New York Times Chocolate-Chip Cookies

Hi Ginny,
So I lost a bet with my sister and the price was that I had to bake the New York Times's recent recipe for perfect chocolate-chip cookies with as few compromises as possible. As it turned out, it was quite a task to track down all the ingredients. Plus, I had to plan thirty-six hours in advance of serving them, to allow for the recommended "marinating" peeriod for the dough. Finally, by Saturday morning, I had found 60 percent cacao bittersweet chocolate chips (though not the discs the recipe recommended), cake flour (surprisingly hard to come by here), sea salt, unsalted European butter. I don't have a mixer with a paddle attachment, so I had to do the mixing by hand. But I think I did a pretty good job of it, and I followed their advice and pressed a piece of plastic wrap to the dough before refrigerating it. By Sunday at 10 pm, the dough was ready to bake. I used a Silpat baking mat, sprinkled each dough dollop with sea salt, flatteded the chips that were poking up, and let them rest on the cookie sheet for ten minutes before transferring them to the rack to finish cooling. In the end, the cookies were pretty professional-tasting, but I'm not sure they were that much better than the normal Nestle Toll House recipe. Maybe if I'd used the discs, or mixed the dough with a mixing paddle....
CVD

Old Favorites

Dear Caitlin,
This weekend I woke up early on Saturday morning and did some baking. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing better than losing yourself in the act of measuring, mixing, and following a recipe...my favorite way to relax. As I mentioned to you the other day, I had some bananas that needed to be mashed, so I went ahead and made a batch of banana bread using a new recipe from my Magnolia cookbook. This recipe uses sour cream to moisten the bread rather than a bunch of oil like my other recipe and I think I like it better. The bread is lighter and crumbly but with good texture and flavor...and of course it was topped with crystallized ginger!

For my second recipe I made a batch of butter mochi to take to Matt and Malena's for dessert. Malena made a Japanese curry for dinner so I thought it would be fun to have a Japanese (sort of) dessert too. Although traditional mochi is made by pounding rice, this mochi is made using mochiko flour and therefore it's much easier! It is the ugliest baked good ever! But it is always a crowd-pleaser, in fact it's really popular with little kids in Hawaii. It has a chewy texture that kind of melts in your mouth and the flavor is like custard. Here is the recipe if you'd like to try it:



Butter Mochi

1 pound mochiko flour
2 1/2 Cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 Cups milk
5 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 Cup butter, melted and cooled
1 Cup coconut (I never put the coconut in)

Preheat oven to 350

Combine mochiko, sugar, and baking powder. Add milk, eggs, vanilla, butter and coconut to dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan. Bake 1 hour. Cool before slicing.

I usually slice it into small pieces since it's pretty rich. Yum!

*If you're not familiar with mochiko, it's a rice flour that you can find at Japanese markets. One box is usually a pound.

Bread or Cookies?

Hi Caitlin,
So I heard that you're due at any moment! So exciting. I imagine that you haven't been baking alot, so I thought I would leave some treats "on the doorstep". These are Banana Walnut Chocolate Chunk cookies with a bit of ginger thrown in. I think they're a little cakey for my taste, but they're reminiscent of banana bread and therefore they're yummy. Malena loves these, and she insists that I make these instead of banana bread whenever possible.

We missed you guys at the big easter bash this year. I posted a picture of the award-winning bloody mary garnish for your enjoyment.
Hope all is well, and we can't wait to see pictures of little Reents-Van Dusen!
-Ginny


I cant figure out how to turn this picture...

I baked!

Hi Caitlin,
It's been forever since I've really baked, and this was so easy it almost seemed like cheating. This morning Matt and I woke up early and made this little tart together so that we can take it over to Matt and Malena's for dinner tonight. It's a fig jam tart from "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. Do you have this book? It's a good one.
We wanted to make something simple to go along with a cheese plate and some dessert wine. We recently joined the wine club for Bonny Doon Wines and we've been hoarding some dessert wine away for a special occasion. I think it might be a lot to eat after dinner, but we have a soft and a hard cheese, this tart, marcona almonds, and grapes! I don't know what Malena is going to make but this dessert is almost a meal in itself.
We dropped into their apartment for the first time last night and it is so different from the way you organized it. It's interesting how a place can be completely transformed! The have their dining table in the kitchen and their living room where your dining room is. They had the sliding doors closed, but I think that your old living room is the office because sometimes I can see Matt at his computer from the windows. Anyways, we're looking forward to getting to know them a little better at dinner tonight.
I hope that you and Scott are doing well. We are so excited for you guys!
If I remember I'll try to take some pictures of our Thanksgiving feast, we'll miss you this year.
Talk to you soon,
Ginny

Rose's Famous Exhausting Caramel Cake

Ginny,
My parents came to dinner last night and I decide to make this caramel cake from a recipe in Saveur. I'd never made caramel before, but it didn't sound too hard: just sugar and butter and evaporated milk, cooked on low heat for a really long time. I guess I didn't read the directions too carefully, though, because as it turned out I had to beat the caramel sauce with a wooden spoon for about forty minutes until it transformed from a thicky syrup to the consistency of cake icing. Needless to say, my arms were exhausted, but finally it did indeed get thick enough to spread over the cake and hardened overnight into a beautiful smooth glaze. The cake itself is basically a pound cake, so the whole thing is extraordinarily rich; I think the cake weighs about six pounds! Still, it was really good, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Caitlin

Apple Cake

Hi Ginny,
Over the weekend I made this recipe from yet another grandmother, my mother's mother. We have so many apples after a recent trip to an apple orchard, that I've been trying to figure out new things to do with them. This cake is really easy to make: it's just a simple batter that you spread on the bottom of a springform pan and then arrange sliced apples on top and bake it for an hour. It tastes great with a dollop of creme fraiche or even plain whole-milk yogurt. What have you been baking this fall?
Caitlin

Granny's Oatmeal Bread

Dear Ginny,
Yesterday it was finally cool enough to turn on the oven and bake my first loaves of bread for autumn. I used a recipe for oatmeal bread from my aunt's mother, who died about ten years ago. She was an amazing woman who used to take us on walks to "gnome caves" in the woods behind her home on an island off the coast of Maine, and she baked bread all the time even though she was allergic to wheat! I thought this one turned out pretty well, though it was a little too molasses-y for my taste. I think I prefer honey as a sweetener in bread dough. We had friends over for dinner, and I served it with a big pot of soup au pistou, made with vegetables from the farmer's market.