Cookies with Exotic Spices!

Hello, my friends! There is so much to blog about! I will sprinkle all of my latest baking exploits throughout the next few days/weeks.

Today: Gingersnaps and Cardamom Cookies

O.K. you guys. I have a confession to make. I love cookies. There! I said it! Don't judge me! Cookies are awesome. There is no problem, physical, emotional, or spiritual, that cannot be made better by a delicious and well-crafted cookie.

My mother makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the entire world. No joke. There are people all over the country who would agree with this. They are called "Aunt Sharon's Chockie Bickies" which is a reference to a delightful cartoon from years ago called "Count Duckula" which is about a vampire duck that only sucks the "blood" of vegetables. (Trust me, it's hilarious). Anyway, Duckula still has a nanny that lives with him. Her name is "Nanny". She has a perpetually broken wing and calls Count Duckula "Ducky-boos". She calls her tea-time treats "Chockie Bickies". There's a little Schaefer family anecdote for you to tell at parties and various other social gatherings.

I did not make chocolate chip cookies (though I did inherit the skill from my Mama). Instead, I decided to try two cookies I haven't tried making before.

Gingersnaps. When I was a little girl, my dad's parents, Gramma and Grampa Schaefer were visiting (I think we were living in North Dakota at the time). Grampa had gotten a huge box of gingersnaps and he and I were eating them on the couch watching baseball or Richard Simmons or something. My mom was running out on some errand or something and she asked my Grampa to not let me eat too many gingersnaps, because they would make me sick and ruin my supper. During the time she was gone, Grampa and I just kept dipping our hands into the box of cookies. Not speaking, not looking at each other. Just comfortable in our mutual love of far too many gingersnaps. My mother was proven right (as she always is) and I had a heck of a stomach ache when she got home. She was all "Bill, did you let her eat all those gingersnaps?" I don't really remember Grampa's response but it was probably a shrug for her and a wink for me. Even though my tummy hurt, it was still 100% awesome. To this day, I do not regret eating those gingersnaps.

So! Here are the gingersnaps I made!

It's more of a close-up of their adorable, golden-brown bottoms, but you get the picture. I took the recipe from Coconut & Lime. I liked this recipe because it didn't require me to roll out and cut any dough. They were drop cookies! Yay! The recipe called for Demerara sugar, but I didn't have any on hand, so I used Turbinado sugar instead.

This is turbinado, or "raw" sugar. The differences between this and other sugars is something about molasses or what not. If you want to know exactly, go here.

The raw sugar is used to roll the dough in before they are baked.

Deeeeeeelicious. The flavor of these cookies was very good, but they weren't very crispy. There wasn't much "snap" in the gingersnap. It looks like I might not have flattened them enough before baking. Perhaps I will flatten them more next time.

Moving on! Cardamom cookies.

I have another confession. I don't like Indian food. My God, I've tried. I've tried so hard to like it. The spices are weird and unsettling. This is distressing to my husband and my youngest sister, both of whom looooooooove Indian food. We go to the Twin Cities sometimes to have Indian food for Jonathan's birthday. I always bring Amanda (my sister) with us, since I figure Jonathan would enjoy it more with someone who is enjoying the food as well. I usually just load up on naan and stop on the way home for a Blizzard. So, when I saw this recipe, I was a little wary. I don't like cardamom in savory dishes.

(Nor do I like cinnamon in savory dishes. That's why I call Indian food "Cinnamon Beef" which, now that I look at it, could be very offensive to some people. My apologies. It's really in reference to having corned beef and cabbage one St. Patrick's Day at Jonathan's best friend Rick's and his lady, Susan's house. Susan and I were not that enthusiastic about the beef. We called it cinnamon beef. Anyway, I digress.)

So! I thought I might like cardamom in a sweet dish. This, sadly, was not to be. I did not like them. Not surprisingly, Jonathan, Amanda and someone in Jonathan's D&D group (nerd alert!) all liked them. So, who knows? Maybe you'll like them.

Cardamom Cookies

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup light brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift together flour and cream of tartar into a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream butter, cardamom, baking soda and salt. Add sugar and beat until well combined. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually stir in flour mixture. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and flatten them slightly with the palm of your hand onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, until cookies are a light golden brown. Let them rest on a baking sheet for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

While we're on the subject of cookies, let me introduce you to the cookie-baker's best friend: the disher. "What is a disher?" you ask, one eyebrow rising in inquiry, your eyes filled with confusion and a little rage. This, my friends, is a disher:

"Oh! A lunch lady scoop!" you exclaim. I close my eyes and slowly shake my head. "Yes. A lunch lady scoop. This is its technical name,"I say.

Anyway, this tool is really awesome for making uniformly-sized cookies. I have three different sizes of them!

See? I usually use the smallest one for cookies. Unless I want to make really big cookies. They are super handy! There is a little sweepy-arm that scrapes the inside of the scoop when you squeeze the handle! What mad genius thought of this?! Anyway, I got these at the kitchen store at the mall in Eau Claire, but you might be able to get them at a Target or a Walmart- type store.

Well, there you have it. Cookies.

Cookies make everything better.

The Quest for Wheat Bread: The Good, The Horrible and the Meh.

Hello! Wow, it's been two weeks since I wrote! I am sorry! The reason I haven't written in all of that time is because I was having problems getting some whole wheat bread made. There were some..... interesting results. I will show them all to you.

Ok, now, look at me. Look into my eyes. Look at me! Ok. This is going to get ugly. It's going to get real ugly, but you need to stay with me! Don't you go anywhere! I promise I won't leave you!

Alright. Failed bread attempt #1.

I got this recipe from http://www.best-bread-recipes.com/golden-grain-bread.html. It seems pretty cool, and the finished product tasted O.K. but I was not happy with the shape of the loaves. This is my fault, since I tried to do a free-form loaf without any free-form-loaf making experience or training. I know just enough about free-form loaves to be dangerous.

Here is what they looked like just out of the oven:

Not too bad, I will admit. Since this recipe makes FOUR loaves of bread, I had to try free-form since I don't have 4 loaf pans. I realized later that I could have make 2 or 3 loaves, and either used the rest to make dinner rolls or freeze the dough and thaw it out to rise later. Perhaps I will give this one the old college try again sometime and halve the recipe. I was making wheat bread because I like to have it for toast in the morning and I was buying it from a local bakery for a ridiculous price. So, I decided to try making it myself.

This particular recipe had lots of grain-y goodness in it that appealed to me: cracked wheat, sunflower seeds, cornmeal, rolled oats and wheat bran. I added flax seeds as well. I bought all of these grains in bulk at Festival Foods in Eau Claire, but most grocery stores have a bulk/health food section these days and you can find them there. What you probably won't find, unless you live in a big city, is cracked wheat. This is basically a wheat grain that has been cracked (so it's not just a clever name.) It's used a lot in Indian and other eastern cooking. I couldn't find it, so I just bought regular wheat berries and decided to crack them myself. (Not as easy as it sounds.) I tried cracking them in my food processor, that didn't work. So I gave up and just put them whole in the bread. This worked fine, since the rising and baking process softened them up.

As I said, this bread tasted fine, but it was not very easily toasted. So, I would suggest, if you want to toast this bread, follow the recipe and use loaf pans.

Failed bread attempt #2.

Remember when I said that this was going to get ugly? Well, this is the part about which I was talking. Remember, I do this so that you don't have to!

I got this next recipe from The Harvard School of Public Health website. People at Harvard are smart, right? Well, they are smart. I'm sure this bread is very healthy and that some people just fly to the moon when they eat it. I am not one of those people. This recipe calls for a lot of different flours : rye, buckwheat, and barley flours. I had the buckwheat and the barley on hand, so I just used those two and skipped the rye flour. The website says that you can play with the seeds and the flours and such. So, I used a cup of buckwheat flour and a cup of barley flour. This was too much buckwheat flour. I like buckwheat, especially in pancake form, but it was a little too strong in this bread. I also added flax seeds, sunflower seeds, rolled oats and wheat bran.

Here's what they looked like after baking: (warning: the following picture might cause permanent emotional scarring in more sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.)

OH LORD! THE HUMANITY!!!!!

Ok, so they look like bricks and they were about as heavy as bricks too. This, I later found out, is because there was no white flour in the bread. White flour has lots of gluten which makes for a more airy, lighter-textured loaf. If you read this recipe on the Harvard site, it gives you some tips on how to make the loaf lighter without using white flour. These include adding vitamin C, pectin or lecithin. I did not try any of these. Obviously. In addition to looking bad, I though it tasted bad as well. As I said above, the buckwheat flour overpowered any other flavor that might have survived in this bread. If you like the taste of buckwheat, then try this recipe, but use the "Bread Enhancers" they talk about at the bottom of the page.

Bread attempt #3: Success!!!

So, by this time, I am fire-pissed about this whole bread situation. I almost, almost gave up. I had a scathingly brilliant idea, though. I decided to find a regular whole wheat bread recipe and then just add stuff to it. The recipe I found was here. It's a whole wheat bread recipe that includes white flour. I would like to try to make it 100% whole wheat at some point, since that's healthier, but I thought I'd try it this way to see what happened. (They include the "bread enhancers" at the bottom of the web page so you can turn it into a 100% whole wheat loaf) So, I followed the recipe and added wheat bran and some ground brown and golden flax seeds.

We need a moment to discuss flax seeds and flax seed meal. Flax seeds are good for you, click here to see some health benefits. As the previous link says, ground flax seeds are easier to digest and you can get more of the benefits from grinding them. You can buy flax seed meal already ground at the health food store, but it's cheaper to buy the flax seeds and just grind them yourself as needed. Storing your flax seeds whole and grinding them as needed also keeps them fresher. When I tried to grind the wheat berries during bread attempt #1, I tried to grind flax seeds with them. No dice. So, when I was making this third loaf, I tried grinding them by themselves in the food processor, but that just spun them merrily around and left them intact. So, I looked at my coffee grinder and though "Nah, that won't work..." but I tried it anyway and it DID work. It worked like a bloody charm! So, I informed my husband, Jonathan, that I now need another coffee grinder. One for grinding coffee and one for grinding flax seeds and other sundry things. I daresay the wheat berries might even work in the coffee grinder. (If you don't want to get another coffee grinder, just use the one you have, but wipe it out with a damp cloth before and after you grind the flax seeds.)

OK, back to the bread. This recipe make one loaf and one loaf only, so that was nice. Since it was such a small amount to bread, I was able to put the dough together in my KitchenAid mixer and use the dough hook to do all the kneading for me. Keep an eye on it while it's kneading and add flour if it gets too sticky. You won't have to knead the dough as long in the mixer as you would if you were kneading it by hand, so make sure you don't over-knead it. The dough should be elastic and not too sticky. Let it rise in a warm place. My laundry room is right off the kitchen. It's out of the way and it's always warm in there, so that's where I put my bread dough to rise:

This is the dough rising on my dryer. If it's a little cool in there, I just start the dryer up for a little while and the room gets nice a toasty. This made a perfectly sized loaf. I think that if I doubled the recipe, I might still be able to use the stand mixer to knead it. I'll let you know, since I'm going to make another loaf for me and one for my sister.

Here is what the finished product looked like:

I chose this picture because it show the failed bread wallowing in it's own shame and the reflected glory of the successful loaf. Here's a look at the inside of the bread:

The bread turned out very nicely. I might not add as much flour during the kneading process next time, since it was a little crumbly as toast this morning. But the flavor was really good!

I will try and make a 100% whole wheat loaf with the bread enhancers in the next week or two and let you know how it goes.

Happy baking!