Fudge Brownie Kisses and Swirls

Valentines Day is a good excuse to make something chocolate, isn't it?  Last year I made chocolate soufflés, my personal favorite.  This year I decided to make Paul some brownies.  A big batch of brownies is really something we don't need to have hanging around the house.  Instead of a big pan of traditional brownies, I thought I'd make some brownie bites using a mini cupcake pan.  The last time I made them they were a big hit.  Maybe it was the Nutella I swirled in the batter.  Paul had just discovered the wonders of Nutella.  They were really fudgy and one little brownie bite was the perfect sized chocolate fix.

For Valentines Day I decided to swirl some with raspberry jam, some with Nutella, and top a few with a little Hershey's Kiss.  I used a basic brownie recipe, but the add-ins make them special.  As I am writing this I just thought to myself, I should have swirled in some peanut butter.  That would be wonderful!  Oh wait, then I would be making them more for me.  Anyway, this recipe makes about 50 bites, so you can experiment if you so desire.  Sorry Paul, you can't have all 50.  I'm packing up a box and the rest are headed to my office.  There are a few chocoholics working there as well.

I hope you all have a Happy Valentine's Day and share it with someone you love!

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” 
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh

Shortbread, Any Way You Like It

You may find yourself wanting to bake some cookies for Christmas.  Maybe you're not quite up to the big Christmas cookie bake-a-thon.  Maybe you want to bake just one cookie that you can either eat plain or douse in chocolate.  Maybe you want nuts, and maybe you are not feeling too nutty. This is a very adaptable recipe.  I wouldn't call this a kid kind of cookie recipe.  It's more sophisticated.  It's not a dunk in your milk cookie, its more like a nice cookie to have with a cup of tea or a cappuccino.

My mother used to bake shortbread stars for Christmas.  It was her cookie.  As children, my brother and I had no interest.   I guess that's why her shortbread stars were always the last remaining Christmas cookie in the tin.  Oh, did I mention that shortbread cookies keep well, sealed tight in a tin?  Now I get the appeal.  I've made several shortbread cookies over the years and find Ina Garten, a woman with no fear of butter, has a great shortbread recipe.  My mother always made her shortbread using powdered sugar rather than granulated sugar.  Combining my mom's recipe with Ina's produced a crisp, buttery, delicious cookie.  Dipped in bittersweet chocolate, they become something special.  To dip or not to dip....I split the batch and make them both ways.  Whip up a batch and see what a great, versatile cookie this can be .  By the way, it's OK if you want to add this recipe to your bake-a-thon as well.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

Are you sick of pumpkin yet?  I'm not.  Pumpkin is one of those things that most people either love or hate.  I fall into the first category.  As much as I like pumpkin, I only cook with it in the fall.  Thanksgiving is the end of pumpkin season for me.  Earlier this week I made penne with a pumpkin sage sauce for dinner.  I used some canned pumpkin to make the sauce leaving me with a cup of pumpkin to either use, or let it sit in the fridge for the week and eventually end up in the compost bin.  A cup of pumpkin usually finds its way into a small batch of muffins, but I was feeling somewhat adventurous and decided to do something different.

We Love Our Madeleines

I didn't start my love affair with madeleines until a few years ago.  Well, it's not a love affair, but I really am quite fond of them.   I don't know how or why I became enamored with them, I just did.   Ten years ago, Costco or Entenmann's didn't make them, at least not to my knowledge.  I think I saw the pans at Williams Sonoma, and fell in love with those delicate shell pans.  When I was a little girl, I loved story time.  One of my favorite books that our school librarian, Mrs. Connelly, would read to my class was Madeline, written by Ludwig Bemelmans.   "In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.  In two straight lines they broke their bread and brushed their teeth and went to bed.  They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine in two straight lines in rain or shine — the smallest one was Madeline."  Seriously, I think my memory of this book made me delve into the world of madeleines.  Madeleines too, are usually baked twelve to a pan and in two straight lines and they are French....interesting.

I started out with one pan, and quickly realized that two pans are better than one.  Most recipes yield 24 madeleines.  The first recipe I tried was a Barefoot Contessa, coconut madeleine recipe.  It was a big, big hit with the family.  I tried many others - chocolate madeleines, orange madeleines, chocolate dipped madeleines, vanilla infused madeleines, almond madeleines and lemon madeleines.  To this day, the coconut madeleines remain the favorite with the family.  Personally, I adore these lemony lovelies by David Lebovitz.  If you LOVE lemon, by all means, try them.  If you are like the rest of my cocoNUTTY family, I think you will enjoy these.

Aunt Dot's Rugelach

I guess if you had to assign a signature recipe to my mother, this would be it.  Every Christmas, my mom would make a tray of home baked cookies to take to her sister's house or my cousin's house, depending upon who was doing Christmas that year.  Her choice of cookies changed from year to year, but the one constant that remained was her rugelach.  She baked them exclusively for the holidays, and it was expected that they would be present on every tray.  They were everyone's favorite.  They became known as Aunt Dot's Rugelach.  Even I call them Aunt Dot's rugelach, and she is my mother.  "Did Aunt Dot make her rugelach?" or "Aunt Dot's rugelach is here" is how we were usually greeted at the door.  My cousins and I all had the same idea to sneak one off the tray before dinner; heck no one would notice just one missing.  The problem was, when you multiply 10 or 12 people sneaking just one cookie, it gets noticed.  My mother, wise woman that she was, eventually brought an extra tin of rugelach along to fill in the holes.

  

My mom use to bake her rugelach with a raisin and nut filling.  It wasn't until I took over the Christmas baking, that I began to add some apricot or raspberry jam.  Sometimes I'd fill them with a cocoa-chocolate bit filling.  You can use any jam or dried fruit that you like.   I find it easier to mix the pastry the night before I want to bake the cookies.  I mix the dough, wrap the dough in wax paper and refrigerate it overnight.  I take the dough out of the refrigerator an hour before I am ready to roll the pastry and they are the perfect temperature.  They take a little time to make, but they are well worth the effort.  Add some rugelach to your cookie tray this year.  My mom would be happy!

Cookie bags for EVERYONE!

Heath Bar Shortbread Meltaways

Christmas has been sneaking up on me.  Thanks to the internet, my shopping is now under control .  It's a quiet weekend.  Paul is away visiting his family.  Today was the perfect day to start my holiday baking.  I sat with a cup of coffee this morning, looking through cookbooks, reading tattered recipe cards, and pulling out cookie recipes that I've been collecting all year.  I thought I'd spend the day mixing batters, baking off some cookies and freezing the rest.  I wanted to use ingredients that I had on hand.  I've been squirreling away cookie-baking ingredients since October.

I finally decided to start my first day of holiday cookie baking by making my mom's rugelach recipe, her spritz cookies, some sparkling ginger chip cookies, russian tea cakes, peanut butter cookies, and I was thinking of making some shortbread cookies.

I've been a busy baking elf today

This morning I came across a hand written shortbread recipe that my mom probably wrote back in the '60s.  I remembered that she liked them with her afternoon tea.  They weren't too sweet and they melted in your mouth.  I was thinking of jazzing them up with some chocolate, either chopped and added to the batter, or better yet, maybe I would dip the baked shortbread in some dark chocolate.  I started pulling all of my ingredients out of the pantry and lo and behold, a bag of Heath Bar chips was tucked between a bar of Belgium chocolate and a bag of chocolate chips.  I bought them because one of Paul's favorite candy bars is a Heath Bar.  I didn't have anything in mind to bake when I bought them.  I don't know what possessed me to do it, maybe I was missing Paul, but I decided to go a little crazy and add the Heath Bar chips to the shortbread and heck....dip them in chocolate as well.