There was a lot of postings on Pinterest the other day of The Other Side of 50‘s version of the New York Time’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. It looked delicious and her post was funny. With the week I’ve had I needed a chocolate chip cookie.


It’s an intriguing recipe because it uses a combination of cake and bread flour, but no all-purpose flour. She used a combination of semi-sweet and unsweetened chocolate in hers (because that was all she had in the house). I had all kinds of good chocolate in the house. I had big blocks of 65% and 70% bittersweet chocolate and white chocolate, and bags of Barry Callebaut semi-sweet and white chocolate as well as his espresso chunks. I liked the way she’d used grated chocolate in her dough though so decided I was going to use that idea. I didn’t measure anything precisely with the chocolate except for the final weight, which I kept at 20 oz., but it was approximately 4 oz. white, bittersweet, and espresso chunks, and 4 oz. each of grated white and bittersweet chocolate.


Everyone that has eaten these cookies this week, from my mom to my husband to my kids, have said they were the best chocolate chip cookies they’ve ever eaten, so there must be something to that unusual combination of flours. This recipe is definitely one for the recipe file.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Original recipe adapted from Jacques Torres and published: July 9, 2008, New York Times. Adapted (slightly) by Crafty Farm Girl, 2011

Time: 45 minutes (for 16-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling


2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate chunks & grated chocolate, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)
Sea salt

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.


2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.



3. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside. I used a level 4-tablespoon ice cream scoop that Scoop to form the cookies, and placed 6 onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. I made several batches of these to get the cooking timing just right. Of course it helps if you have an oven thermometer so you are sure the oven is at 350 degrees as well. If you used a 4-tablespoon scoop, bake the cookies for 14 minutes 30 seconds. They will not look like they are cooked enough, but they are (or they were in my oven).


5. If you don’t have a scoop that size just make your cookies from 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls), making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. For cookies made this way, bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes.

6. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.


Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.


Note: The chocolate chunks and bulk chocolate I used is available at kingarthurflour.com.

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I had an urge to make a galette this weekend with some fall fruits. I love galette’s — like a pie but less fussy. I love the rough, free-form look of them.


At the grocery I was hoping to find a few ripe peaches, but the few that were there felt like soft rubber balls. I chose Honeycrisp apples, Bosc pears and black plums. I also knew I wanted some fresh ginger in there, nutmeg and cinnamon.


I made David Lebovitz’ Sweete Galette Dough that I found on Fine Cooking’s website. For the Gallete recipe itself, I made up my own recipe.

Fall Fruit Galette

By Crafty Farm Girl, November, 2011

Serves 8-10

• Sweet Galette Dough (recipe follows)
•  2 Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, and cut into ¼”-thick slices
• 2-1/2 ripe Bosc pears, peeled, cored, cut into ¼’s and cut into ¼”-thick slices
• 3 Black plums, peeled, pitted, and cut into ¼”-thick slices
• 1 teaspoons peeled,  grated ginger
• ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon King Arthur Flour Pie Filling Enhancer or instant clearjel
• 1 teaspoon minute tapioca
• ½ teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
• Juice of ½ large lemon
• 1 egg
• Sanding sugar for dusting (optional)

Preheat oven to 375^o and place rack in center of oven. Line a large baking sheet with parchment.

Using half of the galette dough, roll out to an 11” circle on a lightly floured surface. Move to parchment-lined baking sheet, cover, and refrigerate until ready to use.


Place all of the sliced fruit into a large work bowl. Add the ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla bean paste, and sugar. With clean hands toss to cover fruit evenly.


Add the pie filling enhancer or clearjel, tapioca, lemon zest and juice. Toss again to combine.


Take the prepared galette dough out of the refrigerator and pile the fruit into the center of the dough, leaving the edges clear for about 1-1/2” all around.


Fold the dough in and pleat it as you go (I found a little water helpful in holding the pleat closed). There’s no wrong way to fold up the sides; you can just scrunch it all up like a too-short string sack, pleat it in a free-from manner with the pleats going in no particular direction, or have the pleats all go in one direction like I did.


Make an egg wash with the egg and 1 teaspoon water. Brush over the outside dough. Sprinkle with sanding sugar if desired.


Place in preheated oven and bake for about 50 minutes, or until nicely browned. Allow to cool on baking sheet. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with lightly whipped, sweetened cream.

Fall Fruit Galette with Apples, Pears & Plums

Sweet Galette Dough

Original recipe by David Lebovitz

Freeze any unused dough well wrapped in plastic; defrost the frozen dough in the refrigerator for a day before using it.

Yields enough dough for two galettes about 11 inches in diameter.

• 11-1/4 oz. (2-1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbs. sugar1/2 tsp. salt
• 8 oz. (16 Tbs.) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
• 5 oz. (about 2/3 cup) ice water

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the chilled butter using a stand mixer, a food processor, or a pastry blender until the butter is evenly distributed but still in large, visible pieces. Add the ice water all at once to the flour and butter. Mix the dough just until it begins to come together (if using a stand mixer or a food processor, be especially careful not to over-mix the dough). Gather the dough with your hands — don’t worry if you see streaks of butter — and shape it into two disks. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

I came across this recipe in the November 2011 issue of Bon Appetit‘s r.s.v.p. section. I have found so many great recipes in that column. It’s from Big Spoon Roasters in  North Carolina. It sounded really interesting because it has peanut butter, toasted pecans, and both old-fashioned and quick-cooking oats in the recipe, which sounded like the perfect combination to me. Not too peanutty, not too overwhelmingly pecan, and just enough oatmeal. And that is exactly what these cookies are. Perfect. I brought them to a meeting tonight and they disappeared before the meeting even started. Luckily I saved a bunch to keep here at home.

Having a large family as well as somewhere I could bring cookies to tonight, I doubled the recipe and it worked great.

Peanut-Pecan Butter and Oatmeal Cookies

Original recipe from Bon Appetit, November, 2011. Altered slightly by Crafty Farm Girl, October, 2011.

Yield: About 20 3” cookies

1/3 cup smooth peanut butter
1/3 cup pecans, toasted, cooled
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
½ cup old-fashioned oats
¼ cup quick-cooking oats

Combine peanut butter and pecans in a food processor and puree until almost smooth.



Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.


Using an electric mixer, beat both sugars and butter in a large bowl until fluffy, about 3 minutes.



Add peanut butter mixture and vanilla. Beat to blend well.


Beat in egg.

Add dry ingredients and mix until well combined.


Add both oats. Continue to blend at high speed for 1 minute.



Now here’s where I veered off from the original recipe. The original recipe said to refrigerate the dough for at least 3 hours and then scoop them onto foil-lined cookie sheets. I was running out of time, so I scooped the dough out onto parchment lined baking sheets, spacing about 1” apart (using a scoop that held just under 3 tablespoons of dough), and then refrigerated the cookie sheets for about 45 minutes before baking. This seemed to work just fine. They also said to use a foil-lined baking sheet, but I used parchment and that also seemed to have no ill effects on the final cookie.


Arrange racks in upper and lower thirds of oven; preheat to 375 degrees. Bake until light golden, 10-12 minutes (rotate baking sheets 180 degrees halfway through baking).


Let cookies cool on sheets for 2 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

This coconut layer cake would probably be considered my “signature” cake. It’s most of my family’s favorite cake, and the most-requested birthday cake I make.

I volunteered to bring something to my children’s fall Homecoming fair today. I tried a few different recipes this week looking for something new and exciting to bring, but nothing seemed right. I made a fancy brownie, but they were dry. I made a pear & ginger coffee cake that was good, but it didn’t rise that well. In the end I decided to stick with what I do best. And I decided to make two; one for the bake sale and one for us.


I originally posted this recipe last march. You can see that post by clicking here or on either photo of the cake.

I absolutely love these pies. You can’t leave me alone in the house with them or I swear I will eat them all. They are the perfect individual apple pie. You can pick them up and eat them with your hands. They are a great treat for after school snacks, or as an after dinner treat. And they will be the hit of your school’s fall fundraiser if you show up with them. I’ve even done them in miniature, inserting lollipop sticks in them, and created apple pie pops with this recipe.

Apple Pie Pops

For this post though I used the apple-shaped one I had bought last year, along with two others that I bought that I would not recommend.The pink and blue ones below are made by Tovolo with the name “Petite Pie Mold”. I personally did not feel that these molds worked nearly as well as the Williams Sonoma ones. They did not seal the crusts together very well, and there was too much crust at the edge and not enough room for filling.


You cut the dough out using the backsides of the mold. One side cuts a plain shape out and the other cuts out one with a decorative steam hole in it. Place the non-vented piece of dough in the mold, brush the edges with water, and fill it with the apple filling (it holds quite a bit of filling too), place the vented pastry top over that and press gently around the edges. Fold over the mold and press to crimp and seal the edges. The pie taps easily out of the mold. Brush with an egg wash if desired and bake as directed. When slightly cooled you can put the apple glaze on.





You don’t need to buy these molds to make hand pies though, you can cut out small rounds of dough, maybe 4″ to 4-1/2″, vent the top piece of dough, fill, and crimp the edges with a fork. These molds do make quick, easy work of the task though.

Apple Hand Pies

Makes 12-16 pies. If you have some apple filling left over you can freeze it to use another day.

Pie crust recipe, below, doubled

Pie Filling

• 8 Granny Smith apples  (about 3 1/2 pounds), peeled, cored, and diced into 1/3” dice
• 8 Golden Delicious apples  (about 3 1/2 pounds), peeled, cored, and diced into 1/3” dice
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and cooled
• 6 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 egg for egg wash

Glaze

• 1 cup reserved apple juice  (from filling)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter , softened
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar

For the pie: Combine apples, 1 cup sugar, and salt in colander set over large bowl. Let sit, tossing occasionally, until apples release their juices, about 30 minutes. (I have carefully covered the bowls with plastic wrap overnight and it was fine. Just remember if you are going to do this to sprinkle the apples with some lemon juice and toss to coat before covering to prevent browning. Press gently on apples to extract liquid. I helped this along by placing a plate over the apples and weighting it with a large can. Reserve 1 cup juice.

Toss the diced apples with the sugar and salt.

Place apples in a colander set over a large bowl.

Place a plate on top and weight it down with some cans or something heavy for about 30 minutes until apples release their juices.

Toss drained apples with tapioca, cinnamon, and lemon juice and remaining 1/2 cup of sugar. If you let the apples drain overnight and used lemon juice to keep them from browning, use a little less lemon juice now.

Toss apples with remaining 1/2 cup sugar, melted butter, tapioca, cinnamon and lemon juice.

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. If you are using the pocket pie molds above, follow those directions for assembly. If you are making them by hand, roll out dough to about 1/8” thick and cut out pastry into 4” rounds with a cutter. The first time I made these I used a small oak leaf to cut a steam hole on one side of the pastry, but in hindsight the hole was too large and the next time I will use the end of a straw and make a few small round vent holes instead. Stack the circles as you make them. Re-roll the scraps and make as many rounds as you can. Place the stacks of dough rounds on a plate and refrigerate, covered, until you are ready to use them.

Brush edges of dough with water. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the apple mixture onto the plain side of the dough round. Carefully fold over the dough and meet the edges together. Press the edges together with your finger, and adjust filling as necessary to evenly distribute. Carefully Use fork to crimp and seal outside edge of pie. Lay pies on parchment-covered baking sheet about 2” apart. Brush the pies with an egg wash. Bake until pie is golden brown and juices are bubbling, approximately 25 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and let cool.

For the glaze: While pie is cooling, simmer reserved apple juice in saucepan over medium heat until syrupy and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in confectioners’ sugar. Stir in lemon juice and butter and let cool until it is just warm. Brush glaze evenly over warm pie. Let pie cool completely, at least 1 hour longer. Serve.

Apple juice from the strained apples.

Bring reserved apple juice to a boil and, over medium heat, simmer until juice is syrupy and reduced to about 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes.

Whisk in confectioners sugar.

Stir in lemon juice and butter and let cool until it is just warm.

Brush warm glaze over pies.

Make Ahead: The pie can be made up to 24 hours in advance and refrigerated. Bring to room temperature before serving or frozen on parchment-covered baking sheets. Once they are frozen you can remove them from the sheets and store in tupperware container or ziploc freezer bags until ready to bake.

The Best Pie Dough – Double Crust 8- or 9-Inch Pie

For a double-crust 8- or 9-inch pie. Published September 1, 1994, Cook’s Illustrated.

In search of the best pie dough recipe, we found that all-butter crusts have good taste, but they are not as flaky and fine-textured as those made with some shortening. All-shortening crusts have great texture but lack flavor. We experimented with a variety of combinations and ultimately settled on a proportion of 3 parts butter to 2 parts shortening as optimal for both flavor and texture. You can make a pie dough recipe by hand, but the food processor is faster and easier and does the best job of cutting the fat into the flour.

The following pie dough is one in a series for different size pies. When rolling out the dough, roll to a thickness of about 1/8-inch thick (about the thickness of two quarters).

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
11 tablespoons unsalted butter , cold, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
7 tablespoons vegetable shortening , chilled
4 -5 tablespoons ice water

Instructions:
Mix flour, salt and sugar in food processor fitted with steel blade. Scatter butter pieces over flour mixture, tossing to coat butter with some flour. cut butter into flour with five 1-second pulses. Add shortening and continue cutting in until flour is pale yellow and resembles coarse cornmeal with butter bits no larger than small peas, about four more 1-second pulses. Turn mixture into medium bowl.

Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of ice water over mixture. With blade of rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix. Press down on dough with broad side of spatula until dough sticks together, adding up to 1 tablespoon more ice water if dough will not come together. Shape dough into two balls with your hands, one slightly larger than the other. Flatten into 4-inch-wide disks. Dust lightly with flour, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling.

I’m so excited to finally have my kids back in school it’s hard for me to pick what to do first. Today I did a little bit of everything, including make these Apricot Coconut Almond Bars. I was in the mood to make some sort of bar cookie thing and had a craving for apricots and coconut. The almonds were an afterthought.

I found two recipes on-line; one from allrecipes.com and the other from foodandwine.com. I pretty much went off of the Allrecipes.com recipe, but the recipe called for walnuts, which I thought was an odd choice. Almonds and apricots go so well together that I could think of no reason not to exchange the walnuts for sliced blanched almonds. I increased the amount of apricots from 2/3 to 3/4 cup and I decided to throw in 1/4 cup of apricot preserves for shits and giggles.

These were easy to throw together and sliced up really nicely. They are not too sweet and would be perfect to bring to one of those class coffee’s or PTO meetings, or would be a great lunchbox snack.

Apricot Coconut Almond Bars

Original recipe from allrecipes.com, altered a bit by Crafty Farm Girl, September, 2011.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dried apricots, roughly chopped
1 cup water
2 eggs
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup sliced blanched almonds
1/4 cup apricot preserves
3/4 cup flaked coconut (optional)
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar for decoration (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). In a medium bowl, mix together butter, sugar, and 1 cup flour. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9×13 inch pan and bake for 25 minutes in preheated oven.

In small saucepan, bring apricots and water to a boil, and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, beat eggs and brown sugar.


Stir in 1/3 cup flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and lemon juice.


Fold in nuts and chopped apricots. Stir in coconut, if desired.


Pour over the prepared crust and spread evenly.



Bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm.


Cool, and dust with confectioners’ sugar if desired before cutting into squares.

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Apricot Coconut Almond Bars

Original recipe from allrecipes.com, altered a bit by Crafty Farm Girl, September, 2011.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dried apricots, roughly chopped
1 cup water
2 eggs
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup flaked coconut (optional)
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar for decoration (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). In a medium bowl, mix together butter, sugar, and 1 cup flour. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9×13 inch pan and bake for 25 minutes in preheated oven.

In small saucepan, bring apricots and water to a boil, and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool.

In a medium bowl, beat eggs and brown sugar. Stir in 1/3 cup flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and lemon juice. Fold in nuts and chopped apricots. Stir in coconut, if desired.

Pour over the prepared crust and bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm.

Cool, and dust with confectioners’ sugar if desired before cutting into squares.

While Hurricane Irene raged outside last Sunday, I was inside so grateful to still have power, yet still worried how my animals, friends and family were faring.

What’s good for a time like that? Chocolate. What’s even better than that? Chocolate and peanut butter together. Luckily I had just received a shipment from the King Arthur Flour Company on Thursday, and inside that shipment were two bags of the mini peanut butter cups that were called for in their Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie recipe.

chocolate peanut butter cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup (1 1/2 ounces) natural cocoa or Dutch-process cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 cups mini peanut butter cups





Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.

2) In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.





3) In another bowl, beat together the sugars, butter, and peanut butter until light and fluffy.






4) Beat in the vanilla, egg, and water.





5) Then stir in the dry ingredients, blending well.




6) Stir in the mini peanut butter cups.





7) Scoop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets; a small ice cream scoop works well here. Flatten each cookie to about 1/2″ thick.





Bake the cookies for 7 to 9 minutes, or until they’re set and you can smell chocolate. Remove them from the oven, and cool on a rack.





Yield: about 3 dozen cookies.