Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies (p. 769)

I'm already failing at keeping the blog up again.  I'm two months behind but that's fine, I've decided I'm not going to stress over it and I'm not going to backdate posts.  I still have a lot of blog work to do--I have to finish the indexes, change all the side copy, and fix the keywords (to start).  

Cookie baking!  This is our new tradition, started in 2018.  On Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd) we bake cookies.  Lots and lots of cookies.  The goal is so we have those cookies when people stop by, which they do.  I love holiday visits.  Do you bake cookies for the holidays?  What do you make?

I didn't get a final picture of these cookies because...well, because were attempting to make ten types of cookies and it got hard to photograph.  I'm not back in the swing of things yet.  We use a planning board whenever we cook big meals to stay on task.  Guests have gotten good at walking into the house and going over to the board to see what's on the menu.

The planning board--you will see this a lot

Double-chocolate peppermint cookies (p.769) use the same base as Soft and chewy sugar cookies (p. 768).  

Flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt were sifted into a bowl.  Remember, measure and then sift.

In another bowl sugar  and butter were mixed until light and fluffy. 

Spin spin spin

This takes longer than you think it's going to take.  Don't rush it.  I added peppermint extract and then an egg.  I know peppermint extract might not be something that everyone has in their pantry but you really need it if you want to bake a lot.  I love the smell of mint so it was nice and invigorating.  Side note: If you get the opportunity to go to the Celestial Seasoning tea plant, I highly recommend it.  The room where they store the mints is awesome--clears your sinuses it's so strong.  The most interesting thing I learned there is they clean with air because if you cleaned with water you make tea.

The flour mixture was added in.  Of course at this point I divvied up the dough into balls, completely forgetting the chocolate chips.  I had to add all the balls back into the bowl, add the chocolate chips, and do it all over again.  

The dough  was rolled into balls, then broken in half and rolled into balls again.  

We sprinkled turbinado sugar on top.  (What? You don't have a selection of sugars to use at home??  Plain brown or white sugar would have been fine).  They were cooked  for about ten minutes.

Remember, I forgot to take a final picture but they essentially looked like this, just cooked.  The cookies were extremely chocolaty and very, very minty.  The phrase "an Andes mint on steroids" was mentioned.  If you like chocolate/mint combos, make these.  You will love them and they aren't very difficult.

Random facts:

• Peppermint is a hybrid of watermint (wtf is watermint?) and spearmint.
• Peppermint is considered an invasive species in much of the world.  It's extremely fast growing.

Nora's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 770), Applesauce Cake (p. 732), and Quick Butterscotch (Penuche) Icing (p. 799)

Who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies?  I have to admit, I don't turn to The Joy of Cooking for cookie recipes at all.   Do you?  I tend to go to dedicated cookie cookbooks and I have historically not loved the TJOC chocolate chip cookie recipes but I was hopeful for this one because it's new to the  2019 Edition.  Readers, I didn't love it.  It was certainly easy enough (but not nearly as easy--or as good--as the recipe on the Crisco container).

I love my house and I love my kitchen but I do not love the lighting.  It's absolutely terrible and it will be improved at some point.  Fortunately, terrible pictures have always been a hallmark of TJOTJOC. 

Dry ingredients were mixed:

Ugh, these shadows

Butter was creamed with white and brown sugar (if you don't know what that means, google is your friend). Vanilla, an egg, and an egg yolk were added:

OMG I did not make this in complete darkness

The flour mixture was added in and then the chocolate chips.  We had two different types of chocolate chips left over from Christmas Eve Eve (otherwise known as "cookie baking day") so I just used those.  I got out the cookie scoop.  We have a lot of cookie scoops and they are all terrible except the one my bestie Rachel gave me.  I picked out "Amazon Choice" scoops.  I read a story online right after that about a terrible lady who takes money from companies that make garbage that they pay people to "review" on Amazon and that regularly become "Amazon Choice" and that really irritates me because I formerly trusted the rating.  It explains why I have had so many terrible purchases recently.  Scoops that don't scoop fall into that.  Rant over.  I had to scoop them twice because I used the wrong size.

I never know how much they are going to spread so I always put them too far apart.

After:

Toooooo crispy.  I don't like my chocolate chip cookies that crispy which is why I tend to use Crisco.  I love Crisco.  I could work for Crisco.  The recipe lies.  It calls these chewy, thick cookies--they were not.These will not be made in the future.

The Joy of Cooking Applesauce Cake came next.  The other day I looked in the refrigerator to find a freaking enormous jar of applesauce.  To the best of my knowledge nobody in this house is a big applesauce fan so it was odd.  Jeff said that it was really cheap so obviously he bought it.  Obviously (eye roll).  So I looked in TJOC for a recipe that would use some applesauce and found Applesauce cake (p. 732).

Gwen helped me mix sifted flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, salt, allspice, and nutmeg.  Two points here:

1.  EDUCATION!  If it's "sifted flour" you measure after sifting.  If it's "flour, sifted" you measure and then sift.  I'm not sure everyone knows that and it's super important.

2.  I have Gwen taste all the ingredients as we are cooking including all the spices.  I'll be damned if she's one of those people on a cooking show who fail the tasting challenge--they should all be ashamed of themselves.  Let your kids taste things when they cook with you!

Butter is beaten and sugar is added.  I used brown sugar but you can use white or a combination.  An egg is cracked in and then the flour mixture and the applesauce are alternately added.  I was optimistic about this recipe.  It smelled good and wasn't too sweet.  You can add nuts or dried fruit.  I'm always going to opt in to nuts and dried fruit so I added walnuts and dried cranberries.

The whole thing as cooked for about a half hour.  I decided to use the square pan rather than the loaf pan option.

After cooking:

It popped out extremely easily, which makes sense, as I used about a stick of butter on the pan.

I'm always going to opt in to icing.  I lllloooovvvveeee penuche so I was happy to see Quick Butterscotch (Penuche) Icing (p. 799).  It was easy because all icing is easy.  Butter, brown sugar, evaporated milk, and salt were mixed over heat until they were combined and let cool in a bowl:

Powdered sugar and vanilla were added:

Tell me you don't want to reach into this picture for a taste...

I liked both these recipes!  The applesauce cake was not very sweet and reminded me of the zucchini cake we made every summer to get rid of the huge excess of zucchini.  The icing was absolutely amazing--smooth, brown sugary, fantastic.  Next time I will make the cake in a loaf but I will make it again.  Possibly with the same giant jar of applesauce.  Fast and good.

But I had extra icing so what to do with it...

Sandwich it between cookies!!!  It was amazing.  Penuche icing belongs between cookies.  

Even though I didn't like these cookies I do think they would make fantastic ice cream sandwiches.  For Gwen's second birthday we made homemade ice cream sandwiches and they were really popular.  You have to be careful with the cookie that you pick because they can get way too hard and I think these would have been sturdy enough while soaking up some of the moisture from the ice cream to soften.

What kind of chocolate chip cookies do you like?  Does the rest of your household agree or is it an argument every time? Tell me below!

Note: All three recipes are vegetarian, the icing is GF. 

Thanksgiving 2012 Post 1: Brussels sprouts with chestnuts (p. 261), Root vegetable puree (p. 245), and Creamed cabbage (p. 263)

So, I realize I've been the worst blogger ever and I greatly apologize!  I will catch up on old blog posts (I'm over a year behind--honestly, I haven't even blogged about Thanksgiving 2011 but I will!).  I thought I would post new posts while sprinkling in the old posts.  And I'm going to schedule these to post in a row, even if I write them all in the same day, so check back.

As most of you know, I'm running out of "normal" Thanksgiving foods to cook because I've already made them.  So I've taken to only making the side dishes, the stuffing, and the bread out of TJOC.  This years I made three vegetable side dishes.

Brussels sprouts (and yep, there is an s at the end of Brussels) are something most people are sure they hate, even if they've never eaten one.  They really aren't as bad as people think--they are cabbagey but not as strong and are absolutely amazing with butter and a little garlic and salt. So, strangely, it wasn't the Brussels sprouts that were my problem with Brussels sprouts with chestnuts (p. 261), it was the chestnuts.  I had never eaten a chestnut before and had no idea if I was going to like them or not.

The recipe was simple.  I melted butter and added 4 halved shallots (that seemed strange to me--I mean, you usually chop or slice them but only halving them?  And if you are going to half them, don't you think you'd use more?) and peeled chestnuts (I used the vacuum packaged ones, I didn't want to go through the trouble of peeling fresh chestnuts).

 

 I added the Brussels sprouts, chicken broth, a bay leaf, thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper and cooked it all for about 15 minutes: 


So it turns out I don't like chestnuts, nor did anybody else at this Thanksgiving dinner. They were mealy and tasteless and an expensive waste.  Does anyone out there like chestnuts?  What are they supposed to taste like?  The Brussels sprouts were absolutely delicious though so I would make this recipe again without the chestnuts.

I've meant to make Root vegetable puree (p. 245) for quite  awhile.  I knew it would be a winner because it's essentially mashed potatoes with other stuff and I love mashed potatoes.  I mean, who doesn't love mashed potatoes?  And every time I make them I wonder why I don't make them more often because they are so easy.

So this recipe was also easy.  I boiled potatoes, added carrots to boil, and waited until they were super tender. 



When they were fork tender, I mashed them with a potato masher and mixed in cream, butter, salt, and pepper:

Delicious! Make sure you add LOTS of salt though, it really needed it.  This was creamy, delicious, heated up wonderfully the next day, and was beloved by all.  The best part was that the carrots made it seem more healthy than regular mashed potatoes and gave a little more flavor.  I really recommend this!  You can also use any other root veggie and I suspect that parsnips would give it a nice little peppery flavor.

My mother was in charge of the turkey this year.  She gave me a timeline of how long the turkey would take to cook.  Several of these dishes (the rolls [post forthcoming], the cabbage, the root veggie puree, the gravy, and the Creamed cabbage (p. 263)) needed to be done in the last hour and a half or so.  All of a sudden, way before expected, the turkey was done.  So I had to pound out all of these dishes while the turkey was sitting.  It was extremely stressful but I got it done!

Creamed cabbage isn't that popular anymore but, the few times I've had it, I've liked it.  The recipe was simple.  I boiled milk in a pan and added shredded cabbage.  TJOC recommends the cabbage is finely shredded, which it wasn't when I made the recipe, because I couldn't get it shredded finely.  If I was at home it wouldn't have been a problem (hooray for the salad shooter!) but I was at mom's house so I just did my best.

After a couple of minutes I dropped it into a white sauce and seasoned it with horseradish, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.  Caraway was sprinkled on top:



I expected this dish to be unpopular and it was but it was really good!  Because I was hurrying (or maybe because the cabbage wasn't actually shredded finely enough) it was pretty crisp still but I think that made it even better.  It wasn't particularly creamy, which is exactly the way I like it, and the caraway gave it a nice German flavor.

There will only be 3 blog posts for the 2012 Thanksgiving festivities but there was actually quite a bit of food.  We seem to have settled on a menu of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, 2 types of cranberries, 2 types of stuffing, green bean casserole, the 3 veggie dishes, and rolls.  And that's for about 6 people!

What did everybody else enjoy?  Do you keep it traditional?

Scallion and mushroom soup (p. 145)

Scallion and mushroom soup (p. 145) is a challenge to write about because it wasn't very interesting.

TI beat butter until it was fluffy and added scallions:

Seemed like a strange step

 I added salt and pepper and cooked it for about ten minutes (so, really, just cooking the scallions in a ton of butter):

I removed the pot from the heat and added flour and chicken stock:

It was simmered for about ten minutes:

I added thinly sliced mushrooms:

I used the immersion blender and blended the whole thing (sooooo much easier than using the sieve that TJOC recommends).  I also added some cream (making it a "cream of" soup).  The soup was not an attractive color:

I added some more of the thinly sliced mushrooms:

It was okay.  It required a TON of salt to bring out the flavors, and, even then, was pretty bland.  I like cream of mushroom soup quite a bit but button mushrooms are not the most delicious and scallions don't really add that much.  Maybe with more black pepper and salt and a ton of garlic, the soup could be improved.  Then again, it's possible that not everybody is as obsessive as I am about soup.  Has anyone else made this recipe?  How do you feel about cream soups?

Pita salad (Fattoush) (p. 159)

I had a good feeling about Pita salad (Fattoush) (p. 159) because I really like pita bread.  I'm not a big salad eater.  I want to be.  I really want to love salad.  But I don't.  

I started by tossing cucumber and salt in a colander and leaving it to drain for a half hour:

I also split some pitas and baked them until crisp:

I whisked together olive oil, lemon juice, a crushed garlic clove, salt, and black pepper.  The dressing was good, nicely spiced.  I'm sure I used more garlic than I was supposed to, I always do.

I mixed tomatoes, romaine lettuce, scallions, parsley, cilantro, and mint in a bowl:

And tossed it with the dressing.  The pita chips were added to the top and it was done!

The salad was easy and very tasty.  I like a crunch in a salad (I notice that they really care about texture on the cooking shows but I don't usually pay a whole lot of attention to that--even so, the crunch is nice in salad).  The dressing was perfect, although I would have liked to add some olives or feta or something briny.  I've never had fattoush before this--anyone have any experience with the dish?  Does this seem similar?

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Pizza dough (p. 607) and Focaccia (p. 607)

I'm not sure what motivated me to make Pizza dough (p. 607) other than I wanted to make a bread recipe and pizza sounded good.  I usually just buy my pizza dough at Whole Foods because I hated baking at high altitude.  And Whole Foods has good pizza dough! 

(I know these posts are super late so I'm not going to backdate them.  Look forward to a lot of posts all at once)

I mixed water and yeast:

Yeasty!

I added flour, olive oil, and salt.  I omitted the sugar because I don't like my pizza dough sweet (does anyone?):

I mixed it by hand for a minute:

And started kneading.  TJOC always recommends kneading for what I think is way too long.  I kneaded until it looked good:

At this point I separated the dough into three sections because I was only going to make pizza with part of it, I was going to make Focaccia (p. 607).  I covered all the dough so that it could rise. 

It went from this: 

To this: 

   I punched it down, rolled it into a ball, and let it rise for another 10 minutes.  I flattened the ball, stretched it, brushed it with olive oil, and made a pizza!  I never use pizza stones but some people swear by them.  I would love to know your experiences in the comments....

It was really good although no better than the pizza dough from Whole Foods!  So I don't know if I would bother with it in the future.  You all know my theory--if it's not better or cheaper homemade than I might as well just buy it.  Your time is worth something, right?

I like focaccia but almost never buy it.  I took the pizza dough, rolled it out, and put it in a baking dish.  

Well, actually two dishes.  They were let raise in the pans.

I topped mine with garlic, olives, and spices!

I topped moms with mushrooms, garlic, and tomatoes:

I wish you could have smelled how terrific these were when they were cooked:

Focaccia is totally worth making.  Honestly, it was delicious and easy.  And I'm sure you could make it with store-bought pizza dough if you didn't want to make it from true scratch.  I even think mom froze some of it and ate it later and that totally worked.  Has anyone else made focaccia?  How did it turn out?

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