Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a java twist)

I’ve been holding out on you. I should have posted this recipe long ago, but this cookie has a way of slipping through the cracks.

Years ago, my sister called me up, raving about a fantastic peanut butter cookie recipe that she insisted came from me. I had no idea what she was talking about.

My sister was shocked. “You mean you don’t make these cookies anymore? Oh, you must make them!” She told me the recipe was in the cookbook that I put together for her when she got married.

I took a look at the cookbook and I remembered how I came up with the recipe. I wanted a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, so I added some peanut butter to a chocolate chip cookie recipe. So far, pretty standard. But, then I had the idea to add in coffee powder, and lots of it. It was part of my Maida Heatter phase. Maida Heatter often added in coffee powder to intensify a dessert’s flavor, and it became my secret weapon. Here, I fearlessly wielded that weapon like a cudgel, adding in 2 tablespoons of coffee powder.

I called my sister back. “Do you really follow the recipe and add 2 whole tablespoons of coffee powder?” She told me, that, yes, she does, and why was I asking, since it was my recipe in the first place? Well, okay . . . .

I made the recipe (using a little less coffee powder) and found that the coffee and peanut butter flavors fused together in an interesting way, balancing each other so that the cookie was not strongly coffee-ish or peanut butter-ish, but mostly a very intense chocolate chip cookie with a deep rich flavor.

Depending on how much coffee powder you use, the cookies will taste and look quite different. My mother goes full on with the coffee and her cookies look almost as dark as if she used cocoa powder in the dough. I can’t bring myself to use that much coffee (I know, I know . . . it was my idea to begin with). With 1 1/2 teaspoons of coffee powder, the coffee is barely there, subtly intensifying the peanut butter flavor, making the cookies more Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup-ish (see above picture). With 2 teaspoons, the flavor is almost like Cracker-Jacks, with a rich caramel molasses and roasted peanut flavor (see below picture).

Caramel and roasted peanuts (well, roasted anything) have added flavor compounds and a certain bitterness that comes from the process of caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Coffee has a certain bitterness, too. In fact, coffee flavor is in part a result of the Maillard reaction because coffee beans are roasted, as well (which is not to say that coffee is bitter only because of roasting, but there are those who argue that roasting is primarily responsible for bitterness in coffee). Cocoa beans (chocolate) are also roasted. The browning of cookies and the enhanced flavor from that browning comes from the Maillard reaction. Could this be why a little coffee powder  intensifies flavor so well, because it has flavor and bitterness associated with well-browned food?

Random food science digression: food scientists now believe that the antioxidants in coffee come not from caffeine or the chlorogenic acid found in green coffee beans, but these antioxidants are rather mainly a direct by-product of the Maillard reaction during roasting.

with all light brown sugar and 2 tsp. coffee in the dough

You can also get different effects by using all light brown sugar, or half light brown and half white, or half dark brown and half white. Although the recipe calls for white flour and margarine, I have successfully made the cookies with whole wheat flour and oil.

Three Doughs, Endless Possibilities: Grandma’s Rugelach

The above is actually a picture of Hungarian Yeast Rugelach, from a much earlier post. I don’t have a picture of the crescent shaped rugelach my grandmother A”H  favored. I went with roll shaped rugelach this time. If you want to see how the crescent shaped rugelach is made, you can take a look at my earlier post.

My father firmly believes in apricot rugelach, but my notes say that my grandmother used raspberry jam.  She also used to drop blobs of it all over the dough, while I am a jam spreader. Doesn’t matter. This is a classic cream cheese dough recipe for rugelach.

Three Doughs, Endless Possibilities: Julia G.’s Rugelach

I don’t know why, but I usually feel the urge to make rugelach this time of year. Not pareve yeast rugelach, but dairy rugelach, with real butter and cream cheese.

It always seems like a fabulous idea . . . until I am halfway through rolling out, filling and shaping the dough. Then I remember why I only make rugelach once a year. These aren’t simple drop cookies. These are hand crafted miniature pastries. Rugelach are not hard to make, but they are rather labor intensive.

It helps if you are prepared for that aspect and think ahead to make things a little easier. Make the dough a day ahead. Divide the dough up into individually wrapped packets and flatten the dough a bit so you have a head start on rolling out. It is also a little easier to make rugelach logs instead of crescents.

When you serve the rugelach for dessert at a party, all the hard work pays off.  At the end of a heavy meal, what most people want is a little something rich and sweet with coffee, and rugelach hits the spot.

Rugelach making is as much about the shaping as it is about the filling and the dough. I have three different dough recipes, and I play around with different fillings, but I have found that I can get very different effects just by changing from the crescent shape to a log shape or even a larger strudel shape.  You can even make a completely different cookie by using just jam as a filling and shaping the dough like danishes.

Another thing to think about is size. One of my tricks is to make miniature rugelach, but any size is delicious.

I just posted Grandma Rose’s sour cream pastry dough, which is used to make miniature danishes or strudel. Now, I am giving you the cream cheese dough recipe from my brother-in-law’s grandmother. Julia G. A”H was a superior baker, and she was famous for her rugelach (among other specialties).

Three Doughs, Endless Possibilities: Old World Mock Strudel

I mentioned in my last post that Grandma Rose’s filled cookies are a bit labor intensive, with a lot of rolling and shaping. The dough gets divided into four parts, and by the time I had rolled and filled the first three parts, I was ready for something new to do with the remaining quarter of dough.

Grandma Rose’s dough is versatile. You can use it for many pastry purposes, but I was particularly keen on using it for making mock strudel.

Mock strudel is another “old world” delicacy that is substitutes flaky pastry dough for strudel dough. My husband’s grandmother used to make a pareve version (and Batmitbach has posted a pareve pastry strudel from her husband’s grandmother).

Many years ago Marrion Burros and Lois Levine published a recipe for this kind of mock strudel in Elegant But Easy (1960). The revised version of this cookbook (1998) also featured Ann Amernick’s variation on this recipe.

The original filling from Elegant But Easy: 6 ounces marmalade, 6 ounces apricot jam, 6 Tbl.  cup brown sugar, 1 Tbl. cinnamon, 1 cup chopped walnuts, and 1/2 cup golden raisins. The jam is spread over 4 pieces of dough, each rolled 6″x10″, the nuts, sugar, cinnamon and raisins are sprinkled over and each pieces is rolled up like a jelly roll and baked whole. It is kind of a cross between rugelach and strudel.

According to Marrion Burros, Ann Amernick’s filling was different because it called for all apricot jam, no brown sugar and lots more cinnamon, nuts, raisins and currant. Ann Amernick has actually published a few different versions of this recipe (I guess she must keep revising it). In all her versions, Ann Amernick adds much, much more filling than the Elegant But Easy version, pulling it away from its similarity to rugelach.

I ended up going with the version that appears in her 1992 book, Special Desserts, but I will explain her more recent versions.

Why did I want to make this strudel and why did I go with Ann Amernick’s version (well, one of her versions)? Well, Ann Amernick is a top-notch pastry chef with many, many years of experience. She worked as Roland Mesnier’s pastry assistant at the White House during the Carter era (she remembers the time they koshered the White House kitchen). She was pastry chef for Jean-Louis Palladin.  Her pastry role models are Gaston Lenotre and Yves Thuries. And she said in an EGullet interview that the one food she cannot resist is this particular strudel. “I love it more than anything,” she said.

Now, THAT is a dessert I have to try.

Three Doughs, Endless Possibilities: Grandma Rose’s Filled Cookies

I realize that most people have baked all the holiday cookies they intend to bake. We have moved from decadent treat baking frenzy to after-holiday fatigue and dieter’s remorse. So, my posts now should all be healthy dishes and not rich pastries.

All the same, I am going to share three (not just one, but three) different pastry doughs.

The first recipe is from my Grandma Rose, A”H. She used to make these cookies that looked little miniature danishes. Imagine crisp, flaky pastry with the rich dairy taste of rugelach, filled with with jewel-like drops of jam.

People go nuts over these cookies. They seem so much plainer than rugelach, without the nuts, chocolate, raisins and cinnamon sugar. But the simple contrast of jam and pastry lets the flavor and texture of the crust shine through. The dough, which is like a pie dough, but with sour cream added instead of ice water, puffs up into light flaky layers like buttery puff pastry when it is baked.

I have no idea where this recipe came from, but I pretty sure it is “old world.” I haven’t seen any recipe that uses a pastry dough that is exactly like this, but I have seen other sour cream doughs, and they are all “from bubbe” recipes.

I won’t lie to you. These are not a snap to make. There is a lot of rolling and cutting and shaping and baking.

When you bake them, they have the frustrating habit of exploding open (the dough really rises). It helps to freeze them before baking and to accept that they might still come apart a little in the oven. Dust them with powdered sugar and it won’t really matter so much.

If you have access to oven-proof jam that will help, too, because regular jam boils over in the oven (like with hamentaschen). Apricot lekvar probably would work perfectly. But, Grandma Rose used regular jam/jelly. I tried a few different flavors of jam (the contrasting colors are pretty) and I think that the better quality jams worked out a little better than the cheaper jams/jelly I used.

One more observation: remember this dough for Purim, since it would be make delicious hamantaschen (although you would really have to pinch to prevent them from exploding open and you would need to use oven-proof filling, like lekvar–supermarket jam would for sure make them explode open).

Chanukah Cake Pops (from homemade cake and frosting–with dairy-free options)

I made some cake pops for upcoming Chanukah parties. The standard recipe calls for cake mix and store bought frosting, but I just didn’t want to go that route.

Making the cake and frosting is actual trivial compared to the task of shaping, dipping and decorating.  An additional bonus of homemade cake and frosting is that you can control the ingredients and eliminate trans-fats or make it dairy-free (or even vegan).

For the cake, I went with a vegan chocolate cake that is intensely chocolate, but tends to crumbly dryness, which is an advantage in this case. For the frosting, I went with a super dairy mix of powdered sugar, butter and cream cheese. It would be very easy to make this vegan/dairy-free/pareve, though, with margarine and Tofutti cream cheese.

Spoon Cookies

Don’t these make you think a little of teeny sufganiyot, with the jelly oozing out and the powdered sugar on top?

No? They don’t?

Well, never mind, because you will want to make these anyway for Chanukah. They are great make-ahead dairy cookies–the amazing browned butter flavor and the melt-in-you-mouth texture only improve after a couple of days.

The recipe originally comes from Gourmet Magazine, and it has won devoted fans (see the many comments on it at Epicurious). There is a very similar recipe posted on Food Network, where it is also listed by its Finnish name of “Lusikkaleivat.” The main difference between the two recipes are that the Food Network recipe calls for the addition of an egg yolk and for baking powder instead of baking soda. The preparation instruction for the Food Network recipe are also a trifle less fussy and there is a better description (with a video!) for shaping the cookies, which is the hardest part.

I didn’t see the Food Network video until after my cookies were in the oven (sigh–too late. . . .). After getting a trifle frustrated, I resorted to shaping the dough into an even number of balls (you must have an even number because these get sandwiched together). I pressed the balls against the cookie sheet to flatten, and then squeezed them a bit to make them into oval shapes (I was able to shape one cookie with the spoon, and I used that shape as the guide). Other people who made these cookies (judging by the comments on Epicurious) found it easier to either  stick with flattened balls or to roll out the dough and cut out tiny circles.

If you go with shaping the dough into round balls, you should be able to get 64 balls that are the size of large marbles, which ultimately yields 32 sandwich cookies.

Vayeitzei: Rock Cakes

In the beginning of this parsha, Yaacov leaves Be’er Sheva and goes to Haran. He stops at “the place,” sleeps, and has a dream of a ladder extending to heaven, with angels going up and going down.  Hashem appears and tells Yaacov that he and his descendants will be given that land upon which he is lying, that his “seed shall be as the dust of the earth,” and that Hashem will provide protection.

Before Yaacov goes to sleep, he places stones around his head, but,  when he awakens, he takes the stone (singular) that he had placed at his head. He anoints it with oil, making it a monument (matzeiva).

At the end of the parsha, Yaacov and Lavan use stones to erect another matzeiva, to commemorate their truce.

See here for a shiur by Rabbi Berman that points out that Yaacov erected four matzeivot. The third is erected at the site where Yaacov had the dream when he returns there. The fourth is to mark the kever of Rachel.

Rabbi Berman explains how the four are all related to the dream and its promises of land, children, and protection:

“The first commemorates the dream itself, the second the protection of God, the third the promise of the land, and the fourth, tragically, the blessing of children. The presence of God in Yaacov’s life (‘nitzav alav’) and the ensuing sanctification (‘ve-rosho magia ha-shamayma’) are symbolized by Yaacov’s matzeivot and the annointing in Beit-El, the ‘gate of heaven.””

Why matzeivot? Rabbi Berman points out that the root for matzeivah appears twice in the dream. The ladder is mutzav, or set, upon the ground. Hashem is nitzav, standing, over Yaacov.

(Rabbi Berman also puts forth the following question: “There is only one other matzeiva in the Torah (not including the idolatrous ones of the nations of Canaan) and that is during the giving of the Torah. Moshe erects twelve matzeivot at the foot of Mount Sinai. What is the connection between Mount Sinai and Yaakov’s ladder?“

I don’t know if this is the complete answer, but the Midrash points out that the word for ladder, sulam, and Sinai both have the numerical value of 130.  Rabbi Kahn has a discussion of this. He mentions other parallels between Sinai and ladder (both part of revelations, both were “conduits” to heaven). He adds that the word for voice, kol, has the numerical value of 130, as well, which ties in the power of prayer.

According to the Midrash (explained at Shirat Devorah), Yaacov’s dream includes a vision of Matan Torah, with the ladder being Har Sinai and the angels being Moshe and Aaron.

Getting back to stones, the word for stone, even, is seen as  a contraction of av (father) and ben (s0n). The Midrash says that Yaacov gathered twelve stones that became one, which foreshadowed the twelve tribes.)

For the parsha, I baked rock cake (also known as rock buns)(digression: I think a stone is technically a rock fragment, but most people use the words stone and rock interchangeably). This is a classic British tea time treat that is so easy to make, it is often one of the first recipes taught to school children (here is a recipe especially written for kids). They are so named because of their craggy, lumpy appearance–not their texture. The exterior is crispy and the interior is moist and tender–like a cake-ey cookie or a cross between a cookie and a scone. Only over baking will make these treats hard like rocks (well, that and letting them go stale. Although, there is little chance of that happening. My rock cakes are already almost all gone. I will have to bake again for Shabbos.)

Veyeira: Akeida Ram’s Horn Cookies (Mandelhoernschen)

There is so much going on in this parsha that it was hard to focus on one thing. In the end, I decided to make ram’s horn cookies. Actually, these are mandelhoernshen, almond horns that have had their shape altered ever so slightly to look more like shofars.

“And Avraham raised his eyes and saw a ram afterwards, caught in the thicket by its horns.”

Why “afterwards?”

According to Pirkei Avos (Chapter 5 Mishna 6), this particular ram had been created by Hashem the first erev Shabbos, at twilight on the 6th day of creation.

According to the Midrash (see Torah Tots and page 11 of The Resurrection Motif in the Midrash on the Akedat Yitzchak) the ashes of the sacrificed ram became the foundation for the Mizbeyach in the Beit Hamikdash, its tendons became the strings of Dovid Hamelech’s harp, it’s hide became a belt for Eliyahu Hanavi, and it horns were made into shofars. The left horn sounded at Har Sinai when the Torah was given. The right horn, the larger one, was set aside for trumpeting the arrival of Moshiach.

Reb Jay (Daf Notes) points out that the Midrash tells us that Hashem creates the cure before the sickness, and so it was with this ram.

Why didn’t Avraham see the ram right away? Reb Jay points to the Midrash that says that Satan was able to hide it until Avraham did Hashem’s will, and then it could be hidden no longer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Nut-Free Basic Chewy Granola Bars

This the perfect basic chewy granola bar: nicely compact, chewy but with a certain crunchiness, and sweet without being cloying. The flavor and texture reminds me of Quaker Granola Bars.

They are nut-free (provided coconut doesn’t count as a nut, and, if it does, you could leave out the dried coconut and use another oil). You could always add chocolate chips or drizzle with melted chocolate. (Update: I tried these with nuts added. Without nuts is better. A little sliced almond is unobtrusive and nice, but large pieces of whole almonds and pecans I didn’t like so much.)