Black Forest... Cookies!?

Last week a coworker who knows I like to bake offered me a challenge. Black Forest Cake. In a cookie.

Chocolate, cherries, cream. Holy crap yes. So, I started searching. Initially I’d figured I’d make a chocolate sugar cookie and sandwich two together with something cherry-ish between them. Maybe top it with some kind of creamy glaze or icing… Seemed like a lot of steps, particularly if I was making some of it up as I went. And I’d have to present these to the people at work who come by my desk and say “Cookie?” Not something I want to do with a complicated recipe that I’ve never tried before.

And then I came across a thumbprint cookie that was freaking perfect. A minor adjustment to incorporate the cherries and I had it! And holy crap do they look fancy. And holy crap did people ever keep coming back to my desk looking for more. Too bad the recipe only makes 28. I definitely need to do a double batch next time.

Black Forest Cookies

What you need:

For the cookie part:

• ½  cup butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg, separated 
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder (regular, not dutch process)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar, for coating the cookies

For the gooey filling:

• ½ c cream cheese
• 3 tbsp dried cherries, chopped (if you don’t have or can’t find dried, I suppose you could use some other kind but really, look for the dried ones, they’re awesome)
• ¼ c icing sugar

To make them look super fancy:

• ½ c semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

What you gotta do:

As usual, have all the ingredients waiting for you on the counter. It’s best if everything is the same temperature: room temperature. But don’t bother preheating the oven quite yet.

As with nearly all cookie recipes, you start by creaming the butter and sugar.

Separate the egg, set the white aside, and add the yolk to the butter/sugar along with the vanilla and milk.

Sift the flour and cocoa together. I use a sieve over a bowl.

I recommend a bowl wider than the sieve.

I just dumped all the dry stuff in with the wet and started stirring. And panicking. It looks really dry at first. Like way too dry.

But I kept stirring and eventually it all mixed in and formed a really soft dough.

That’s why I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for an hour. I totally did the dishes while it chilled. Totally did. Okay, yeah, total bullshit. But I thought about doing them.

Once it firms up a little, roll it all into balls. Yup, do all of them first. (Actually, preheat the oven to 350 first).

You get a better idea of how many there are, get a chance to make sure they’re all about the same size, and you won’t be constantly wiping egg white off your hands to roll the next one.

Yup, egg white. Dip each ball in the egg white.

Actually, best to dip only half of it, then roll it in your palm to spread it around. A bit too much egg white isn’t terrible. It comes off looking and tasting kinda meringue-like, but if you’re aiming to make these look fancy, less egg white is better.

Roll the whited balls in sugar and place them on a cookie sheet. With your thumb, a bottle cap, or a half teaspoon measure, press the balls down and make a dent.

Bake about 10-12 minutes, and then while they’re taking a minute to cool on the pan, use that measuring spoon to refresh the dent in the middle. You could probably skip this step if the dent stays, or if you’re okay with a slightly shallower dent.

Put them all on a rack to cool completely. You can make the filling while they cool.

Combine the cream cheese, icing sugar and chopped cherries in a bowl, then transfer it to a sammich bag.

Cut the corner off the bag and squeeze a bit of the filling into each cookie.

Resist the urge to poke at them or eat them. They’re not done yet and yes they really need the last step.

(Note the white-ish meringuey coating. It's actually kinda crispy and tasty, but has a slightly different aesthetic.)

Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave on medium heat. Seriously, everything in the microwave should be done on medium heat unless it’s water you’re trying to boil. The radiation is just too intense; you’ll scorch the chocolate.

Once it’s all melted, put in into a sammich bag as well, and trim a tiny bit off the corner.

Back and forth across the top of the cookies and the decorating is done. They’ll need a minute or two in  the freezer to set before you can pack them into the magic cookie tin to take to work. Keep them in the fridge though, there's cream cheese in them.

So, there we go. Black Forest Cookies.

Alright folks, here's your chance. Challenge me.

What kind of cookie do you want me to make?

Mayhem, the Musical!

Beans are not a fruit.

It is officially the end of Mayhem. Taneasha is almost home, and I’ve almost remembered to get stuff for dinners each day this week. Srsly, I eat way too much cereal.

I’ve got one more recipe from my time in the south, and it’s a true southern dish that starts with "the trinity". Now, of course with anything this quintessentially part of a cuisine, there will the various and assorted variations on ingredients, methods, and opinions on how to make it properly.

I think with a dish like this, there will also always be variations based on the ingredients at hand. I mean, this is not some kind of haute cuisine concoction that requires specifically harvested delicacies that only grow in one part of the world. This is budget food at its finest. Most recipes I’ve seen also call for a small amount of precooked meat added at the end. That there is called using up the leftovers folks. Basically it’s a vegetable protein and carb that were advertised as healthy in afterschool public service announcements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heKYNWFBkW8

(nope, I don't know how to make html tags to insert a video, deal with it)

The Schoolhouse Rock Gang were right! It’s damn tasty.

And cheap. And freezable. And infinitely variable.

(As usual, since I cook for one 90% of the year, the recipe I have written down is for as small a batch as possible. I‘ve found that  it’s much easier to double a recipe than to cut one in half. What you see us make is a quadruple batch!)

Red Beans and Rice

What you need

• ½ lb small red kidney beans, washed
• 6 oz pork sausage, diced (or, leftover ham, as you'll see)
• 4 C water or stock
• 1 med onion, chopped fine
• 1 stalk celery, chopped fine
• 1 bell pepper, chopped fine
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• ½ tsp thyme, dried, or a bunch of fresh from the garden (what? me measure?)
• ¼ tsp salt
• black pepper, pinch
• curly parsley, fresh

What you gotta do

Do not soak beans.  That’s right, I said “do not.” I realize that some people are having hairy conniption fits right now but I’ve never understood this whole bean soaking thing. I mean, you’re going to cook them anyway. Besides, soaking beans requires way too much forethought. They take hours to cook as it is, which is more planning than I put into most meals (see reference to cereal, above). To soak them would require that I know a whole day ahead of time that I’m going to want beans for dinner.

Really the rest of the procedure can be summed up in the following sentence:  Put everything but the parsley in the pot and cook it all until the beans are done.

But I have a bunch of pictures and I figure you should have something to read in between them.

So, you start by chopping stuff. And checking through the beans to make sure everything in the package really was beans.

You put the beans in the pot and add the liquid.

We used 8 cups of chicken broth and 8 cups of water (quadruple batch remember) and... the Easter ham bone. Water alone will make a tasty batch of beans, but if you can get your hands on a ham bone… holy crap, these were some freaking awesome beans.

Put the bone in the pot and chop more stuff.

A nice glass of iced tea (or just tea as they apparently call it in the South where no one drinks "tea," or hot tea as they call tea) is handy to have during all the strenuous chopping.

Add the herbs and keep chopping. There really are benefits to cooking for only one person.

Add the spices and stir it all up.

You see that lovely deep burgundy bean colour? You’d totally lose that if you soaked them first.  Now, instead of throwing away that colour, it’s going to end up in your food and give the resulting broth a rich beany colour.

So really, all you have to do now is put it on the stove and walk away.

If you check after 45 minutes or so you’ll see that the beans are already starting to give up their colour.

After an hour and a half, maybe 2 hours, they’ve definitely changed colour.

After a few hours any meat left on that bone will be either in the pot already or perfectly willing to come off it.

And there was so much meat left on the ham bone that we decided to save the sausage for the next day and just use the ham. Look at us stretch the family food budget. ;)

So while I was picking the meat off the bones

which, for some reason, I find strangely soothing and will offer to do after every holiday dinner, Recipe Guy was mashing a few cups of beans and putting them back in the pot. Mashed beans are a fabulous way to thicken any gravy.

We added the ham back in,

chucked the bone, and added a little more salt. It’s really best to start this dish with as little salt as possible and correct at the end.

A scoop of rice, a scoop of beans, a handful of parsley and a dash of hot sauce. Or, if you’re me, 8 dashes of hot sauce.

And if you find a crawdad (aka land shrimp) hanging around on the property, make sure you cook them before you try to eat them.

They fight back.

Man, the amount of wild (aka free) food down there is just awesome for the family food budget. What’s your favourite budget meal?