Category: cookies

gourmet magazine put out a feature on their favorite cookies – one for each year from 1941 to 2008. i’ve got this crazy notion that maybe i can tackle every. single. one. not all at once, mind you, or even in order, but i’d like to keep it in my brain as a “someday” goal. i’ve gotten a few suggestions for which i should bake next via the magic of twitter (seriously, why aren’t you following me yet?), but wanted to start off with this classic from 1988. apparently when i was 4, pistachio tuiles were the best thing going. at the time, my favorite food was probably hot dogs. or a good grilled cheese. or baloney sandwiches. come to think of it, not much has changed.

tuiles get their unique shape after they bake. you have to scoop them off the baking sheet with a spatula really fast and then lay them over a cylinder to cool. there’s a 10 second window to get this done, so if they stick to the sheet or cool too quickly, put them back in the oven for a few more seconds to loosen. things i loved about this recipe: i happened to have all of the necessary ingredients in my kitchen at the time, they take about 10 minutes to make from melting the butter to pulling them out of the oven, and they’re basically sweet pistachio potato chips. how great is that? oh yeah – and they taste awesome. use them as a scoop for a big bowl of ice cream (pistachio flavored?) or be classy and enjoy with a glass of wine (port?).

i’m not sure if it’s the weather, but lately i’ve been craving christmas cookies. it actually snowed here a few days ago, and since i’ve associated being cold 24/7 with stuffing my face with festive baked things, it’s been a delicious week. although rugelah are decidely jewish, we always had them on christmas morning with breakfast as a treat.

i don’t mention my day job very often, but i’m privileged enough to work a place where i can use my passion for food every day. i don’t want to get into much more detail, but one of my perks is occasionally getting free cookbooks, like  joan nathan’s The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. i’m especially excited because her challah recipe was my first yeast bread.

does this look like a lot of extra filling? it is. i accidentally halved the dough recipe but kept the filling recipe the same, so not only were the cookies stuffed, there was a bunch of spill-over. luckily, when sugar coated raisins and nuts get baked, the result is an incredible caramelized trail mix (minus any redeeming health benefits). i’ve been eating it by the handful since.

i’ve had trouble in the past with doughs that need to be refrigerated and then rolled out later, but this one seemed to hold together perfectly. it didn’t stick to the table when i rolled it out, and it puffed and crisped every so slightly and perfectly in the oven. don’t like raisins and nuts? try any kind of jam or preserves and whip up a batch. then eat them in front of a roaring fire with big cup of hot cocoa to stave off freezing. spring, get here NOW!

i have a (possibly  irrational) fear that the bacon trend may be waning. with the advent of bacon salt, bacolicio.us and any number of bacon blogs, a once underground community of bacon lovers is on the verge of going mainstream. just last week, the new york times published an article on the bacon explosion, a giant roll of bacon wrapped in sausage wrapped yet again in bacon. the times even recognized the absurdity of publishing the bacon explosion piece alongside another article about nyc’s war on salt.

this leaves me a little worried that the bacon overload could go the way of pirates, ninjas, robots, monkeys and zombies, concepts that have just been driven into the ground, particularly by the internet masses. i’m holding that  bacon stays timeless and untouchable, which explains why i decided to make a recipe that combined candied bacon with chocolate chip cookies.

enough about my bacon fears, let’s get to the recipe. i was inspired to make candied bacon by david lebovitz, who combined it with ice cream. i also found several recipes for bacon chocolate chip cookies, but they used ordinary bacon. i wanted to take the decadence of candied bacon and insert it into the sweetness of a cookie. dare i? i dared.

the candied bacon by itself was overwhelmingly delicious, so much so that i could only eat a bite at a time without my taste buds exploding with joy. i chopped up the bacon into tiny pieces and mixed it in with ordinary chocolate chip cookie batter (the tollhouse recipe of course). before i put them in the oven, i worried that the bacon would overtake the taste of the cookie and simply be too much to handle. luckily, i was completely wrong.

in fact, what results is a very subtle bacon flavor that teams up with the chocolate chips to elevate the cookies – sweet and salty never disappoints. you might want to canvas your friends before making a full batch of these though. no matter how i explained the process, i got the same incredulous looks from everyone i told and couldn’t get even one person to try a single cookie. apparently, candied meat cookies are still ahead of their time, which means i have some work to do. maybe this bacon trend isn’t on its way out quite yet.