Another Win for Laziness: Chocolate Chip (Etc) Cookie Bars

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The first time, I made them because I needed something easy and transportable for a graduation party and I knew I wouldn't have time to wait for the butter in my freezer to soften, or to make multiple batches of drop cookies.  I googled 'melted butter cookie bars' and voila!  Bloggers to the rescue, as usual.

The recipe was super simple and I had all the ingredients, plus some pecans I thought would enhance the flavor of half the bars (we have a friend with a nut allergy so I wanted to leave half plain), and nobody was expecting cookies so the pressure was off.  I gave it a go and an hour later my companion and I were burning our fingers trying to 'test' the batch.

#chocolatechipcookiebars with pecans only on half (out of deference to our allergic brethren). #noms #baking #stuffourfaces #prettythings

A photo posted by Anne H. Putnam (@ahputnam) on May 23, 2015 at 3:38pm PDT

Once we were able to try a bite, we agreed: these things are good.  So good that I ate three that night, which is unusual for me – often when I bake something, no matter how tasty it is, I tire of it quickly and am obliged to convince someone else to eat the rest.  It's no coincidence that I favor tall boyfriends with hollow legs ;)

In this case, though, not only did I eat a bunch of the baked good in question but I also started thinking about making them again almost immediately upon leaving the party (I nearly brought home a couple bars but I stopped just short of embarrassing myself that much).  So when I was gifted two glass jars of Nutella from Italy and was antsy to use one as a wine glass, I knew exactly how to put the Nutella inside to good use.

The point is this: these bars are infinitely adaptable.  They were delicious with pecans, indulgent with Nutella, and likely would be even more toothsomely tasty with oats – that's my plan for next time!  In other words, make these.  As soon as humanly possible.

You're welcome.


Chocolate Chip (Etc) Cookie Bars
    Adapted for pecans/Nutella from Em's Bytes  
    (I doubled the recipe the first time and used an 8x13 pan – ain't nothin' wrong with twice the amount of this goodness)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C and grease an 8" pan, square or cake, whatever you have.
 
Mix together in a large bowl:
     1/2c (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
     1/4c sugar
     1/2c brown sugar

Beat in: 
     1 egg
     1 tsp vanilla
 
Add and stir until combined:
     1 c flour
     1 tsp baking powder
     1/4 tsp salt

Stir in:
     1c semi-sweet chocolate chips
     1c chopped pecans (optional – you can also place them on top of the dough once it's in the pan, if you fancy the look or want to limit their reach) 

Spread into prepared pan, pausing to top with blobs of Nutella if desired, and bake 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. (Side note: mine never got as golden as I'd like, but I'm glad I pulled the first batch out when I did anyway, as they were getting close to dry.  I suggest using the cake tester method if in doubt, and remembering that gooey cookies are always better than dry.)

Last Minute and Low Supply: Vanilla Bean (Apricot) Shortbread Cookies

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(This will be a shorty because I've been asked for the recipe enough times in the last 24 hours to get me to write the post the day after these cookies were baked and consumed.  I know – bonkers fast for me!)

I went to a friend's Summer Solstice barbecue yesterday, and when I woke up late, a bit hungover after a night out, I suddenly realized that while I had offered to bake cookies for the party I had a seriously limited stock in my cabinets.  I knew I had butter (in fact, despite being tipsy the night before when I got home, I had even remembered to take a stick out of the freezer and let it soften on the counter), and I knew I had flour and sugar, but I was eggless, and my roommate who moved out recently took her raising agents with her, so I was pretty much at a loss for ideas on what to make.  BUT THEN!  Inspiration struck.  Shortbread doesn't have eggs or raising agents!

Blogged in the Nick of Time: Easter Baking Experiments

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Last weekend, my brother's girlfriend (and my friend) Rachel and I did an Easter crafting day, where we made ridiculously cute magnets to gift to family members in their Easter baskets – we also decided that this weekend we would do even more crafting, this time in the form of baking.  She set her heart on making these super cute fluffy chick cookies, with a further lamb variation of her own invention, while I chose the much easier-looking (if frequently warned-against) bunny bread rolls that have been all over Pinterest of late.  I bought frozen parkerhouse rolls and she showed up in Napa with all her many ingredients in hand, and right after a boozy brunch and a wee wander we came back to the house and got to work.

And by 'got to work', I mean that I pulled some rolls out to defrost and she got started on the first of six or seven relatively involved steps.  This post is going to be mostly photos, with a bit of description alongside, but since (spoiler alert) Rachel's recipe turned out to be a bust and mine is little more than a set of vague instructions, there will be more links and tips than actual directions here, in case you want to recreate anything.

A Dream Deferred: Italian Almond Cookies

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When my guy and I were in Rome a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend for Christmas, the apartment we stayed in was just down the street from a tiny bakery that had the reputation of selling some of the best cookies and panettone in the whole city – a lucky accident of which we took full advantage!  Every few days we would wander in and make use of my ever-more-limited Italian to buy a bag of treats: chocolate-dipped Christmas trees, jam studded thumbprints, mini pistachio biscotti, and our absolute favorites, chewy, dense, heavy-sweet almond cookies.  Those ones were always the first to go, and we kept finding ourselves having to negotiate over who got the last one.  If only I didn't require so much time stalling while I tried to remember the word for almond (mandorla – of course now I can remember it!), we might have just gotten bagfuls of those each time and called it a day!

So of course the minute we got back to the UK I looked up a recipe.  And then I bookmarked that recipe, bought ground almonds, and... promptly put off making the cookies.  I think I avoided it for so long at first because almond paste (one of the main ingredients) is super expensive, but after a while I just kept forgetting about them.

'Paris Is Always a Good Idea' – Dark Chocolate Sables and Some News

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As usual, I've been wanting to spread the news about these amazing sables (or, as my French co-worker corrected me, sablés) since I first baked them, but as usual life has gotten in the way.  In face, I have an unusually good excuse: this post is especially apropos because the BF took me on a surprise trip to Paris the weekend after I made these French cookies – and he proposed!  Of course I said yes (if you've been following this blog for a while you know that he and I are already practically married), and have been consumed by wedding planning insanity (on top of work and book promotion) ever since.

Nonetheless, even with a head full of even more things than before (sigh), I still can't stop thinking about these little beauties – ooh, maybe I'll make a batch for the wedding!  Ahem, sorry.  I get distracted a lot these days.  Where were we?  Right!  I can't stop thinking about these sables, so it's high time I passed them on to you all so you can obsess over them too.  Trust me: they're worth the lost sleep.

Beauty Comes from Within: Sexy-Ugly Hedgehog Cookies

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One of the BF's favorite kind of cookies is oatmeal chocolate chip, for which he'll hardly get a raised eyebrow from me: the toothsomeness of an oatmeal cookies with the sweetness of chocolate?  Obviously.  I myself am a fan of the good old oatmeal raisin as well, but the more people I poll, the more I feel like this cookie has unfairly fallen out of favor.  Alas, poor oatmeal raisin... well, more for me!

Anyway, when I went to visit the BF in Boston a few weekends ago, I planned on bringing him some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but for some reason (I guess because, really, I wanted to eat them), I went with my gram's chocolate chip shortbread cookies instead.  He was never any the wiser, and those cookies are the bomb, so I didn't feel too guilty.  I did, however, find myself craving them the following week (I suppose the idea had planted and refused to let go!), and as I was going to have some girlfriends over for dinner – and needed to make some cookies to mail to a friend for his birthday – I had an excuse to make them.

Work/Life Balance and Lemon Sugar Cookies

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Life has been manic lately.  I know every third post for the last two years has probably started that way, but this time it's really true (or maybe life just gets more and more manic as we get older, and manic takes on a whole new meaning every year??  Oh god, I hope not...).  Anyway, work has gotten increasingly more intense, and as of next week I'm going to be working in the office every day (as opposed to my current schedule of half-in, half-out), and things with the book are heating up too – the relevance of all these facts to you lovely sweet-toothed readers is that posting may be a bit sparse in the coming months.  I'll definitely do my best, as this little corner of the internets is one of my favorite places to spend that in-between time (not quite free, as in time to stuff my face and watch Downton Abbey, but not quite work, as in bust my butt and get paid a little bit for it), but these days I have little time to bake, and even littler daytime to photograph.

Nonetheless, we all know I'm not going to stop baking altogether, and between my usual stress-baking tendencies and the fact that we're doing our own Thanksgiving over here this year, there should still be plenty of fodder for posts.  But you may have to forgive me if I'm not super creative; when I'm stressed and pressed for time, all I want to do is throw together something I'm pretty sure will taste good.

And that was the plan with these cookies.  Lemon + sugar + butter = obvious choice.

Falling into Nostalgia Again: Apple Spice Cookies

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One of the times I miss the US most is the first week of fall, when that first bite hits the air in the mornings and people start pulling out scarves and boots from the backs of their closets and the leaves haven't quite turned yet but you can tell they will be soon.  This time of year always brings the nostalgia pretty hard, and usually I cope with it by taking long walks in the park with the BF, stopping for coffee and a snuggle, and, of course, baking.

This year, the BF just happens to be abroad – back in the States, actually – for a sort of med-student study-abroad program.  I've been handling the separation pretty well, due mostly to being run off my feet with work, book stuff, and general back-from-vacation admin, but when the leaves started turning I did start to pine a bit (no pun intended).  Still, I was determined not to mope (or eat my feelings any more than I'm already wont to do); I may not be able to take long, chilly walks with my guy, but I can still bake, dang it!

Easy Friendships and Easier Dessert: Pistachio and Blueberry Biscotti

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I have a great girlfriend in London who is that wonderful combination of nice (without being too nice), hilarious (without being too catty), and understanding (without letting me get away with too much moaning), and best of all, she gets along famously with the BF.  Instead of glazing over the way I do when he talks about medicine too much or tells a story for a little too long, she is always rapt and encouraging – is it any wonder he loves her almost as much as I do?

Given how awesome this friend of mine is, of course she has a standing invitation to our flat for dinner, and when she moved a mere 20 minute walk down the road the invitation was reiterated with even more vehemence.  Now, unfortunately, she's a very busy gal, so we don't have her over as much as we'd like, but she does come round relatively often, and when she does I always make sure we finish the meal with something sweet and satisfying, and preferably something that packs well so I can send her home with a doggie bag.

Leftover Egg Yolks? Make Sugar Cookies!

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I'm off to San Francisco in an hour, for a nice long visit with friends and family (I finally get to meet my first niece!) and a wee vacay, but I wanted to get a quicky post in before I disappear for a week or two.

So, remember that promise I made in the meringue post about a use for the leftover yolks?  Well, I'm going to deliver!  These sugar cookies are easy and quick, and best of all, they use egg yolks in place of whole eggs, which is not only convenient but also delicious and rich and chewy.

Signs of Growing Up: My First Meringues

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I had a bunch of girlfriends over for dinner a couple weeks ago, and one of them (whom I nonetheless love very much) is a serial dieter.  Not in a fad-diet kind of way, more in a oh-no-I-shouldn't kind of way.  It makes me sad, since I show my love through sugar and butter, but I was determined not to either a) do without dessert at my dinner party or b) make her watch everyone else eat pound cake while she tried not to salivate.  I did a bit of research, skipped a lot of recipes that involved Splenda or other unnatural ingredients (no offense to people who use that stuff, but I always find I can taste the difference, and anyway my dieter-friend is a bit of a purist), and wound up back at Joy the Baker, where I reacquainted myself with a recipe I'd bookmarked weeks before, for vanilla bean and cocoa nib meringues.

Ain't Nothin' Wrong with a Classic: Chocolate Chip Cookies

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 Can it be?  Can it really be possible that I haven't ever posted a recipe on this blog for that most classic of classics, the chocolate chip cookie?  How can that be so?

Well, I guess it doesn't matter how the omission came to pass – the important thing is to rectify it.

Less Healthy, Still Easy: Peppermint Cream Cookies

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One of my favorite things about the holidays – besides the family time and vacations and trees and frolicking – has always been the limited-edition flavor combos that companies put out, usually involving peppermint and chocolate in some combination or another.  I used to hoard peppermint bark and mint M&M's and dark chocolate York patties for weeks, long after my stocking had been packed away in the cedar chest with the rest of the holiday decorations.  But, my love of chocolate aside, my absolute favorite treats were always pure peppermint.  And I wasn't alone.

My friend Rachel practically swoons over the mint M&M's every year, and my college roommate, Emily, and I used to go to the grocery store in St Louis (Schnucks!) every December and buy huge tubs of Dryer's (or, in the Midwest, Edy's) peppermint ice cream while it was still on the shelves.  We'd stick one or two gallons in the back of the freezer and pull them out for a scoop (or a naughty late-night spoonful straight from the carton) well into the warmer months.  It was one of my favorite flavors, so much more pure than mint chip, and somehow so exotic because it was only in the shops for a short time (unfortunately, I later discovered that one of my fave ice creameries in SF, Swensen's, does a scrumptious peppermint ice cream, year-round, but luckily parking around there is a nightmare so it still retains its rarity, and thus its charm).

Buon Natale di Roma!

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Ciao, tutti!  I'm on a much-needed vacation in Rome right now, but I couldn't neglect the blog during the bakingest season of the year, so I'm leaving you with this recipe for fabulously easy, majorly impressive homemade biscotti.

I made these guys for a dinner party back in early November (more on that to come, as it was my first time doing a full-on dinner for a vegetarian-inclusive crowd), and everyone was so surprised to hear that I'd baked them from scratch.  I just brushed off the oohs and aahs with a shrug: no biggie.

Trust Me on This One: Blueberry Oatmeal Cookies

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Okay, first things first, I need to acknowledge the elephant in the room: these pics.  They're not so good...and there aren't very many of them.  This post is unlikely to get past the guards at Foodgawker, or be pinned on Pinterest, or be bookmarked solely for the beauty of the photos.  For that reason, I've been putting off writing this post.  But then, on a long and awkward train journey to Edinburgh, I ate the last of these cookies, and I decided I couldn't let the photos hold me back anymore – the world needs to know about these chewy gems.

I'm not even kidding.  These cookies are that good.  They can make a squished train ride bearable, a cold day feel nostalgically wintry, and a loved one forgive a stress-related slight.  They're magic, and they're so easy.

Fall Baking, Without the Pumpkin: Dairy Free Spice Cookies

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The air is biting, the leaves are turning, and the adolescent swans down on the canal are finally starting to turn white, which means two things: 1. the swans are currently a mottled grey-white, which is adorably hilarious, and 2. it's time to bust out the fall recipes!

Now, I'm not the most creative cook, so fall recipes, for me, usually just involve pumpkin.  I love pumpkin.  Pie, bread (or bread, or bread), muffins, oatmeal – you name it and put pumpkin in it, I'll eat it.   

Healthifying a Craving: Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

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My cravings aren't always butter-related.  Often I crave sushi, or heirloom tomatoes, or noodles.

But if we're going to be really honest here (and I think we should be – this is a safe space for honesty and cravings), I have to admit that the majority of my sudden desires involve copious amounts of sugar, egg, flour, and yes, butter.

Cinnadoodlesnaps!

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Y'all know how much I love cinnamon, right?  Have we talked about this before?  Oh, yes, we have.  A lot.  So I ask you this: how is it possible that I never tried to make gingersnaps with cinnamon taking the lead?  HOW?

Okay, it doesn't matter how.  We'll just chalk that up to yet another brainfart on my part.  The point is, dear people, I've now tried it...and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go back.  The cinnamon, oh, god, the cinnamon has me swooning.

Dead Easy: Chocolate Chip Blondies

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I love a one-bowl recipe.  Lately, with my MA course ending and changes at my job and this massive manuscript edit looming over my head, all I've been wanting to make are easy, comforting, quick recipes – had you noticed?  With the exception of the lemon cream pie, nearly everything I've made in the past 2 months has come together in under an hour and involved one bowl, a couple of measuring cups, and a (usually lined with foil) baking dish/tray.  Few steps, few ingredients, few dishes to clean up – great result.  That's my kind of recipe.

For Real This Time: Momofuku Compost Cookies

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Okay, so I know I already waxed lyrical about the wonders of the Momofuku method as a base for my favorite cookie ever, but I did also (finally) try the recipe as it's meant to be made: with all sorts of weird, shouldn't-that-be-savory things stuffed into it.  And I wanted to share my experience.

A couple of weeks ago, the bf's brother came to stay with us on his way to a year abroad in China, and I thought it might be nice to give him and his friend a good old American cookie send-off.  I wanted to make a batch of my chocolate cherry cookies, but I also wanted to try the real Compost Cookies of lore.  So I made the dough up until the additions bit, split it in half, and did one batch of choc-cherry and one with potato chips, pretzels, and chocolate chunks.  You can see the bits here: