Further Adventures With Peppermint Extract

Here's something kind of fun that I made today - no reason, I just had nothing better to do and wanted to use up my peppermint extract from the previous post. They're pretty easy to make and look quite cute and impressive. Naturally, I didn't have any shortening in the house (duuuuh) so I substituted coconut oil, which seems to have done the trick. I also put a little corn syrup in the melted chocolate to make it nice n' shiny. I would make these again but next time I'd put in more peppermint extract, and not just because I'm trying to get rid of it - the peppermint flavor is not that strong. I might also try putting the peppermint extract in the chocolate. This is a yummy, simple, wintry treat, excellent for a cold day like today. You can find the recipe here.

Make It Out of Peppermint Barky Barky

Hanukkah is over – time for the real holidays to begin! (Worst Jew ever, right here.) Time to turn off the Maccabeats and whatever the hell this is and turn on Elf. Yes, it’s true, I love cultural Christmas, in no small part because of the food, and I love the food in no small part because of peppermint bark. Over the last couple of years it’s become a tradition of mine to make peppermint bark, which is beautiful, festive, delicious, and simple to make. Well, the making part is simple; it’s the cutting that’s tricky. Every year, the pieces splinter apart when I cut them, or the white chocolate separates from the dark. No good!

This year at the family Hanukkah party (I knew that holiday was good for something!), my Aunt Nancy gave my cousin a little tin of yummy homemade peppermint bark. I asked her how she was able to cut it into such neat squares, and she divulged two secrets. One, add some cream to the dark chocolate. Two, don’t wait until it’s completely hardened to cut it. Now they weren’t that secret, as far as secrets go. I had seen some recipes that included the cream, and common sense told me to cut the bark when it was still a bit soft. Nevertheless, every recipe I’ve seen specifically instructs the baker to wait until the chocolate is totally hardened before cutting it. Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to go with Aunt Nancy’s method. And I was so pleased with the results! At first I was concerned about the dark chocolate, because when I added the cream it became very thick and ganache-like, and it’s true that it didn’t spread as much as it should have, but it firmed up okay, and provided a much firmer base for the bark than just pure chocolate. I put the bark in the fridge for about 20 minutes, cut it, and then put it back for further hardening, and it turned out great. I put the pieces in glass jars, tied ‘em up with pretty ribbons, and gave them to current and former coworkers as holiday gifts. (For Kaitlyn, last seen being a vegan on this blog here, I made vegan peppermint bark, which is literally just dark chocolate studded with pieces of candy cane. I did look for vegan white chocolate but it was impossible to find – there was one place that sold it 3.5 ounces for $17, but that seemed excessive. And it turns out Kaitlyn doesn’t even like white chocolate so I’m glad I didn’t waste my money.) Anyway, it was a big success. To thank Aunt Nancy for the awesome tips, you should check out her Web site, it's pretty cool!: http://www.mylifestylecareer.com/ 

Aunt Nancy’s Peppermint Bark

One pound of dark chocolate

One pound of white chocolate

Half a cup of cream

Peppermint extract

Candy canes or peppermint candies, in pieces (I put them in a bag and crushed them repeatedly with the bottom of the tea kettle. You may find a more elegant method, but probably not one as satisfying.)

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Melt dark chocolate and cream in a double boiler; mix until the chocolate thickens. Add peppermint extract to taste. Spread the dark chocolate mixture on the aluminum foil and refrigerate until mostly firm.

Melt white chocolate in a double boiler; add peppermint extract to taste. Pour on top of dark chocolate sheet and sprinkle on peppermint pieces. Refrigerate until mostly firm. Remove from fridge and cut into pieces, then return to fridge until completely firm.

Peace on Earth

Right now, the world could use a little extra peace.  If these cookies help us get there, all the better.  If these delicious salty, sweet chocolate cookies help spur us to action to make the world a better place, to bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then these cookies will have really earned their keep.

These world peace cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, were my favorite cookies that she made in her shop.  It is awesome that they can be made at home and turn out just as well.  The dough is a little crumbly, but if you can get past that, they are tender and deeply chocolatly with a hit of salt that puts them over the top.  These are some of the best cookies I have ever made or eaten and I hope they bring the world one step closer to the peace it so desperately needs.  You can find the recipe here.

Spicy Hanukkah Cookies

Hanukkah is here!  The holiday of all things fried in oil.  You might expect some traditional jelly donuts or other fried treats, but sometimes after a huge meal with latkes (fried potato pancakes), you just want something not too heavy or sweet to cut all that oil.

When I got this month's Bon Appetit, and I saw that these cookies were on the cover, I thought they would be the perfect accompaniment to a Hanukkah meal.  It was even better when I saw that they were Dorie Greenspan cookies, since Dorie's recipes have never failed me.  Dorie calls these Speculoos Cookie Buttons, which is an adorable name for a delicious cookie.  They are slightly crisp but tender, with a little crunch from the sugar (which I did blue and white for Hanukkah) and a sweet and spicy kick.  Dorie puts a glaze on them, which I skipped because I ran out of time, but I am sure would be delicious.

You can find the recipe for the cookies here.  I hope you add them to your Hanukkah recipe file or make them all year round.  Happy Hanukkah!  I hope you and your family have lots of light in this dark time of year.

Review: Dorie Time!

Happy Thanksgiving, hooray hooray hooray! The Baking Sisters had a wonderful Thanksgiving, because, for the first time since Rebecca’s son Leo was born, we are all together! Hooray hooray hooray, again! Usually when Rebecca is in New York we are prevented from eating delicious things because of time constraints, or Passover, or whatever. But as true Dorie Greenspan fans, we took this as our opportunity to go to her new store Beurre & Sel. 

The store itself is a wee little booth in the Essex Street Market. After a scrumptious lunch of grilled cheese from Saxelby Cheesemongers, we commenced the real reason for our visit to the Lower East Side. There were four notoriously un-tough taste-testers: Rebecca, Sarah, Rebecca’s son Simon (age 4) and Rebecca’s husband Adam (age 34, not a fan of chocolate). At Beurre & Sel, there were six choices of cookie, plus tubes of cookies sticking out of the wall. If you are having trouble visualizing that, here is a picture:

The cookie choices were a rose macaroon, a sable, a World Peace Cookie, a blueberry jammer, a pumpkin cookie, and some blondie thing with coconut or some crap. The coconut one was obviously out, and usually the pumpkin one would be too, but since Adam doesn’t like chocolate and wouldn’t try the World Peace cookie, we bought him the pumpkin one. (Simon isn’t picky so he would try all of them.) Here are our thoughts:

The jammer was a very pleasant surprise. It’s the sort of thing we probably wouldn’t have bought if our options had been more abundant, but it was in fact a highly tasty cookie. It was a cross between a thick linzer cookie and a coffee cake, with a slightly salty aftertaste and a delicious blueberry jam filling.

We’ve made sables a number of times, but they’ve never come out as well as these ones. They were much bigger than your average sable from Baking From My Home to Yours and tasted pretty similar, but the texture was so much better; tender without the usual crumbly action that accompanies our sables. This was Sarah’s favorite cookie at Beurre & Sel.

At last – the famous World Peace cookie! Once again, it was a lot bigger than the ones we make, but hey, more for us! It featured the well-known and well-loved mixture of sweet and salty. Considering what has been going on in the Middle East, we feel that these cookies may be more relevant than ever. This was Rebecca and Simon’s favorite cookie, and we also bought a tube of them, which were the familiar size. We also bought tubes of espresso chocolate chip, which was good but nothing to write home about (though we have sentimental attachment to them because they were the first thing we ever posted on the blog), and mint chocolate chip, which Rachel loved.

We didn’t try the pumpkin but Adam seemed to enjoy it.

So there you have it. A wonderful week of Baking Sisters fun in New York. And although we didn’t get to see Dorie, we would like to give her a shoutout for being the best! Dorie, if you are reading this, we love you!

Double Chocolate Chip Cranberry Bread: A Thanksgiving Morning Treat

One of the reasons that the baking sisters started this blog was to stay connected when I moved across the country.  However far I get away from NYC, my heart is always there and I am heart broken to watch what is going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  Please consider making a donation to the Red Cross, Bend the Arc or the Educational Alliance (they do lots of fabulous work on the lower east side, both to address immediate needs and find long term solutions to poverty). 

One of the best things about New York City is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and one of our family Thanksgiving traditions is to go to the parade (outside, not watching on TV or in someone's apartment like wimps) and then go home, frozen, and eat hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.  As we got older, we were less interested in going to the parade, but the hot chocolate and cookie tradition remained.  This year, we are taking my son to the parade for the first time, and we will undoubtably need that hot chocolate and cookies afterwards.

However, if you are not as wedded to this particular tradition, this cake would make an excellent Thanksgiving morning treat.  The tart cranberries are seasonally appropriate, and they offset the sweetness of the cake nicely.  You can make it ahead and it freezes nicely, so you don't have to add it to your list of things to make on Thanksgiving day.  Also, this is technically called "bread" so you can eat it for breakfast.  You can find the recipe here on the Baking Bites blog.

VOTE!

Do it!