And a bonus!

#1 Son’s Girlfriend: Delicious. I loved the texture. Didn’t really get a lot of coconut, and if you hadn’t told me there was coriander and orange I wouldn’t have known. But delicious!

You should try these. Really. Even if you don’t like coconut. Get the recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or on Jayne’s blog. Either way, you won’t be sorry. And check out what all the other TWD bakers did with these, too.

Next week, banana cream pie!

Yum.

My sister’s birthday was Saturday, so I thought that would be a perfect opportunity to make this cake and not have to watch it devoured in a matter of seconds by the four of us. A whole cake for four people is just silly.

But the usual logistical nightmares meant my sister and the assorted other guests would not be joining us this weekend.

Plan B was cupcakes, but the cake was so glorious that I couldn’t bear to reduce it like that.

Plan C was making the cake, but sending a quarter to the neighbors and another quarter to #1 Son’s girlfriend and her mother.

The best-laid plans of mice and mothers …

So, I made the cake. It was after piano lesson and grocery shopping, so I didn’t start till almost 3 in the afternoon. That was dumb. It’s a cake. I’ve made cakes before. I know how long they take.

Couldn’t find my 9-inch cake pans. (I have sons who have lived in this house their entire lives and still can’t manage to put things away in the same place two times in a row.)

Couldn’t find a non-warped 9×13 pan. (That one’s my fault. I really need to upgrade my baking pans.)

But what’s this? A Bundt pan! It holds the same amount as two 8-inch pans!! Yes!!!

So I made it as a Bundt cake. I buttered and floured the pan, but skipped the parchment — my imagination was just not up to the task of figuring out how to line a Bundt pan with parchment. It baked fine and slid right out of the pan, smooth as silk.

I sliced it into four layers with considerably less angst and cursing than I was expecting, and crumbled the bottom-most one.

Then I made the frosting, increasing the amounts by 50 percent because I like frosting, and so that I could fill the center hole with lovely, fluffy whiteness.

From comments I’d read from other TWDers, I knew the sugar-water part of the frosting was going to have to cook for a while, and yet I didn’t start it till after 8 in the evening. I’m not always the brightest person around. But I had the cake, and I had people waiting for dessert, so I did it despite knowing it was dumb.

Put the egg whites in the mixer. Put the sugar and water and cream of tartar in the pot. Stirred. Boiled. It got up to 230 fairly quickly, maybe 10 minutes or so. And it stayed there. And stayed there. And stayed there. Maybe 20 minutes later it was up to 240. And it stayed there. And stayed there. And stayed there.

I had started to beat the egg whites when it hit 235, just like the book says, and they were done, so I turned the mixer down, just like the book says.

Still 240.

I leaned over the mixer bowl to see how the whites were doing, and when I looked back at the thermometer it read 250. Literally 10 seconds had elapsed, and it had jumped 10 degrees.

Husband later mentioned a slightly burnt aftertaste. I hit him.

But back to the slightly overcooked sugar syrup. I soldiered on, pouring it into the egg whites and beating them till they cooled. Here’s something I hadn’t considered: Increasing the ingredients by 50 percent increases the output by 50 percent. This was not buttercream frosting — this stuff was essentially marshmallow fluff. Marshmallow fluff that expands a lot when it’s beaten.

Filled my five-quart Kitchenaid right up to the top, but luckily no further.

It tasted kind of weird, though, beyond the aforementioned aftertaste. It tasted almost lemony. I figured that had to be the cream of tartar, although I’ve never noticed a flavor from cream of tartar before. It was a little offputting, at least to me. #1 Son liked it a lot.

Slapped the cake together pretty quickly — it was well after 9 by this point — but it looked pretty good, if I say so myself. #2 Son lovingly applied the cake crumbs.

The recipe says to refrigerate the cake for an hour before serving. That was not going to happen. We ate it. We mostly liked it, although we weren’t overwhelmed. That lemony taste turned me off, and I’m not a big fan of chocolate cake to begin with.

Husband: It didn’t thrill me in any way. The lemony taste of the frosting was overwhelming.

#1 Son: I really liked it. Something gave the icing the slightest hint of lemon, and it worked beautifully. The texture of the cake was also perfect; not too mushy, not too crumbly, but a happy, top-of-the-brownie-like middle ground.

#2 Son: I liked the cake, but the icing wasn’t very good. It tasted weird, so instead of eating the leftover frosting, I just put it in a bowl.

So I covered it with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge, hoping for a better tomorrow.

I got one.

Twenty-one hours or so later, the lemony taste had gone, and the frosting was sweet and pillowy and lovely. The cake was fudgier, more like a brownie than cake. I liked the whole package much better. As for those people who live in my house:

Husband: It was better the second day, because the cake had more of a brownie consistency. But I didn’t find the chocolate taste at all special, and I found the icing tooth-piercingly sweet.

#1 Son: I really liked the contrast between the almost too dry cake and the frosting the first day. The second day, the cake got a moistness and a fudginess that I felt equalized the textures more, so I didn’t like it as much. But the flavor and texture of the icing intensified overnight, and I really like that.

#2 Son: It was overall much better today. The sweetness increased, which was good, because it decreased the weird taste in the frosting, but it also  started hurting my teeth. I would eat this again on the second day, but not the first. And I really do recommend milk with it [slurp].

Oh, and #1 Son, brilliant as sometimes, sprinkled cinnamon over his slice. That was amazing.

So there you have it. Mixed opinions, as usual, but I was happy. And that’s really all that matters.

Check out the myriad variations dreamed up by the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers. And if you want to try this cake for yourself, buy the book or head on over to Confessions of a City Eater, where Stephanie will have the recipe for you.