Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Drops

The combination of salty-sweet is perfection in desserts: salted caramels, chocolate dipped pretzels, even chocolate bacon cake. (Trust me.) But the original, the very first experience most of us have of this nirvana of salty-sweet, is with peanut butter and chocolate, possibly my favorite flavor combination. (See my blog post on homemade peanut butter cups.)

Going a bit farther on that path (and at the request of my peanut butter and chocolate obsessed children), I came up with this recipe for cookie dough drops: basically cookie dough dipped in chocolate and finely chopped nuts (I like cashews, for an extra hit of rich, nutty flavor. Peanuts work just fine too.) Easy to make, even easier to eat, and appealing to everyone, big and little alike.

One note: I have re-imagined the peanut butter cookie dough so that it does not include eggs, just in case you are a little freaked out about eating eggs in the raw.

Recipe:

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1/2 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup A.P. flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8-12 ounces chocolate, (milk or dark) melted
• 1/2 cup cashews or peanuts, finely chopped

I use a food processor to make this, because it can be done in less than a minute, but it can be made by hand, just be sure to blend everything well.

1. Blend together butter, peanut butter and sugar until well combined. It should be very smooth. 
2. Add flour, baking powder and soda and salt. Blend again until very smooth. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes, until the dough is firm enough to be easily handled.
3. Using a tablespoon or a large melon baller, make 1-inch dough balls. 
4. Freeze until firm about 30 minutes. This makes the dough much easier to dip in the melted chocolate. 
5. Dip dough in melted chocolate and sprinkle with chopped nuts, and place on cooling rack until chocolate hardens.
6. Snarf.

Makes about 3 dozen 1-inch dough drops

*This makes a great peanut butter cookie too. Flatten the dough balls with a fork, sprinkle with chopped nuts, and bake in 350 degree oven 10-12 minutes until edges are crispy and the middles still a bit soft. 

Raspberry Chocolate Whipped Cream Profiteroles

Spring is here, and I simply can't wait for berry season. Until then, I will have to content myself with the fact that my chickens know it is spring too, and are laying eggs like crazy. I have dozens and dozens. Eggs are rolling off my kitchen counters. I am giving them away to my friends, neighbors, even the mailman.
In an effort to use up some of this lovely bounty (I know, I am spoiled rotten) I made choux, which is a magical pastry dough that is cooked and then baked in the oven to a fantastical puffy, golden lightness. And then I stuffed each lovely light-as-air orb with kir royal infused whipped cream and a raspberry and dipped the tops in dark chocolate.
This should do until strawberry season.

Choux Dough:

• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar
• 1 cup flour 
• 5 eggs

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees with two racks in the middle third of oven

1. In a medium saucepan over high heat, bring butter, milk and water to a boil. Once boiling, Add salt, sugar and flour all at once. Don't be alarmed if it seems a lumpy mess at first, just stir briskly with a wooden spoon or stout whisk. The mixture will quickly become smooth. Continue stirring a few more minutes until the mixture becomes a bit dry.
2. Remove from heat and let cool a moment or two and then add eggs one by one, stirring very well after each to fully incorporate. Don't worry if the mixture looks a bit curdled, it will come back together. 
3. Spray or use silpat mats and prepare two half size sheet pans and either pipe or drop rounded spoonfuls of dough onto pans. Pop into reheated oven and IMMEDIATELY turn the heat down to 375 degree. Bake approximately 25-30 minutes, rotating pans halfway through baking time, until puffs are well risen and lightly golden brown. 
4. Remove from oven and allow to cool on cooling racks before proceeding

Raspberry Whipped Cream:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 Tablespoon confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon raspberry liquor, like Chambord or vanilla extract

1. In a very cold bowl, with a very cold whisk (I put mine in the freezer for a few minutes) whip heavy cream just until it holds soft clouds. This takes about three seconds, less time than it takes to hunt up the blades for the electric mixer. Much easier to do it by hand. Really. 
2. Add sugar and favoring and give it a few more turns with the whisk, just until it holds firmer peaks. C'est fini. 

Assembly:

Choux

• Whipped Cream
• Raspberries
• Melted chocolate: 6-8 ounces of your favorite, melted in a bain marie or the microwave on 50% power.

1. Using a bread knife, split the choux open, they will be quite hollow inside. 
2. Add a dollop of cream into the hollow, then a raspberry. Replace the cap.
3. Spoon melted chocolate over the top. I like to refrigerate them, so that the chocolate gives a nice, satisfying snap, and the cream stays chilly. 

Divine.

Makes about 30-33 2-inch choux, enough for 10-11 dessert servings. 

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

I am obsessed with that magical combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Salty, sweet, bewitchingly bitter, pleasingly unctuous, it truly has it all. Divine.
But Reese's has started to taste, well, cheap. This is a homemade version that takes three (3!!!) ingredients, about 20 minutes (10 if you have a microwave) and tastes loads more decadent and delicious.
Warning: once you find out how easy these are to make, you may never leave the house again.

Recipe:

• 2  12 ounce packages bittersweet chocolate chips, Sunspire (organic),Valrhona or even Ghirardelli are great. And nestlé morsels are delicious too, just a bit grainy.
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter (I used organic, but whatever floats your boat)
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar (again, I used organic, but use what you like)

That's it!

1. Melt one package of chocolate chips in a double boiler or in the microwave. While the chocolate is melting, prepare either an 8 x 8 inch glass baking dish with a quick spritz of vegetable cooking spray, or use a mini-cupcake mold (either spritz it as well or line it with cute little cupcake liners.)
2. When the chocolate is melted and smooth, either pour it into the prepared dish or divide it evenly among the openings of the mold and pop it into the freezer to set up.
3. In a separate bowl, blend peanut butter and powdered sugar together. Heat gently, just until peanut butter is hot enough to be liquidy. This will make it easy to incorporate the powdered sugar. Check the chocolate in the freezer. If it is firm to the touch, go ahead and pour the peanut butter mixture on top (or spoon it, using a teaspoon, there will be EXACTLY enough to fill the molds) and return it once again to the freezer. 
4. Melt reaming chocolate until glossy and smooth. Once peanut butter layer has set, pour melted chocolate over the top, smooth with an off-set spatula, and let set once more in the fridge. Done!

Makes 16 large bars or 28 butter cups

*To remove the chilled butter cups from the mold (if you did not use liners,) just turn the mold upside down on the counter (put a clean towel down first to catch them) and tap firmly once or twice against the counter. They pop right out. 

Irish Soda Bread

My grandmother was always, always making soda bread. Most of the time it was real Irish soda bread: a brown quick bread, almost like a large biscuit, made with whole wheat flour and oats. But when the grandchildren were coming, out came this version of soda bread--the sweet, raisin-studded, American version, often with sugar dusted right on top. Of course, both versions were deeply slashed with a cross, "To let out the devil" she always said, before catching my eye, wide-open in childish horror at the thought that something so delicious could be so wicked, "And to catch the sugar too." She would always wink.

All was right with the world again.

This version is a bit of a spin on hers: I soak my raisins in tea laced with port, so they are extra plump and delicious, and I use a happy mix of Greek yogurt and whole milk instead of the classic buttermilk. I think it makes a nicely tender crumb, with a bit more breakfasty heft. Of course, feel free to use buttermilk instead. 

I also make this recipe the way my grandmother did: with a bowl, a spoon, and a grater rather than my trusty food processor. It's a great trick: simply pop the butter in the freezer, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, make a well in them, and then grate your cold, cold butter into the dry ingredients using the medium small holes in the grater. Stir. The butter is now perfectly incorporated! Simply continue on with the recipe. 

Makes 2 loaves

Recipe:

• 4 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar plus 2 Tablespoons for dusting
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 cup plain yogurt, Greek if you can
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1 stick very cold butter

• 1 1/2 cups raisins
• 1 teabag of your favorite tea
• splash of port if you have it
• hot water to cover

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven. Spray either a large baking sheet or two 8-inch cake pans

1. While the oven is pre-heating, dump your raisins in a little bowl with your teabag and splash with port, if you have it. Bring some water to a boil and pour over raisins. Cover and set aside. 
2. In a bowl or a food processor, combine the dry ingredients. Incorporate butter (see above) and then yogurt and milk. The mixture will look shaggy and dry. DON'T WORRY, and DO NOT keep mixing--it will come together. A light touch is best.
3. Drain the raisins and add them to your shaggy dough. If you are using a food processor, DO NOT hit start--you will puree them. 
4. Turn dough out and gently but firmly pat it into shape. The dough will quickly come together. Divide into two round loaves, about 8-9 inches in diameter. Slash each with a sharp knife with a cross and sift  sugar over the tops. Place in cake pans (they will rise quite a bit and look quite cake-ish) or on large baking sheet (they will spread and look more authentic and homemade.)
5. Cook about 35 minutes until tester comes out clean and the tops are nicely cragged and lightly browned and crusty. Let cool about 10 minutes and turn out onto cooling rack. Serve warm with lashings of butter. 

Spice Doughnuts

On snowy days, my father always tells the same story. He is a small boy, awake early on a very cold morning in the depths of January. It is the late 1940's. His Irish grandmother is in the kitchen, looking out the window at the snow sifting down from the still dark sky.

"No school for you today, laddie" she tells him.

This tall, iron gray woman, a daughter of famine, quite literally--her family had only survived the Great Hunger because they had been cook and gamekeeper on an Anglo-Irish estate "by the grace of God" as she put it, while more than 1 million people starved--set to work making breakfast for my father and his five siblings.

My father had oatmeal every morning of his life--made by his grandmother, and if he didn't eat every bite, she bopped him on the head with the serving spoon.

She was a very firm woman.

But this morning, when my father was still the only child awake, and it was just the two of them, grandmother and grandchild in the cold kitchen before the stove had a chance to chase the chill from the linoleum, my great-grandmother made my father a treat--these spicy doughnuts. Fried dough, she'd called them then, and recalled for him a time when she herself had helped her mother make them on a rare snowy Irish morning, in an enormous Victorian kitchen, at a range that burned bricks of peat in a country an ocean away, in another century.

Of course this is not that recipe. But on a recent snow day, I missed my family. And so my children and I made these, and I thought about my Dad, and his grandmother, and her mother.

Love, comfort, snow.

Recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups  all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• vegetable oil for frying
• cinnamon sugar or confectioner's sugar for dusting

Special Equipment: heavy skillet for frying, thermometer

1. In a medium bowl, stir dry ingredients together. 
2. In a smaller bowl, whisk buttermilk, egg, vanilla and oil together, and then whisk into the dry ingredients. Stir just until combined. 
3. Fill skillet with oil to a depth of 1/2 inch and heat over medium heat until thermometer registers 375 degrees. 
4. Drop SMALL, rounded spoonfuls of dough into the hot oil CAREFULLY. The dough will puff as it cooks, so think less than a teaspoon. As they cook, they will usually turn themselves over, but sometimes they may need a little helping hand with a slotted spoon. Remove when they are lightly golden brown and puffy and drain on paper towels.
5. Dust with cinnamon sugar or confectioner's sugar while still warm. 

Triple Chocolate Brownies

These truly are the very best brownies. So easy, they can be made while you are boiling water for pasta. The perfect base for an almost endless array of add-ins, you will never tire of them. The perfect gift for a lovelorn friend, a bake sale staple, an undeniably delicious bribe, a delectable way of expressing gratitude. Or, you can simply hide in a closet and keep them all to yourself. Tempting.

Recipe:

• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 8 ounces butter (2 sticks)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 
• 1/2 cup All-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 large handful bittersweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven.
Butter or spray a rectangular pyrex dish--I use one that is 11 3/4 inches by 7 1/2 inches.

1. In a medium bowl over boiling water (or in a microwave) melt chocolate and butter together. Stir gently just until melted. 
2. Add sugar, vanilla, eggs and salt and mix until eggs are just combined. Add flour and cocoa powder and mix again just until combined and there are no lumps--really DO NOT OVERMIX. The brownies will be tough and dry if you mix too much. Really you are just trying to make sure that all your ingredients are combined together and aren't left in great lumps, that's all. Use a wooden spoon, be gentle.
3. Add chocolate chips and spoon into prepared pan. Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes until brownies are set-the surface should have a nice sheen, the edges should be  dry and well set, and the tester should come out fairly dry. The brownies will continue to cook, once they come out of the oven, and they really are best a bit on the gooey side, so it's best to under-rather than over cook.

One caveat: You MUST wait until the brownies are cool before cutting! I know, it will be hard!

If you ever get bored with the basic recipe (how could you? but still...) add chopped pecans or walnuts to the batter before baking, or sprinkle the top with some grains of super coarse salt, or pistachios, or coconut, or frost it with ganache when it cooled, or....see? practically endless....

Party Food: Boeuf Bourguignon

The months of late winter in my house are full of parties: from Christmas on, it seems, we are in a constant whirl from New Years to the first week of spring in late March: there is Epiphany, many birthday parties, Valentine's Day, school festivals, sometimes even Easter!

Everyone needs a recipe to feed a hungry crowd of people--something incredibly easy, but also gorgeously impressive and deeply satisfying. This is a recipe that will never cease to draw oohs and ahhs from the hungry guests gathered around your dining room table, and leave plates and bowls scraped clean.

While the last posts have been consumed with the sweeter side of these many celebrations, really, you can't have dessert before you have had a long, leisurely, delicious meal. As a hostess of many, many parties, I have realized the importance of having a store of recipes that are almost indestructible, and most can be made ahead and even served room temeperature. That, a really great black dress, and champagne, and you have a party.

This week, we are making a riff on Boeuf Bourguignon, the classic French beef stew. Delicious, with layers of rich, wine laced broth and chunks of tender, silken beef and sweet carrot, earthy, plump mushrooms and smoky bacon. Nicely complex, but not too muddled with different flavors, and nicely balanced by some plain buttered egg noodles or even mashed potatoes.

*The recipe is really very easy, but it does take time. Do it the day before if you can, and let it cook all afternoon on the back of the stove or in the oven. Cool it to room temperature and then refrigerate before going to bed. Overnight, any fat in the stew will rise to the top and solidify and you can simply lift it off and toss it before heating it about an hour before your guests arrive. Easy! Also, the stew really improves in taste overnight. But don't worry if you can't do this step, it will still be amazing!

Serves at least 10 hungry big people

Recipe:

• 5 pounds beef chuck roast, as local as possible, diced into about 1-1 1/2 inch cubes
• vegetable oil
• salt and pepper
• 4 strips smoky bacon, cut into lardons (1/4 inch strips) 
• 5 celery ribs, chopped (about 1 cup)
• 8 ounces baby carrots (about 1 cup)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 liter red wine (1 1/2 bottles)
• 3 cups beef stock
• bay leaf
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 12 ounce package white mushrooms, quartered
• 1 package frozen pearl onions (you can use fresh if you have the time and inclination. I would rather use that time to vacuum the floor or get a pedicure, frankly.)

1. In a large, heavy, deep dutch oven or daube (as the French say) over medium-high heat, add a bit of vegetable oil and brown the cubes of meat well. This is the hardest part of the recipe, because it will take a few batches, and the urge to crowd the pan is strong. RESIST THIS URGE! Too many pieces in at once means that the meat will poach and turn gray and not gorgeously golden brown, sealing in all those lovely juices that will make your stew so delicious your guests will swoon. It will take three or four batches, but be strong. All the other ingredients can just be dumped in soon enough. Keep adding vegetable oil if needed to make certain the beef doesn't stick. As the cubes are finished, scoop them out and put them in a nice deep bowl and season them well with salt and pepper and continue until all the pieces are finished. 
2. If the bottom of your daube is looking unappetizingly blackened and tar-like, give it a quick wipe with a paper towel, but really, don't worry about it too much. Dark brown is simply tasty waiting to happen. Return to medium high heat and add the bacon. Once the bacon begins to render its fat add the carrots, celery, onion and garlic and cook over medium heat until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. 
3. Once the veggies are on their way, add the meat back in, glug in almost all the wine, add the beef stock and the bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Once a nice, steady bubbling has been reached, crack the lid to about half way, turn the heat down so that the stew is at a bare simmer, and go do something else for a few hours. 
4. After about 2 hours, in general, my stew is just about ready for the last steps.  In a large sauté pan, melt butter over high heat. When the butter has fully melted add mushrooms and pearl onions and cook, stirring often. Add a bit of salt (mushrooms need to exude their liquid to get the proper sear and mushroomy taste) and keep cooking until the mushrooms are golden brown and the pearl onions have lost some of their frozen chill and add them to the stew. 
5. Check the stew periodically--add the rest of the wine if you haven't already, and taste to check the seasoning. My stews tend to be ready after about three hours of barely there simmering, but could probably go longer, and if I turned up the heat could be ready more quickly. But figure about 2-3 hours. If you are doing the overnight trick, you are done. Simply put your pot in a sink of ice water until it is cool and then refrigerate overnight. 
6. Right as your guests are arriving, put your pasta water on to boil. The water should come to a boil just as you are pouring a second round of drinks and getting everyone to the table for the first course, which is perfect. Toss in a large bag off egg noodles. They cook in about 8 minutes, so by the time everyone has come to the table and you have plated the first course and gotten it to the table, it is time to drain the pasta and return it to the pot with some butter. Turn up the heat on the stew--it should be piping hot before being ladled out.

Simple. Delicious.