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Pam called on Saturday afternoon to see if the Grub Club was up for some nibbles at Ditch Plains. "Sure!" I said, chuckling because I thought she said "Bitch Plains." (Who'd name a restaurant that?)
1) Naked hot dogs. 2) "Ditch dogs": hot dogs topped with...mac 'n cheese(!).
3) "Sloppy dogs": hot dogs topped with chili sloppy joe meat. 4) Ricotta and smoked mozzarella fritters. 5) S'mores.
OK, I know. I'm taking the whole rhyming thing a little too far with this post's title, but this week's Grub Club meeting at Finnegan's Wake Pub, named after a book that, as an English major, I'm sure I should have read at some point, got me in a literary--or at least alliterative--mood.
This past Tuesday night, In-Young, Pam, Jon, and I met all the way up in the undiscovered country of...the Upper East Side. (Just kidding, IY!) For some good, cheap stick-to-your-ribs pub food.
1) In-Young's shepherd's pie. 2) Pam's bangers and mash.
3) Jon's open-faced turkey sandwich. 4) Greg's bacon cheeseburger. 5) Dessert: tartufo, which is pub-speak for chocolate and vanilla ice cream (and a few maraschino cherries) coated in a hard chocolate crust. In other words, as Pam pointed out, it's a hoodsie cup on on a plate.
It's a good thing I keep my camera close to the couch. I snapped this pic during last night's episode of Top Chef, when the quickfire challenge was all about using oatmeal with another food product: fish (!), poultry, fruit, veg, dairy, etc.
(Don't you love how they embed commercials in these shows? The way the product--whether it's Glad containers or whatever cars they're driving around in or Quaker Oats--is displayed so prominently and discussed at such length. It's Tivo/DVR proof. Genius.)
I know the contestants only have like 15 minutes to make a dish, so I guess oatmeal cookies were out of the question. Darnit!
Here's the recipe for my Red Bean-Stuffed Green Tea Cookies in process.
Liberate your tea from their bags. I used about a dozen tea bags.
Cream the creamables. Butter, white sugar, dark brown sugar, and green tea.
Combine the wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, and (cooled) brewed green tea.
Add the wet ingredients to the creamables. Mix.
Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the combined wet ingredients and creamables.
Scoop the dough balls, split them in half, and form into flattened disks.
Remove the beans from the fridge. Stuff the cookies.
Freeze the stuffed dough balls for five minutes and then bake.
Jenni wrote in to ask about creating a copycat Magic Middles chocolate filling for a stuffed cookie:
“What is the best kind of chocolate to use to stuff cookies with. I desperately want to recreate a Magic Middles! do you have a good recipe?”
Hi, Jenni! Thanks for writing in. If you're interested in doing a chocolate-filled cookie, I think you should check out the filling part of the recipe for my Inside-Out Peanut Butter Cups. (It's a cookie with a peanut butter exterior and a soft, chewy chocolate interior.) To get the right flavor and texture for the filling, I used cream cheese, melted semisweet chocolate chips, cocoa powder, milk, and a little bit of salt. I think this will approximate that Maggic Middles center you're looking for.
Happy Chinese New Year, everybody! In honor of the Year of the Ox, I decided to make a truly Asian-inspired cookie. I can't take all of the credit, though. My fellow Grub Clubbers--Pam, In-Young, and Jon--along with a dessert of green tea ice cream and red bean pancakes at Hagi, encouraged me to take on this more-savory-than-sweet challenge. (Thanks, Pam, for picking up the can of beans for me!)
I made a green tea cookie exterior and used my standard stuffing technique to fill the the cookies with sweet red adzuki beans. If you can't find the beans in your local grocery store, or if you're not sure you're ready to experiment with a new ingredient, feel free to make the dough and skip the stuffing part. Who's looking, anyway?
I used bagged green tea, but make sure the tea you use is finely ground so that you don't end up with big honkin' twigs in your cookie. If your bagged tea is coarse, try giving it a whirl in your food processor or running your knife through it a couple dozen times until you're left with a finely chopped, powdery pile of tea. You'll get all the flavor and color but none of the twiggitude. (In all, I used about a dozen or so tea bags.)
Green tea, oats, and red beans. That's a snack that's so healthy you'll age in reverse--Benjamin Button style!
Makes 2 dozen cookies. (To see this recipe in process, check out Picturing Red Bean-Stuffed Green Tea Cookies.)
Filling |
Approx. 1/2 can sweet red adzuki beans |
Creamables |
1 stick butter 1/2 cup white sugar1/2 cup dark brown sugar 2 tablespoons finely ground green tea |
Wet Ingredients |
1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 tablespoons cooled, brewed green tea |
Dry Ingredients |
1 1/4 cups finely ground oatmeal 1 1/4 cups flour 1/3 cup finely ground green tea 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt |
Here's the recipe for my Flat, Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies in process.
Cream the creamables. Butter, white sugar, and dark brown sugar. The white sugar is key to making a crunchy cookie.
Combine the wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, and milk.
Add the wet ingredients to the creamables. Take everything for a spin.
Shave the chocolate. Take one of those big bars of Hershey's milk chocolate, cut it in half, and have at it. I use a vegetable peeler, but you could use a microplane, a box grater, or even a knife. Whatever implement you use, your goal is to produce little pieces of milk chocolate.
Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the combined wet ingredients and creamables. The dough should be fairly wet.
Scoop 'n bake. Enjoy your flat, crunchy cookies with a glass of ice-cold milk. These guys are perfect for dunking!
To borrow a truism from carpentry, you should "measure twice, bake once" when you're trying out new recipes.
Check out what happened when I was developing my Flat, Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies.
The proof is in the...er, um...cookie. In this photo, the cookie on the left includes twice the flour and oatmeal than the cookie on the right. All the other ingredients are the same, but my misreading of my own recipe lead to the dry plumpness that is the cookie on the left.
I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong, and then it hit me like a dozen dough ball-shaped cookies: I had used the incorrect amounts of dry ingredients. Duh!
Yes. I am the Oatmeal Cookie Guy, and I oopsed! Learn from my mistake and make sure you read your recipes carefully. Otherwise, the flat, crunchy cookie you were hoping for will turn out plump and crumbly.
A while back, Lorelei wrote in to ask me if I could come up with a recipe for a flat, crunchy chocolate chip cookie that she could make for her dad. I'm not one to turn down a recipe challenge, so I got to work researching and planning. I even conducted a poll to see whether my readers preferred their chocolate chip cookies flat and crunchy or plump and chewy.
I'm a fan of plump and chewy cookies, so this really was a challenge. I even had a couple missteps (well, more like a couple full-blown Oops! episodes) along the way. But, ultimately, I worked out the kinks in my practice batches and have come up with what I think is pretty darn good recipe that will satisfy all those fans of flat, crunchy cookies out there.
I started with my Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies, of course, and got a-tweaking. I knew that white sugar makes a crispy cookie, so that was a no brainer. But I also wanted the molassessy richness of brown sugar, just a hint of chewiness, and a nice crumb, so I threw in a wee 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar. So far, so good.
Next came the wet and dry ingredients. The wetter the dough, the flatter and crispier the final cookie, so I cut back on the flour and oatmeal and increased the vanilla a little. I also cut back on the leavening--the baking soda--to ensure that the cookies didn't rise too much while baking.
Makes 2 1/2 dozen cookies. (To see this recipe in process, check out Picturing Thin, Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies.)
Creamables |
1 stick butter 3/4 cup white sugar 1/4 cup dark brown sugar |
Wet Ingredients |
1 egg 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 teaspoon milk |
Dry Ingredients |
3/4 cup oatmeal 3/4 cup four 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips 2 ounces shaved milk chocolate 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt |
Yet again, it was far too cold to take a long walk yesterday. (We've yet to do our first "Winter Saturday" jaunt.) But we did try to brave the weather, heading up to see what was playing at the movie theater on 23rd Street and then down 6th Avenue to find a nice place for lunch. And lunch we did at 10 Downing--the restaurant, not the home of the British prime minister.
This place is pretty new, and we've wanted to try it since it opened. It's got a crisp, modern look and the charm of a warm, airy Parisian bistro, with huge windows that look out onto the street. We each warmed up with a bowl of delicious sunchoke soup. Rich, creamy, and surprisingly smokey, this soup--and the crispy dumpling that came with it--was the perfect comfort food for the weather. I could have eaten this stuff all day long. Jon got a brisket burger for his entree.
For my entree, I got a chorizo sandwich. It was good, but I think I would have liked the burger better. The fries, or patatas bravas, had a nice crunch and hint of spicy smoke. For dessert, I got a deconstructed PB & J sandwich, meaning spiced, toasted hallah sticks; peanut butter gelato; and a tart-sweet black grape sauce. Jon got lemon curd with warm pound cake. We're definitely going to come back for dinner sometime.
You've probably noticed a new "badge" under the Braggin' heading on the left. That's because I recently wrote an article on improvisational baking for the food section at Betty Confidential, a new online magazine. That article combines some info, recipes, and photos I've already posted on this blog. (Let's hear it for leveraging content across platforms!)
Here's a collection of the stuffed cookies I've done so far:
Golden Girls
PB & J(onnie)
Peanut Butter Cup
Fake-Out-Eos
German Chocolate Cake
Inside-Out Peanut Butter Cups
Pumpkin Cheesecake Cookies
Stuffed Red Velvet Cookies
Still TK: a cream cheese-suffed date nut cookie and a red bean-stuffed green tea cookie. Stay tuned for more good stuff!
Melissa, a reader and real-life recipe user, made my Better Than Grandma's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies but had a question:
“I just baked these, they are very good. However, DH despises raisins. Can you come up with an equally good cookie without raisins?”
Hi, Melissa. Oh no...a raisin hater? I think you could replace the raisins in this recipe with any other kind of dried fruit: cranberries, cherries, dates, etc. Or you could replace the fruit with your favorite kind of chip: chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, etc.
The base recipe is really simple, so you can customize it just by swapping out the add-ins--in this case, the raisins. Check out my article on improvisational baking to see how easy it is to tweak a recipe.
Oh...but what does DH stand for? I thought designated hitter at first, but that doesn't sound right. Is it dumb husband? Just wondering. :-)
For this week's Grub Club outing, Jon, Pam, In-Young, and I headed to Corner Bistro, a super-crowded dive bar/burger joint in the West Village. (Only in the West Village could West 4th Street be a block north of West 12th Street, but I digress.) This the place to go if you're in the mood to stand in line for burgers, brewskis (or Diet Cokes), and bar music. Paper plates? This is my kind of place!
The burgers were good, but the company was even better. After nibbles, we headed up to Art Bar, for drinks and Morrissey. Nothing like the jukebox way-back machine to instantly transport you to the summer of 1991. NB: don't order a Rob Roy unless you want booze. I'm just sayin'...
Here's the recipe for my Coconut Rum Raisinet Cookies in process.
Toast the coconut.
Soak the raisins in rum to enplumpen 'em. Soak for 30-45 minutes (or longer, if you have the time).
Cream the creamables. Butter and dark brown sugar.
Combine the wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, coconut extract, and rum.
Add the wet ingredients to the creamables. Mix.
Drain the raisins and add them to the combined wet ingredients and creamables. Mix again.
Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the combined enplumpened raisins, wet ingredients, and creamables.
Scoop, bake, and enjoy!
This is the third recipe in my improvisational baking series. As I've said before, it takes only a few tweaks to turn a classic recipe into something entirely new.
I started with my Better Than Grandma's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies as a source recipe and made a few changes--adding chocolate chips, soaking the raisins in rum, and adding straight rum to the wet ingredients--and came up with a completely new recipe for Rum Raisinet Cookies.
For this next round of improvisation, I started thinking of flavors that would compliment the rum and chocolate. I considered adding another variety of dried fruit, white chocolate chips, and even a dusting of turbinado sugar to give the cookies a crunchy, sugary shell when they bake. But then I opened my cabinet, and the answer I was looking for was staring right back at me: coconut, the perfect partner for both rum and chocolate. I have to thank Mumma for this one. (Thanks, Mumma!) She thinks everything should have coconut in it.
I replaced a cup of the oatmeal with a cup of toasted coconut, and I replaced 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon of milk with 1 teaspoon of coconut extract. These two small changes give the cookies a brand new flavor and texture, really jazzing up the source recipe and the second-round recipe as well.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies. (To see this recipe in process, check out Picturing Coconut Rum Raisinet Cookies.)
Creamables |
1 stick butter 1 cup + 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar |
Wet Ingredients |
3/4 cup raisins soaked in 3/4 cup rum, drained 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon rum 1 teaspoon coconut extract |
Dry Ingredients |
1 cup oatmeal 1 cup toasted coconut 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips 1/2 cup flour 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt |
Here's the recipe for my Rum Raisinet Cookies in process.
Soak the raisins in rum to enplumpen 'em. Soak for 30-45 minutes (or longer, if you have the time) to get those raisins drunk!
Cream the creamables. One stick of butter and 2 cups + 2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar.
Combine the wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, rum (yo-ho-ho!), and milk.
Add the wet ingredients to the creamables. Mix.
Drain the raisins and add them to the combined wet ingredients and creamables. Mix again.
Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the combined enplumpened raisins, wet ingredients, and creamables. (There's a whole lotta combinin' going on.)
Scoop and bake. You've got your rum and your raisinets in a single movie-ready treat. Pop in a DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean and call it a night!
As I mentioned in my earlier post on improvisational baking, it takes only a few tweaks to turn a classic recipe into something entirely new.
I started with my Better Than Grandma's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies as a source recipe and then did some brainstorming. "What flavors go with raisins?" I thought. And then it hit me: booze and chocolate. Rum raisin ice cream is pretty popular, and Raisinets (chocolate-coated raisins) are a common movie theater snack. What a no-brainer.
I wanted to keep the raisin-chocolate balance even, so I split the 1 1/2 cups of raisins from the source recipe in two and used 3/4 cup raisins and 3/4 cup chocolate chips. I then decided to soak the raisins in rum to infuse them with flavor and to enplumpen them. Next, I replaced a teaspoon of the milk in the wet ingredients with a teaspoon with rum.
I made just three small changes to the source recipe, and I've come up with a new cookie. It really was that simple. I just swapped out one ingredient for an equal amount of another.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies. (To see this recipe in process, check out Picturing Rum Raisinet Cookies.)
Creamables |
1 stick butter 1 cup + 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar |
Wet Ingredients |
3/4 cup raisins soaked in 3/4 cup rum, drained 1 egg 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla 1 teaspoon rum 1/2 teaspoon milk |
Dry Ingredients |
2 cups oatmeal 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips 1/2 cup flour 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt |
Here's the recipe for my Better Than Grandma's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies in process. (I opted not to sugar the dough balls before baking.)
Cream the creamables. Butter and dark brown sugar.
Combine the wet ingredients. Egg, vanilla, and milk
Add the wet ingredients to the cremables. Spin, spin, spin.
Combine the dry ingredients. I saw these Sunsweet jumbo red raisins and gave them a try. They certainly are plump and tasty!
Add the dry ingredients to the combined creamables and wet ingredients.
Scoop and bake the cookies. For a crispier exterior, sugar the dough balls before baking.
On Tuesday night, the Grub Club met at Hagi, a Japanese saki/tapas bar between Times Square and Radio City Music Hall. It's a good thing we got there early because there was a line out the door when we left. The food was good (and cheap), but the company was even better. And I even got an idea for a new recipe: a red bean stuffed cookie, to celebrate Chinese New Year.
1) Grilled pork belly skewers. 2) Fried squid legs. 3) Grilled yellowtail collar.
4) Fried chicken with pickled radishes. 5) Crispy chicken skin skewers. 6) Noodles topped with benito. 7) Green tea ice cream with red bean pancakes.
I think my favorite was the grilled pork belly skewers. Mmmm, bacon!
Last weekend, Jon, Pam, In-Young, and I met up for an Indian buffet lunch. Over that meal, the Grub Club was born. Because what's better than meeting up with your foodie friends and eating?
So once a week we'll all try to get together over some tasty cheap eats. Yum!
During the Today show this morning, Al Roker talked to a lady in the audience who was madly waving a canister of Quaker Oats. "What's that about," I thought. Turns out she was there to promote a joint effort between Quaker and Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger.
From January 12 to February 28, Quaker will donate a bowl of oatmeal to the hungry for every UPC number you enter from your favorite Quaker hot cereal. You have to be on Facebook or join Facebook in order to enter your UPC. Click here for more info.
I'm going to enter my first UPC code when I get home tonight. So should you!
As
you’ve probably noticed, I’ve got some pretty unique oatmeal cookie
recipes up my sleeve. But it occurred to me that I haven’t posted a
recipe for the most classic of classic oatmeal cookies: oatmeal raisin.
I love oatmeal raisin cookies (ORCs), but it can be hard to find one that has the right texture (neither too soft nor too crunchy) and the right amount of raisins (neither a dearth nor a glut). How many of you have had ORCs that are super chewy or super raisiny but super bland? Or ORCs that are just way too soft (to the point of falling apart) or just way too crunchy (to the point of breaking a tooth)? It’s a serious baking challenge to get the balance right.
By upping the brown sugar, oatmeal, and raisins and using less flour than many standard ORC recipes, I made a cookie that’s even better than your grandma’s. I also roll the dough balls in turbinado sugar before baking to give the finished cookies a nice crunchy exterior to contrast with the chewy interior, which is my favorite texture combination. (If you prefer a cookie that is strictly soft and chewy throughout, this sugaring step is optional, of course.)
Makes about 3 dozen cookies. (To see this recipe in process, check out Picturing Better Than Grandma's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.)
|
Creamables
|
1 stick butter 1 cup + 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar |
| Wet Ingredients | 1 egg 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla 1 1/2 teaspoons milk |
| Dry Ingredients | 2 cups oatmeal 1 1/2 cups raisins 1/2 cup flour 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt |
|
Topping (optional) |
turbinado sugar |
According to my Large, Flat, and Crunchy or Small, Plump, and Chewy? poll, texture--not size--is what matters most. The supermajority of you like your chocolate chip cookies chewy, regardless of whether they're large or small.
Fans of the chewy should check out my Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. But fret not fans of the crispy: I'll have a chocolate chip cookie recipe for you soon. Stay tuned!
Voting still remains open, so feel free to weigh in.
Reader leeleemarie left the following question on my Toffee Figgy Pudding Cookies post:
“What about a really dark rich cakey date nut cookie stuffed with cream cheese? As a kid we would have date nut bread slathered with cream cheese. I have not had it in years but for some reason the figs made me think of dates and then date nut bread, and then I thought what about a cookie?”
Thanks for writing in, leeleemarie. That's an awesome idea. Up until this point, all my stuffed cookies have been smooth and "chunkless," meaning that they don't have any chips or nuts or any other sort of mix-ins in the dough. This is because I was afraid that the chunks would make holes in the cookie dough shells and allow the filling to leak out during baking.
But you have really inspired me, leeleemarie. I'm going to cross the chunky stuffed cookie barrier! And what better way to do so than to make a date nut cookie stuffed with a schmear of cream cheese. Mmmm...yummy. Stay tuned!
