Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Cream butter, tahini, and sugars.
2. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat until well combined.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together flours, baking soda and salt.
4. Gather your garnishes—chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, seeds or nuts, and millet—in yet another bowl.
5. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture. Don’t overdo it.
6. Now add chocolate chips and all of the other fun stuff. Stir until evenly distributed.
7. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least one hour. Can be frozen for longer-term storage.
8. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place rack in the upper-middle position. I prefer to bake cookies one sheet at a time—that’s just what works best in my oven.
9. Form dough into just-larger-than-tablespoon spheres.
10. Bake until golden all over. Cool five to ten minutes on wire rack before munching.

Today was a Hungry Day. Big time. I haven’t learned how to balance my wild appetite fluctuations and nutritional needs with the urgent cravings I am experiencing with ever-greater frequency. I need advice: when I am sure that I will die if I don’t eat a turkey burger immediately (a true story), should I go make that burger happen (I didn’t)?

I’ve always been into food, but not like this. The bowl of lightly-sweetened multi-grain Cheerios I had for breakfast (with real milk, which is pretty crazy considering I “gave up” cow’s milk back in 2001) just about put me into orbit. It’s good, right, but it’s never been that good. By ten a.m. I started to wonder if maybe I should stop at every food cart between PSU and the Library MAX stop in case I needed something to tide me over through my teeny fifteen-minute commute. Some days, all food smells make me want to fill my nostrils with concrete. Today, the aromas of frying onions and baking dough and coffee and even the sort of freaky meat smells (like, I assume, sausages) flipped some kind of switch in my guts, causing me to need everything I smelled.

Though it’s just not possible, I feel like I have been hungry all day long. When I arrived home after that epic quarter-hour commute I wolfed down two slices of veggie pizza left over from last night’s dinner at Old Town Pizza (we had leftovers because yesterday was definitely not a Hungry Day). Shortly thereafter, I emptied all of the vegetables from the fridge and pantry and made a spicy, tomato-based vegetable soup, scheduled to be my lunch tomorrow. While that simmered, I baked off some Cinnamon-Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies and gave them to guys installing windows downstairs. Tasting occurred, of course, throughout.

About two hours ago I started thinking about the slice of banana bread I had last weekend. I was at a morning event catered by Grand Central Bakery, and enjoyed a slice of their very moist and nutty banana bread. I decided about an hour and a half ago that I have never had such delicious banana bread in all of my life. I decided an hour ago that if I didn’t make something half as good for breakfast tomorrow, then my day would surely be ruined and the mental and physical well-being of the baby, the Squeeze and me would be irreparably compromised.

What follows is a variation based on the a Cook’s Illustrated banana bread recipe, not meant to be even an approximation of GCB’s banana bread, but one that, what with the wheat flour and the demera sugar and all, I can feel less-bad about eating.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour a 6×9-inch loaf pan.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flours, sugar, salt, soda, and poppy seeds. Whisk to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together cooled butter, yogurt, eggs, vanilla extract, and mashed bananas.
4. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the flour mixture, leaving some lumps in the batter.
5. Pour into prepared loaf pan, smooth out the top, and bake for approximately 55 minutes. When a toothpick is inserted into the center of the loaf, only a few crumbs should cling.

Ingredients:

• 3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, halve and thinly sliced.
• For the tart dough:

• For the frangipane:

Procedure:

• For the tart dough:

1. Cream butter, sugar, ground nuts, and almond paste.
2. Add egg and beat.
3. Mix in flour and salt until just combined.
4. Wrap tightly in plastic and chill before use

• For the frangipane:

1. Cream butter, sugar, nut flour, and almond paste.
2. Add egg.
3. Mix in flour and salt until just combined.
4. Wrap in plastic and chill before use.

• To assemble and bake the tart:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Roll out dough to ¼inch thickness and line tart pan/ring.
3. Spread in frangipane to just below the top edge of the tart.
4. Arrange apples in fan pattern or, as shown, in a co-centric circles.
5. Bake until edges are dark brown. Cool completely. Glaze, if you like. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yields two 9″x3″ loaves. (can very easily be halved.)

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Prepare two 9″ x 3″ loaf pans.
2. Whisk together flours, spices, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Beat together sugar and oil until well blended.
4. Add eggs, vanilla, and chai (or water — the chai is just a way to squeeze in more flavor).
5. Beat until mixture is even and smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl and the beater as necessary.
6. Add flour mixture all at once. Stir gently until just mixed.
7. Fold in pumpkin puree until uniform.
8. Stir in nuts or seeds, and cranberries, if you like.
9. Divide batter between the loaf pans and bake, about one hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf emerges clean.
10. Cool on a wire rack about ten minutes, then remove bread from the pans and cool completely before slicing or wrapping.

Procedure:

If you’ve made any of my other scones, the procedure is the same here. You’ll need much less buttermilk, however, since the pumpkin puree adds quite a bit of moisture.

1. Preheat oven to 375º standard/350º convection.
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine dry ingredients: flour, sugar, spices, salt, and baking powder.
3. Add butter cubes and mix with paddle attachment until the butter is reduced to roughly pea-sized pieces.
4. Stir in pumpkin puree and mix to distribute evenly.
5. With the mixer turned on to the lowest setting, slowly add buttermilk. You will need more or less depending on the moisture content of your pumpkin puree.
6. Stop pouring when the dough begins to stick together. It should be crumbly, but not dry. When you press it together between your fingers, it will feel almost satiny, though not slick or wet.
7. Turn the dough out onto a very lightly floured cutting board. Pat it out into a circle, approximately nine inches in diameter and maybe an inch and a half thick.
8. Brush top and sides with egg wash, and sprinkle the demera sugar over the top.
9. Cut into wedges – eight or twelve according to your preference.
10. Use your knife to transfer the scones to your baking sheet. The dough may try to stick to the cutting board; do not be alarmed.
11. Bake until scones are golden brown at the tips and edges.
12. Cool slightly before removing them from the baking sheet.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. In a standing electric mixer using the paddle attachment, whip oil and sugar together.
3. Gradually add eggs and extract. Beat well.
4. Combine cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking powder and stir into wet mixture.
5. Divide dough and place onto prepared baking sheet.
6. With wet hands, form into log shapes about 2 inches wide and nearly as long as the pan.
7. Bake until golden, about 35 minutes. The color of the biscotti makes “golden” a bit difficult to determine, so look for firm edges and a split top.
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
9. Preheat oven to 250ºF.
10. Slice on a bias, about 1½ inches thick.
11. Lay the cookies flat on baking sheet and return to oven.
12. Bake for 40 minutes, turn oven off, and let cookies cool inside the falling oven.
13. Store in air-tight container.

Happy Dunking!

I can’t take much credit for this one. For starters, the whole thing was the Squeeze’s idea. I found the cookie recipe at The Joy of Baking and didn’t change it a bit, and the ice cream is a simple adaptation of my friend Bob Hopkins’ vanilla ice cream formula. When you make them, however, I suggest that you keep all the glory for yourself.

You’ll want to start on the ice cream three days ahead of when you plan on eating these beauties.

Mint Ice Cream

1. Scald milk and add mint leaves. Let steep five minutes.
2. Add half of the cream.
3. Bring mixture to a simmer. Do not allow to boil.
4. In a separate bowl, beat sugar into egg yolks until mixture is very smooth and light yellow in color.
5. Slowly whisk simmering milk mixture into egg mixture.
6. Return to heat and cook until thickened.
7. Remove from heat, add remaining cream, and pass through a strainer to remove mint leaves and any cooked bits of egg.
8. Chill overnight.
9. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.
10. Freeze churned ice cream over night again before making sandwiches.

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and prepare two baking pans.
2. Cream butter and sugars until fluffy and light.
3. Beat in vanilla and egg. Scrape down beater and sides of the bowl.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. Stir in dry ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined.
6. Fold in chocolate chips.
7. Drop teaspoonsful of batter onto prepared baking sheets.
8. Bake on center oven rack 8 – 10 minutes, or until the centers of the cookies are still soft, but the edges are well set.
9. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to finish cooling.

Assembling Sandwiches

1. Scoop out an ice cream puck roughly the same diameter as your cookies, and as thick as you please.
2. Place ice cream puck between cookie bottoms and smush the sandwich gently between your palms.
3. Return sandwiches to the freezer for a minimum of 20 minutes before serving.
4. If making well in advance, wrap individual sandwiches in plastic wrap before re-freezing.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Combine butter, juice, zest and sugar in the top of a double boiler.
2. Melt butter and stir to create a uniform mixture.
3. Remove from heat and gradually whip in eggs. Sluggish whipping may result in “scrambled” eggs in your curd. This isn’t a huge catastrophe, as you will strain the curd anyway, but try to avoid it if you can in order to take full advantage of the eggs’ thickening power.
4. Return mixture to heat and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened.
5. Strain through cheesecloth.
6. Cool.

I guess I must have grown up a Nabisco Kid. I can still hear the mid-1980s jingle: the rising intonation of the company name followed by the sweet little “bing,” just like, I always imagined, a faerie’s wand, putting just a little bit of magic into my favorite snack cookie. Little Debbie was cute, but she never stood a chance.

While the Keebler Elves kind of creeped me out, and I’ve always preferred Premium brand saltine crackers to Nabisco’s Club, the Fig Newton is, I believe, among the very best of the brand’s bunch. And while I can’t really sign off on the “fruit and cake” assessment, the classic Fig Newton is no ordinary cookie. Neither is my grown-up version of it, a revision and expansion of David Lebovitz’ Fig Cookie recipe in his gorgeous cookbook, Room for Dessert.

You will need a couple of hours from start to finish, which may be split over two days if you like. I suggest starting with the filling, and letting it reduce and thicken while you make the cookie dough. When both the filling and the dough are well chilled, you’ll want a good-sized, cool workspace upon which to roll out the dough and assemble the cookie logs. I like working on a lightly-floured pastry cloth, as the cloth makes transferring the log to a cookie sheet quite easy. When I set to making these the first time, I was somewhat intimidated at the notion of making a filled cookie, but they are really quite simple.

Roll the dough out into rectangles, then make a row of filling in the middle.

Then brush the edges with water. Fold one side up, then the other.

Next, just press the short ends together to seal off the log and transfer to a lined baking sheet.

Bake until golden, about thirty minutes. Cool; slice.

    
Inspired by a certain shortbread cookie at a certain local bakery, I have been adding peanuts to just about everything lately. Behold, a very simple, chocolatey brownie, dressed up with the unlikely but delicious peanut. Above, mine are looking a tad underdone, but no less tasty.