Say “Hey Neighbor!” with homemade.  Nothing says “Hey!  I like who you are.  I’m glad we’re in the world together” like homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Nothing  helps makes the world a better place like letting people know they’re appreciated.  See how that works?  Spread the good.

Whole Wheat, if not little by little then lot by lot.  Sure, whole wheat flour has been all the rage for years now, but it hasn’t really touched my heart.  This year, approach whole wheat little by little.  Your belly might just welcome a whole wheat triple chocolate cake, emphasis on the triple chocolate.   

Vegan time?  A few less sticks of butter and eggs and milk might just do a body good.  Those Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies I made with Jill treated me right.  There should be more vegan baking in our futures.

Play.  Commit to playing in your kitchen.  Visit to one of those fancy food shops and buy yourself a treat.  Maybe something that you never played with in the kitchen before.  Get it home and get crackin’.  There’s something fundamentally awesome about playing with new ingredients in the kitchen.  It’s like getting that new color of Play-Doh for Christmas, and just about losing your mind. 

Give.  The best part of baking, aside from eating a brownie fresh from the oven, is being able to share your treats with others.  You might even consider contacting a shelter that might be able to take your goods.  That’s thinkin’.

Get you hands on a new cookbook or two.  New cookbooks are full of new tricks and new stories. Dive in!

Celebrate the season.  I know, sounds totally cheesy, right?  Here’s the thing about celebrating the season… it’s all about enjoying where you are when you’re there.  My favorite way to do this is to head out to the farmer’s markets for some seasonal shopping.  Early morning, fresh produce and hot coffee.  It’s one fine day.

Make a pizza.  If you haven’t made a homemade pizza yet, you really shouldn’t waste any more time.  It’s good for the soul.

Do it with love.  Whatever you do this year, if you do it with love.  It feels super awesome crazy great!  I promise.

More later.

I know.  I’m such a tease.

I feel like I’ve had cupcakes coming out of my ears lately.  I probably have.  But there are worse things, right?

Friends… we need to talk.  It’s about me, and how I need a vacation.  And how I’m actually taking a small vacation, making my July 4th weekend extra long and glorious.  There will be a pool, a bikini, sunglasses and… mojitos.  I’ll take pictures and share, promise.    

Please allow me to leave you with these double chocolate and bright red velvet cupcakes.  Take good care of them while I’m gone.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!  Don’t eat anything I wouldn’t eat… 

Has the Baker had too many days off recently?  

Forgive me, but with such beautiful mild summer weather, I can’t bear to keep myself in the kitchen.  

With the spirit of summer under my wings, I took an overnight trip up to San Francisco to visit my darling sister.  She’s a bartender at Citizen Cake in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley.  

Citizen Cake is a great place to get a unique dish without staring at your plate, wondering what the the hell happened.  It’s a creative and still approachable culinary experience.

Powdered Sugar Dusted Donut Balls are served warm with a fresh raspberry and sugar glaze dipping sauce.

An Omelette with Chick Peas, Fava Beans and Asparagus.   Tasted like a fresh from the garden breakfast.  

Warm biscuits with scallions.  Hard to tell if they were sweet or savory.  The sweetness really came through and made these biscuits amazing.  Simple and delicious!

The view from my bar stool.  

I took this apple tarte tatin, that wasn’t so much a tarte tatin at all, to a lovely dinner party of Sunday night.  What was so fun about this tart was that I cooked the apples in a cast iron skillet with butter and sugar before I left the house.  I let them cook in the pan while I rolled out a 10-inch circle of pie crust.  I packaged up the cast iron skillet and the pie dough and we went to the dinner party.  After dinner, I heated up the apples on our hosts stove, and tucked the refrigerated crust over the slightly warm apples, then popped the whole thing in the oven for 30 minutes.  When the crust was browned and the juices underneath bubbling, I took the skillet from the oven, let it sit for a few minutes, then turned all of the warm apples and buttery crust upsidedown and onto a serving dish.  Everyone was super impressed, and I made their home smell like apple pie, which is just an added bonus.  This is the kind of dish that will get you invited for dinner again and again.

To talk about this tart we really should talk about pie crust.  I used to be intimidated by pie crust: was I cutting the butter right?  Am I adding enough buttermilk?  How do I know if it will be flaky?  Pie crust has very simple ingredients: butter, flour, sugar, salt and liquid.  The secret is the technique of bring all those things together.  So no more intimidation for me.  I learned a technique that involves rolling the cold, cubed butter out with a rolling pin, creating flattened butter sheets, that ensures a flaky crust every time.

Print this recipe!

Flaky Pie Crust

makes 2, 9 to 10-inch pie doughs

2 sticks (8 ounces) cold unsalted butter

2 1/2 (12 ounces) cups all purpose flour

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (5 to 6 ounces) buttermilk

1.  Cut the butter into 1-inch pieces and place in the freezer to chill for 15 minutes.  Measure out the buttermilk and store in the refrigerator to keep it cold (you could even put it in the freezer for a few minutes too).

2.  Sift together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Take the cold butter from the freezer and toss it with the flour mixture.

3.  Dump the cold butter cubes and flour mixture onto a large work area for rolling.  With a rolling pin, roll the mixture, flattening the butter cubes with the flour into long, thin, floured butter sheets.  Work quickly to ensure that the butter stays cold.  Below is what the rolled butter and flour look like after I’ve gathered them together on the work surface a bit.

4.  Place the flour and flattened butter back in the large bowl and chill for 10 minutes.    When the butter is cold, remove the bowl from the refrigerator, make a small well in the center of the flour and butter mixture.  Add the cold buttermilk to the bowl all at once.  Begin to bring the dough together with one hand ( keep the other hand free to answer the phone).  Moisten all of the flour with the milk, using your hand to break up large clumps of milk and flour.  The dough will be rather shaggy, but you can add another tablespoon of buttermilk, if you see that all your flour isn’t moistened.  Form the dough into two disks.  The disks will be rough, and hard to shape together, but once they rest in the fridge for an hour, they’ll be easier to roll out.

5.  Chill the dough for at least an hour in the refrigerator.  At this point, the dough will keep in the fridge for up to three days, or in the freezer for up to three weeks.  For freezing, roll the dough out into sheets and wrap them in plastic film.

Apples for Tart

7 Fuji apples, medium size, peeled and cored and cut into fourths

3- 4 Tablespoons of unsalted butter

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon cinnamon.

1. Melt 3 Tablespoons of butter in a 9 or 10-inch cast iron, or oven safe skillet.  When the foam subsides, add the apple chunks, arranging them so they fit snugly together and fan out around the pan.

2.  Cook the apples, over medium low heat, without stirring the apples to disturb the pattern.  Sprinkle the brown sugar on top, and add the remaining tablespoon of butter.  Lastly, sprinkle the cinnamon on top.  ( I periodically lifted an apple slice to see how it was browning, and notices that the center of the pan was browning faster than the edges of the pan.  To correct for this, I simply positioned the edges of the pan more directly over the flame, moving the pan over the flame until all the apples were slightly browned.)

3.  Cook the apples until they are slightly browned on the bottom, about 15 minutes.  A knife inserted into the apples will reveal a firm apple, that’s great! They’ll cook completely in the oven.  Remove the pan from the flame and let the apples and the pan cool.

4.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.  Roll out one disk of pie dough into a 9 or 10- inch circle.  Put the dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes before the next step.   Carefully pick up the pie dough and place it over the apples in the cast iron skillet.  Tuck the dough down along the inside of the pan, next to the apples.  Brush the top of the dough with ice water.

5. Place the cast iron skillet on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone baking mat.  Place the baking sheet and the skillet in the oven to bake, turning the oven down to 400 degrees F just after you put the tart in.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the crust is lightly browned, and the juices bubbling.

6 . Remove the pan and skillet from the oven.  Let rest for 5-10 minutes. Run a blunt butter knife along the edges of the pan, separating the crust from the pan.  Place a large serving platter over the cast iron skillet, and, using pot holders, invert the tart out onto the platter.  If an apple or two stick to the pan, just fish them out and place them nicely on the tart.  Serve immediately with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

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Oatmeal with Candied Ginger and Walnut Cookies

Chocolate Chip Salted Cashew Cookies

I have a strong connection to my Kitchen Aid.  It spoils me.  It takes me on lavish Caribbean vacations, compliments my fashion choices, and yes… even mixes my cake batters evenly in the flash of an eye.  I have deep affection for this machine, which was in no way diminished by my choice to make cookies by hand.  There is something to be said for the wooden spoon technique.  It’s a baking fundamental.  My fantastic pastry teacher Chef Griswold taught me that good cookie dough shouldn’t have too much air whipped into it.  So a wooden spoon help decrease the amount of air and also helps ensure that the dough isn’t overworked by the powerful mixer.  It takes more time and elbow grease, but the result of hand craft and fantastic!

This chocolate chip cookie recipe is solid  It has enough flour that the cookies don’t completely flatten into a greasy mess when they come out of the oven.  The salted cashews add to the rich buttery flavor, but walnuts are a classic, delicious choice.

Print these recipes!

Chocolate Chip Salted Cashew Cookies

adapted from Demolition Desserts

8 Tablespoons (4 ounces) butter, softened

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup plus 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/4 cup plus 3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks

3/4 cup cashews, coursly chopped

1.  In a large bowl, using a wooden spoon, cream together the butter and brown and granulated sugar until smooth but not overmixed.

2.  Add the eggs vanilla and salt and stir until just combined.

3.  Sift in the flour, baking soda and baking powder and stir gently until combined.  Add the chocolate chips and nuts.  Stir just until the ingredients are incorporated.  Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

4.  Position the oven racks in the upper third and lower third of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

5.  Spoon 1-inch balls onto sheet about  leaving about 2 inches between each cookie.

6.  Bake the cookies for 13- 17 minutes, rotating the pans after 7 minutes.

Enjoy with milk.

Oatmeal Cookies with Candied Ginger and Walnuts

adapted from The Sweet Life

1 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

16 Tablespoons (8 ounces) butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs plus 1 egg white at room temperature

3 cups raw oatmeal

3/4 cup candied ginger, coarsely chopped

3/4 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped

1.  In a large bowl, with a wooden spoon, cream the butter and the brown and granulated sugar.  Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating well after each addition.

2.  Add all of the dry ingredients in one addition.  Fold together the ingredients, working the dough for about 1 minute.  Add the chopped candied ginger and walnuts, stirring to incorporate.

3.  Wrap the dough in waxed paper and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

4.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray baking sheets with oil, or line with parchemnt paper.  Scoop 1-inch balls onto cookie sheep, spacing them about 2 inches apart.  Flatten each mound with the back of a spoon.

5.  Bake cookies until they spread, rise and turn golden brown, about 12-15 minutes.  For even browning, rotate the cookie sheet from front to back at least once while the cookies are baking.  If you continue to bake the cookies they will color more and be a crunchy, caramelized,  intensely flavorful cookie.  That’s what I did!

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