A Balm for Writer’s Block

Blogging is going to be light this month, because I have more pressing matters to attend to. I’m still baking for the coworkers every Sunday because they’ve made it clear it’s no longer optional to bring in treats on Monday morning, so there will be things to blog, but it’s bound to be more hit-and-run in nature than I’d normally like.

So, since I have a daily word quota hanging over my head, here’s a very quick write-up of the perfect cookie for the November insanity. Not only are they the kind of yummy calories your brain needs for heavy thinking, but they are practically instantaneous to make because there’s no creaming of butter and they go straight from bowl to oven.

Interestingly, making these cookies last night for a lunch with students today also kicked me out of what had been a pretty weak start to this year’s NaNoWriMo. I was really organized about preparing for it last week, but I was also still pretty tired from a very busy October so the words weren’t coming as fast as they should have. Having fixed fifteen-minute windows between batches actually made me more productive than I had been with unstructured evenings on Monday and Tuesday, and since then I’ve been much more enthusiastic about the whole thing.

These cookies are adapted from the recipe for chewy sugar cookies in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated. Normally, I am no fan of sugar cookies, because almost every one I’ve ever had has been the equivalent of a white canvas — not in a stripped-down-to-essentials, purity of ingredients way like a good shortbread, but in a bland, bland, boring, nothing but flavorless-fat-and-sugar way. I gave this recipe a try, though, because His Lordship loves a chewy cookie, and the recipe relied on the same liquid-fat-ratio math that recently produced the first batch of brownies to really meet his chewiness requirement. I made changes to inject some interest, though, because I still wasn’t buying the whole plain sugar cookie idea.

The texture of these cookies was everything that was promised: crackly on the outside and beautifully chewy on the inside. With my additions of toasted coconut and macadamia nuts, they also have rich coconutty flavor and tender crunch, enough to inspire at least a couple of hundred words.

Since I now have cookies and an awesome new caffeine delivery vehicle, I have no excuses. Back to work!

Coconut-Macadamia Sugar Cookies
(Adapted from Chewy Sugar Cookies, Cook’s Illustrated, November/December 2010)
Makes 4 dozen cookies

1/2 cup finely shredded unsweetened coconut
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 ounces cream cheese, in 8 pieces
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 tablespoon coconut milk (or regular milk)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted roasted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
Additional sugar for rolling

In a small nonstick skillet, toast the coconut on medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until golden brown. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 F and line multiple baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place the sugar in a large bowl and scatter the cream cheese cubes over the surface. Melt the butter and pour it over the sugar and cream cheese while still warm, stirring and folding with a spatula until most of the cream cheese has melted (streaks and a few small lumps are OK). Switch to a whisk and mix in the oil, then the egg, coconut milk and vanilla until smooth.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and powder, and salt, and add to the wet ingredients. Whisk until almost incorporated, then stir in the toasted coconut and macadamia nuts.

Fill a shallow bowl with about half a cup of sugar. Scoop up heaping tablespoon-sized bits of dough and roll into balls, dropping them into the sugar and rolling to coat. Set the balls on the baking sheets, two inches apart.

Bake on the middle rack for 12-13 minutes, until turning golden at the edges. Allow to cool to room temperature on the sheets. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Notes:

This makes a very soft, oily, weird-looking dough, but it will come out fine, I promise!

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Sunday Sweets Blogging: Cashew-Macadamia Hearts

This is what happens when I get really ambitious on a Sunday.

Inspired by one of my favorite food blogs, which recently featured homemade brazil nut cups, I decided to finally get around to using the heart-shaped molds I’d bought ages ago with the intention of using them for chocolates and other molded treats. I thought about using a plain ganache filling, but since I’ve been big on all kinds of nuts and seeds lately, I decided to go with a nut butter filling instead. I had tried a cashew butter recipe from Alton Brown last year and liked it quite a lot, so I decided to start with that, supplementing the cashews with macadamias and the macadamia nut oil I’ve been putting into a lot of baked goods lately. (It’s really lovely stuff and works miracles on vanilla cupcakes.) The results are fragrant and tropical and a million times better than plain old peanut butter.

Making chocolates isn’t really that hard. It’s just a bit time-consuming, and the only tricky step is tempering the chocolate properly, so that it stays shiny and crisp when you bite it, instead of developing a waxy “bloom” or turning brittle. I researched several methods of tempering and decided to start with the “seeding” approach, melting most of it while reserving some for addition off the heat, to bring down the temperature and encourage stable crystals. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it well enough, and the chocolate was a bit distempered, so they did develop a whitish bloom, but I can’t complain too much, because these do taste wonderful, especially at room temperature, when the filling is creamy and smooth and melds perfectly with the yielding chocolate coating. I cheated a bit for presentation purposes by painting them with additional macadamia oil to make them glisten (a trick I picked up from Jacques Torres, another celebrity chef I decidedly don’t hate) and dusting the tops with cocoa.

I’ll work on my tempering techniques and see if I can’t do even better next time by monitoring the temperature instead of using the less precise seeding method, but for now, I’m quite pleased, and I didn’t hear any complaints at work this morning, either.

Cashew-Macadamia Hearts
Makes approx. 32 bonbons

1 cup cashew-macadamia butter (see below)
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 lb bittersweet chocolate
Cocoa for dusting

Equipment: Clean, scrupulously dry candy molds
Double boiler
A cooling rack set on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper

In a food processor, blend the nut butter and powdered sugar until a firm paste forms. Taste and add additional salt if necessary to balance the sweetness. Set aside while tempering the chocolate.

Chop the chocolate very finely, setting aside 1/3 for later addition. Place the remaining 2/3 in the top half of a double boiler over simmering water and allow to melt, stirring gently. When the chocolate is just melted, remove from the heat and add the reserved third, stirring until the entire batch is melted together.

Fill the chocolate molds with chocolate, swirling and shaking to cover all surfaces, then set upside-down on the rack over the cookie sheet to let the excess run out. Set in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes to set up. When the chocolate is firm, invert the molds and fill each chocolate-lined cavity with enough nut filling to reach about three-quarters to the top, pushing into the crevices to be sure that there are no air pockets. Seal the bonbons with the remaining chocolate, scraping the tops of the molds to remove extra chocolate and ensure clean unmolding. Return the molds, right-side up, to the refrigerator to set.

When the chocolates have firmed, carefully unmold them. If desired, brush with additional macadamia oil, and dust the tops with excellent-quality cocoa powder sifted through a fine mesh sieve.

Notes: Chocolate will “seize” or turn clumpy and grainy if it comes into contact with water, so be careful not to let steam from the double boiler condense into the melted chocolate, and be sure that the molds and all work surfaces and tools are very dry. Supposedly the best way to keep chocolate at a workable temperature and maintain the temper is to keep it on a low-temp heating pad while you’re waiting for the first set, but I didn’t have one, so I left it over the still-warm water in the double boiler, off the heat, which kept it warm enough to spread over the filled bonbons and also, oddly, resulted in slightly shinier bottoms on the candies.

Cashew-Macadamia Butter
Makes approx. 1 1/2 cups

8 oz raw cashews
2 oz macadamia nuts
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons macadamia oil (or other nut oil)
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or canola, or other very mild-flavored oil)

Preheat oven to 350. Toast the cashews in a single layer on a baking sheet until golden, approximately 12-15 minutes, being careful not to burn them. Let cool.

Heat the honey in a small container in the microwave until slightly runny, about 15 seconds. Combine with the oils in a liquid measuring cup.

Pulse the cashews, macadamia nuts and salt in a food processor until nearly pulverized, about 5 seconds. With the processor running, slowly add the oil and honey mixture through the feed tube and continue processing until a smooth paste forms. Taste and correct seasonings as necessary.

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