Last week, I was planning to bake cookies for some friends, and I wanted to come up with something their kids would really like. I asked Kurt what kind of cookies I should bake. His answer, shockingly, was chocolate chip. You should know that anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances, when asked what type of cookie should be baked, Kurt’s answer will be chocolate chip. And, he backed up that predictable response by informing me that everyone likes chocolate chip and surely that would make the kids happy. Well, he had a point, but I also wanted to offer something a little bit different and fun. I went searching through both paper and digital files and found these s’mores cookies that I bookmarked from a cookie slideshow. I thought they definitely qualified as fun. They’re also really easy to make. The cookie base has whole wheat flour and ground oats that give it a graham cracker vibe, and the toasted marshmallow topping looks as good as it tastes.The cookie dough was started in a food processor by first pulsing the oats until finely ground. All purpose and whole wheat flours were added with cinnamon, baking soda, and salt, and that was pulsed to combine. In a separate bowl, butter was mixed with brown sugar and an egg, and then the flour mixture was added. The cookies were shaped by the tablespoon on baking sheets and topped with squares of chocolate. I used milk chocolate thinking that kids probably prefer that to darker chocolate. The cookies baked for about thirteen minutes, and then each was topped with a marshmallow cut in half. One baking sheet at a time was placed under the broiler for a minute or so to toast the marshmallows.
I made homemade Kaiser rolls, and I had a plan for them. I had been thinking about these sandwiches on Kaiser rolls for a year, or the recipe had been sitting in my files for that long anyway. Last September, these num pangs appeared in Food and Wine, and the combination of big flavors and crisp vegetables was something I wanted to try. They could have been made with just about any roll, and semolina baguettes were suggested as another option, but they were shown on Kaiser rolls which seemed just right. There’s a lot going on in these sandwiches. The julienned carrots aren’t just raw carrots. They’re crisped in vinegar with a little sugar. And, the pesto is no standard pesto. It’s made with Thai basil and spiked with anchovies, lime juice, and fish sauce. That’s not all. While plain mayonnaise would have been good, drizzled with sriracha, it was even better.So, to make those quick-pickled carrots, cider vinegar and sugar were combined and the julienned carrot sticks were tossed in the mixture. That was left at room temperature for an hour and stirred from time to time. The pesto was made by whizzing the following in a food processor: Thai basil leaves, anchovies, lime juice, fish sauce, crushed red pepper flakes, and chopped garlic. The Kaiser rolls were split, toasted, and buttered, and then it was time to build sandwiches. One side of each roll was spread with mayonnaise and drizzled with sriracha, and the other side was topped with pesto. The sandwich was layered with thinly sliced cucumber, piquillo peppers, carrots, and cilantro leaves. 
, I didn’t have good luck with the first two breads I tried. Maybe I chose poorly and should have started with less fussy varieties, but the efforts weren’t completely wasted. I became more familiar with pre-ferments and how chilling them overnight before mixing them into a dough develops flavor. Flavor was definitely not a problem with those first two breads, but I decided to take a break from ciabatta and pugliese and attempt Kaiser rolls. I wanted to jump right in and order a Kaiser roll stamp to make the distinctive cuts in the tops of the rolls, but given my track record with this book, I decided to wait and see how the first batch went before buying a special tool. The stamp makes the pinwheel cuts with one press. There’s also an alternative suggested in the book which involves making a knotted kind of roll that looks similar. I decided to just make multiple cuts in a pinwheel pattern using a lame. The rolls turned out fine, so I’ll have to order the stamp for next time.Once again, a pre-ferment, this time a pate-fermentee, was mixed and chilled in the refrigerator overnight. The pate-fermentee was brought up to room temperature and then mixed into a dough with flour, salt, barley malt syrup, yeast, an egg, vegetable oil, and water. The dough was kneaded and then fermented for two hours. It was divided into eight pieces which were left to relax for ten minutes before shaping each into a Kaiser roll with pinwheel cuts on top. Then, oddly enough, each roll was placed top side down on a semolina-dusted baking sheet. The pretty, swirly cuts were smashed. That just seemed wrong. After 45 minutes, the rolls were flipped cut side up, and I ended up re-cutting the swirls into most of them. They proofed for another 30 minutes while the oven warmed. Then, I had some questions. The rolls pictured in the book have glossy tops that I assumed could only be achieved with an egg wash. However, the instructions for pre-baking were to simply mist with water and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. I proceeded with just water and sprinkled poppy seeds. That was question one. Question two was why was the oven spritzed with water after loading the rolls? Steam produces a crispy crust and these should have been tender and shiny rather than crisp. So, as suspected, water on the rolls and water spritzed in the oven resulted in crisp surfaced rolls that were perfectly fine and tasty but completely lacking gloss, and next time I will try an egg wash and no water sprayed in the oven.
