Sunday Cookies

Toll House Chocolate Chip!

Triple Coconut Cookies (Good to the Grain)

Feeling decidedly under the weather but Peter leaves for three weeks of your tomorrow and no amount of stuffiness is going to stand between me and sending him off well provided for.

Apple Picking and Jammers

These are a few shots from last weekend...fall is really heading to Portland in all its rainy, cozy glory. The Jammers up top are a new recipe from the Grand Central Bakery cookbook and they were really, really good...light and flaky and salty-sweet. I'll try to post the recipe soon. 

Pumpkin Spice Buns

Made Smitten Kitchen's pumpkin buns last night...didn't rise quite as much as they should, but they taste so good I don't think anyone minded too much. 

Marie-Hélène's Apple Cake

I went home last week and, as usual, it a typical bacchanalia of food, food and more food. My mother wanted a "culinary journey" through different cuisines. So we had Thai shrimp curry, Chinese stir-fry, Italian night (pasta with prosciutto, clams in white wine), French night (chicken with a tarragon pan sauce), steak with pesto, Indian night (lamb rogan josh, shrimp curry, spicy potatoes and spinach). It was all amazing. But this apple cake was undoubtedly one of the major stars of a really great week of cooking and trying new recipes.

Blueberry Swirl Muffins

I was a woman on a mission.

Partially inspired by the big, beautifully empty Moleskine notebook I got myself for Christmas as a brand new recipe book, I've been systematically hunting down and recording all of my best recipes for posterity and for easy transport. But there was one glaring hole: a solid, delicious recipe for blueberry muffins where the blueberries tasted like blueberries and the muffin was moist and enticing. The search, good friends, is over.

Cranberry-Pistachio Cookies

Guys. These cookies? Are red and green. Whatever insanely brilliant mind discovered that cranberries and pistachios not look lovely and Christmasey together but also taste good deserves some sort of award. If you're looking for a last little recipe to fill out a cookie gift box or to stock up the cookie jar during the holidays, look no further.

Clover Rolls

As you might remember, I promised everyone that I was going to go a little nuts this Thanksgiving. And I did. I made a ton of food which, for the most part, was gobbled down. There are certainly one or two things that I'm definitely going to turn into a yearly tradition, and this particular recipe was one of them. While I'm not usually the type of person who'll invest a couple hours into making dinner rolls for an everyday meal, these particular rolls are perfect for a special occasion. They're pretty and delicious and surprisingly un-temperamental to make.

Cranberry Orange Pecan Bread

Let's talk about gray, drizzly days, cups of tea and toast. Particularly this toast, from the Grand Central Bakery Cookbook, which is studded with sweet cranberries, crunchy pecans and bright and zippy lemon zest. It's just what you need when you require a little fall morning pick-me-up. 

Oreos

I was something of an Oreo hound in my teenage years. At my best friend Mia's house there was always a large plastic tub filled with them that I exclusively commandeered every time I went over. Once, when Mia's mom found it necessary to ground me, my punishment was, among other things, no more Oreos. The horror!

World Peace Cookies

 "But Bailey," I hear you cry, "Why on Earth are there only two cookies in these pictures?" Well, friends, it's because these cookies were gobbled down in the blink of an eye. I was in the shower when Piper came home, found these in the cookie jar, and ate one. I was able to hear her un-printable exclamation over the sound of the shower. They're that good. Dorie Greenspan, who I'm starting to imagine (in a totally non-creepy way) as my fairy baking godmother, jokes that these cookies are called World Peace Cookies because if everyone in the world had one war would be a thing of the past. She may have been joking, but I think she's on to something.

Sicilian Fig Bars

When I told Peter that I was thinking of making Fig Newtons, he sounded less than enthusiastic. Fig Newtons were a cookie his mom used to eat when he was little. They were not, perhaps, the coolest cookie around. I've always had a fondness for them, though, and when I saw that Nick Malgieri's recipe for them was called "Sicilian Fig Bars," that just about did the trick. "Sicilian Fig Bars" made me think of lounging around on the patio of a villa outside Siena, munching on a cookie, reading a good book and watching the cypress trees sway in the distance. Who couldn't fall in love with that?

Cherry Frangipane Tart

If you're throwing or attending a little get-together, I think the best desserts are the ones that can be tossed together and thrown in the oven at the last minute (or warmed up until they're ready to serve). So when Peter's cousin invited us to a little dinner this summer I immediately decided to try this fairly no-fuss tart. Plump red cherries and a buttery pastry and a sweet almond filling? Count me in.

Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake

My grandparents live in a little mini-Eden, slightly outside Eugene, Oregon. It's situated right on the Mackenzie River at the base of a beautiful forested hillside. My grandparents grow fruit, vegetables, grapes, apples, herbs and have a flock of sassy chickens that deliver some of the best eggs in the Pacific Northwest. After a recent visit, my grandmother sent me home with (among other things) a huge bag full of juicy, completely red strawberries. And what's a girl to do?

Suspiros

This is the type of recipe I love best. My mom has been making these (cookies? meringues? some weird hybrid of both?) for as long as I could remember. She got them from my great-grandmother Mary, who we used to visit at her retirement home in Santa Fe. I have nothing but the most magical memories of our trips to Santa Fe, and these magical little confections are a fitting reminder of those visits. The name is Spanish for "breath," and it's an apt moniker. One bite and the cookies dissolve into air.

Tuckers

Is there a coconut hound in your life? When you make a steak, do they casually suggest that you use dried coconut flakes as a crust? Do they buy coconut rum and then endlessly try to foist in on you? Then I have the cookie for you. It's got, like, four ingredients, it has a fun, unusual method of preparation, it's adorable and surprising in its shape and presentation, and it will get snapped up before you know what's happening. This little helped endear me to Peter's dad when I went to his house over Christmas; apparently the coconut fiend gene is hereditary.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Cake

This is definitely one of the most unusual (in a fantastic way) confections I've ever come across. It's hard, really, to pinpoint exactly where in the baking realm it falls (pie? cake?) but what is certain is that this is a beautiful way to showcase the standout fruit of early summer, namely rhubarb and strawberries. A light, cloudlike cake gives some structure to the dessert, topped with fruit and finished with a brown sugar crumb. The original name for this was "snacking cake" and it's easy to see why. When this is sitting out on the counter it sort of beckons you over every time you walk by.

Almond Apricot Macarons

Trust me: these wee little fellows pack quite the punch. I'd made a fairly large batch of apricot-habanero jam and after consulting flavor wizard Hallie for compatible flavors (I'd half-expected her to text back "CLAMS! CLAM MACARON! NO ONE'S EVER DONE IT BEFORE!") decided to up the almond ante and see what came of it. These sweet and spicy treats are perfect for a little midday pick-me-up, which is probably why I made quite a few bite sized ones (like those pictured here). 

Rhubarb Cream Cheese Hand Pies

Remember that book called How to Win Friends and Influence People? There should have been only one page in that book and it should have been a picture of a hand pie. Hand pies hold the answers to so many of life's little dilemmas. For example, how does one maintain one's dignity when one is caught by one's roommate shaving off a wee bit of pie slice in the middle of the morning? What if one's roommate gives himself a larger slice of pie than you and rather than speak out against this gross injustice one must accept one's cruel fate? The answer, dear friends, to all these problems is the hand pie; a perfect medley of fruit filling and dough, appropriate for any occasion.

English Muffins

Breakfast can be beautiful in its simplicity or astonishing in its breadth and complexity. What is not beautiful or astonishing is when your boyfriend (a grown, 26-year-old man) informs you that for breakfast he had a cookie and some yerba mate. I am not a nutritionist and I am a professed fan of ramen noodles, but that sort of thing strikes me as not the best thing you can do for your body, especially after you've made it wake up at 6:55 in the morning. And while I religiously eat cereal for breakfast most days of the week, I can appreciate those who, like Peter, are in search of something more. Enter the English muffin.

Soft Pretzels

Pretzels have always held a soft, salty, comforting place in my heart. I can't tell you the number of times I've been schlepping through a train station in a distant Germanic country only to realize that I have just enough money/time to quickly snatch a pretzel and some mustard before I have to make a train. They've kept me going, and for this I thank them.