Strawberry-Rhubard Sorbet and Vanilla Ice Cream with Rhubarb-Red Wine Compote

It’s time for dessert. After tapas and paella, dessert was, well, not exactly Spanish. I wanted to make use of spring-time strawberries and rhubarb and turning them into something frozen seemed right. Since a frozen dessert would be made well in advance, that meant I could put together a few components and nothing would require last-minute attention. When I read The Perfect Scoop, I was inspired by the suggested pairings of sorbets or granitas with ice creams and sauces. I dreamt up a vision of fruity strawberry-rhubarb sorbet served next to a sinfully rich scoop of vanilla ice cream, and I found those recipes in that book. Following the strawberry-rhubarb sorbet recipe, there’s a note about serving it with a red wine-poached rhubarb compote which sounded perfect. Sorbet, ice cream, and compote was a good start, but I thought a nutty, crunchy item would make it complete. For that, I turned to Martha Stewart's Cookies and chose the lacy nut cookie. I had a plan, but I had no idea how to best present those items on a dessert plate. I should probably read a book on plating and presentation.

Each part of this dessert was very easy to prepare. For the sorbet, rhubarb was chopped and cooked with sugar and water until tender. That was pureed with strawberries, chilled, and churned into sorbet in my ice cream maker. The next day, I made the custard for ice cream with whole milk, sugar, cream, a vanilla bean, six egg yolks, and vanilla extract. I’ve tried a few different recipes for vanilla ice cream, and I can now gauge how delicious the result will be based on the number of egg yolks used. Six is a lovely number of egg yolks for vanilla ice cream, and it was very delicious. The compote was a simple mix of chopped rhubarb, red wine, sugar, honey, a cinnamon stick, and ground cloves. That combination was simmered until the rhubarb was cooked and the sauce reduced, and then I stored it in the refrigerator. Before serving, I brought the compote back to room temperature. The last item was the cookie. The dough was made from mostly butter but also confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, bread flour, and chopped pecans. Once mixed, it was rolled into a log, wrapped in parchment paper, and chilled. Pieces were sliced from the dough log and baked on silpat-lined sheet pans. I quickly learned that these cookies spread even more than you would think. The dough log I created was a little big, and I ended up cutting each slice in half before baking. The shape of the dough doesn’t matter so much because it spreads into a circle regardless while baking. The cookies baked into lacy and somewhat fragile wafers of buttery crunch.

I ended up with just what I wanted for flavors, textures, fruit, and nuts, but I had no idea how to make it look nice on a plate. Should I have put the compote on the bottom, drizzled it on top, or placed it to the side? What about the cookie? I couldn’t decide how to position it either. It could have been the platform on which everything else sat, or it could have rested on top like a lacy veil over the frozen scoops, or it could have sat in a more vertical pose. I played with the plating and snapped the photos seen here well before dinner time. Then, when it was time for dessert, my final plating decision was to set out a buffet of sorts and invite everyone to help themselves. Problem solved.

Chocolate Chip Cookie XS

My kitchen’s cookie baking season has officially started. There remains the question of how much will actually fit in my freezer, but I’ll deal with that as I go. I like to bake a so-called regular cookie or two to go along with the more festive ones. This particular cookie appears to be just an oatmeal chocolate chip. Looks can be deceiving. It’s actually a pretty spectacular version of an oatmeal chocolate chip. Back in September, I wrote about Demolition Desserts by Elizabeth Falkner and baked her smore brownies, and these cookies come from that book as well. The XS in the title is for extra sugar but it could also be for extra special.

Falkner devotes a couple of pages to types of sugars, their unique properties, and how she uses them. For this cookie, dark muscovado sugar is used which is an unrefined, natural product of sugar cane. It contains more minerals and rich molasses flavor than a standard brown sugar. Commercial brown sugar is actually refined white sugar that has some molasses added back into it. The second sugar used here is Demerara which is made in the same way as muscovado, but the grain is coarser. It’s named for the colony of Demerara in Guyana but is now mostly produced in Mauritius. By using both types of sugar in this cookie, the dough develops great molasses flavor, and the Demerara provides a little crunch. To make the dough even more special, the oatmeal is pulsed a few times in a food processor and then is toasted in lightly browned butter. And, the chocolate? No regular chocolate chips here, although they are listed as an option in the recipe. Instead, I chose to make chunks from a piece of Callebaut bittersweet.

For a little cookie recipe, Falkner provides a lot of insight and suggestions. For instance, she precisely describes the steps involved in chopping and toasting the oatmeal. I appreciate this kind of enthusiasm and attention to detail and take it as a sign that she really cares about the quality of the outcome. For baking times, she notes differences in the texture of the cookies for nine minutes, 10 minutes, 11 minutes, etc. Her preferred baking time is 10 minutes for these, but she encourages the home cook to find his or her own favorite. I decided mine was 11 minutes which resulted in a flatter cookie with crisp edges. Shorter baking times resulted in a puffier cookie. These unrefined sugars are delicious, and the texture and flavor combination of this cookie is definitely extra special. If I want something more regular on my cookie platter, I’ll have to bake something else.

Whoopie Pies

I thought people knew about whoopie pies. I don’t know the origin of the name, but I’d heard of them. And so, I came trotting into work with a box full of them and offered them around only to be asked repeatedly: what’s a whoopie pie?

Fortunately, everyone's confusion turned to bliss after tasting them. These particular whoopie pies are a lighter version than usual. I’ve been seeking out some light options during the summer heat, and when I stumbled upon this in Eating Well, it was a go.

The cake batter-like mixture for the cookies comes together quickly and easily. When spreading the batter onto the baking sheet, you do need to take a moment to try for evenly sized circles. In the end, some of my cookies were a tiny bit bigger than others, but they all seemed to find a mate of equal size for the sandwiching step.

This recipe requires no butter and only one egg. The cookies are cakey, soft, and delicious. The filling with yogurt, cream, and vanilla has a sense of lightness about it but no lack of flavor. Everyone who tasted one agreed that these do not taste like anything is missing. Another bonus is that this is a very good chilled cookie. I usually prefer cookies at room temperature, but these need to be refrigerated because of the filling. The fact that they’re chilled takes them in an ice cream sandwich direction which is a very good thing. Coming to think of it, they would probably be fantastic frozen.

They look decadent, and seem like a big serving of cookie, but they’re very light and nicely flavored without being too rich. So, make some whoopie pies because the name is ridiculous to say, they’re easy to make, and they’re amazing to eat.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

It's fair to say that I bake a lot more cookies than I eat. Usually, the fun is in the baking and the sharing. These cookies are different. I first tried this recipe when it appeared in Living magazine, and it became a favorite of mine. I typed it into my file, with one small change, and kept it for future use. My little change was to increase the amount of whole wheat flour to 3/4 cup to bring the dough together a bit more. Something I wouldn't change is the use of natural peanut butter. Most recipes assume regular, sugary, hydrogenated oil-filled peanut butter will be used, and when I use natural instead I have guess at the right amount of sugar and make other alterations. It's so rare, but fantastic, to see real peanut butter used. This weekend I purchased a copy of the new Martha Stewart's Cookies book and was delighted to find the recipe included in it. Apparently, everyone at MSLO knew it was a keeper too. I baked a batch yesterday, put several in the freezer to enjoy as needed, and brought a few to work to share. Kurt completely disagrees with me about the use of peanut butter in baked goods. He gave this cookie a seven out of ten after eating four of them and claims to only ever want chocolate chip. No matter, this is a cookie I enjoy eating as much as baking.

Corn Flour Lemon Cookies Baked on a Silpat

This experiment might have had more to do with testing baking equipment than a recipe, but I learned something about both. For years, I had been using a couple of trusty non-stick, air-layered cookie sheets, but they had gotten a little bent and weren’t as non-stick as they used to be. Also, I thought I might be the only person on the planet who hadn’t baked with a silpat. So, when I received a Williams-Sonoma gift card for my birthday, I headed straight to the cookie sheet area of the store. I bought one half sheet pan and a silpat to fit it. I thought I should test this before purchasing more than one. With my batterie de cuisine now expanded, it was time to try a corn flour cookie I had been craving. I was imagining a crunchy cookie that would hold its shape. Instead, the cookies spread while baking and definitely lacked crunch. I was not thrilled with the result of the recipe test, but the silpat worked beautifully. I plan to purchase a few more with pans of the same size. Now, since Kurt had no preconceived notion of what this cookie could or should be, he was very happy with the result. He enjoyed the chewy texture with the lemon flavor and the crunch of the chopped almonds on top. When I peeked in the oven and saw the cookies spreading, I thought I should have chilled them before baking. Since they all fit on one pan, I didn't get to test that theory. Given the fat content in the recipe, that probably wouldn’t have helped much anyway. Also, a little longer baking time would have resulted in a drier cookie, but this wasn’t the right recipe for my particular craving. I’ll just have to try again.

Big, Thin, Chocolate Chip Cookies

UPDATE 12 APRIL 2010:

These cookies are so good, I wanted to update this very old post. I just made these again for an Austin food blogger potluck and shot some new photos. These cookies are intended to spread a lot while baking, and the result is a big, thin, crispy-edged, brown-sugary, irrestible, chocolate chip cookie. I've always found the original recipe to be just a little too low on flour even though that's why they spread so well and become so thin. I have a couple of changes I make including adding one half cup of wheat germ and adding extra vanilla, but I always add a little extra vanilla to cookies. One other thing I do with this recipe is to use one half cup of whole wheat flour in place of the last half cup of all-purpose flour. There's something about the thinness of these and the crunchy edges giving way to tender centers that makes them one of my all-time favorite cookies.

original post:

The recipe can be found on the Martha Stewart site under Alexis's Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip cookies and also in The Martha Stewart Cookbook: Collected Recipes for Every Day under Lexi's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies. These cookies spread a lot, meaning more than any cookie has ever expanded on a baking sheet, as they bake. They need lots of space around them so as not to bake into a solid cookie sheet. I place just five mounds of dough on each sheet pan, and it's not a bad idea to chill the sheets with dough mounds for a few minutes before putting them in the oven. I used a three tablespoon scoop for mounding the dough and left the cookies in the oven for twelve minutes rather than eight as directed in the recipe. Also, parchment paper or silpats are necessary to easily remove the baked cookies from the sheet pans. One last tip is that these cookies are very big and need time on a cooling rack to crisp. This all makes them sound somewhat fussy, but they're really not and they're definitely worth the effort.