RYE CRUMBLE BARS WITH JAM

I’m currently having a torrid love affair with rye. This is not a sponsored post, but an awesome artisan flour mill opened in my neighborhood a few years ago, and my friend S gifted me some of their products last Christmas, including a bag of whole rye flour. I immediately started Googling recipes, and it turns out I adore the nutty, malty flavor that rye adds to baked goods. So far I’ve made bread, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies (those last two really deserve posts of their own, but were fortunately/unfortunately devoured before I could snap photos, so gosh darn it, I’ll have to make them again), but the real winner has been these bars from Kim Boyce’s much buzzed-about cookbook Good to the Grain, found via Orangette. I always have jars of old jam under my bed that need using up, so the fact that it uses a whole cup and a half of the stuff is a definite bonus.

Let’s face it: This recipe looks incredibly fussy, especially compared to the much simpler jam bars already in my repertoire. The bottom crust and the top crust are made separately with slightly different ingredients, you have to melt and cool butter twice, the bottom crust needs to be frozen for 30 minutes, and the baking time is astonishingly long—nearly two hours. It’s not something you throw together on the spur of the moment. But I made it on a Friday night, and I was surprised by how non-annoying it actually was. The bottom and top crusts share similar ingredients and are a cinch to mix up; you can make the top one while the bottom one freezes. (Or, as Orangette notes, you can even make this in stages over the course of a few days.) After that it’s mostly hands-off, and you can wander away and watch TV or do yoga or something while it bakes. Most importantly, the result is terrific. They definitely put the “crumble” in crumble bars, and I felt that they benefited from some time in the fridge or freezer to keep them from being a sticky disintegrating mess, but the flavor is so, so good, with the toasty, buttery, salty shortbread balancing out the sweet tartness of the jam. I used berry jams the first time, and am planning a second go-round to use up last year’s cranberry preserves. At the rate I’m going, I’ll need to restock on rye flour before I even get to the rest of the recipes I want to try (shortbread, crackers, more bread)!

Shortbread crust:
65 grams (½ cup) dark rye flour
120 grams (1 cup) all-purpose flour
50 grams (1/3 cup) dark brown sugar
½ teaspoon kosher salt
113 grams (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Crumble:
100 grams (1 cup) rolled oats
32 grams (3 tablespoons) dark brown sugar
52 grams (¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons) dark rye flour
30 grams (¼ cup) all-purpose flour
38 grams (3 tablespoons) sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
85 grams (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
Filling:
350 ml (1½ cups) jam, preserves, or fruit butter (I had closer to 1¼ cups, and it turned out just fine)

1. Set a rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat to 275 degrees. Grease a 9-inch springform pan (I just used a regular cake pan, lining the bottom with parchment, and it was fine) with butter or cooking spray.
2. To make the shortbread crust, combine the flours, sugar, and salt in a large bowl, and whisk to mix well. Add the melted butter and vanilla extract, and stir until thoroughly combined. (If the mixture looks dry, use your hands to squeeze and massaged the dough until it comes together.) Using your hands, press the dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Put the pan in the freezer for 30 minutes, while you make the crumble. (If you want to do this step ahead of time, wrap the pan in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge or freezer. If it’s in the fridge, just remember to transfer it to the freezer for 30 minutes before baking.)
3. While the shortbread is chilling, put all of the crumble ingredients except the melted butter into the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until the oats are partially ground, about 5 or 10 seconds. Pour the mixture into a bowl. Add the melted butter and stir with your hands, squeezing the mixture to create small crumbly bits. Set aside. (If you want to do this step ahead of time, wrap the bowl in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. Take it out about 30 minutes before using, and if needed, use a fork to break up any giant clumps that have hardened.)
4. Bake the frozen shortbread until pale brown and firm when touched, about 50 to 55 minutes. Remove from the oven, and raise the oven temperature to 350 degrees.
5. To assemble the bars, spread the jam over the shortbread crust, and then top with the crumble, evenly sprinkling it over the surface and squeezing bits of it together to create irregular nubs. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until golden brown on top, rotating the pan halfway through for even baking.
6. When the pan is cool enough to handle but still warm, run a sharp knife around the edge of the pan to loosen any jam that may have stuck. Remove the ring if using a springform. Completely (or mostly, anyway) cool the bars in the pan before cutting into wedges.

Serves: About 12 to 16
Time: 3 hours
Leftover potential: Good; I kept mine in the freezer and they lasted for a few weeks.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE 2.0

Is it too late in the summer to talk about strawberry shortcake? Too bad. I’ve avoided baking traditional biscuits for most of my life, my irrational fear of making pie crust extending to any recipe that involved cutting butter into other ingredients. I made drop biscuits and cream biscuits, and even made “shortcake” using Bisquick in the very early days of this blog. That was all fine, but as soon as I successfully overcame my pie fear, it was time to unlock the top level of buttery flakiness in one of my favorite desserts.

There are an overwhelming number of strawberry shortcake formulas in the world, so I stuck with the always straightforward and reliable Simply Recipes, and was not disappointed. Because I was home alone for the week, I ate one biscuit straight out of the oven and froze the rest. Each night I’d defrost one, macerate a single serving of berries, whip a single serving of cream (Did you know you can do this? Immersion blenders are magical), and enjoy my solo dessert. Thus I can’t vouch for the exact accuracy of the berry and cream quantities listed here, since I was winging it from day to day. I suspect I used more than 6 cups of berries—I like a lot of fruit on my shortcake. I even used peaches once, when the berries ran out, and that was also tasty.

I took the opportunity to try Food52’s nifty recipe for yogurt whipped cream, which is as tangily delicious as promised, but you can of course use regular whipped cream too.

Berries:
3 pints (about 6 cups) strawberries
½ cup sugar, or to taste
Biscuits:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1½ tablespoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ cup (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1½ cups heavy cream
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Yogurt whipped cream:
1 cup heavy cream, chilled
½ cup plain yogurt, Greek or otherwise, full-fat or otherwise, chilled
A few pinches of sugar (optional)

1. Cut the stems away from the strawberries and discard. Cut the strawberries in half, and then in either quarters or thick slices. Put the cut strawberries into a large bowl and sprinkle with ¼ cup sugar. Taste, and add up to another ¼ cup sugar depending on how sweet your strawberries are and how sweet you want them. Gently stir until coated and let sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes, until the berries soften and begin to release their juices.
2. Meanwhile, to make the biscuits, vigorously whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter into the flour mixture, either using your fingers, a pastry cutter, a fork, or a food processor, until the largest pieces of butter are pea-sized.
3. Mix the vanilla and cream together. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the cream into it. Mix with a fork until the mixture is just combined. It should look rather shaggy and feel a little dry. Gently knead by hand a few times to form a loose ball of dough.
4. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and form it into an 8-inch square, about ¾ inch to 1 inch thick. Place it on a parchment- or silicone-lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for 20 minutes.
5. Mash about half of the berries in the bowl and stir to mix. Let sit while you bake the biscuits.
6. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the biscuit dough from refrigerator, cut into 9 even squares, and spread them about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. Bake until medium golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.
7. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk (or using a hand mixer or immersion blender, or by hand), beat heavy cream and yogurt (with a little sugar if desired) on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.
8. To serve, slice each biscuit in half horizontally and place cut side up in a wide, shallow bowl. Ladle strawberries over each biscuit and add a dollop of whipped cream.

Serves: 9
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Leftover potential: OK. Biscuits are best freshly baked, but they can be frozen and defrosted in the microwave; the texture will suffer a bit, but the flavor is still good and macerated strawberries hide a multitude of sins. (You might also try freezing the unbaked dough squares and baking them in small quantities as needed.) If eating them singly, use about 1/3 to ½ cup macerated with ½ to 1 tablespoon sugar per biscuit. If you have an immersion blender, it’s easy to make whipped cream in small quantities; per serving, I use a few tablespoons of cream whipped with a heaping tablespoon of yogurt.

LAZY MINI PEACH CRISP

I tend to operate under the guideline that I can eat as much dessert if I want, as long as I make it myself. My laziness usually balances out my gluttony enough to maintain a healthy moderation, but this doesn’t work as well in the summer, when it takes only a few minutes to transform ripe fruit into a delicious treat. (And when you can fool yourself into believing that it’s perfectly good for you because it has fruit in it.) Thanks to recipes like this one, I’ve now had to switch to my other rule, which dictates skipping dessert on weekdays unless it’s a special occasion.

I did a lot of cooking experimentation while A was in Indiana on his annual July 4 visit. While he’s usually supportive of my incessant recipe testing, but it still feels extra freeing when there’s no one around to witness any potential food flops. This clever one-serving shortcut peach crisp recipe from Joy the Baker seemed like perfect single-lady fare, and indeed I ended up repeating it at least three times in the course of a couple of weeks (single ladies find themselves with a lot of extra ripe peaches sitting around).

I couldn’t manage to heap all of the topping on the two halves of a single peach without half of it sliding off, so in my view this can easily make two servings—bake both at once if you want to share with a friend, or store half of the topping mixture in the fridge overnight and bake yourself a second peach the next day. But if you were to go ahead and pile it high enough to eat it all in one sitting, no one would blame you. The fruit softens in the oven, the buttery oat-almond-coconut topping crisps and caramelizes, and just like that, you’ve treated yourself to a nice warm dessert.

This would be downright fantastic with vanilla ice cream on top, but I poured a little cold heavy cream over mine and that was lovely, too.

1 ripe peach (or 2 if you’re nice enough to share)
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup packed light brown sugar
3 tablespoons old-fashioned oats
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon shredded coconut
1 tablespoon sliced almonds
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Slice peach(es) in half and remove the pit. With a small spoon, scoop out the dark red pit center, creating just a bit more room for the crumble topping. (You can skip the scooping if you’re really lazy, or if you’re making two peaches.)
3. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon, salt, coconut, and almonds. Add butter and, with your fingers, work it into the dry ingredients, quickly breaking it up until it is well combined. Some of the butter bits will be the size of oat flakes; others will be the size of small peas.
4. Place peach halves, cut side up, in a small, oven-safe dish. Top each peach half with a generous portion of topping.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, until topping is golden brown.
6. Remove from the oven and serve warm with vanilla ice cream or a drizzle of heavy cream.

Serves: 1-2
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: The peaches are best eaten warm from the oven; however, if you make one peach and have enough topping left over to make another one tomorrow, you can store the crisp topping overnight in a sealed container in the fridge.

BLUEBERRY PIE

 Or, My First Pie, Part II.

Blueberry is not my favorite pie flavor; that honor goes to strawberry, followed by lemon meringue. As a child, I also favored banana and coconut cream, and of course French silk; now I lean more toward peach and apple. But since I didn’t start really liking blueberry baked goods until 2008 or so, blueberry pie has never really been on my radar. It is, however, A’s favorite pie. And more pressingly, we had 10 pounds of blueberries in the fridge, because I happened to have some very helpful out-of-town guests on hand when berry-picking day rolled around, and it turns out that when conditions are favorable, five adults can gather a heck of a lot of blueberries in a very short time. So, blueberry cake, jam, crisp, salad, crumble, oatmeal, and then pie.

There are a lot of blueberry pie recipes in the world, and not being a connoisseur, I wasn’t sure what to look for in a good one, but I trust Annie’s Eats and this one looked solid. I love lemon with blueberries, and cinnamon seemed like a good idea (I of course added a pinch of cardamom as well). It came out well—a bit on the juicy side, but not too runny. And it turns out I like blueberry pie quite a lot, especially when it’s my own handiwork.

2 rolled-out rounds pie dough
4 cups blueberries (If fresh blueberries are unavailable, you can use frozen blueberries without thawing, increasing the baking time by 10-15 minutes.)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 egg
1 tablespoon water

1. Line the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan with one of the rolled-out dough rounds. Refrigerate pan until ready to fill.
2. Place the blueberries in a large bowl, sprinkle with the lemon juice and toss to coat evenly. In a small bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, salt and cinnamon. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the berries and toss to distribute evenly.
3. Immediately transfer filling to the dough-lined pan. Dot with butter pieces. Place the remaining dough round on top of the pie and and crimp the dough rounds together to seal the edges. Be sure to cut vents in the top crust to allow steam to escape during baking. Refrigerate the pie until the dough is firm, 20 to 30 minutes.
4. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, beat the egg and water with a fork to make an egg wash. Brush onto the top crust just before baking.
5. Bake the pie until the crust is golden and the filling is thick and bubbling, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely to set, 1 to 2 hours. Serve at room temperature or rewarm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes just before serving.

Serves: 8
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes, plus cooling time
Leftover potential: OK; keeps for a few days in a sealed container at room temperature or in the fridge, although it will get a bit soggier over time.

PIE CRUST

I’m baaaack! I’ll skip the boring excuses because I have a huge backlog of recipes to record—starting with pie! I don’t usually post photos of myself here, but this picture is the best way to sum up how excited I was last month when I finally overcame my lifelong fear of making pie crust. It was an irrational fear, I’ll admit, born mostly of the difficulties my mother had with pie-baking when I was a child. Luckily, her mother was a pie master, so whenever she came to visit, Grandma would spend a day mass-producing dough for us to stockpile in the freezer. This was always hotly anticipated by me, because she’d make cinnamon-sugar-sprinkled cookies out of the dough scraps and I’d get to scarf them down straight out of the oven. (To this day, those cookies remain one of my most vivid and nostalgic food memories.) But from all this rigmarole, I got the idea that piecrust was tricky, even though dozens of people have since sworn to me that it’s not so hard.

Guess what? It’s easy. Granted, I may have overprepared, studying dozens of recipes and tutorials before following one solid authority (the always-reliable Smitten Kitchen) with military precision; I was so ready for frustrating disaster that surpassing my low expectations was probably inevitable. There are a host of pie-crust tips and tricks out there—use oil or shortening, freeze and grate your butter, add vodka or vinegar, mix in a food processor—but I’m pleased with this simple and sensible route. The recipe itself is just flour, sugar, salt, butter and water; the technique basically hinges on keeping everything cold, cold, cold. Stay calm and believe it will all work out. (Perhaps pie dough can smell fear?) I’ve rolled out three pie crusts now with no tearing or cracking, so I’m tempted to dub this method foolproof.

And of course I made pie crust cookies, and they tasted just like I remembered. My mother later told me Grandma always used lard in her dough, so it’s not an exact replica, but still enough to inspire a Proustian reverie.

Pictured is a blueberry pie; I’ll post the filling recipe separately, because this list of instructions is long enough. The level of detail will make you doubt my claims of simplicity, but it was helpful to me as a pie newbie. The one place where I fell down was sealing the two crusts together, and you can see there was some leakage as a result. The Smitten Kitchen instructions were sadly silent on how to add the top crust, and I foolishly tried to punt. Google would have set me straight, but instead I tried to fold the bottom crust over the top instead of vice versa, and didn’t think to use water to adhere them. I’ve clarified these fine points below to save you (and future me) from my mistakes. Fortunately, a leaky pie is still a plenty delicious one.

2½ cups (315 grams) flour, plus extra as needed
1 tablespoon (15 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt
2 sticks (8 ounces or 225 grams) unsalted butter, very cold

1. Fill a 1-cup liquid measuring cup with cold water and add a few ice cubes, or place in the freezer for 15-30 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar and salt. If your kitchen is warm, place the bowl of dry ingredients in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes.
3. Dice the butter into ½-inch pieces. If your kitchen is warm, rechill the butter cubes in the fridge or freezer.
4. Sprinkle the cold butter cubes over the flour and begin working them in with a pastry blender, using it to scoop and redistribute the mixture as needed. When all of the butter pieces are the size of tiny peas, stop. (This won’t take long, and it’s OK if the mixture looks uneven.)
5. Remove any ice cubes from the water and drizzle ½ cup over the butter and flour mixture. Using a rubber or silicon spatula, gather the dough together. Add more cold water a tablespoon at a time (you’ll probably need an additional ¼ cup or so) until the mixture comes together. Once you’re pulling large clumps with the spatula, use your hands to gather the clumps into one mound, kneading them gently together without overworking the dough.
6. Divide the dough in half and wrap each piece in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least two hours, preferably overnight, before rolling it out. (Dough will keep in the fridge for about a week, and in the freezer longer, well wrapped in additional plastic wrap or a freezer bag. To defrost dough, move it to the fridge for one day before using it.)
7. When ready to roll out the dough, generously flour your work surface. Unwrap the chilled dough (if you’re making a double-crust pie, only take half the dough out of the fridge at a time). Put it in the middle of your work area and flour the top of it too.
8. Start rolling out the dough by pressing down lightly with the rolling pin and moving it from the center out. (You’re not going to get it all flat in one roll, so be patient.) Roll it a few times in one direction, lift it up and rotate it a quarter-turn. Keep repeating this process, re-flouring the counter and the top of the dough as needed—you should be leaving no bits of dough on the counter or your pin. If the dough sticks to the work surface, run a bench scraper underneath the stuck part, peel it back, and flour that area before continuing.
9. For a standard-size pie pan, trim your dough into a 12-inch circle with the tip of a knife.
10. Transfer your crust to the pie pan. This should be no problem if you’ve worked briskly and your dough is still cool, but if you need help, you can roll it around your rolling pin and unroll it in the pan, or fold it very loosely into quarters and unfold it into the pan. Press the dough gently into the pan, making sure it is centered.
11. For a single-crust pie: You should have a half-inch overhang; fold it under so that the dough becomes the size of the pan. Crimp the edge by forming a “V” with the tips of the thumb and index finger of one hand and pressing the dough into it with the index finger of your other hand, continuing around the edge of the whole pie. Return the pan to the fridge while you prepare your filling.
12. For a double-crust pie: Place the pan with the bottom crust in the fridge while you repeat the rolling-out process with the other half of your dough. Before transferring the top crust to the pan, brush a little water around the edge of the bottom crust to help the two pieces seal. Gently tuck the top crust edge under the bottom crust edge, then crimp the two pieces together. Brush the top crust with an egg wash (1 egg beaten with a tablespoon or two of water), sprinkle with sugar if desired, and cut a few vents in it.
13. Make pie-crust cookies with the excess dough: Gather the scraps into a ball, roll it out, cut it into circles using the top of a glass (or cookie cutters, if you’re fancy), continuing the gather the scraps, re-roll and cut it until you’ve used as much as you can. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, and bake at 350 degrees until crisp and lightly golden brown around the edges, about 8-12 minutes.

Makes enough dough for one double- or two single-crust pies.

VANILLA ROASTED PEARS

I first made this Smitten Kitchen recipe during a visit from my parents. I recall it being easy, elegant, and enjoyed by all. I failed to get a photo, bookmarked it for a repeat attempt…and then about four years went by, for no good reason. I don’t make dessert that often, I never buy that many pears, I’m out of vanilla beans—I don’t know what my excuses were, but they all seem flimsy in retrospect. Because finally, last month, when I happened to have a surplus of ripe, ungainly little Bartletts (farmers’ market seconds left over from a canning project), I revisited it and fell in love all over again. A one-dish dessert that transforms a handful of basic ingredients into meltingly tender, tart-sweet fruit bathed in a fragrant caramelized sauce—how could I have wasted so much of my life not eating roasted pears?

Friends, don’t be like me. These pears will make you feel like a culinary rock star without breaking a sweat, help you celebrate the pear harvest in style, wow your dinner party guests with a sophisticated and seemingly effortless finale, or let you whip up a fairly wholesome weeknight treat. I have no doubt that they would be delicious over ice cream, topped with cream or crème fraiche, served with a cheese plate or spooned over oatmeal, but I have yet to do more than eat them straight from the pan. It may be counterintuitive to post this recipe during the holiday season, the one time of year when I feel compelled to tackle ambitious baking projects, yet it’s an excellent reminder that the simplest things really are often the best.

¼ cup sugar
½ vanilla bean (or a whole one if you’re feeling decadent)
1½ pounds ripe or slightly underripe medium pears, peeled if desired (but not necessary), halved though the stem and cored
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 
2. Place the sugar in a small bowl. With a thin, sharp knife, split the vanilla bean lengthwise in half and scrape out the seeds. Stir the seeds into the sugar.
3. Arrange the pears in a large baking dish, cut side up. Drizzle the lemon juice evenly over the fruit, then sprinkle with the sugar. Nestle the vanilla pod pieces among the fruit. Pour the water into the dish and dot each pear with some butter.
4. Roast the pears for 30 minutes, brushing them occasionally with the pan juices. Turn the pears over and continue roasting, basting once or twice, until tender and caramelized, 25 to 30 minutes longer (a paring knife poked into the thickest part of one should meet with no resistance).
5. Serve warm, topped with the caramelized drippings from the pan.

Serves: About 4
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Leftover potential: Good; leftover pears can be eaten cold or reheated briefly in the microwave.

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER PUDDING

When I first discovered how simple and gratifying it is to make homemade pudding, I went bonkers for it. Over the next three years, I gradually worked my way through every type I could think of and loved them all, but I regret to say that chocolate peanut butter didn’t cross my mind until I saw this recipe in an issue of Cooking Light. I further regret to say that it took me about a year and half to get around to making it, which is ridiculous because I love this flavor combination, and sad because I could have spent those 18 months eating a ton of extremely delicious pudding.

If you’re a fan of the choco-PB combo, this will satisfy your cravings with ease, and if you’re new to making pudding, it’s a great place to start. With no egg to temper, this is a quick boil-and-stir affair, and thanks to the natural thickness of the peanut butter and solid chocolate, it stiffens up very dramatically (almost to a mousse-like consistency) without much cooking at all. Just to keep things from becoming too simple, I added a pinch of salt and a splash of vanilla, both good enhancements. I also used semisweet chocolate chips instead of the original recipe’s chopped milk chocolate, because it’s what I had on hand, and I think it was the better option—a deeper, richer taste with less sweetness. Cooking Light has you top it with sliced bananas (bleah) and chopped peanuts, but I don’t like chunks interrupting my creamy pudding texture, or any extra elements interfering all the with chocolatey, peanut buttery goodness.

1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa
1½ cups milk
½ cup light cream or half-and-half
2 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
¼ cup all-natural creamy peanut butter
1 pinch salt
½ teaspoon vanilla

1. Combine sugar, cornstarch, and cocoa in a medium saucepan; stir with a whisk. Whisk in milk and cream. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook 1 minute or until thick and bubbly.
2. Remove from heat. Add chocolate, peanut butter, salt, and vanilla, stirring until smooth.
3. Divide among bowls and chill until set.

Serves: 4-6
Time: 20 minutes
Leftover potential: Good.

JAM ALMOND CRUMB BARS

I’m canning less than I used to (I blame this year’s interminable heat, coupled with an increasingly demanding job that leaves me less energy for big kitchen projects), but I still have a perpetual spare-jam supply. Beyond my big holiday distribution, I always hoard a few jars just in case I need them for eating or gifts throughout the year, plus there always seems to be one in every batch that doesn’t seal properly and has to get added to the crowd in the back of the fridge, where it languishes long enough for me to forget when it was made.

When blueberry-picking time rolled around this year and I prepared to make a fresh batch of blueberry-lime jam, I discovered to my chagrin not only a big jar still left over from last year in my stash under the bed, but also two open, partially used jars of indeterminate age floating around in the refrigerator. I have coworkers who will happily polish off any extra jam I happen to have, but I felt odd trying to give away such old stuff, even though I knew it was perfectly safe to eat (with so much sugar and acid, jam rarely goes bad, and if it does it tells you so by getting moldy—but it should still be eaten within a year, and the texture does alter a bit with age).

I needed a recipe that would use up a lot of jam and mitigate any potential staleness, and I quickly found just the thing at Two Peas and Their Pod: easy bars that sandwich the fruit between a simple crust and a crumb topping. I had made similar jam bars once before, but they were loaded with butter and sugar, and even though I wrote about them so enthusiastically here, I never made them again. This new recipe has less sugar and half the fat, uses coconut oil instead of butter, and replaces white flour with whole wheat. It’s still not health food, but it’s less overwhelmingly rich and actually tastes better too; the nuttiness of the wheat and almonds and the slight coconut flavor add a nice counterpoint to the sweet preserves. These bars make an addictive dessert—I brought them to a picnic and they were a big hit—but it wouldn’t be totally crazy to eat them for breakfast or a snack, either. In short, I’m in love, and very sorry to have gotten my jam situation so well under control that I don’t have any left over to make more jam bars. Yes, I could just buy jam at the store, but that seems like cheating… So as soon as the weather cools off (please let it cool off!), I’ve got to get canning, stat. In the meantime, if you’ve got homemade jam from me (or another source) sitting around gathering dust, this is a great way to use it up.

1½ cups white whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (I also added a pinch of cardamom)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup coconut oil, at room temperature
½ cup packed light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup sliced almonds
¾ cup fruit jam

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish with cooking spray or coconut oil. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream coconut oil and sugars on high speed until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract. Mix well. With the mixer on low, slowly add in the flour mixture. Mix until combined (the dough will be crumbly). Stir in the sliced almonds.
4. Gently press half the dough into the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Evenly spread jam over dough. Sprinkle remaining dough over the top, making sure you cover the entire thing. Press gently to form the top layer.
5. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Cool completely and cut into squares.

Yields: 12-16 bars
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: Good; freezes well.

BLUEBERRY PEACH CRUMBLE

It wouldn’t be summer without another new blueberry recipe in the wake of our annual blueberry-picking expedition. Thanks to the extra-warm weather this year, the blueberries were ahead of season and already getting sparse when we made the trip to Somis in late June, which helped keep our haul at a reasonable level (around 7 pounds). One batch of blueberry jam, one blueberry-corn salad and a lot of eating by the handful left us with only a modest amount that need to be creatively used up, so I found this recipe at Two Peas and Their Pod to help us out.

Fruit crisps and crumbles are always delicious and are hardly rocket science, but this one especially floats my boat with just the right amount of sweetness and seasoning (lemon, vanilla, cinnamon—and I always add a little cardamom too, Swede that I am). I love the addition of peaches to cut the intensity of the cooked blueberries.

The original recipe says to peel the peaches, but if you’re lazy like me and don’t mind a more rustic texture, you can skip it. In other lazy news, I just mix the filling right in the baking dish instead of dirtying another bowl. Vanilla ice cream would make a magnificent topping, but I had some leftover heavy cream in the fridge, and a little bit splashed over the warm fruit was pretty incredible too.

Filling:
2 cups blueberries
2½ cups sliced peaches (about 4 large peaches), peeled if desired
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
Topping:
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup old-fashioned oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 tablespoons cold butter, diced

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a 2-quart ceramic or glass baking dish, combine blueberries, sliced peaches, lemon juice, lemon zest, vanilla extract, granulated sugar, and flour. Gently toss until fruit is well coated. Let the fruit mixture sit while you prepare the topping.
3. For the topping, in a large bowl, combine the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Stir together with a whisk. Mix in the butter with your fingers until the mixture comes together and you have big crumbles.
4. Sprinkle the crumble mixture evenly over the fruit. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the top is browned and crisp and the juices are bubbly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves: 6-8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Good. Refrigerate leftovers in airtight containers and either eat them cold or reheat them in the microwave.

LEMON COOKIES WITH TOASTED COCONUT FROSTING

If I had to name my mom’s favorite foods, at least as far as I know, lemon and coconut would top the list—so when I saw this recipe at Two Peas and Their Pod, I knew it would be the perfect treat to bake for her birthday. Frosted cookies don’t mail well, but I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate with Mom in person, as her birthday happened to be the first day of my parents’ annual California visit. I’m glad I had this idea, not only because everyone (and especially my mother) really enjoyed the cookies, but also because I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to making them if I hadn’t had such a festive semi-selfless excuse; frosted cookies are just so much more of a hassle than regular ones. Missing out on these tender, sunny sugar cookies with fluffy coconut-flavored frosting and crispy toasted coconut would have been a shame. After all, lemon and coconut are fave flavors of mine too…it must be genetic.

I used regular milk in the frosting because I didn’t want to open a whole can of coconut milk just for a spoonful of it, but if you happened to have some just sitting around, it would amp up the flavor even more—a triple coconut dose. The frosting turned out on the soft side, which, combined with the flakes of coconut on top, makes eating these a rather messy endeavor (they’re a little more tractable when frozen), but I didn’t want to add any more sugar to stiffen it because it was already quite sweet. It might have been cloying on its own, but the cookies themselves aren’t overly sugary, so together they balance out.

Cookies:
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons lemon zest
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Frosting:
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon coconut extract
1 tablespoon coconut milk (or regular milk)
1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
   
2. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Whisk and set aside.
   
3. In another small bowl, add granulated sugar and lemon zest. Rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingers until fragrant.
   
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl with a hand-held mixer), beat butter and sugar/lemon mixture together until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla, and fresh lemon juice. Mix until smooth.
   
5. Slowly beat in flour mixture on low speed until blended.
   
6. Drop dough by tablespoons onto prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Gently flatten dough with the palm of your hand.
   
7. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until cookies are just set and slightly golden brown. Cool cookies on baking sheet for 2 minutes and transfer to cooking racks. Cool completely.
   
8. While the cookies are cooling, make the frosting. In a stand mixer (or using a hand-held mixer), mix together butter and sugar. Mix on low speed until well blended and then increase speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes. Add coconut extract and coconut milk (or regular milk). Beat on medium speed for 1 minute or until frosting is smooth and creamy. You may need to add a little more sugar or coconut milk, depending on your desired consistency.
   
9. Once the cookies are out of the oven, turn the heat down to 325 and spread the coconut in a thin layer on a baking sheet. Put it in the oven just until light brown and fragrant, 5-10 minutes, stirring halfway through.
   
10. Frost the cooled cookies and sprinkle toasted coconut on top.

Yields: About 2 dozen
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Great; store in an airtight container for several days at room temperature or indefinitely in the freezer.

SOFT FROSTED SUGAR COOKIES

As I’ve mentioned before, I have nostalgic feelings about sugar cookies. Most of my childhood memories involve the flat, crisp-chewy style with thin, glaze-like icing. I could never resist these in a bakery window, especially when they came in unusual shapes with elaborate decoration, like the faces of Sesame Street characters (bonus points for garish blue or green that stained my tongue); my particular favorite was the “cookie on a stick” I would always choose as my treat for behaving myself when my mom dragged out shopping at the mall. But later in life, mostly thanks to office holiday celebrations, I fell hard for the polar-opposite sugar cookie model, the fluffy, impossibly soft, buttercream-frosted ones found in grocery store bakery sections. Why do I find them so irresistible? It’s that pillowy cakelike texture, even when it verges on being too floury (and no doubt artificial-preservative-laden). I always felt a little gross after finishing one, but the first bite was sheer heaven.

So when a recipe popped up at Annie’s Eats that promised to replicate the super-soft sugar-cookie experience, I had to give it a try. These cookies really do feed that craving, satisfyingly thick and tender but without the dense, doughy, chalky quality the storebought ones can have. And the flavor is infinitely better, buttery and intensely vanilla-spiked.

My one stumble has been with the frosting, which has turned out smooth and glaze-like instead of thick and creamy both times I’ve made these. The first time (pink, for Valentine’s Day 2013; yes, I’ve been holding out on you that long) the finished cookies were so homely (er, “rustic”) that I didn’t even want to photograph them, but as soon as I realized how addictively delicious they are, I knew I’d have to try again so I could post them. I figured I had put too much milk in the frosting and tried to dial it back on the second attempt, but got the same result (this time in robin’s-egg blue, in honor of spring). The frosting is delicious and I have no desire to change it, but you’ll see that mine didn’t resemble Annie’s original picture or the store version.

It’s strange to say because I always consider myself a chocolate-chip fan, but these might be some of my favorite cookies ever. It’s kind of a problem how good they are. If you’re a soft sugar-cookie fan, try this recipe.

















Cookies:
4½ cups all-purpose flour
4½ teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoons salt
1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
3 large eggs
5 teaspoons vanilla extract

Frosting:
5 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/3 cup (5 1/3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
7-8 tablespoons milk
Food coloring (optional)
Sprinkles (optional)

1. To make the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, and whisk together to blend. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar and beat together on medium-high speed until soft and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition and scraping down the bowl as needed. Blend in the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated and evenly mixed. Cover and chill the dough for 1 hour.
   
2. When you are ready to bake the cookies, scoop a scant quarter-cup of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the ball slightly and place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, spacing the cookies at least 2-3 inches apart. Bake about 10-12 minutes or just until set. (Do not overbake! The edges should be no more than very lightly browned, if at all.) Let cool on the baking sheet for several minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
3. To frost the cookies, place the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl. Add the melted butter, vanilla, and milk to the bowl and whisk until smooth. Whisk in additional milk as necessary, 1 teaspoon at a time, until you reach your desired consistency. Tint with food coloring if desired. Use an offset spatula or spoon to frost the cooled cookies. (If the frosting begins to thicken as you decorate, just continue to whisk in small amounts of milk to keep it workable.) Top with sprinkles if desired.

Yields: About 2 dozen large cookies
Time: 2 hours
Leftover potential: Great. I store mine in an airtight container in the freezer and they keep for weeks. 

POPCORN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

My work counterpart went through a phase where she was obsessed with popcorn. At least once a week she’d stop by Trader Joe’s on her lunch break and come back to her desk with a bag of cheddar or kettle corn. Then remorse would strike and she’d press me to share in her snack, which was just fine by me. So when her birthday rolled around and I wanted to bake a gift, something involving popcorn seemed a natural choice.

I remembered seeing a recipe for buttered popcorn cookies in the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, but when I Googled for it, I stumbled upon this Joy the Baker adaptation that improves upon that brilliance by adding chocolate to the mix. My coworker loves the sweet-salty combo, I have a long history with chocolate popcorn, and it doesn’t really seem like a birthday without chocolate, so it’s no surprise which version I settled on.

As an homage to the recipient’s particular fixation, I used TJ’s bagged kettle corn instead of making buttered popcorn from scratch. It turned out so well (not to mention being easier) that I’d be tempted to cut this corner again in the future, but I’m leaving in the directions for popping the corn yourself in case you’re more energetic (or farther from a Trader Joe’s) than I.

No matter what, these are some excellent treats. When I plopped the dough onto the baking sheets, it looked like clumps of popcorn just barely held together by batter, but they did indeed settle into proper cookies as they baked. If popcorn cookies sound weird to you, think addictively chewy chocolate chip cookies with an extra dose of salt and an occasional bit of crunch…the perfect movie-theater contraband snack. My coworker loved them, but they’ve definitely earned a spot in my personal cookie hall of fame too.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup yellow corn kernels
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips or coarsely chopped dark chocolate
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

1. To make the popcorn, place the oil in the bottom of a medium saucepan. Heat over medium heat. When oil is hot, add corn kernels in a single layer across the bottom of the pan. Cover the pot but keep the lid ajar to let a bit of steam out. Listen to the popcorn as it pops. Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the burner once the popping has subsided. Sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon salt and drizzle with the 1 tablespoon of melted butter. Toss well, then pick through the popcorn to remove any unpopped kernels. Set aside to cool. You’ll have about 4 to 4½ cups of popcorn.

2. Preheat then oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until butter is pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla extract for one more minute. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and beat on low until just combined. Remove the bowl from the stand mixer and use a spatula to fold in the popcorn. It might seem like a disproportionate amount of popcorn considering the cookie batter, but keep folding; the popcorn will break down a bit as it’s folded in. Fold in chocolate.

4. Scoop dough by the heaping tablespoonful onto the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with coarse sea salt. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes or until the edges and tops are golden brown. Remove from the oven, allow to rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Yields: 2 dozen
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Good; store in an airtight container at room temperature or in the freezer.

COCONUT CARDAMOM TAPIOCA PUDDING

Speed blogging! I’m busy busy busy and tired tired tired, but I feel bad for repeatedly neglecting you over the past month, so I’m just going to crank out some entries in a more slipshod manner than usual. Bear with me. First up: Another chapter in my long history of pudding mania. I saw this recipe at Smitten Kitchen and thought, “Hmm, do I like tapioca?” I vaguely recall my mom serving the instant stuff when I was a kid but don’t remember having any strong feelings toward it, although apparently tapioca is polarizing stuff, if the comments on the recipe are a fair representation. People seem to either love it or hate it, with texture being the main sticking point. I tend to like creamy-chewy concoctions, so I suspected I’d be in the tapioca-liking camp, and since coconut milk, vanilla, and cardamom turned my rice pudding indifference into passionate love, I figured they could do the same for my tapioca ignorance. I bought some Bob’s Red Mill small pearl tapioca (which reminds me alarmingly of Styrofoam fragments), fiddled with the recipe to mimic the rice pudding (not being a fan of either mangos or effort, I skipped the toppings from the Smitten Kitchen version), and got to work.

It turns out that while I can see why tapioca weirds people out, I do like it, especially when it’s dressed up in so many of my favorite flavors. It doesn’t hurt that it’s incredibly easy to make, either (although, as you can see, it did prove hard to photograph). Soak, mix, simmer, and you’re done! Its starchiness turns it into pudding without much effort on your part, and I find the texture fascinating. This is a comforting, nursery-style dessert that still feels relatively light and refreshing. Since I now have a giant bag of tapioca to use up, I’m extra glad the experiment worked out.

1/3 cup small pearl tapioca
2½ cups coconut milk (light or full-fat; a 13.5-ounce can contains 1¾ cups)
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon table salt or a heaped ¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or the seeds from 1 small vanilla bean
¼-½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1. In a medium saucepan, soak tapioca in coconut milk for 30 minutes.

2. Whisk in egg yolk, sugar, salt, and vanilla bean seeds, if using (if using extract, you’ll add it in a bit). Place saucepan over medium heat until mixture comes to a simmer, then reduce it to very low heat so it’s barely bubbling. Cook until it thickens, about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

3. Remove from heat and add cardamom, plus vanilla extract, if using. (Pudding will seem thin, about the consistency of thick gravy, but it will set after chilling in the fridge.) Pour into pudding cups to chill for several hours or overnight.

Serves: 4-6
Time: 1 hour plus chilling time
Leftover potential: Good.

DARK CHOCOLATE, PISTACHIO, AND SMOKED SEA SALT COOKIES

Why don’t we put pistachios in cookies more often? Walnuts, pecans, and almonds steal the spotlight, and macadamia nuts have their white-chocolate niche, but pistachios are super delicious yet seem to get little love. They finally get to be superstars in this recipe, transforming otherwise ordinary (though always tasty) chocolate chip cookies into something truly special. You might be distracted by the exoticness of the smoked salt, as indeed I was when I first bookmarked this recipe from Joy the Baker, but it plays a supporting role here, and indeed if you were to use regular coarse sea salt instead, I wouldn’t scold you. I recalled seeing smoked salt in grinders at Trader Joe’s for a few bucks, but of course when I went to actually buy it I found it had been discontinued, as are so many TJ’s products just at the moment you really need them. Thinking that these would just be plain old chocolate chip cookies without the smoked salt, I went to Whole Foods and spent a rather ridiculous sum of money for a container I will now spend the rest of my life trying to use up. Don’t be like me! The smoked salt is great if you can get it, but the pistachios were the real revelation here. We both loved these cookies, to the point that A repeatedly exclaimed how good they were every time we ate one. Definitely a keeper—and not just because I now have a surplus of smoked salt on my hands.

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ cups dark chocolate chips or chunks (I’ll admit I just used semisweet and it was still great)
1 cup shelled pistachios, coarsely chopped
Smoked sea salt for topping

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter and sugars together until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the egg and beat in for about 1 minute. Add vanilla extract and beat to incorporate.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the mixture all at once to the butter mixture. Beat on low speed until just incorporated. Finally, mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.

4. Dollop or scoop cookie dough by the 2 tablespoonful onto prepared baking tins. Leave about 2 inches of room between each cookie. Sprinkle generously with smoked sea salt.

5. Bake cookies for 18 minutes, or until just golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the pan for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yields: 2 dozen
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: Great, either in a sealed container at room temperature or frozen.

CHOCOLATE COCONUT OATMEAL COOKIES

Is it too soon to talk about cookies? These are the next item on my long backlog list and I really feel you ought to know about them. Sure, all the food blogs are still full of green smoothies and if your cupboards are anything like mine they’re still full of leftover Christmas treats, but if you don’t feel up making these just yet, bookmark them for later. Because if I’d managed to get this recipe posted in 2013, it probably would have garnered a spot on my list of the year’s top recipes.

I know these look really basic, even homely, and I wasn’t expecting anything especially remarkable. I mean, chocolate and coconut are great together and oatmeal cookies are my fave, so obviously that trifecta is what lured me to try this recipe when I saw it at Tasty Kitchen. But except for the slight twist of replacing some butter with coconut oil, this is about as straightforward as cookie formulas come. Yet I ended up making them twice last year, and considering I don’t make cookies more than once a month (excepting December) and have a wealth of great recipes already on file, that’s pretty remarkable. These might be my ideal everyday cookie. (OK, not every day, but ordinary, not special-occasion.)

One thing I like about these is that they’re not too sweet, but I was too lazy to go to Whole Foods for the unsweetened shredded coconut and got good results using the less-sweetened version from Trader Joe’s, which is still way less cloying than Baker’s or other standard grocery-store versions.



















1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup (heaping) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3 tablespoons coconut oil
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (unsweetened)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

3. In an electric mixer, cream together the butter, coconut oil, and sugars. Scrape down the sides and then add the egg and vanilla; mix to combine.

4. On low speed, gradually add the flour and cocoa mixture and mix until incorporated. Add the shredded coconut and oats and mix. Add chocolate chips and mix until just folded in.

5. Form dough into balls about the size of a heaping tablespoon and place on baking sheets lined with silicon mats or parchment paper.

6. Bake for 11 minutes or until just solidified. Remove from oven and let cool for about 2 minutes more on the sheet, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

Yields: 3 dozen
Time: 35 minutes
Leftover potential: Great; freeze well.

ROASTED STRAWBERRY AND TOASTED COCONUT POPSICLES

I know, it’s not strawberry season for most of you, and it’s not popsicle weather either, and this picture is kinda crappy. (Popsicles turn out to be surprisingly difficult to photograph, especially when they’re melting—it actually was popsicle weather way back when I made these—and I really want to eat the subject. Hunger is my number-one obstacle to becoming a better food photographer.) But I had to share, because popsicles! I made them! And they were delicious. So you’ll just have to bookmark this for next summer.

When I was a kid, my mom used to make pudding pops (from Jell-O boxed pudding mix; pistachio was my favorite) in Tupperware molds. (These, to be precise.) Periodically I’ve seen fancy foodie popsicle recipes on blogs and in magazines and thought about making them, but it never seemed worth buying special equipment for. Popsicles are refreshing and all, but I’ll happily pass them over for ice cream. Then I won some popsicle molds (these, to be precise) in some random departmental contest at my old job…and promptly shoved them into a deep back corner of the cupboard and forgot about them for nearly a year, until I spotted this recipe at Joy the Baker. Roasted strawberries and toasted coconut? Hold the damn phone.

Why didn’t anyone tell me popsicles could be this good? They’re a snap to make but don’t taste like anything you can buy at the store: creamy coconut milk with toasty coconut shreds, rich red strawberry concentrated via roasting, not too much sweetness and just a hint of lime for contrast. This immediately launched a popsicle obsession for me, but none of the other recipes I’ve tried so far have held a candle to this one.

Trader Joe’s only sells a light coconut milk, which works well for most uses but would have been too icy when frozen, so I tried TJ’s coconut cream instead and it was fantastic for this purpose, thick and rich with a purer flavor than any other coconut milk I’ve had. I also used TJ’s shredded coconut, which is only mildly sweetened, far less sugary than the Baker’s stuff. I daresay you could use straight-up unsweetened if you wanted. I had to make this in two half-batches because I only have six popsicle molds, but it was no big deal—I made the full amount of roasted strawberry puree and stored half of it in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days, where it held up just fine until I was ready to make the other popsicles, at which point I concocted the rest of the coconut mixture.

1/3 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Juice of 1 lime, divided
1 (15-ounce) can whole-fat coconut milk or coconut cream, well shaken
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle coconut onto a rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven until golden brown, about 3-5 minutes (keep a close eye on it). Remove from oven and place coconut in a small bowl to cool.

2. Place strawberries on the baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Place in the oven to roast until fragrant and soft, about 18-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and add the strawberries to the bowl of a food processor or blender. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and juice of half a lime. Blend until smooth.

3. In a small bowl, stir together coconut milk, remaining lime juice, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, and vanilla extract. Stir the toasted coconut into the milk mixture.

4. Dollop a spoonful of strawberry into the bottom of each popsicle mold. Stir coconut milk and add to the popsicle molds, filling them about 2/3 full. Spoon more strawberry into each mold and top with remaining coconut milk.

5. Add popsicle mold sticks and lids. Freeze for at least 6 hours before serving.

Yields: About 10 popsicles
Time: 40 minutes (plus 6 hours to chill)
Leftover potential: Of course. Ours were eaten within a week, but they should keep in the freezer as long as you like (within reason).

CARDAMOM COOKIES

I made these cookies last Christmas and never managed to take a photo of them. I made them again this Christmas and only remembered to get a picture of them when they were already placed on the Christmas Eve cookie trays, ready to be devoured. So the photo isn’t the best, but honestly, they’re very homely cookies. It doesn’t help that I can’t seem to manage to get the shape to resemble the illustration in the original Sunset recipe—last year they spread so much that the two ends of the horseshoe fused together (A said they looked like butts), and this year they didn’t flatten out at all (A said they looked like turds). I’m not sure why they have to be in a horseshoe shape; I’m tempted to give up on it entirely next time, but then they’d just be plain brown circles, which could look even less tempting. At least I can pretend this odd shape has some sort of charming traditional Scandinavian significance. Plus, they resemble the letter C, which seems very apropos: C is for “cookie,” and “cardamom,” and “Christmas.”

Anyone who’s actually brave enough to grab one of these unglamorous blobs off the platter is in for a rare treat, at least if they like cardamom, which fortunately many of my family members do. As I’ve mentioned many times, I adore the stuff and am always adding it to recipes that don’t call for it, so it’s refreshing to see it featured so prominently. This is a serious dose of cardamom in a simple, buttery cookie. The recipe seems a bit odd—it doesn’t have many of the usual cookie ingredients, like eggs, salt, or vanilla—I promise you, it works. These have already become a family favorite, and buttlike, turdlike, or plain-Jane as they may look, they’re part of my holiday ritual now.

P.S. I finally got around to adding a button to my posts to convert them into a friendlier format for printing! I was printing off some recipes from other blogs today and lamenting how annoying it is when that feature isn’t available, forcing me to print a lot of unnecessary material spread over many pages or paste the recipe into Word and print from there. Then I realized that I’m a huge hypocrite because that’s exactly what I put people through with my own blog. (I guess I’m still in denial that anyone might be reading, let alone cooking from, this site.) Or perhaps you’re all cool and modern and you don’t print things anymore and you just cook directly from your iPad or phone or whatever? Well, la-di-dah. But this button also converts the posts to a PDF and lets you email them to yourself, so you might still find it useful. See what a nice friend I am?

1 cup (8 ounces) butter, at room temperature
⅔ cup sugar
1 tablespoon dark molasses
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. In a large bowl, with a mixer on medium speed, beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add molasses and beat until well blended.

2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cardamom, and cinnamon. Beat into butter mixture until well blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill until dough is firm, about 1 hour.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. With lightly floured hands, roll each ball into a rope about 2½ inches long and ½ inch thick; bend each rope into a horseshoe. Place cookies about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined or buttered baking sheets.

5. Bake cookies just until edges begin to brown, 7 to 9 minutes; rotating pans halfway through baking. Let cookies cool on pans for 5 minutes, then use a spatula to transfer to racks to cool completely.

Yields: About 3 dozen
Time: 1½ hours
Leftover potential: Good; freeze well

PUMPKIN BUTTERSCOTCH OATMEAL COOKIES

I love trying new cookie recipes, because they rarely if ever turn out badly. In this case, how could adding pumpkin and spices (yes, I am firmly on board the pumpkin train after years of resistance, and that train is delicious) to the standard oatmeal scotchies recipe be anything but tasty? The pumpkin creates a nice amber color and tender cakiness, the spices help balance the intensely sweet, slightly artificial flavor (I say that in a loving way) of the butterscotch chips, and the whole thing is heartily fallish (if not very photogenic; I think mine are especially homely).

The major change I made to the original recipe was to make my own spice mixture, instead of using premixed pumpkin pie spice augmented by other spices. I went with a similar combination to the one I’ve used in all my other pumpkin recipes, but because I didn’t feel like doing endless math to match the exact amount, it made a little more than the recipe calls for, so you’ll have find some other use for the extra (I threw it into my refrigerator oatmeal the next day). I also increased the salt from ¼ teaspoon to ½ teaspoon, which seemed necessary to counteract the richness of the butterscotch chips (it’s also the amount used in the traditional oatmeal scotchies recipe, at least as published on the Quaker oatmeal package). I would maybe consider cutting back slightly on the butterscotch chips; 1½ cups (nearly but not quite an entire bag, according to my measurements) made for a very sweet result, and some of my cookies seemed more like clumps of chips loosely held together with a bit of dough. I found myself longing for more of the oatmeal-pumpkin portion, so I might try just 1 cup next time. Lastly, I think I could have made my cookies a little larger, because I got about 10 more than the original recipe did. But since when is having extra cookies really a problem?

1¼ cup cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cardamom
⅛ teaspoon ground ginger
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
⅛ teaspoon allspice
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1–1½ cups butterscotch chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. Measure out 1¼ teaspoons of the spice mixture and add it to the bowl with the flour mixture, whisking well to combine. Save the rest of the spice mixture for another use.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment (or just in a large bowl using a handheld electric mixer), beat butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth and creamy. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix again. Add pumpkin and mix until combined (mixture may appear curdled, but it’s fine).

5. Turn the mixer speed to low and slowly add in flour mixture, mixing until just combined. Stir in oats and butterscotch chips.

6. Drop dough by heaping tablespoons onto prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookies are set and golden. Remove cookies from the oven and cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.

Yields: About 3 dozen cookies (original recipe said 2½ dozen; I got 40)
Time: 45 minutes
Leftover potential: Good; freezes well.

COCONUT LIME SUGAR COOKIES

When I make cookies, I usually want something involving chocolate or oatmeal, often both. Sugar cookies seem to boring to bother with—until I taste one and am reminded that they were one of my go-tos as a kid. This is probably because they tended to be frosting delivery devices, but still, a plain sugar cookie is nearly as delightfully nostalgic. What tempted me in this recipe, from Everybody Likes Sandwiches via Poppytalk, was the lime and the coconut, two of my favorite flavors—especially in the summer—but a combination I’ve never tried in cookie form. I was surprised to find that those elements are fairly subtle here, but I wasn’t too disappointed, because what resulted was essentially an excellent sugar cookie with the perfect crisp-chewy texture, but with intriguing notes of citrus and toasted coconut. They taste a lot like the sugar cookies my mom made when I was little, which she made with lemon extract (almond, of course, being reserved solely for holiday spritz). And they’re incredibly addictive.

Maybe it was because I baked these on a hot day, but mine turned out completely different than the ones in the photos accompanying the original recipe; those are thick and rounded, whereas mine are wide and flat, bakery-style. Whatever I did, I want to do it again, because the texture was my favorite thing about these cookies. I kept daydreaming about how perfect they would be as the base for an ice cream sandwich. Someone should get on that, stat.

These cookies are already on the sweet side, so do make sure you use unsweetened coconut. I found mine in the bulk section at Whole Foods.

2¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened (dried) shredded coconut
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1½ cups white sugar, plus about ¼–½ cup extra for coating the cookies
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest from 1 or 2 limes
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1. Toast coconut in a small sauté pan over medium heat until fragrant and lightly browned.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment or Silpat.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, toasted coconut, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large mixing bowl using a hand-held mixer, cream the butter and 1½ cups sugar together until fluffy. Add the egg and mix well, then add the vanilla, lime zest, and lime juice. Slowly mix in the dry ingredients until combined.

5. Place some sugar (start with about ¼ cup and add more as needed) in a shallow bowl. Form dough into heaping-teaspoon-sized balls and then roll in sugar. Flatten slightly and place on lined cookie sheets two inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned. Cool for a few minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes: 2–3 dozen
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: High, if stored in the freezer; if stored at room temperature, the chewy texture will disappear after a couple of days.

COCONUT CARDAMOM RICE PUDDING

I just can’t care about rice. I mean, whatever, I respect its right to exist, I recognize that it’s a vital and versatile component of many cuisines, it’s fine when it appears on my plate, it adds substance to a meal, food sits on top of it, it makes a nice vehicle for sauce, it doesn’t taste like much, blah blah yawn. I don’t seek it out, is what I’m saying. I don’t specifically order it in restaurants and I don’t cook it at home. I used to think I felt the same way about rice pudding. I mean, rice pudding is definitely preferable to plain rice, but if you gave me a choice between rice pudding and regular old nonrice pudding, I’d pick normal pudding every time.

But then my friends came to visit and cooked me an unbelievably delicious fish curry. There was leftover rice. I thought I’d be thrifty and make it into pudding. I added coconut milk, vanilla, and cardamom. I fell head over heels in love. And now I’m screwed because I don’t have a regular supply of leftover rice. Either I’m going to have to start making rice, or I’m going to have to find myself a similar rice pudding recipe that starts with uncooked rice. Oh, the injustice!

The recipe I found via Food Blog Search, from Vanilla Garlic, called for 1½ cups of cooked rice, but I had 2 cups, so I used it all and increased the liquid contents slightly, probably not in very scientific proportions. The recipe said to use 2% or whole milk, but I used 1% mixed with the dregs of a carton of heavy cream I’d been wanting to use up. In the future, if I don’t have cream already on hand, I’ll probably just try making it with 1%, because I hate buying multiple kinds of milk. I don’t think it would cause any major texture issues; you might just have to cook the pudding a bit longer to get it to thicken. I also used light coconut milk. I didn’t have any vanilla beans, so I used extract, and I added the cardamom because I adore it, and because I wanted to emulate Indian-restaurant kheer, which is the most enjoyable form of rice pudding I’ve experienced. I wasn’t quite sure about the cooking time, because the original recipe said to just “simmer over medium-low heat for 40 minutes.” I suspected this might mean to bring it to a boil at a higher heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 40 minutes, but I decided to take it literally, start the burner at medium-low, set the pot on it, and set the timer for 40 minutes. It took nearly half an hour just to start simmering, and at least another half-hour to reduce to a pudding-like consistency. No problem if you’ve got the time to babysit it, but if you want to speed things along I suspect it would be better to get the simmer started at a higher temperature, then turn it down.

I was so concerned about my pudding being overly soupy that I cooked it down more than I’d planned, forgetting that it would thicken a bit more once I took it off the heat. I ended up loving the texture, though—velvety, but with a satisfying chew. Because the leftover rice I’d used was broken rice, the pieces ended up quite small, reminiscent of tapioca. Even though I’m not sure whether anything bad could happen when you mix coconut milk, sugar, vanilla, and cardamom, I was still blown away by how delicious it was, especially since I’d improvised/fudged so much of the recipe along the way. Since the rice is already cooked, I don’t really think you can really mess this up too much short of burning it—just add the amount of sugar that tastes good to you and a reasonable amount of liquid, and cook it until it resembles pudding. The result is cold, creamy, not too sweet, and very refreshing as a summer dessert. And apparently, it’s made me a rice pudding convert.

2 cups cold cooked rice
1 14-ounce can coconut milk (I used light)
3 cups milk
½ cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 vanilla bean, insides scraped out, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼–½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the rice, coconut milk, milk, sugar, and salt. If you’re using a vanilla bean, add the seeds and the scraped-out pod.

2. Simmer over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened, at least 40 minutes, then remove from heat. If using vanilla bean, remove the pod; if using extract, stir it in. Stir in the cardamom.

3. Divide into individual servings (ramekins, small bowls, teacups, whatever), cover, and chill.

Serves: 6
Time: 1 to 1½ hours
Leftover potential: Great; will keep in sealed containers in the fridge for days.