Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

When I see a recipe repeatedly I sometimes feel compelled to give it a try. Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies from Danielle Oron's Modern Israeli Cooking is one of those recipes. It was published in the New York Times a little over a year ago, then Food52 got in on the act and reprinted it as well.  Just recently David Lebovitz published his version of the recipe, which he had adapted and then raved that they were "some of the best chocolate chip cookies to ever come out of my oven." His goal was to make the cookies a bit more chewy and to increase the chocolate. Those are goals I thoroughly support. While I pretty much used his recipe, I took it a bit further. Instead of using one half cup of light brown sugar in place of one half cup of white sugar as he did, I used one half cup dark brown sugar. I also increased the chocolate. While Lebovitz uses chocolate chunks, I used chocolate chips and the whole bag, why not? It’s 12 ounces and 340 grams of semisweet......

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Red Grapeseed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars Recipe

If you’re familiar with the White Lily brand, you probably know it’s a Southern company, famous for flour that is used in biscuits. It’s been a very long time since they’ve introduced a new product, so they invited a bunch of mostly baking bloggers (and me!)  to come visit wheat fields outside of Spokane to learn about their latest venture—wheat flours with tracability and blends with red and white grape seed flour. Red and white grape seed flour from Whole Vine is blended with flour from Shepherd’s Grain and sold in 2 pound resealable bags . It’s designed to be an optimal blend, offering cup for cup replacement of all purpose flour. Plans are to offer it nationwide. Although the flour is a blend, each bag has a traceability code allowing you to see and learn more about a farmer whose wheat is in the specific bag. To produce the flour, White Lily partnered with Shepherd’s Grain, a cooperative that has roots in an 1888 farmstead farm. The goal of the company is to provide......

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Rocky Road Recipe

Did you know that Rocky Road was invented in Australia? It seems like such an American candy, but there are different versions in other parts of the world. In Australia the candy has things like coconut and fruit jellies in it. The Rocky Road in the United Kingdom has marshmallows, cookies (or biscuits as they call them), chocolate, raisins and a dusting of powdered sugar. While I like the idea of adding crisp cookies to Rocky Road, it just does't seem like Rocky Road to me without nuts, and toasted walnuts in particular. I blame Tori Ritchie for making me take on Rocky Road. Her email newsletter this week had a recipe for it and after that I was a goner. Rocky Road is one of those things you can't really mess up. I think the easier the better. With all due respect to Michael Ruhlman , the ratios are a bit fluid here, you can add more or less chocolate or nuts as you like. I've seen recipes that have 1 part chocolate to 1 part marshmallows and others have 2 parts c......

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Hot Chocolate Cookies Recipe

The drinks and dishes I tried on my trip to Avery Island inspired me to think about Tabasco in new ways. Of course you can use it in things like in guacamole or in a bloody mary, but how about something unexpected, for example, cookies? I made François Payard Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies twice during Passover this year and they were gobbled up so quickly that I didn't even get to snap a photo. After following the recipe closely, I decided to put my own twist on it. The cookies are mostly powdered sugar, cocoa powder and egg whites. They are crisp and crackly on the outside but moist and fudgy, almost like brownies on the inside. But perhaps not surprisingly, they are a bit sweet. To temper the sweetness I added Tabasco and cacao nibs. The Tabasco gives just a hint of heat in the background. You'll barely notice it, but it definitely takes these cookies to the next level. While the toasted walnuts add crunch and a contrasting bitterness, unsweetened cacao nibs h......

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Tea-infused Hot Cocoa Recipe

I'm not much of a coffee drinker but I love hot chocolate and I love tea. I enjoy the richness of hot chocolate, but sometimes it's a bit too much. I certainly couldn't drink it everyday. I have tried quite a few chocolate flavored teas and while some of them are pretty good, I've discovered a more satisfying solution. I make hot cocoa with equal parts tea and milk. On the surface this might seem like a weird thing to do, combining cocoa and tea but it's really quite delicious. I learned from chocolate authority Alice Medrich that the fat in dairy products coats your tongue so the flavor of chocolate is sometimes muted in very creamy preparations. She said you can make cocoa with hot water, but I have found that tea provides an amazing addition of flavor. I like a little bit of milk to add some texture. The result is a beverage that is richer and more viscous than tea and milk, but not quite as cloying as hot cocoa can be. In the Winter, I could drink it just ab......

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Chocolate Fondue Recipe

Lee's biggest complaint regarding my cooking is that I "never repeat", meaning I never make the same thing twice. Which isn't true of course, but I know what he means. I'm always looking to improve upon recipes and try something new. So for Valentine's Day I let him choose the menu, something new or a repeat of an old favorite. For celebratory meals it seems eating in is at least as romantic as eating out, maybe more. And with a few possible exceptions, no matter what ingredients you buy, you'll be hard pressed to spend more than you would dining out. One year I even made platters of seafood--oysters on the half shell, poached shrimp, mussels, smoked salmon, etc. But the biggest hit was the time I made cheese fondue followed by chocolate fondue. So after deciding we'd rather do Valentine's Day dinner at home this year, Lee expressed his desire for "Fondue x 2", which is our menu du jour. While making cheese fondue can be tricky, maki......

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Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake Recipe

Blackout! Sometimes deep, rich, chocolate cakes go by that name, but in this case it was the real thing. Heading down the street with my precious ingredients I noticed the traffic lights weren't working and when I got home, I realized that wasn't all. Hard to bake a cake without electricity. But fortunately after a two hour lull, we were back in business. Ever since I blogged about Guinness I've been looking for an excuse to make a Guinness Chocolate Cake and the latest "Is My Blog Burning?" seemed like a good one. IMBB is that mostly monthly event whereby bloggers world round blog about cooking with a certain type of ingredient or on a specific theme. Of course the eighth IMBB event was supposed to be one in which we used spirits or wine, so I imagine using Guinness is a bit of a stretch but then again, you could wash it down with a spot of Irish Whisky or an Irish Coffee. This recipe comes from a St.Patrick's Day special served at Diamond Jim Brady......

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Spice Hot Chocolate Recipe

Tonina, Chiapas, Mexico Lid of vessel with monkey and cacao pods, AD 600-900 ceramic, 18.3 cm (7 3/16); diameter: 33 cm (13) Museo de Sitio de Tonina, Chiapas -INAH, Mexico Photo: Javier Hinojosa Once upon a time the snake-footed god K'awiil threw a lightening bolt at a mountain breaking it in two, revealing two plants, maize and cacao. And so from the very beginning cacao and maize were linked. Cacao like maize, was complicated for the Maya to process. The beans had to be fermented, cured and roasted, then ground into a powder that was the basis for a cold foamy more-bitter-than-sweet, chocolate beverage, called cacaoatl, Nahuatl for "cacao water." The Mexican Indian word "chocolate" comes from a combination of the terms choco "foam" and atl "water". Cacao may not have been as vital as maize for the survival of the Maya people, but it was so highly valued that it was sometimes used as currency. It was probably considered sacred, us......

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Perfect Brownies Recipe

Everyone likes their brownies just so, and so it comes as no surprise that there are untold thousands of brownie recipes. How do I know this? The web site Recipe Source has 569 recipes alone for brownies. The recipes on that site include such varied additions as zucchini, frosting, apples, butterscotch, cream cheese, chocolate chips, marshmallow, pineapple, mint, carob, walnuts, raspberries and Kahlua. Whew! I made quick friends with my sister-in-law to be by presenting her with a batch of brownies sans nuts. Nuts, Lori said, only take up space where there could be more brownie. I have to agree with her. For me a brownie is a brownie is a brownie. No nuts, no zucchini, thank you very much. In my preferred purist version I don't want them too dense and fudgy and I don't want them too cakey and fluffy. I also like to make them but I find most recipes that call for baking chocolate to be a real bother. I never seem to have the right amount on hand--if the recipe calls for unsw......

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