Baking

Chicken and spinach calzones.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

We make and eat a lot of pizza around here – it’s my go-to meal when a bunch of people show up and are hungry. Last summer I discovered my new favourite easy crust, and there’s been no going back – I make it all the time. I change it from time to time – whole wheat flour, a little bit of buckwheat flour every so often, or spelt even. I let it rise a little for a thicker pizza, which is how I like it, or roll it out flat for a thinner crust. Or, sometimes, I add a little bit of semolina flour, give it 30 minutes in a warm kitchen, cut it into eight pieces, roll each piece out until it’s barely as thin as a pie crust, and stuff it with sauce and cheese.

Calzones are a treat, and they’re awesome for lunches at work or school – they’re pizza pops, but with none of that chemical stuff that’ll probably kill you. Cheese, a little sauce, some veggies and meat if you want – and you can stick them in the freezer and reheat them as you need them, in the microwave or toaster oven, whatever you’ve got. And if you’re using an easy crust, they’re the kind of thing you can serve on a weeknight, or even to company, with a little bit of salad and not much else.

If you use leftover chicken, even better! Less effort, so you have more time for drinking beer and inhaling the smell of baking pizza. Which is infinitely better than ordering delivery, even though delivery is easier. Some things are just worth a little bit more time, and people will like you more if you serve them calzones over take out schlock. Some of us need all the help we can get in that regard.

Chicken and spinach calzones

(Makes 8.)

Dough (inspired by a recipe from everybody likes sandwiches):

  • 1 package yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp.)
  • 1 tsp. honey
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup semolina flour (if you don’t have this, it’s not crucial; just use regular flour, or sub whole-wheat, if you want)
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. salt

Filling

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
  • 2 cups shredded cooked chicken
  • 2 cups packed fresh spinach, roughly chopped
  • 1 tbsp. chopped fresh basil
  • 2 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp. lemon zest
  • Salt, to taste
  • 2 cups grated mozzarella cheese

In a large bowl, combine yeast, honey, and water, and let stand until foamy, about five minutes. Add flour, semolina flour, oil, and salt and stir to combine. Turn out onto a floured surface, knead ten times, and then place in a greased bowl and cover with greased plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place for 30 to 40 minutes.

Use semolina if you can, because it’s extra nice in this kind of crust. It’s a coarser flour, and it produces an excellent crispiness that you’ll want in your calzones. Regular old all-purpose will work fine if that’s what you’ve got, but semolina is a nice touch. A little goes a long way too – spend the two dollars, and you’ll have a bag that will last you a long time, and you can add it to homemade pastas and breads and all kinds of things.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat onions in olive oil until shimmering. Add garlic, stir and saute for another minute, and then add crushed tomatoes. Reduce heat to medium, then add chicken, spinach, lemon zest, garlic, and basil. Taste, adjust salt as needed, and set aside.

Cut dough into four equal pieces, and then cut each piece in half. Roll each piece out until it is no more than 1/8-inch thick – it should be as round as possible, about the size of a small plate.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Spoon filling onto dough, dividing the amount as equally as possible between all eight rounds. Place the filling slightly above the centre of the dough, so that when you fold the short side of the dough over top of the filling, you still have an inch or so of dough on the other side. Place 1/4-cup of cheese on top of each scoop of filling, and fold dough over.

Press dough down gently to seal, and then fold the remaining dough over the crease to seal. You’ll end up with a sort of scalloped pattern, as you fold each bit of dough over the last. (See below.)

Place gently on a baking sheet lined with parchment or sprinkled with cornmeal. I bake these four to a sheet, with at least an inch between them, as they’ll puff up a bit and get bigger.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve hot.

If you’re not going to serve them all right away, you can cool the rest on a wire rack, and then wrap up and freeze. Reheat as needed.

Peanut butter and white chocolate shortbread cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

It’s my birthday (tomorrow)! Exciting news, I know. I’m now 27, which is three years older than my mom is in that picture, which makes me feel fairly unproductive and much less like an adult.

Fortunately, those feelings are easily forgotten by eating cookies, so I made myself some special birthday cookies and then stuffed my face with them. Being a grown-up means that I can have all the cookies I want, which is the best but most often overlooked part of adulthood. And tomorrow we are celebrating my birthday by driving two hours to Hope for pie, and then to a dodgy casino across the border for $1.75 pints and $3.00 blackjack. Adulthood can be kind of awesome if you don’t take it very seriously.

Peanut butter and white chocolate shortbread cookies

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, whatever you prefer)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, melted (if you don’t like white chocolate or simply prefer dark, use the same amount of semi-sweet chocolate chips)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

This is the kind of recipe for which you need to have some sort of electric mixer or food processor. You can do without, I suppose, but that would be an incredible pain in the ass. The thing about shortbread, especially shortbread made with granulated sugars (including brown sugar) is that you literally have to beat the hell out of it. And not for a minute or two either – I’m talking 25 to 30 minutes, so that the sugar rips tiny little tears into the butter before dissolving back into it.

Yes. Now. Cream together the butter, the peanut butter, and the brown sugar. Meanwhile, melt white chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of simmering water on the stove. Once melted, pour into the butter-sugar mixture, and continue beating. Beat for 25 to 30 minutes, total.

After what will seem like forever, especially if your mixer needs to have its engine WD40d or something because it howls like it’s been stabbed, add the flour, a bit at a time, until a dough forms. Mix for another three to five minutes, until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl.

Divide into two balls. Roll out into two logs, about a foot long each, and an inch and a half in diameter. Cover tightly in plastic wrap, and place in the freezer to firm up, 30 to 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Slice each log into about 24 equal pieces, place on a baking sheet about an inch apart, and poke each piece with the prongs of a fork. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, but check occasionally during the last few minutes to ensure the cookies have only just begun to brown. You want them firm and crumbly, but pale.

Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before eating, and then enjoy with chocolate milk (as much as you want).

Meyer lemon shortbread.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about shortbread lately, and I wasn’t going to give in to temptation (especially after I consumed 80% of the butter/cream/cheese buns the other day), but then I needed comfort food and my stew failed last night and cookies always make everything better when we’re out of the stuff to make pudding (pudding is the most soothing of comfort foods). My grandpa died yesterday, and though we all knew it was coming, that kind of advance warning doesn’t make the news any less surprising or unpleasant. And while I certainly have thoughts on the matter, I think I’d best save them for now – I’m well past the age of emo, and besides, it’s impossible to think clearly about anything until you feel able to focus.

So this morning, I am busying myself with shortbread cookies, the kind that sparkle with Meyer lemon and whisper vanilla. Regular lemon – or any citrus you like – will do if your local market didn’t surprise you with Meyer lemons this week. To replicate the taste of Meyer lemons, use two tablespoons lemon juice and one tablespoon orange juice (preferably mandarin orange juice), and that should give a suitable impression.

Meyer lemon shortbread cookies

(Makes about 24.)

  • 1 cup butter, softened (room temperature)
  • 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
  • 2 Meyer lemons, zest and juice (zest = about 2 tbsp., juice = 2 to 3 tbsp.)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

Cream together butter, sugar, lemon zest and juice, vanilla, and salt until liquid is absorbed into the mix. Mixture should be shiny and light.

Add flour, stirring until a soft dough forms. Form dough into a log (make sure the ends are equal to the middle in girth), and wrap tightly in plastic. Place in the freezer for up to one hour.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Slice cookie roll into approximately 24 equal pieces. Place cookie slices on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, checking after 15 minutes for doneness.

Shortbread is different from regular cookies, in that it’s best if it isn’t allowed to bake until golden. The other thing that’s different is that you don’t want to eat it warm. Like bread, there are changes that occur when the shortbread cools, and you want the texture to have a sandy fall-apartness that you have to wait for. Troublesome, isn’t it? Not really, but they smell so good when they bake you’ll want to dive in right away.

Allow to cool on the baking sheet for five minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Serve with tea.

Mexico, St. Lorenzo, and some brunchy buns that belong to both.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

My mom keeps talking about these little bread treats called St. Lorenzo buns. Apparently they’re a buttery Mexican treat that have a glob of cheese in the centre, and they are served warm at breakfast-time at at least one resort. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to exist anywhere but that resort and/or my mom’s imagination, as a Google search turned up nothing, even when I varied the spelling. All I’ve got to go on is that they’re pretty much savoury, and that they have a soft cheese in the centre.

I emailed Alana at Eating from the Ground Up, as she’s doing some very accessible (and delicious) homemade cheeses these days, to see if she knew of a cheese similar to what Mom vaguely described. She had a few good ideas, but I wasn’t sure about the texture, and about using apple cider vinegar – aren’t apples a rare treat in Mexico? I wanted to use limes. (Even when asking for help I’m a stubborn know-it-all. The worst kind.)

If you know how the cheese in these is supposed to be, or if you know what these buns are and can help me, please let me know. I think the cheese should be something like panela, which is similar-ish to ricotta, I guess. My mom said it should be creamier, like cream cheese (or mascarpone), which you could use as well (1 tbsp. per bun). I like a challenge, but I’ve started with too few facts to produce a reliable facsimile of the buns. Unless you can determine that the following recipe is a reasonable facsimile … in that case, compliments and adoration will do.

Saint Lorenzo buns

Cheese (based on this recipe here):

  • 4 cups whole milk
  • 1/2 cup cream
  • 2 1/2 tbsp. lime juice (lemon’s fine if that’s what you’ve got)
  • 1 tsp. salt

Buns:

  • 1 package dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp.)
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 cup cream
  • 1 egg
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt

The night you make the buns, set cold milk and cream in a pot over low heat. Add lime juice. Using a candy thermometer, bring milk to 180°F. Don’t rush it. This should take an hour. Once there, increase temperature to medium, and allow liquid to come to a boil, just over 200°F. The curd will begin to separate from the whey – the whole thing will resemble icebergs in a murky sea.

Remove pot from heat, and let stand 10 minutes. Drain in a colander lined with cheesecloth, 15 minutes.

Stir salt into mixture (still in cheesecloth), then knot around a cupboard door handle and allow to hang for two or three hours, until liquid no longer drips from cheese.

Press cheese (still in cheesecloth) between the bottoms of two small plates, the top plate weighted with a brick or a couple cans of beans, and refrigerate overnight.

If you’d rather go with store-bought ricotta, you’ll still want to drain the excess liquid out – strain about a cup of ricotta in a colander lined with cheesecloth, a clean (non-linty) dish towel, or some paper towel overnight in the fridge.

To make the buns, begin by pouring yeast into the bottom of a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine cream, honey, and butter, heating until butter has just begun to melt. Whisk to ensure that honey doesn’t stick to the bottom. Pour over yeast and allow to stand until yeast is frothy, about five minutes.

When yeast is frothy, whisk egg into the mix, then add flour gradually, forming a paste at first, ensuring it is well-combined every step of the way. Continue adding flour until a soft dough forms. Turn out onto a floured surface, dusting with additional flour as needed for kneading. Knead until dough becomes smooth and elastic, about five minutes.

Let stand in a lightly greased bowl covered in plastic wrap until doubled in size, about an hour. Lightly butter 12 muffin tins. Slice pressed/drained cheese into 12 equal pieces (about one tablespoon each).

Turn back out onto a floured surface and cut the dough in half. Cut each half into three equal pieces, and then cut each piece in two, so that you have 12 pieces. Stretch each piece out in your palm, pressing a piece of cheese into the centre and folding the edges of the dough around the cheese, pinching the opening closed at the top.

Drop each bun into a muffin tin, and cover the whole thing with plastic. Allow to rise again, until doubled (ish), another hour.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Remove plastic from buns, pinch closed any buns that have opened, and stuff the whole thing in the oven, for 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden on the tops and fragrant all over.

Serve warm, possibly for brunch, definitely with something delicious, like breakfast cocktails. The buns are lightly sweet, and very buttery, flaky and soft in the centre. So, maybe a cava and orange juice would be ideal? I’ll leave that part to you.

Burger night, but we had no buns or money.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

It occurred to me recently that the reason all of my work clothes were faded and full of holes is that I haven’t actually bought anything for work in years, which also explains why I had begun to look so slovenly and outmoded. I am the kind of person who will go shopping for pants and come home with a sequined party dress, so was no surprise that I didn’t have anything practical that I could wear for a job interview I’ve got this week. So we looked at our bank accounts, decided that we’ve been responsible enough with our bills lately and that they could be ignored this payday, and determined that I could go shopping if I was smart about it and promised not to buy anything with sequins. If I get the job, I’m going to buy whatever dress I want.

So, because I had to buy a lot of grey and black clothes, and because we were down to our last as far as essential grocery items, and because life is full of surprises, this has been a big spending week, and now we’re poor again. But I wanted turkey burgers, because had ground turkey thighs in the freezer and one last jar of zucchini relish in the cupboard. The only thing we didn’t have was buns. Solution? Homemade hamburger buns.

The recipe is based on a recipe I dug out of the old Fannie Farmer, but I’ve adapted it to suit normal people’s lives. Who keeps dried milk powder on hand, and how many people other than me hoard lard in their freezer for no particular reason other than greed? I have no idea, but I think no one. This is a more modern, much more convenient take on things.

Hamburger buns

(Makes 12)

  • 2 packages (or 4 1/2 tsp.) dry yeast
  • 1 tbsp. honey
  • 1 1/2 cup milk, warmed slightly
  • 1/3 cup butter, melted (alternative: use olive oil, if you prefer)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 5 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, whisk together yeast, honey, and milk. Let stand for five minutes, or until yeast has begun to foam on top.

Mix butter, egg, and salt, and stir into the yeast mixture. Add two cups flour, and stir until a paste has formed. Gradually add the rest of the flour until the paste becomes a dough.

Turn out onto a floured surface, knead for about a minute, and then cover with a kitchen towel and allow to rest for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, return to the dough, kneading until smooth and elastic, about eight to ten minutes. Place in a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel, in a warm place, and let stand until doubled in bulk, 60 to 90 minutes.

Punch down dough, and divide into two equal pieces. Divide each piece in two again, and then each of those pieces into three, for twelve pieces of dough, roughly equal in size.

Grease two baking sheets, and sprinkle with cornmeal, if desired.

Roll each piece into a ball, pinching the bottom to secure the shape.

Place dough balls on baking sheets, pressing each ball flat with your palm, so that each ball forms a disc about a 1/2- to 3/4-inch thick. Let rise again, covered in plastic wrap and dish towels, until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Bake buns at 425°F, for about 20 minutes, until golden, then place on a wire rack until cool.

Slice in half and top with your favorite burger patty and condiments. Serve with “easy frites.” Or use as bread for your favourite sandwiches.

Blood orange cookie bars.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I love blood oranges so much. It’s not just their deep red flesh – they taste like a mash of oranges and raspberries, at least to me, and they peel easily and they aren’t so bitter that you can’t eat eight of them in one sitting if you wanted to, and I want to, most of the time.

When I was a kid, my mom used to make lemon slice – lemon custard baked onto a shortbread cookie crust. I think everyone’s mom made it – it was the kind of thing you’d have at open houses, grown-up birthday parties, or on Sundays. I’ve made them with limes, and the result was delicious, and with oranges. I wonder about grapefruit – I bet grapefruit cookie bars would be pretty interesting. Today, we have blood oranges, because to be honest when it’s blood orange season we always have more than we can peel and eat on hand anyway. I hope you like these. They’re like mom would make – especially since they’re adapted from a recipe I swiped borrowed from her tattered kitchen binder. But prettier, because they’re pink.

Blood orange cookie bars

Shortbread crust:

  • 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • Zest of one blood orange
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour

Custard:

  • Zest of one blood orange
  • 4 tbsp. blood orange juice
  • 1 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 to 3 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Cream together the butter, sugar, and zest to make your crust. Stir in flour until a crumbly dough forms, and then press it into a 9″x9″ square baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes, until the edges have browned and it smells like cookies. Remove from oven and cool in the pan on a rack, about 20 minutes.

Whisk together your zest, orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, flour, and salt. Pour over crust. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges, dry on the surface, and pretty much firm in the centre when tilted slightly.

Cool, again in the pan, on a wire rack. Once completely cooled, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar and cut into slices. Serve with tea. Or, if you had a crappy work week and it’s over now, serve with a glass of sparkling wine with just a squish of blood orange for colour.

Things to not be messed with: Sticky toffee pudding, and also me. But mostly the pudding, because I probably won’t fight back but we have to defend the food.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

Despite its reputation to the contrary, England is actually home to a tradition of really delicious food. In theory, anyway. In practice? I’m not so sure, but it’s possible that when I was there, the good stuff was priced a tad out of my range. They do good fish and chips, and I can’t get enough mushy peas or potted Stilton.

It was much too long ago that I was there. I think it was 2005, which means I am long overdue for a return. I went with my aunt and uncle, Lynn and George, who continue to spoil me rotten despite my advancing years, and though the delicacies were mostly cheese– or chocolate-based (those fresh little croissants and their warm chocolate dip at the coffee shop beside Harrod’s – I dream about them!) and each very special in their own right, there was one extra special treat that tastes and reminds me of England in all its splendour, and it’s impossible to screw up.

Sticky.

Toffee.

Pudding.

Well, actually, I’m wrong. It’s super easy to screw up, and even the English are doing it. The thing about sticky toffee pudding is that it’s a pudding, not a cake with sauce. Semantics are important, and the difference must be appreciated. I noticed a few years after returning home that sticky toffee pudding had made itself known on this side of the world – there’s even a Haagen-Dazs flavour named for it. I got excited, and tried it everywhere. There are a couple of good spots for it locally, but on the whole, it’s gone the way of most other trendy food items: it got all tarted up, and in the process lost the magic that made it what it was.

Sticky toffee pudding is a gooey, sticky pudding that tastes like toffee. Which sounds obvious, but I’ve seen it complicated, dried out, and not even toffee-flavoured. It’s the kind of thing you’d eat after a big roast dinner with all your relatives or Two Fat Ladies. It’s homey, wholesome, and packed full of sugar. Even Nick liked it, and he’s usually not big on dessert. He suggested that he might want the leftovers for breakfast.

So anyway, I have been thinking about this for ages, and tonight, Auntie Lynn and Uncle George came over to see our new place and meet our new cat and have tea and a baked good. I decided that we would have sticky toffee pudding, with ice cream, and I searched the Interwebs for a suitable recipe.

But there wasn’t one.

Because the Interwebs also seem to think that it should be a cake with sauce. Even Jamie Oliver thinks so.

So I had to do it all myself. Here’s the result: sticky toffee pudding, mixed in its baking dish and baked in its own sauce. It’s rustic, and needs no further fussing to bring it any nearer perfection. Your grandmother would have approved, and I think she’d be more right than Mr. Oliver about this.

Sticky toffee pudding

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar (1/2 cup reserved; please don’t use light brown sugar – it would be all wrong)
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 cups chopped dates
  • 4 tbsp. butter, melted
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tbsp. butter

Preheat your oven to 375°F. In a 1 1/2 quart casserole or baking dish (which you don’t have to bother buttering), mix flour, one cup of dark brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and dates. Mix well, so that all ingredients appear to be thoroughly incorporated.

In a measuring cup, whisk together melted butter, milk, and egg. Pour over dry ingredients, and stir until just moistened.

In a separate bowl or measuring cup, mix boiling water, remaining brown sugar, granulated sugar, and additional tablespoon of butter. Pour over the cake-batter-like mixture in the baking dish, but do not stir. Place in the oven as-is, and bake, uncovered, for 45 to 50 minutes, until the sauce bubbles up on the sides and the top resembles a moist cake.

Serve warm, with ice cream.

My aunt confirmed that this is what sticky toffee pudding is supposed to taste like, and my uncle said little but nodded emphatically. I liked it very much – it had the right cakey-pudding to sauce ratio, and tasted exactly how I’d hoped it would. There will definitely need to be another trip to London in my future, but for now, this little recipe will make the meantime more tolerable.

**Also, as far as photo credits, the blurry food ones are mine. The others I swiped from my aunt’s album online.

A little bit of lemon on a weeknight.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

I’ll be honest, this one doesn’t come from me. However, it has lived in my head for so long that I’m not sure where it comes from, though more than likely it comes from Fannie Farmer. You probably make something very similar, and if you don’t, your mom or grandmother probably did. Because it’s delicious, I think it bears repeating.

I made Alana’s ricotta again today – I’ve been making it a lot, and have found multiple uses for both the curds and the whey. I’ve been making it with those two-litre containers of homogenized milk, which has meant I’ve had at least a pound of ricotta and quite a lot of whey leftover for somewhere around $2.38, which is easily more than a pound of ricotta costs. And you know, the thing about whey? It subs in very nicely for buttermilk.

I’ve used it today, in my lemon buttermilk pudding cake, and it’s very nice. If you don’t have whey or buttermilk, you can use regular milk, and it will just be lemon pudding cake, which is plenty delicious and probably where the whole thing started.

This pudding cake is part of a long family tradition of pudding cakes, which includes stewed fruit and dumplings and my grandpa’s Radio Pudding. It’s magic, because it starts off as a very runny batter, which transforms into a pudding with a delicate sponge cake top once baked. Sound familiar? It’s the perfect dessert for company on a weeknight, its purpose this evening, because it’s easy, and uses just a handful of ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry and fridge. You can substitute limes, or oranges, if that’s what you have, and it will be different but also lovely. I bet it would look very pretty if you made it with blood oranges.

Lemon buttermilk pudding cake

  • 1 cup granulated sugar (1/4 cup reserved)
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • Zest of one lemon
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1/3 cup lemon juice (fresh-squeezed is best)
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla
  • 3 eggs, separated
  • 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (or whey, or regular old milk)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter or grease a 1 1/2 quart casserole or baking dish, such as a soufflé dish or that Corningware dish that looks like a giant ramekin, or a 8-inch square baking pan. (Keep in mind that the deeper your baking pan, the runnier your result. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but deeper means more to have to set up, you know?)

Combine three-quarters of the sugar, flour, and lemon zest in a mixing bowl, and whisk well. Add the melted butter, lemon juice, and egg yolks, and whisk to form a batter. Slowly add in buttermilk (or whatehaveyou), whisking as you go.

In a separate bowl, whisk remaining sugar with the egg whites until the egg whites form soft peaks. You want them to be sturdy but malleable – if you overdo it, they get to a point where you can almost “chunk” pieces off. It won’t be the end of the world if that happens, but try not to get to there.

Fold egg whites into sugar-flour-buttermilk mixture. Pour into your prepared dish.

Place the dish into a larger baking pan, and fill the outside pan with water until the water comes to halfway up the side of the dish.

Place carefully into the oven, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is cake-like and lightly browned. Cool for at least 30 minutes before diving in.

Serve warm, with whipped cream. Possibly be transported back to your grandmother’s messy kitchen table, as many years ago as that was. This tastes like lemon slice, lemon meringue pie (sans meringue), and all those treats most of us rarely make anymore.

Thank-you cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments


I wanted to do something nice for Judy, our building manager, who has been all kinds of nice to us and gave us a reference so we could get the kitten. She also came by and told me everything I needed to do to bond with the kitten and make her comfortable, and lent us some equipment and litter to get started, as we were confused about the process and didn’t think to buy things like a litter box before we brought her home. We’re smart.

Cookies are always nice. Everyone likes cookies.

I was going to make her peanut butter cookies because I thought that way there would be tons and then I could keep some, but I’m pretty sure I have no idea as to whether or not Judy has a peanut allergy, and while chances are probably slim, it would still be a shitty thank-you move to poison someone, even accidentally. Judy doesn’t have that coming to her. From me, anyway.

So, these are almond butter cookies, with a little smear of jam on top.

Almond butter cookies

(Makes about two dozen)

  • 1/2 butter
  • 1/2 cup almond butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup jam

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, cream together butter, almond butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and the one egg. Beat these until the mixture is fluffy and the ingredients have lightened in colour.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir these into wet ingredients, until dry ingredients are just moistened and a dough is formed.

Roll cookie dough into one-inch balls, and place on a lined or greased cookie sheet. I ran out of parchment paper, so I used tin foil, and it worked just fine. Press your thumb into the centre of each cookie to form a hole big enough to contain a drop of jam.

Spoon jam into cookie holes, about one-quarter teaspoon into each.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until lightly golden but still slightly soft. You want these to be chewy. You really do. Let them cool on the pan for a minute or two when they’re fresh from the oven, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling. Then eat with tea, or package up with a thank-you card to give to someone who was nice to you.

Root beer cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

I think I told you I’m writing a book. Aren’t we all? By “writing a book,” of course I mean spending four hours tonight on Facebook, Twitter, MyLifeIsAverage, and everyone-else-in-the-world’s blog. Four hours is probably not even an exaggeration.

As there’s no point in going outside for the next two to three weeks, and since this whole book-writing thing is much less fun than anything ever, today’s off-the-couch distraction was cookies. Root beer cookies, actually, because there was a little bit of a bottle of the stuff left in the back of my fridge and I get super neurotic about throwing anything out. Which explains why I have so many mostly empty jars taking space in my little fridge (at least eight of the jars are condiments that I felt compelled to purchase because they were so weird I couldn’t just leave them there to not be bought).

Most root beer cookie recipes I’ve come across call for root beer extract, which apparently is as easy to find as regular old vanilla, but I’d never heard of it, and, frankly, I can’t be bothered to go looking – why use root beer extract when a root beer reduction works just fine?

Well, maybe it would make the cookies more root-beery. But I like what I came up with here – it’s like sugar cookies high-fived vanilla, and the result is a chewy, sugary delight. A whiff of root beer, and that’s all you really need. If you wanted root beer hyperbole, you’d just drink the stuff, wouldn’t you? Yes. That’s what I thought. So here you go: my root beer cookie recipe. I hope you like it.

Root beer cookies

(About 30 cookies)

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 to 2 cups root beer, simmered until reduced to 1/2 cup (30 minutes to one hour), and cooled
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (for rolling)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Gradually pour in root beer reduction, then each egg individually, beating continuously until just after the last egg has been added. Stir in vanilla extract.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Pour into the wet ingredient mixture, stirring to combine until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Roll dough between your hands to form a ball the size of a golf ball. Roll the balls in the sugar, and place on a cookie sheet, about an inch and a half apart. Press each ball down with a fork.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, to desired doneness, or until golden around the edges. I like mine just shy of underdone, so that they’re still chewy, but I know other people like theirs finished. Serve warm, with cold milk, or store in a sealed container for about a week, if they last that long.

Tomorrow’s distraction? Cookie eating. I win two nights in a row!