Coconut Macaroons

If you find yourself making things like rhubarb curd or the kind of ice cream that calls for custard, you will find yourself in possession of extra egg whites. Not that you were thinking of tossing them, but if that thought has ever crossed your mind, banish it immediately. Even if you are not the type to eat egg white omelets (as I am definitely not), there are many ways to use those egg whites. Put them in a little container, and if you fear that you will not use them up quickly, freeze them, with a note of how many there are.

David Lebovitz, the pastry chef, writer, blogger and author of that fabulous ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, knows about the extra egg yolk conundrum. And on his site, he has a page called "Recipes to use up leftover egg whites." There are 15 recipes on that page, and I suspect all are wonderful, but I haven't been able to get past the first one I made--coconut macaroons. They are easy to make, delicious and addictive.

Lebovitz's original recipe calls for the macaroons to be dipped in chocolate. I am usually all for dipping things in chocolate. If there is a choice between chocolate and no chocolate, I almost always choose chocolate. However, in this case, I'm not so sure. The first time I made these, I brought them to a work gathering. Half were dipped in chocolate and the other half plain. To my surprise (because I have many chocolate loving colleagues), more people preferred the plain ones to the chocolate ones. The chocolate was distracting, almost, from the lovely coconut flavor. I've included his instructions for the chocolate dipping, but if you don't have the time or inclination (or are, heaven forfend, someone who doesn't like chocolate) know that these are fabulous just as they are.

The process is quick and easy. Basically, you dump all of the ingredients in a skillet and heat it up. Lebovitz says to cook until it begins to scorch, and I found that a little bit alarming the first time I made them, but it's pretty clear when they're done cooking. The ingredients are a sticky mass, and your kitchen will smell delightfully of coconut. At that point, once the batter is cool, you can refrigerate or freeze it to use at a later time. Otherwise, you put the batter onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat and bake.

Mine were in for exactly 18 minutes, but I didn't check on them, as I probably should have as they are a bit over brown. Still, they are chewy and coconuty and delicious, and if there is a better way to use leftover egg whites, it might be a while before I find out!

Note: This recipe calls for 1/4 cup flour. Though I am not a Passover expert, I would assume that if you replaced the flour with matzoh meal, they could be a wonderful and welcome Passover treat. (These will chase the memories of macaroons from a can out of your mind posthaste.)

Coconut Macaroons (with optional chocolate)
Adapted from David Lebovitz

4 large egg whites
1¼ cups sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
2½ cups unsweetened coconut
¼ cup flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

In a large skillet, mix together the egg whites, sugar, salt, honey, coconut and flour.

Heat over low-to-moderate heat on the stovetop, stirring constantly, scraping the bottom as you stir.

When the mixture just begins to scorch at the bottom, remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Transfer to a bowl to cool to room temperature.

(At this point, the mixture can be chilled for up to one week, or frozen for up to two months.)

When ready to bake, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Form the dough into 1 1/2-inch mounds with your fingers evenly spaced on the baking sheet. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until deep golden brown. Cool completely.

To dip the macaroons in chocolate, melt the chocolate in a clean, dry bowl set over a pan of simmering water (or in a microwave.) Line a baking sheet with plastic wrap. Dip the bottoms of each cookie in the chocolate and set the cookies on the baking sheet. Refrigerate 5-10 minutes, until the chocolate is set.

Approx. 30 cookies

Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

On Friday night, Kim Boyce won the James Beard award for Best Baking and Dessert cookbook for Good to the Grain, her cookbook on baking with whole grains. Boyce is a former pastry chef as well as the mother of small children, and her interest is not just in making things healthier but in taking advantage of the different flavors and properties of different whole grains. Her book has chapters on oats, corn and whole wheat but also on spelt, amaranth and teff, to name a few. (I've never baked with teff, but it's used in the Ethiopian bread called injera.)

Despite their use of whole grains, these are not lo-cal, low sugar or low fat recipes. Boyce was, after all, a pastry chef. But they are thoughtful recipes and almost always delicious. I've made three or four things from the book already (and have several others bookmarked), but the one recipe I've returned to multiple times is her whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe. While chocolate chip cookies (much as I like them) are not usually my standby cookie recipe (that would be one kind or another of oatmeal), this recipe might challenge that--or, if I'm honest, is challenging it already, given how many times I've made these in the past few months.

I've made a few changes to Boyce's original recipe. One is that I cut it in half. The original recipe--2 sticks of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 8 ounces of chocolate and all--makes 20 large cookies. As a person who likes to eat cookies and also doesn't want to later regret eating said cookies, I prefer to make smaller cookies. My half recipe makes about 30 small cookies, ones you can eat (relatively) without guilt. The other thing I did in this version was to replace 2 tablespoons of butter with peanut butter. This was less for health reasons than that it seemed like a slight peanut undertone might go well with these, and it does. (If you skip the peanut butter, use a full stick of butter.) I followed Molly's advice and used white whole wheat flour and would recommend that, though regular whole wheat flour makes good cookies as well. I also opted for a chocolate bar broken up and put in the mini-chopper over chocolate chips. It gives you some chocolate dust as well as chips and integrates itself into the batter nicely.

One other thing to note--these cookies seem to gain flavor with time. They also freeze very well. It makes a person feel better about everything to know that there's a Ziploc bag of delicious cookies in the freezer, ready for when unexpected guests arrive or just for when the day calls for a cookie or two. There's no reason to hide the fact that these are made with whole grains, but if you don't tell, I'm not sure anyone would guess. But whether you disclose the ingredients or not, whether you add the peanut butter or not, whether you make large cookies or small ones, I hope you will agree that not only is Kim Boyce a winner, but these cookies absolutely are as well.

Happy Mother's Day and enjoy!

Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour, plus more for the work surface
• 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
  
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into 1/4- and 1/2-inch pieces

Directions:

Position oven racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven; preheat to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a mixing bowl, adding any large bits of grain or other ingredients that remain in the sifter.

Combine the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer or hand-held electric mixer; beat on low speed for about 2 minutes, until just blended. Add the peanut butter and blend until combined. Add the egg, then the vanilla extract.

Add the flour mixture and beat until barely combined. Stop to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the chocolate, and beat on low speed just until evenly distributed.

Lightly flour a work surface. Transfer the dough to the work surface and use your hands to fully incorporate any remaining flour or chocolate from the bowl.

Scoop small mounds of the dough onto each baking sheet, spacing them several inches apart. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets top to bottom and front to back halfway through. . Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool before serving or storing.

Repeat to use the remaining dough.

Approx. 30 small cookies

Snow Day Cookies

I'm not going to point out that I'm still behind here.

I'm just going to say that, if you are currently snowed in, as much of the East Coast is, there are much worse things for you to do than to make these cookies.

I can take no credit for these cookies. The original recipe is from Silver Palate, and the tweaks are courtesy of my friend (and fabulous baker), Lisa, over at Mappa Mundi. She made them years ago, the first time I met her, I think, and she posted the recipe up in the food thread at Readerville. I copied it down and have been holding on to it ever since, but I didn't actually make the cookies until a couple of weeks ago.

A series of things happened. First, someone at my office lost a (grown) son to cancer, and we put together a basket to send to her family. I decided to make cookies and consulted with colleagues who know her better and was told that plain oatmeal raisin would be a good choice. So, I made a batch of plain oatmeal raisin cookies for inclusion in the basket. The cookies were good (and my colleague appreciated them, which is what counts), but I was left hankering for slightly jazzier oatmeal cookies.

The second thing that happened was that Monday Feb. 16 turned out to be a very bad day for Toyota Camrys. (That doesn't look right, but I have no idea what the plural of Camry should be.) Alex found out that morning that his car (with its partially rebuilt engine) was toast, and then, our hastily arranged plan, in which he borrowed my car and I borrowed Andy's while Andy was in California, was temporarily derailed because my clutch went that afternoon. For a 24 hour period, we were each marooned at our houses without cars. So what's a person to do but bake cookies? (I also figured that Andy might appreciate some for his plane ride, since I knew he wouldn't get fed nearly as much as we'd been fed on our way to and from India.)

I thought about making the other fabulous variation on the Silver Palate cookies, the ones with peanut butter and Mexican chocolate that I wrote about last summer, but I had a hankering for plainer oatmeal cookies, just not quite so plain as the first ones I'd made. I consulted various food blogs and cookbooks and couldn't find what I wanted. And then I remembered Lisa's variation, tucked away on my computer for these last 3 or 4 years. I had everything I needed, including an orange for the orange zest and a bag of dried cranberries.

I made the cookies, and they were excellent. Crisp on the outside, chewy in the middle, slightly sophisticated because of the orange zest and cranberries. They encapsulated all that was already good about oatmeal cookies but were even better. Andy got a small bag to take on the plane. My colleagues got a bigger bag (which we dubbed "car crisis cookies"). I kept a few that I parceled out sparingly over that week. And Alex, the worst sufferer in the car crisis, only ended up with what my colleagues had left, which came to all of 2 cookies.

So, for the past few weeks, I've been saying I'd make him his very own batch. The measure of how tasty these cookies are is that Deb at Smitten Kitchen had just written a post on thick, chewy oatmeal cookies, but it didn't really sway me away from the orange cranberry ones. Everything I've made from Smitten Kitchen has been delicious, and usually if Deb recommends something, I make it immediately. (Okay, maybe not when she's writing about steak or meatball sliders, as she has this week, but I've made many of her non-meaty recipes and have been very happy with them.) And under other circumstances, I would have gone ahead and made her cookies.

But the siren song of the cranberry orange ones was too strong. (That, and Alex kept saying, "Where are my cookies?") So, yesterday, pre-snowstorm, I indulged. Partly because it was a good cookie-baking kind of day and partly because I hoped that the second batch could signify (and celebrate) the end of the car crisis. (My car drives quite beautifully with the new clutch, and while Alex's new (used) car is not yet in his possession, he has at least identified it and should have it soon. )

I didn't take any photos, which I know is bad, but, well, the cookies look like oatmeal cookies. If you've ever made oatmeal cookies, you know what these look like. They're not glamorous, but they're definitely delicious. And you definitely don't have to wait til you have a car crisis (or a snow day) to make them.

Oatmeal Cranberry Orange Cookies
Basic recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook;
tweaks from Lisa Peet
(Additional commentary from me)

12 tbsps. (1-1/2 sticks) butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I've used both light and dark--both good, though slightly different)
1 egg
2 tbsps. water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
grated zest of one orange
2/3 cup all-purpose flour (I used 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour and couldn't tell the difference.)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3 cups quick-cooking oats
1-1/2 cups dried cranberries (I used 1 cup cranberries, 1/2 cup raisins, just for variety's sake.)

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Cream butter and both sugars until fluffy. Add egg and beat thoroughly. Mix in water, vanilla, and orange zest.

3. Sift together flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda; add to the egg mixture and mix well. Add oats and cranberries or raisins, and mix.

4. Use either greased cookie sheets or ungreased cookie sheets lined with a Silpat or parchment paper. (I only have 1 Silpat, so I do one that way and one with parchment.) Form cookies on cookie sheets. I made small-ish cookies, but you can also do giant cookies with an ice cream scoop. The recipe makes between 3 and 3 1/2 dozen small to regular cookies. Bake 12-14 minutes for smaller cookies, 14-17 minutes for giant ones. (The original recipe says 10-12 minutes for the smaller ones, but they weren't done yet at 12 minutes.)

Those skinny peanut wafers . . .

aren't half bad either. Just ask a certain unnamed boyfriend who managed to consume approximately (okay, exactly) 7 of them last night, both as a pre-dinner snack and as dessert. They didn't spread out as much as I expected them too, but their flavor is definitely reminiscent of peanut brittle (which I love and which I eat a lot of when I'm in India). I'd recommend putting as many nuts as will fit on top of the cookies. (I was too delicate with my peanut sprinkling, which is why I suggest this.) Maida Heatter recommended honey-roasted, but I wasn't crazy about the flavor of the ones I bought, and I like the extra bit of saltiness that the roasted peanuts add.

These were very easy to make and relatively speedy, especially compared to biscotti. (2 batches down and 1 to go for this week's biscotti needs. I have to blanch more almonds before I can make the next batch of biscotti, though, and I'm not looking forward to it. Would I rather blanch almonds or work on my quarterly proofing project? That's a good question. I think I need a cookie while I ponder. )

Skinny Peanut Wafers
from Maida Heatter's Brand New Book of Great Cookies

4 ounces (1 cup) salted peanuts
plus optional additional peanuts to use as topping
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sifted unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg graded "large"
2 tablespoons milk

Adjust an oven rack to the center of the oven (these will be baked only one sheet at a time). Preheat oven to 400 degrees. If you have cookie sheets with only one raised rim, these are best for this recipe; otherwise, use any cookie sheet turned upside down. Line cookie sheets with aluminum foil, shiny side up. (Do not use heavy-weight foil-the cookies won't bake well.) Set aside.

Place the 1 cup of peanuts in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal chopping blade. Add a few tablespoons of the sugar (reserve remaining sugar). Briefly pulse the machine 10 times to chop the nuts into coarse pieces; some will be powdery, some coarse, some still whole-OK. Set aside.

Melt the butter in a small pan over moderate heat; set aside.

Sift together the flour and soda; set aside.

Place the egg, milk, melted butter, and the reserved sugar in the small bowl of an electric mixer and beat until mixed. Add the sifted dry ingredients and the chopped peanuts and beat again until mixed. Transfer to a shallow bowl for ease in handling.

Spray a foil-lined sheet with Pam or some other non-stick spray. (I used easy release tin foil, and it worked just fine.)

Place the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls (not heaping) on the prepared sheet, placing the mounds 3 inches apart (I place 6 on a 12 by 15-1/2 inch sheet). Try to keep the shapes neat. Top each cookie with a few of the optional peanuts, or with as many as you can fit on the top of each cookie.

Bake one sheet at a time. After 5 minutes, reverse the sheet front to back. The cookies will rise up, spread out, and then flatten into very thin wafers with bumpy tops; they will spread out to 3-1/2 to -4-1/2 inches in diameter. Total baking time is about 8 minutes. The cookies should bake until they are golden brown.

Remove from the oven. If the cookies have run into each other cut them apart immediately, while very hot. Cool on the sheet for a minute or two. Then slide the foil off the sheet. Let the cookies stand until they are firm enough to be removed. Then it will be easy to peel the foil away from the backs.

As soon as they are cool store in an airtight container.

My Annual Biscotti Gesture

The first biscotti were an accident of timing.

It was December, 1995, and Maida Heatter's Brand New Book of Great Cookies had just been published. The NY Times had published a recipe from it, and then it made the annual round up of the year's best cookbooks. (You can read the rave here.) That summer, I had moved to Northampton, after a year and a half in India, and at the time of my move, I had no job, no money, no place to live and a broken heart. By December, I had a place to live, at least, and sort of a job, but still not much money and my heart had not mended. But even though I was feeling generally glum, I wanted to be able to do something for the holidays, and so I decided to give Maida Heatter's biscotti a try.

Little did I know then that it would become an annual event. But here it is, 13 years later, and I'm still making the biscotti. And all these years later, I'm still making the same recipes. I've branched out over the years--sometimes I make lemon cranberry, for example, and this year, I'm pondering the possibility of maple biscotti (I can't decide whether that's a good idea or not). But I always make Maida Heatter's chocolate chip almond biscotti, her bittersweet chocolate biscotti and her gingerful biscotti. In recent years, I've added chocolate to the ginger biscotti, and while they were delicous before, they are even more delicious now. If I ever get ambitious enough, I may figure out how to dip the ginger biscotti in chocolate, but for now, I'm content to throw a ground up chocolate bar in the batter and enjoy.



The book, unfortunately, is out of print. Every year, I take it out of the library, and I know that at least some of the stains on the pages are from me. I've photocopied the recipes, of course, and you can find them online, but I always like to have the book on hand, for inspiration. (This year, for example, I'm thinking I might make some skinny peanut wafers in addition to the biscotti, just for the hell of it.) (I'm also thinking I should just buy the damn book already.)

A few words on the process. Biscotti are not hard to make, but they're time consuming. Maida Heatter makes you do lots of steps, and she is a bit bossy, but it's totally worth it. You need to be around to switch the baking sheets in the oven at the appointed times and to slice the loaves while they're still hot. The bittersweet chocolate and ginger biscotti both have very wet dough, and you need to wrap them in plastic and freeze them for at least an hour before you bake them. This actually makes them more convenient to make, since you can, as I just did, do the first steps on one day and bake them another day.



The other thing about these biscotti is that there is no butter in them. The dough is held together with eggs and sometimes some honey or perhaps some liquor. This means that the dough can be harder to work with while you're making them, but the finished biscotti are very hard and crunchy, ideal for dipping. It also means that they last for a really long time, so you can make them pretty far ahead of time if you need to.



If you can find blanched whole almonds in the store, go for it. I found them once, at Trader Joe's, and never since. (You can get blanched almond pieces, but one of the pleasures of the biscotti is the chunks of whole almond, so you need whole ones for the best effect.) Although I hate blanching the almonds--my fingers get all wrinkly, and it's boring, to boot--I consider it part of the gift.




This link to the Fresh Loaf website conveniently has the recipes for both the bittersweet chocolate and chocolate chip almond biscotti right next to each other, saving me a lot of typing.

I am posting my version of the chocolate ginger biscotti, partly because last year, these were more highly praised than anything I'd ever made before. I'd sent some to a friend, and the ginger ones were almost instantly purloined by her husband, who was then in the midst of writing a large book. According to my friend, he not only said, "I am certain that I can write more intelligently while eating these," he seemed to truly believe it.

I can't promise you will write more intelligently, but you never know. And even if you don't, you will at least have some delicious biscotti to eat while you're working on it.

Chocolate Ginger(ful) Biscotti
Adapted from Maida Heatter's Brand-New Book of Great Cookies.

• 4 ounces (1 loosely packed cup) crystallized ginger
• 7 ounces (1 1/4 cups) blanched (skinned) or unblanched whole almonds
• 3 cups sifted unbleached flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons finely and freshly ground white pepper (or 3/4 to 1 teaspoon packaged ground white pepper)*
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs graded "large"
• 1/2 cup mild honey
• 1 bar good semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate
  

Cut ginger into thin slivers and then crosswise to make pieces about the size of small green peas; set aside. (I like the little crystallized ginger discs from Trader Joe's--very easy to chop.)

Toast the almonds in a shallow pan in a 350 degree Farhenheit oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until lightly colored, stirring once during toasting. Set aside to cool.

Break chocolate into pieces, then chop in food processor until it's mostly fine, though some small chunks are okay.

Into a large bowl strain or sift together - just to mix - the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, pepper, ground ginger, cinnamon, mustard, cloves, and sugar. Stir in the crystallized ginger, then the nuts. Add chocolate. In a small bowl beat the eggs and honey to mix and add to the dry ingredients. Stir until the dry ingredients are completely moistened.

Place two 18 to 20 inch lengths of plastic wrap on a work surface. You will form two strips of dough, one on each piece of plastic wrap. Spoon half of the dough by heaping tablespoonfuls in the middle - down the length - of each piece of plastic wrap, to form strips about 13 inches long. Flatten the tops slightly by dipping a large spoon into water and pressing down on the dough with the wet spoon. Rewet the spoon often.

Lift the two long sides of one piece of plastic wrap, bring the sides together on top of the dough, and, with your hands, press on the plastic wrap to smooth the dough and shape it into an even strip about 13 to 14 inches long, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches wide, and about 3/4 inch thick (no thicker). Shape both strips and place them on a cookie sheet.

Place the cookie sheet with the strips of dough in the freezer for at least an hour or until firm enough to unwrap (or as much longer as you wish).

To bake, adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two large cookie sheets with baking parchment or aluminum foil, shiny side up. (If you have a Silpat, this is the perfect time to use it.)

To transfer the strips of dough to the sheets, open the two long sides of plastic wrap on top of one strip of dough and turn the dough upside down onto the lined cookie sheet, placing it diagonally on the sheet. Slowly peel off the plastic wrap. Repeat with the second strip of dough and the second cookie sheet.

Bake for 50 minutes, reversing the sheets top to bottom and front to back once during the baking to insure even baking. These will turn quite dark during baking.

Then reduce the temperature to 275 degrees and remove the sheets from the oven. Immediately - carefully and gently - peel the parchment or foil away from the backs of the strips and place them on a large cutting board top down. Slice the strips while they are still hot. Use a pot holder or a folded towel to hold a strip in place. Use a serrated French bread knife. Slice on an angle; the sharper the angle, the longer the cookies, and the more difficult it will be to slice them very thin- but you can do it, and they will be gorgeous. Cut them about 1/4 to 1/3 inch wide.

Place the slices on a cut side, touching each other, on the cookie sheets. Bake at 275 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Reverse the sheets top to bottom and front to back once during baking. Bake just until dry. (You have to cool one to know if it is crisp). Do not overbake.

When done, cool and then store in an airtight container.

*Confession: While Maida Heatter discusses the importance of that white pepper in this recipe . . . I have actually never used it. They're still delicious. So if you don't have any white pepper on hand, don't despair.

Everything tastes better when you add Mexican chocolate

I made cookies last night for the first time in ages. I'm not quite sure what got into me. We've had some of the loveliest weather of the summer these past few days--cool and clear and sunny--but it's actually chilly at night. Like, under 50. Cold enough to need an extra blanket and a couple of cats to stay warm. So, maybe the oncoming chill made me want to turn on the oven, and maybe it was that I needed an activity while I was waiting for the tomato sauce to cook down. (The first garden tomato sauce of the summer, and it was delicious!)

So, I found a recipe for chocolate oatmeal cookies in a Dorie Greenspan cookbook, and I decided to make half a batch, so I could satisfy my cookie-making urge while not tempting myself excessively. I had to improvise a bit--I didn't have enough chocolate, or exactly the right kind of chocolate--and I found myself thinking, Oh, I can just put some Mexican chocolate in to make up the difference. And as I was grating the Mexican chocolate into the dry ingredients, I thought back to my first real Mexican chocolate experience and realized that it was 15 years ago, and that made me feel very, very old.

In the summer of 1993, I was living in Seattle and studying Hindi at the U of Washington in preparation for going to India on a Fulbright in the fall. A few of my college friends were living in Seattle, and we hung out pretty often. I saw my friend Andrea quite a bit, as well as her sister Lindsey, who was studying Mandarin for the summer. (We'd meet sometimes on campus, and after listening to what she was doing in class, I would have to acknowledge that Mandarin was a harder language to learn than Hindi.)

One day, just a week or two before I was leaving, we decided to make cookies. We were in the apartment I was subletting, and there was a copy of the Silver Palate cookbook, and we decided to make oatmeal cookies. Except that the recipe called for 1 1/2 sticks of butter, and we only had one, and it called for 3 cups of oats, and we only had 2 1/2. It was a situation--like last night--where the cookies wouldn't have gotten made if we'd had to go out to get stuff. We could have fudged it, or reduced the recipe, but instead we decided to improvise. We used peanut butter in place of the butter we didn't have. And then Andrea pulled out a little yellow box in the shape of a hexagon from the cabinet. It was Mexican chocolate, the kind with cinnamon in it that you usually use to make Mexican hot chocolate. "Let's put some of this in," she said. So, we grated it up, and used a half cup to make up for the oats we didn't have.

We started to get the idea that we might be on to something before the cookies were out of the oven. The smell was somewhat more sophisticated than the usual sweet cookie smell. And as we tasted them, we were both silent. The peanut butter gave the cookies a mellow base, and the cinnamon in the Mexican chocolate picked up the cinnamon already in the recipe. The chocolate was subtle, but present, and our mouths were suffused with this oaty-spicy-chocolaty-peanuty flavor. We decided that, perhaps, we were geniuses.

We ate more cookies and divided the rest up. I gave some to a few of my Hindi class friends (at least one of whom has gone on to bigger, better, and more dangerous things), and Andrea gave some to her housemates. Somehow, though, she did not give any to her sister. And so a few days later, after having bragged about our cookie-making prowess extensively, we found ourselves having lunch with Lindsey, who mostly wanted to talk about the cookies she hadn't tasted. "So, tell me again, it was the peanut butter you tasted first?" she asked wistfully. Why we didn't go home right then and make another batch, I have no idea.

For years, I was scared to make these cookies again, afraid that they wouldn't be as good as I remembered. But I had nothing to fear.

(As for last night's cookies, they were these, as discussed by Tartelette. Very chocolaty and rich, with some chewiness from the oats. And I have no doubt that the Mexican chocolate made them taste better.)

Oatmeal-Peanut Butter-Mexican Chocolate Cookies
adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook

8 tbsps. (1 stick) butter
4 tbsps. peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsps. water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup grated Mexican chocolate (Ibarra brand)
1 cup raisins (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease 3 cookie sheets.

2. Cream butter and both sugars until fluffy. Add egg and beat thoroughly. Add peanut butter and mix again. Mix in water and vanilla.

3. Sift together flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda; add to the egg mixture and mix well. Add oats, grated Mexican chocolate and raisins, if using, and mix.

4. Form cookies on cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes (15-17 if cookies are extra large).