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May 04 2012
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Chocolate, Cookies, Etc.

Kitchen Art and Cookies

It’s Friday!  Let’s celebrate with arts and crafts and cookies, OK?

I was on a mission last year to find a chalkboard that I could hang in the kitchen or the entryway, but it seemed as though they were a thing of the past.  Every art store, hardware store, craft store or big box store that I went to only sold dry-erase boards.  Pottery Barn seemed to be the only place still in the chalkboard game, but there was no way that I was going to pay a hundred bucks or more for a board to doodle on. What gives?  My lungs want to inhale chalk dust, not marker fumes.

After much disappointment, I pushed the chalkboard idea to the back of my mind.  I’m not sure what made me think of it again, but last weekend I was hanging out at Home Depot, and I realized that I could make my own chalkboard.  I bought a can of chalkboard spray paint for less than five dollars, and I knew that I had a gazillion old picture frames stashed away in the closet that would be perfect painting surfaces.

I had two large frames (I think 10.5×13.5 without the matting) that I thought would be the perfect size.   I started to disassemble them and realized that the glass was actually glued to the frame, so I had to dig out some razor blades to slowly slice away the dried glue until the glass came free.  The first attempt resulted in shattered glass, but I had much better luck with the second frame.  I headed out to the deck, sprayed a few coats of paint while the mailman stared me down from across the street (Is there some law against spray painting on decks that I am unaware of?), and left it to try.  Twenty-four hours later, I had a chalkboard!

I returned the glass to the frame, and it now resides on a wall in the kitchen.  And that is how you make a chalkboard for five dollars.  Take that, Pottery Barn.

In other news, I made Oatmeal Walnut Pecan Cocoa Nib Cookies from Joy the Baker this week, and you should make them this weekend.  They were well received in our house and in Matt’s office.  They make me think of butterscotch until I hit a big piece of chocolate, and then I think of chocolate.  Win-win.

Apr 03 2012
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31 in 2011, Cookies, Snacks

Graham Crackers

It may be four months past my deadline, but I can finally cross another item off of my list – I made graham crackers!  They were incredibly easy, and I can’t believe that I’ve been denying myself the pleasure of fresh-out-of-the-oven grahams for so long.  More importantly, why didn’t I make them a month ago when I had a bowl of leftover strawberry cream cheese frosting?

I used a recipe from Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, and while I was initially a little disappointed in the low level of sweetness, I proceeded to eat about a dozen of them within five minutes of them coming out of the oven and realized that I was perfectly fine with them being just mildly sweet.

Also, do you know what brings out the sweetness of graham crackers?  Cheese.  We had a few bites of fontina and taleggio left after dinner, and rather than wrapping them up and returning them to the cheese drawer, we paired them with graham crackers and didn’t stop snacking (desserting?) until we ran out of cheese.  The grahams remind me of a slightly sweeter version of Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers, which I haven’t had in years, but I used to love eating them with any sharp or tangy cheese.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this graham cracker recipe, I believe that like chocolate chip cookies, there’s no need to settle on just one version.  Here are some others that I’m planning to try:

 Graham Crackers – 101 Cookbooks

Chocolate Graham Crackers – King Arthur Flour

Homemade Whole-Wheat Graham Crackers – Marcus Samuelsson

I was actually surprised in reading a lot of recipes that most of them use some combination of whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and all-purpose flour.  The ones that I made used graham flour and oat flour, so I’m anxious to see how the flavor changes with other flours.  The less graham flour I use for graham crackers, the more I have for when I finally get around to making homemade grape nuts, which are also on the list.

Jun 02 2011
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Chocolate, Cookies

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Every once in a while my ice cream habit gets a bit out of hand, and I realize that I need to slow it down with the desserts for a while.  I don’t have the willpower to completely eliminate dessert, and life is too short for such drastic measures anyway.  Instead, I consider it an opportunity to broaden my horizons and try other desserts that are a bit healthier.  I’ll admit that sometimes the actual result of my good intentions is a handful of fresh berries on top of my ice cream, but this time I took the ice-cream-free route and made chocolate chip cookies with whole wheat flour.  I’m sure they would be delicious eaten with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream (or with ice cream sandwiched between two cookies), but that would defeat my purpose.  With two cups of sugar and a cup of butter, these are not a health food, but if you’re going to eat a chocolate chip cookie anyway, it can’t hurt to have one made exclusively with whole wheat flour.

The recipe that I used is from Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain, and you can find it here.  You can find an altered version that adds oatmeal to the mix and looks super delicious here.

I was always under the impression that whole wheat flour had to be supplemented with all-purpose flour in baked goods, and this recipe makes it clear that that’s not the case.  There’s more depth to these cookies than ones made from all-purpose flour, and they’re anything but chocolate-speckled bricks.

I baked these a day or two before I took off for Iowa and brought most of them home with me.  My brother housed a number of them, so they are both tasty and excellent fuel for several hours of nonstop bird watching.  My parents liked them, too, and if there hadn’t been Garrett’s caramel corn right next to the cookies, I think my dad would have eaten just as many as Bobby did.

May 05 2011
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Cookies

“Animal Crackers”

I had a craving for animal crackers the other day, and instead of just buying a box, I decided to take advantage of my abundant free time and make some. I wasn’t thrilled with any of the recipes that I found (thanks a lot, google recipe search!) until I came across the Animal Cracker Cookies from 101 Cookbooks.  They weren’t exactly what I was looking for, but I had all of the necessary ingredients on hand and I didn’t have to wait for butter to soften – instant gratification*!

*if you ignore the hour of refrigerating the dough

While these don’t taste a thing like the animal crackers that come in the box with a string (they actually remind me of some of the varieties of digestive biscuits that you find in Europe), they are really delicious little cookies, especially if you like coconut. Also, unlike the boxed variety, they don’t contain high fructose corn syrup, enriched flour or any other weird, processed junk.  Win!

I don’t have any tiny animal cookie cutters, so I planned to make mini gnomes and little acorns.  My mini gnome cutter broke after about three cookies, I got frustrated, and then I made circles with a small biscuit cutter.  Circles taste the same as animals (or gnomes), although taking a bite of a circle isn’t nearly as satisfying as biting the legs off of a rhino.

A few of these cookies are a great snack alongside an afternoon cup of coffee or tea.  I also think they would go really well with a scoop of ice cream, especially if you could somehow form the dough into a cone shape.

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