Archives for category: cookies
« Older Entries

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part Five

December 30, 2025 //
1

Today, on December 30, 2025, I frosted my last batch of pfefferneusse for the year. I baked them yesterday right before a guest arrived for tea and cookies (I served her previously baked and frosted cookies). Today’s cookies are sitting in a heated kitchen and I am hoping that the icing will set because I will be mailing out cookies tomorrow morning on the last day of the year. Perhaps some of them will arrive by “old Christmas” on January 6th.

Before I got to the pfefferneusse, I spent yesterday morning rolling and cutting ginger cookies with the usual kinds of trouble, including dough that stuck to my marble slab and cut cookies that wrinkled when I tried to pick them up with a spatula. I was working in an utterly cold kitchen — about 40 F — to minimize difficulties from warming dough.

As I began rolling out the last fresh batch of the last dough, a miracle happened: the dough did not stick to the slab, I could roll it paper-thin and, for the first time in eight days, the cookie cutters lifted the dough rather than leaving it cut in place. Hallelujah. The perfect amount of flour, the perfect room temperature, the drier weather — whatever it was — allowed me to cut out three trays of fresh cookies and do the re-rolling to finish the ginger dough. Whew.

I enjoyed cutting those last batches of cookies. I was on a roll, using up open bowls of lime green and red sugars, ferrying trays to the oven.

I was working on parchment paper and, when I attempted to remove the last baking sheet one-handed, the sheet of parchment slid off the baking sheet. The cookies fell to the oven floor and began turning to charcoal and the edge of the parchment paper burst into flame. I picked it up, dropped it in the sink and splashed dishwater on the burning paper.

My house had smelled lovely, scented with freshly-baked ginger cookies and sugar. Now it smelled like burnt offerings.

I discovered that I cannot reach the lock on the window over the sink — I should add a one-step step-stool to my kitchen equipment, so I pivoted and opened another window. My smoke alarm, which goes off when I fry bacon, remained silent through the entire episode.

With half an hour to go before company, I reduced the oven temperature to 300 F, rolled the pfefferneusse dough into balls and baked them, after scraping black carbon off the oven floor. I began the kitchen clean-up, thinking I was done, when I spotted a small tray of ginger-re-rolls.

Drat. When the pfefferneusse came out in twenty minutes, I cranked the oven back up to 375 F and baked the last ginger cookies of 2025.

This morning I located enough boxes to mail cookies in, found a few boxes and tins that would fit inside them and decided to sacrifice a few tins from my permanent collection to send to some friends. I will get them packed today or tonight and be ready to walk them to the post office tomorrow when it opens.

Next year: start earlier. Maybe collect some new small Christmas tins this week if I can find any.

Tags , , , ,
Categories baking, Christmas baking, cookies, Uncategorized

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part Four

December 25, 2025 //
0

Today, Christmas Day, I took the day off from baking and cooking. I had planned to cook a roast lamb feast, but had no takers, and I had a last-minute invitation to a turkey and trimmings Christmas dinner, so all I made today was a kale salad for the feast and a bowl of oatmeal with sour cherries and walnuts, which I ate at noon.

Yesterday, however, I combined searching for a red tablecloth, testing tree lights, moving boxes around and making French onion soup and kale salad with baking a few dozen ginger cookies and pfefferneusse, and frosting said pfefferneusse.

I made the onion soup base first, caramelizing sliced onions in butter and olive oil, adding thyme and white pepper, de-glazing the pan with chicken stock. Then I de-stemmed kale for salad. Then I decided to tackle ginger cookies.

Ginger cookies, when you want them wafer-thin and crisp, are difficult — there is no way around it. Lessons learned or remembered this year. 1) Chilling the dough for several days is not enough 2) Kick the silicone mat to the curb — it does not help. 3) Turn off the heat in the kitchen: this dough must be seriously cold to manage (It’s the molasses). 4) When the cut cookies wrinkle when you try to pick them up, give it up, scrape the dough off the marble slab and put the dough in the freezer for a few minutes. 5) While, you are at it, refrigerate the marble slab.

Yesterday I left the marble slab in the refrigerator with rolled out dough on it. I’ll see what happens tomorrow.

After I gave up on ginger cookies, I turned to pfefferneusse, easy to roll into balls and pop onto a sheet of parchment paper when you have used up your supply of butter wrappers. They bake in a nice slow 300-degree oven for twenty minutes. Nothing ever goes wrong with them except the royal icing.

I can’t tell you how many times I have made royal icing that doesn’t want to set. I don’t want it tooth-achingly sweet, so I might use less powdered sugar than some people do. I don’t measure it. I just dump powdered sugar into egg whites and whisk until I like the consistency. I add a generous amount of anise extract — you need to taste it in the frosting.

I hand-dip each cookie in the icing and set it on the cut-open paper bag that I have been using for all of the cookies. The bag catches stray colored sugar and absorbs excess fat from the cooling cookies. Doing pfefferneusse last adds frosting drips to the brown paper.

After I finished with ginger dough for the day, I turned the heat back on in the kitchen. It turns out that a heated kitchen helps icing dry. Who knew? In our Kensington kitchen the only possible heat sources were the ovens, the stove, or the dryer. Here in Washington, my kitchen has a heating vent and thermostat. What luxury.

So, by the end of the day I had some of each of the classic four Dimmick cookies made: cocoa shortbread, maple butter cookies, ginger cookies and pfefferneusse with candied ginger and orange peel.

In times past there were more cookies. Mom would make Russian tea cakes, dream bars, even coconut macaroons. I make Russian tea cakes if I have time and I have experimented with apricot bars but have never found one I like with a serious amount of dried apricots and nuts — I want it to be mostly apricots and nuts on a not-too-sweet base. In times long past there were homemade divinity and caramels, homemade eggnog marinated in whiskey. I can make all of those things, but find it difficult to find the time. There was fruitcake and mince pie, neither of which I miss. Mom made walnut fudge and Grandma made rocky road fudge and sometimes double fudge as well as plain sugar cookies like hockey pucks: dead-white with flour, thick and hard. We liked them when we were kids, but every year Grandma used more flour and less shortening until they resembled sweetened hardtack: you could eat them if you dipped them in tea, coffee, cocoa or milk, but why bother.

Before my neighbor Eileen arrived for Christmas Eve dinner I made lemon-tahini salad dressing with garlic, added artichoke hearts and sliced green olives with pimentos for a festive touch. While she plugged in an extension cord she had brought and strung the lights on the tree, I made Gruyere croutons for the soup.

Eileen opened a bottle of Tempranillo. I routed out some punch cups from a large box of fragile glassware packed by professional movers (I have nowhere to display or store goblets, tea cups and punch cups so they are still in their box). She poured an inch of wine and we drank a Christmas toast.

We ate soup and salad, followed by cookies. We put ornaments on the tree. Eileen dried dishes, stowed leftovers and packed cookies to take home.

My current plan is to finish baking ginger cookies and pfefferneusse on Boxing Day and to box up cookie assortments to send to far-flung friends. If I run low, I will make more of anything except ginger cookies. Enough is enough. I also hope to roast the lamb, fix mashed potatoes, lemon pie, radicchio salad and cinnamon rolls. We’ll see how far I get…

Tell me about the holiday cookies you love. And let me know if you have a wonderful apricot-nut bar.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories baking, Christmas baking, cookies, home cooking, seasonal recipes

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part Three

December 23, 2025 //
0

When I walked in the door this evening my house smelled like maple. I spent all day rolling, cutting, decorating and baking batches of Smitten Kitchen’s Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies. I have to say that this cookie is my favorite variation on a classic Christmas sugar cookie. The dough handles perfectly (Is it the egg yolk that keeps it from drying out or getting too stiff?). And they taste fabulous. Deb makes hers austere, but when I make them I tart them up with colored sugar because, you know, when I make them they are Christmas cookies.

Here’s a secret to Dimmick rolled cookies (You may never look at cookies quite the same way again). My mother taught me to use a sequence of cutters: when the dough is untouched, when it has been chilling in the refrigerator and you pull your first quarter or eighth of dough out to roll, you select the cutters you are going to use. I like to start with six-pointed stars and Christmas trees. Then you use only those cutters every time you select a fresh round of dough. When you roll up the scraps and roll them out, you choose entirely different cutters: I chose a flower that I think of as a poinsettia, but could be a Christmas rose. All second-generation dough (aka re-rolls) is cut with this cutter. And if, God forbid, you have a third generation of dough made from twice re-rolled scraps, you choose yet another cutter.

Why do we do this? The first time you roll out dough it has minimal added flour on your work surface. The cookies that you get from a first dough are more tender and flavorful. By the time you are re-rolling dough, you have incorporated the flour that is on your work surface and you usually have to add a bit more flour when you roll it out so that it does not stick, so second and third-generation cookies have more flour in them and the dough gets worked more: both of those things toughen the cookies slightly. The compensation is that the re-rolled dough is usually a bit easier to work with due to the added flour and sometimes you can get the stiffer cookies quite thin. The second generation cookies may look better than the first generation ones, but the first ones taste better. Switching cutters functions as a code. You can say to those in the know, “The poinsettias are re-rolls,” while you make them attractive for others to grab.

My mother favored delicate, thin cookies and I share that preference. I tend to use small, angular cutters with unfussy shapes. My favorite cutters are just an outline of the shape, as opposed to the kind that have a flat top and a sharp cutting edge — cookies tend to get stuck in overly fancy cutters. I don’t make gingerbread men, although I have the cutters to make them.

As I was throwing red sugar onto the maple poinsettias, I realized that I would run out of red sugar before I had baked all of the ginger cookies (which I haven’t started yet). I also saw that I did not have enough powdered sugar to make royal icing for the pfefferneusse — that recipe makes a lot.

When you make cookies hour after hour by yourself, you get into a rhythm. Take a butter wrapper and use it to grease a baking sheet. Set that on the counter. Add flour to your work surface: I use a silicone mat over a marble slab. Pat the dough into a round as you would for pie crust. Flour your rolling pin. Roll out the dough as thinly as possible. I usually end up with one thick end on the top and am running out of room to roll, so I will break the thick part off and set it aside — it is just like new dough because I haven’t finished rolling it.

Choose your cutters and flour them. Place the cutter as close to the edge of the dough as you can. Then place the next cutter as close to the last place you cut as you can. After awhile, you start to see “If I turn the tree cutter right side up here and upside down there” I can cut very close together.” I imagine someone laying out paper patterns on fabric. I don’t think of myself as having strong spacial abilities, but I am good at placing cookie cutters, probably because I’ve done it a lot.

Pop the filled cookie sheet in the refrigerator to chill while you fill the next one. Transfer the chilled sheet to your work table for decorating. When all your trays are full of cut cookies, preheat the oven. Decorate the cookies while it preheats.

As I cut cookies, I move the scraps off to the side of the marble slab — I will gather them up to re-roll later. Mom sometimes made “scrap cookies” of the odd bits of dough between cookies. I prefer to re-roll the scraps and make cookies with recognizable shapes.

Suddenly I remember the family lexicon: members of my immediate family talked about “crap cookies,” not because there was anything wrong with the Christmas cookies we looked forward to all year but because my younger brother couldn’t say esses when he was little. “Scrap cookies” became “crap cookies.”

Before I decorated the last round of poinsettias, my phone rang. My former next door neighbor from Oberlin Avenue who is one hundred years old now was calling to wish me a merry Christmas. I was touched. I asked her if she would be going out to visit her daughter for Christmas. She was, but she wanted to see if I was home first. I told her I was baking cookies, that that had been one of Madge’s specialties and that I still baked them. She said she’d check up on me from time to time and I told her I had never forgotten how she sent us food when my mother was so ill.

While cookies bake, I mix up new batches of colored sugar. I’ve made light green, turquoise, denim blue, orange and an accidental brown — no matter what the package says you cannot make purple sugar with cheap liquid food coloring.

I do not set a timer. When the cookies are ready I will catch their scent wafting through the air. When cookies smell like cookies they are done.

I baked the last tray of cookies, washed my silicone mat and forced myself out of the house for a Safeway run. Safeway was out of red sugar, but I got powdered sugar and a few treats (coffee yogurt and tapioca pudding) and the thyme leaves I have been eying, outrageously priced at nine dollars, but 33% off this week. The walk stretched out my back a little, compressed from all the standing and sitting.

I fed the cat, had dinner myself (bagel, peanut butter, yogurt, raw carrots) and realized I wasn’t up for a second shift. The ginger dough is the hardest one to handle. Stay tuned.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories Christmas baking, cookies, home cooking

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part Two

December 18, 2025 //
7

I thought about the kitchen. I wrote about the kitchen. I tried to avoid thinking about the kitchen. And then I went down to the kitchen.

Onyx followed me down, hoping that I would open a can of cat food at 4:20 PM. Not happening. I tell her it isn’t time. I tell her she has to wait. I don’t know how much of this she understands, but after watching me for a few minutes she disappears up the stairs. I turn on the oven for a commercial frozen turkey pot pie for dinner: when I am doing production baking I don’t cook meals — it will be muffins for breakfast, quesadillas or roasted yams or a bagel with peanut butter for lunch and whatever I can find for dinner for the next few days.

I put the glass bowl of molasses, butter and sugar back into the microwave. I just set it in there to get it out of the way while I sift flour. Three and a half cups into a metal bowl that held flour earlier in the day. When I bake more than one thing in a day I reuse cups and bowls without washing them whenever I can: a cup that only contained flour can be used for flour again; a teaspoon that has only measured dry ingredients can be used for more of them, sometimes with a quick wipe with a towel to remove dark-colored coffee or cocoa powder or cloves. I see that I will have to get flour soon, but I have enough to finish this recipe. The half and half I prefer in coffee has gone blinky, but I do not want to go to the health food store tonight — I want to finish this dough. I’ll open a can of evaporated milk tomorrow morning because I will have coffee long before the store is open.

I measure the flour, rescuing spilled flour from the counter and cutting board when I can to make up the last half cup. I have left measuring spoons out, so I measure a teaspoon of soda and eyeball the salt. Then I turn to spices: cinnamon, ginger. The nutmeg is on the counter where I have left it. Hmm. Pie spice. What’s in it? A quick read of the label reveals cinnamon, vanilla sugar, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves and fennel? None of those things will hurt the spicy molasses dough. Neither will the white pepper I just bought for pfefferneusse. I measure a scant teaspoon of cinnamon, a generous teaspoon of ginger and a level teaspoon of pie spice and whisk them into the flour mixture. I tap the last flour out of the measuring cups. Then I pour the molasses mixture into the flour and start stirring and folding with a rubber scraper. I scrape the dregs of molasses from a measuring cup and from the Pyrex bowl into the forming dough.

The dough turns a lovely mahogany color and smells spicy. Yum. It is very soft, but it will firm up some from chilling. This is the hardest dough I work with at Christmas (Molasses is like that, especially if you want thin, crisp cookies without excess flour). I will make use of both a chilled marble slab and a silicone mat and will probably do some unChristian swearing the day I roll out the ginger cookies. Into a bag goes the dough, still warm, but destined for the refrigerator.

I am done with doughs for the day. Getting three done is pretty good. I might have done the fourth except for the flour shortage. One result of having a smaller kitchen than my mother had is that I can’t stockpile ten or fifteen pounds of flour and fifteen pounds of sugar — there is nowhere to store them — so I have to shop more frequently. I will get more flour and a carton of eggs tomorrow. I have enough molasses to make another half batch of ginger dough, plenty of brown sugar and a big bottle of vanilla, at least three forms of ginger, pounds of butter in the freezer. I have the ingredients for another batch of cocoa shortbread and for more maple butter cookies.

Since I scraped all of the flour I could into the half cup measuring cup for the ginger dough I am able to run a damp dish cloth over the cutting board and counter to clear the rest. I wipe the flour container and close the sifter into its box. I gather the glass bowl and the metal bowl and the glass measuring cup and put them in my dishpan with detergent and hot water. I wash the pasta bowl to get it out of the way, put a cookbook away. I won’t clean the floor until I am through messing with flour several days hence.

I am thorough about getting all of the ingredients out of mixing bowls and measuring cups, off whisks and scrapers. This is respectful of the ingredients and it also makes the bowls, cups and utensils easier to clean: they are not swimming in molasses and butter or crusted with sugar. When I can no longer get more out of a bowl with an implement I use my index finger and get a lovely taste of a finished dough. Part of me wants to eat spoonfuls of it, but these stolen tastes are enough to assure me that I have made good stuff. I wash my hands thoroughly and frequently and dry them between uses so I can’t really explain the floury fingerprints on the microwave. I wipe them off.

I pop open the can of food that Onyx craves, mash it up and take it upstairs to her. Then I take my pot pie out of the oven. She will get some of that, too, but not until I am done. Onyx comes back down to get me — she wants company while she eats. I turn off the oven, the heat and the lights downstairs and go upstairs where I eat, serve the cat a torn up cube of turkey, and compose this post while listening to rain fall on the roof.

To be continued.

Tags , , , ,
Categories Christmas baking, cookies, seasonal recipes

Christmas Cookies Redux, Part One

December 18, 2025 //
0

I am avoiding my kitchen at the moment.

This is my first Christmas in my own house in a December where I have misplaced my house keys, contracted a virus, hired men to bring pallets into my garage and re-stack boxes and furniture to keep them from flood damage from what someone dubbed “the Godzilla of atmospheric rivers,” and then hired them again to bring over sandbags when I noticed puddling on my driveway. I have wondered why the curbs are not higher and why there is no drain in the driveway. Also, my oven seems to be running low after performing well at Thanksgiving, just in time for baking season.

This morning I began mixing up Christmas cookie doughs, softening sticks of unsalted butter in the microwave, measuring granulated sugar and cocoa powder, sifting flour, adding espresso powder and vanilla. The aromas made me happy. I didn’t make Christmas cookies in 2023 when I was taking care of my mother and I didn’t make them in 2024 when I was living in a rental without my kitchen equipment. Now I am back in production.

Cocoa shortbread dough made, I popped it into a Ziploc and into the fridge to chill. I wanted to make pfefferneusse next, but I couldn’t find a paper recipe copy and I didn’t want to stop to go upstairs for my laptop, so I made up maple and nutmeg sugar cookies next. More wonderful smells arose: maple syrup and freshly grated nutmeg, butter. The maple dough went into another bag (I used to chill doughs in metal bowls, but I bought a small refrigerator to fit my kitchen and I don’t have shelf space for four or five metal bowls if I want to keep eating regular meals before Christmas; plus, I don’t buy plastic wrap anymore).

I turned to ginger cookie dough. The first step is to heat butter, shortening, molasses and brown sugar together. Microwaves and Pyrex bowls are handy for this. I was nuking and stirring, nuking and stirring by turns to melt the butter when my neighbor texted me that it was a good time to bring her some muffins I had promised her.

My late mother taught me to clean as I go in the kitchen. It is unlike me to leave a baking project half-finished, but if I stayed long enough to finish the ginger dough Eileen and Harry would not get their muffins. I hastily screwed the top onto the flour jar, but left everything else as it was.

When I got home, I had minutes to assemble a lunch of leftovers and to practice a guitar part I wanted to play at a musical Zoom — no time to finish the dough or clean the kitchen. I saw swirls of congealed shortening on top of the dark brown mass. Fragrant with molasses and brown sugar, but unattractive at this stage.

My genuine happiness at working again with sugar and butter as primary ingredients collides with a shudder as I picture the flour-strewn counter, the glass bowl of glop, not to mention the floor. And so, for now, I delay by writing about the clean-up I am avoiding.

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Christmas baking, cookies, seasonal recipes

The Monte Rio Diaries, Part Two

August 15, 2024 //
0

My friend S. is a late riser. I live a whole life before she gets up in the morning. I check email. I charge up a computer and a phone. I re-pack my luggage. I make coffee. I say hello to S’s husband G. who gets up even earlier than I do.

This morning I found a bowl of Bosc pears on the kitchen counter. That was the signal to make a baked pear pancake: after preheating a 425 F oven I sliced pears and caramelized them in a cast iron skillet with sugar and butter. While they were cooking I made a batter of flour, melted butter, eggs, milk, vanilla and raw sugar. I poured the batter over the fruit and popped it in the oven for twenty-five minutes. Voila.

After eating I went out to sketch. I’m supposedly taking a sketching class on Zoom, but I tried for twenty minutes to get in. No dice. I had assembled my sketching materials, filled my watercolor pen, sharpened some aquarelles, so I opened my sketchbook and began to sketch the bonsai tree out on the deck. I hate bonsai and feel sorry for them, so I made it a real, non-stunted tree and started filling in the colors and shapes of the trees in the landscape behind it. I used too much water trying to make the colors blend — I tore the bottom of the paper and my pigment bled through onto the next page or so. I left the sketchbook outside to dry and rinsed my brushes in the sink, checked email again and sat down to write. S. is still sound asleep.

I am getting used to S.’s kitchen: the rack of cast iron pans hanging above the stove, the baking sheets stashed next to the piano, the refrigerator door that requires slamming to stay shut. But sometimes I find the unexpected.

After lunch on Monday I was craving a sweet. I asked Sadie what she had. She offered me a chocolate bar and mentioned baking mixes. Nah. I had brought a container of rolled oats from the house I left in July. “I could make cookies,” I said. “I brought oatmeal. Do you have flour?” I knew there was butter and I had sugar.

“I have flour. I have eggs. Do you know where everything is?”

“I think so. I took a tour when you-all weren’t around.”

I found the flour in a low cupboard with other baking supplies and packages of pasta. While I was looking for it, I found a jar of bright white powder. I read the label pasted on the jar lid: “Powdered sugar, pretty much ant-free.” I laughed out loud and have been telling the story ever since.

S. got up. I procured a basket and picked blackberries in the garden. She was having breakfast when I got back. When I got hungry I made a peanut butter and blackberry sandwich: ripe blackberries — nature’s jam.

I had a second one of those the next day for lunch before we went to the river to swim. I swam. S. waded into the water a few times and sat on a towel reading. It was lovely: hot day, cool water, negligible current. The water is lower than I have ever seen it at the river, but I have only been here half a dozen times in my life. I would come back. There are hotels here and everything as well as S’s inimitable hospitality.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories baking, breakfast food, cookies, Travel

December Transformation: Ghosts of CDs, Ghosts of Traditional Family Christmas

December 19, 2014 //
5

Painting of Christmas cookies on green and red tablecloth.

Christmas Eve. 8″ x 8″ watercolor pencil and white gouache. Sharyn Dimmick

My mother will turn 85 on New Year’s Day 2015. She has begun announcing that this is our last traditional Christmas celebration, complete with tree, wrapped presents, homemade festive meal, assorted guests and family members, cookie-baking marathon, cut boughs of holly, etc. It is time for a change, she says.

I had always assumed that I would step in and take over the family Christmas traditions. For many years I have increased my contributions to the Christmas labor. But, this year, I had an unexpected number of music gigs in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and a wild week where I both attended concerts and played them. I went north to sing on the radio and to visit my best friend. I went to a local party. And amidst all that I stood by to receive shipment of my new “Clueless” CD.

Clueless CD CoverThe CD was shipped December 10 from Oasis Disc Manufacturing via UPS with two-day shipping. The first notification I got said it would be delivered on Monday December 15 (NOT two-day shipping). Many emails and phone calls later I got a notification today on December 19 that it was on a delivery truck. Lo and behold it got here this evening and is available for purchase at long last. here this evening. In the meantime, Oasis offered to re-manufacture the CDs at no cost to me and to ship them this coming Monday. This means that I will eventually receive 600 CDs instead of 300, but it also means that I cannot get them to anyone but locals by Christmas or Chanukah: Now that the CDs  have arrived I will carry a number of them around in my guitar case and backpack. I will also offer them for sale at Down Home Music and at CD Baby where you can get my 2009 release “Paris” and hear full-length versions of most songs, plus clips of the cover songs. Soon I will begin the process of getting full versions of the songs from “Clueless” up on CD Baby as well. For now you can hear a couple of the songs for free on Reverbnation.

What I have learned from this is that Oasis comes through for its customers, even in situations where they are not at fault and UPS — well, let’s just say that my brother who worked in shipping for a number of years recommends Fed Ex for deliveries.

Anyway, as Christmas approaches, my participation has been limited to buying a few gifts (in October and November), and making ginger cookie dough (yesterday). When I feel better I will be making my famous cocoa shortbread and possibly a new cookie. Mom beat me to making pfefferneusse, Russian tea cakes, dream bars, apricot bars and sugar cookie dough, but I might make up a batch of Smitten Kitchen’s maple butter cookies anyway because my brother and I fell in love with them the first time I made them. I will put some Christmas music on as I lounge about today, awaiting the arrival of the “Clueless” CDs and hoping to put in a brief appearance at a music party this evening.

painting of pomegranates, limes and December sunrise.

December Still Life. 8″ x 8″ gouache and watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick

Saturday morning I have one more gig at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, if it does not get rained out. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning I will be assisting my friend Elaine in preparing for her annual Chanukah party. I will spend Christmas Eve Day with Johnny, eating salad and tamales from Trader Joes, after serenading the morning commuters with Christmas carols. I return home in the evening to rest before assisting Mom with the last Dimmick Christmas feast marathon the next morning. All traditions come to an end, changing in subtle ways before they become part of the ghostly past of memory. No one can remember what year I started buying Straus whipping cream or what year we stopped making homemade caramels or what year I put candied ginger in the pfefferneusse or what year I invented the shortbread.

Whatever you celebrate and wherever you are, I wish you the happiest of holidays. Happy Solstice, Yule, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa. Happy holidays I have never heard of or can’t keep straight in my head. May you know the joy of feasting, of companionship, of bright light in a dark time, of joyful music. Best wishes to all who read The Kale Chronicles, whether you have been here from the very beginning or whether you just popped in today. May you enjoy your winter festivities and the love of all beings dear to you. Love, Sharyn

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Christmas baking, cookies, home cooking, seasonal recipes

Happy New Year, Writing Practice Classes and Russian Teacakes

December 28, 2012 //
29

Dear Kale Chronicles’ Readers and Friends,

It has been a long time since I sent you an update, much less a painting or a recipe. As Christmas Eve turned to Christmas Day I was standing in the kitchen at my mother’s house, baking a last batch of Russian teacakes, a traditional holiday cookie for us, consisting of butter, finely chopped walnuts, powdered sugar and enough flour to hold it all together. I had bought fresh walnuts in the shell from the Berkeley Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning and shelled them earlier on Monday evening while listening to Christmas carols on public television. Unfortunately, I had not consulted the recipe for amounts and had shelled just 1/2 cup when I needed 3/4 cup: as soon as I looked at the cookbook I went back to shelling nuts and wielding my chef’s knife.

It was an all-cookie Christmas this year, supplemented only with batches of Betsy’s delicious Italian Glazed Almonds. I did not have funds available for purchasing gifts in 2012, so I made them, Cocoa Shortbread and Pfefferneusse, Smitten Kitchen’s maple butter cookies, thin Moravian ginger cookies. For several days I busked in the Berkeley BART station in the morning and baked in the afternoon and evening, preparing a silver tray of cookies for my friend Elaine’s Chanukah party, packing a waxed cardboard box with almonds for another. When I wasn’t baking I was borrowing a guitar from Fat Dog at Subway Guitars who kindly lent me a Johnson to play while my beloved Harmony went to the guitar doctor, who treated her for a couple of serious cracks, rehearsing with Johnny for a gig at Arlington Cafe in my home town or giving my annual Christmas music party for which I prepared butternut squash soup, Mexican corn soup, Swedish rye bread and Finnish cardamom bread.

I remember standing at the bread board chopping resinous walnuts, seeing the chopped nuts in the metal measuring cup, the knife blade against the wood, thinking “This is not so bad a way to spend the evening.” True, it was late and I was behind on Christmas preparations, but I focused on the pleasure that a fresh tin of powder-sugar dusted cookies would bring my mother, Johnny (they are his favorite) and my sister-in-law who threatened to kill Johnny on Christmas Day if he had eaten them all. As the knife flashed through the nut meats, as the butter and sugar whirled in the mixer, as I rolled the cookie dough into small balls in the quiet night kitchen I thought how lucky I am:

1) My mother and brother are healthy and here to celebrate Christmas with this year.

2) I have a pleasant and safe home to live in.

3) I have found someone to love who loves me back.

4) I, too, am healthy.

5) My lone guitar has been safely repaired

6) Johnny and I played a gig together in my hometown to generally favorable responses and both ended the evening in the black financially.

7) Friends came to hear us play.

8) My song about our courtship, “Clueless,” continues to be a runaway hit and fun to play.

Honestly, I can’t remember more of those midnight thoughts now. Suffice it to say that I thought of my patient readers who have put up with my long absence from the blogosphere.

Just in case anyone has not had enough cookies over the past month or has never made Russian teacakes at home, I’ll share the recipe with you, slightly modified from that presented in our Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.

Russian Teacakes

Soften 1 cup (two sticks) of butter — I use one stick salted butter and one stick unsalted.

Shell and finely chop 3/4 cup fresh walnuts

Combine butter with 1/2 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract in electric mixer until creamy.

Slowly add 2 and 1/4 cups sifted flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, incorporating flour completely before each addition.

Mix in chopped nuts.

Chill dough as necessary. If you work late at night in a cold kitchen you will not need this step (or want to wait for the dough to chill either). Before baking, preheat oven to 400.  Bake cookies for 10 to 12 minutes until some color shows on the bottom edges. Roll warm cookies carefully in powdered sugar — they are delicate and will develop mangy-looking spots where the butter comes through. Let cool and roll again, or sift or sprinkle more powdered sugar to cover each cookie. Store in airtight tins for up to a week or two. (Mom recommends providing other cookies for the family to eat if you want to keep Russian teacakes on hand very long).

Food notes: the fresher the walnuts, the better the cookie. ‘Nough said. If you live in the South you could try making them with local pecans. If you prefer to bake exclusively with unsalted butter you will want to add 1/4 tsp of salt to your sifted flour. I use unbleached flour in these. Mom likes all-purpose. I have never tried them with a whole-grain flour — part of their attraction is that they are snowy white and ethereal. We only eat them once a year….

Painting notes: The reign of the emperor’s new clothes is long. You’ll know I am painting again the day you see a new painting here. Also, it has been so long since I’ve taken a photo that I cannot find the charger for my camera battery. Oops.

Writing classes: I will be teaching a six-week writing practice group on Tuesday nights in the East Bay starting January 8, 2012. My teacher Natalie Goldberg developed writing practice as a way to help people get their real thoughts on paper. For more information, see my ad on craigslist.

Happy New Year to everybody! See you again in 2013. –Sharyn

Tags , , , , ,
Categories baking, Christmas baking, cookies, home cooking, party food, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized

And the Winners Are… The Lauren Project Recipe Contest Winners and a Painting Sale

September 26, 2012 //
14

Peace sign with cookie border, containing salmon, zucchini and lentils.

Peace Sign. 6″ x 6″ Watercolor Pencil on Paper. Sharyn Dimmick.

Dear Friends,

Lauren and I promised we would announce the winners of The Lauren Project recipe contest in September. Without further ado, your winners are:

First Prize: To Babu Srinivasan for his salmon with turmeric

Second Prize: To Lynn for zucchini roasted with shallots.

Third Prize: To Suzanne for her lentil potage.

Honorable Mention to Will for his astounding cookies. Lauren will be sending him one of her chili pepper oven mitts.

At this writing, Babu has chosen the cookbook as his prize, Lynn has chosen a Paris CD and we have not heard from Suzanne yet.

Lauren says:

top three in order:
babu’s salmon
lynn’s zucchini
suzanne’s lentils
honorable mention:
will’s cookies
everything has been delicious, but these were not only delicious, they were deliciously easy to make and had only a few ingredients all of which i regularly have on hand. there are still a few i haven’t made yet mostly because i found them intimidating, but i plan to keep working through the list and get to the more complicated dishes when i have more time. thank you so much for doing this. i am so happy to have at least five dishes i will be adding to my regular food rotation

Sharyn says: Thank you to everyone who participated in the recipe contest. We appreciate everyone’s attempts to follow Lauren’s dietary guidelines. I know she has cooked several dishes from the recipes submitted and posted photos of them on Facebook. We are happy to be awarding the first prizes in the history of “The Kale Chronicles.”

Please remember that even if you did not win you will be eligible for free shipping of any Kale Chronicles’ painting should you choose to purchase one or more before midnight December 31st. In addition, if you purchase a painting before October 15th, I will take ten percent off the purchase price and if you purchase a painting before November 1st I will take five percent off the purchase price. These are the lowest prices ever offered for my paintings so take advantage of them while you can. You can also buy your own copy of my Paris CD, using this link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/SharynDimmick I appreciate each and every sale: they help me survive as an independent artist and also help fund new work (I have a second CD in progress).

To look at the winning recipes and other submissions, please visit The Lauren Project page. Please feel free to submit additional recipes for Lauren there any time: there is no deadline on generosity.

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories cookies, fish, soups, Uncategorized, vegetables

Combining Recipes: Lemon Bars with a Brown Sugar-Coconut Crust

February 22, 2012 //
47

Painting shows lemon bars.

Lemon Bars. 8″ x 8″ watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

Two of my mother’s favorite flavors are brown sugar and coconut: when she was a child she mixed up a big jar of coconut and brown sugar, planning to eat it. Not only did her mother punish her for “wasting food,” she also threw out the mixture. Now, I ask you, who wasted that particular food?

Anyway, I arrived home yesterday from several days in the foothills of Amador County. In my absence, Mom had made a pot pie and roasted a pork loin and some vegetables. As we ate the pot pie for lunch, Mom said, a little sadly, that there were no sweets except chocolate and that she might have to just eat oranges.

My Mom is a hard worker and she has a sweet tooth. Plus, she had been given some Meyer lemons by our next door neighbor. I offered to make something since it was blogging day. I had just seen a recipe for lemon bars from Sawsan at Chef in Disguise this morning, which had sent me running to my Alice Medrich Pure Dessert cookbook and my binder of recipes to compare ratios for lemon bar base ingredients. I like lemon bars and will eat anything that even looks like one, but Mom and I agree that the crust on lemon bars is often too thick, too rich and too sweet. I asked if there was pie crust left from the pot pie. Negative. That meant I would be starting from scratch. Mom asked if I would want to make a lemon pudding instead. I naturally thought she meant our favorite lemon pudding which has lemon filling trapped between two layers of a rich mixture of Wheaties, butter, coconut and brown sugar. And then I thought, “Why not combine them? What if I made a base of butter, brown sugar, crushed Wheaties, flour and coconut and then put lemon filling on top of that?”

Down to the kitchen I went, taking the Medrich cookbook with me: I would use her recipe as a guideline for my lemon filling because she likes a tart lemon bar. I dug out the recipe for lemon pudding from a file box in the cabinet and studied the crust ratios for three recipes. I decided I would use 1/3 cup butter, 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/3 cup crushed Wheaties and 1/3 cup flaked coconut, plus 1/4 cup brown sugar for the pastry base, which I combined with a pastry blender and baked for twenty minutes in a 350 degree oven. I then turned the oven down to 300.

I meant to use Medrich’s measurements for the lemon filling, but I couldn’t bear the thought of 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of white sugar, so I decided to use 1 scant cup instead. I was aiming for her 1/2 cup of lemon juice, but after I zested and squeezed five small Meyer lemons and one stray tangerine that some cat had batted under the sideboard (it resurfaced last week and had seen better days, looking a little battered), I had 1/3 cup juice plus a little and decided to go with that. I used 1 Tbsp of whole wheat pastry flour and 2 Tbsp of all-purpose flour, whisked that with the 1 cup sugar, whisked in three eggs, added the lemon juice and zest, and poured the result onto the hot crust.

I baked the bars at 300 for nearly half an hour until the filling no longer jiggled when I tapped the pan. I cooled the pan on a rack while I went to Berkeley to pick up my vegetables. It was a bad day for bus service: I returned three hours later, put the vegetables away and cut the first square from the pan. I cut it in half and brought half to Mom who was watching T.V. She approved of the strong lemon flavor, but wondered why there was no topping. I said that lemon bars usually don’t have a topping and if I had made crumb topping for the top it would have taken twice as much butter. She asked why I hadn’t dusted them with powdered sugar and I said I was afraid that they would be too sweet.

These lemon bars came out buttery and lemony with a delicious brown sugar and coconut crust. Despite the scant cup of sugar they were not too sweet. Many lemon bar recipes call for shortbread crusts that take an entire stick of butter: with 1/3 cup of butter, the flavor of butter comes through beautifully.

Food notes: To get a generous 1/3 cup of juice I used five small Meyer lemons and one small battered tangerine. If you use Eureka lemons, you may not need more than two. Meyer lemons are sweeter and less acidic than ordinary lemons, so you may need to increase the sugar to a generous cup and add a dusting of powdered sugar. If you have access to Meyer lemons, you can follow my measurements exactly, if that is your style. I was afraid to use all whole wheat pastry flour in the filling, but it worked fine in the crust. If you do not have Wheaties, you can substitute ground oatmeal (put rolled oats or quick oats in a blender for a few seconds), crushed wheatmeal biscuits, or a dry cereal of your choice.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories cookies, desserts, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized
« Older Entries