After all fancy holiday cooking and baking, and overindulging (pigging-out is actually the word), I crave simple things. These are as good as it gets. Freshly baked, they have a great texture – crispy outside and chewy interior. The following day the crispiness, unfortunately, is gone, but the flavor gets even better, so I think it makes a perfect sense to bake as many of them.
The recipe is from Alice Medrich’s Cookie book.
I hope everyone had truly wonderful Christmas. I wish you a prosperous and joyful 2012, and the most amazing New Year celebration!
There are dozens of possible filling choices for pizzelle. The buttercream has a major advantage – it doesn’t soften a crispy pizzelle shell even if they were filled a day in advance. There’s just one thing to remember when choosing buttercream as a filling: roll the pizzelle cookies tight, so the amount of buttercream inside wouldn’t be excessive and in a good proportion with the cookie itself.
Smooth and creamy crème anglaise-based buttercream is so naturally turned into eggnog-flavored one by addition of nutmeg and dark rum. It goes well with crispy spicy pizzelle shells.
Happy New Year!
Here I am speeding up the baking process. These two different in taste biscotti are made from one chocolate dough.
This is one of my staple cookie recipes for holiday baking. I’m sure I’m not the only one who bakes similar cookies around Christmas. Nevertheless, I thought I’d share the foolproof recipe that’s been tweaked and perfected over the years.
I love using a combination of toasted (always toasted) walnuts and pecans, but either one will work well. When I grind the nuts in a food processor, I pause to take some coarsely ground nuts out to add them later, and then grind the rest finely; it makes quite a difference in taste. I don’t cover the cookies with icing sugar until they are completely cool since I find a melted grease-like thick layer of icing sugar unattractive. I bathe them in icing sugar once they are cool.
This perfect autumn cake is a result of my makeover of an old family recipe, the one from a huge collection of Russian recipes I’m planning to publish someday one way or another.
Feather-soft cardamom-spiced honey cake, sweet caramelized succulent pears, and crunchy walnuts sure make a memorable treat. The cake becomes out-of-this-world fantastic when served slightly warm with vanilla bean and honey ice cream.
Here’s a cross between a cake and cheesecake. The base is a moist soft pumpkin cake with added candied ginger for a little heat. The topping is a thin layer of creamy pumpkin cheesecake. The cake is baked just until a cake tester comes out clean, but not until the cake picks up color. Then it’s cooled briefly while the cheesecake batter is mixed. The latter is baked at reduced oven temperature just until softly set. The result is a perfect cheesecake texture and moist and tender cake interior.
