Danish Salted Butter Cookies

There’s something about the dead of winter that brings me back here. It’s been a year since my last post, and this time I have little excuse for my extended absence; this time I can’t direct you to the modest chronicles of my adventures, both momentous and mundane, in a new city.

Nope, haven’t gone anywhere. I just haven’t done much baking, and when I did bake, I didn’t feel much like reflecting on it. (Sometimes you just want to make a thing and be done with it, you know?)

I have done a few things, though. In no particular order:

1. I moved for the fifth time in two years. Woah. This is the first time I’ve bothered to do that math. But don’t worry: my current roommate and I went halfsies on an area rug, so you know I’ll be sticking around for a while.
2. I started improv again! I loved it. It was terrifying and perfect.
3. I quit improv again. Eh, I’ll be back. We’re not through, improv and me.
4. I spent six months at an internship for which I have little to show, save for a few writing clips in the seatback pocket publication on all Delta flights and an unhappy habituation to the AP Style comma.
5. I baked professionally. I woke up at 3:30 a.m. five days a week; I kneaded pounds and pounds of dough, scooped hundreds of cookies, got sweaty by the gigantic oven, and cleaned a whole lot of industrial baking equipment (discovering the amount of cleaning endemic to the daily running of a bakery was, I remember, truly jarring to me). I lasted two weeks. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m comfortable using the term “meltdown” without feeling hyperbolic. Thankfully, I was able to continue working at the bakery under less extreme hours. As for the matter of baking by trade vs. baking by hobby, I certainly have my answer.
6. And a bunch of other stuff. I did standup for the first time. I phoned Norway to interview one of its bestselling crime novelists. I ate sweet potato tacos every night for roughly three months. I invited professionals in my field to networking “coffee dates” and then ordered hot chocolate. I slept with a cat. (Here’s how that one went down: I come home a little tipsy and my roommate’s cat follows me into my bedroom ‘cause she’s got a pitiful case of FOMO. I’m feeling benevolent. Come one, come all, I say, and give her unprecedented permission to curl up with me in my bed. I wake up around 4 a.m., fully sober and no longer interested in sharing my bed with any animal that isn’t made of nylon and stuffed with cotton. In fact, I’m a little repulsed. Fresh out of good will, I pull the cat from her self-satisfied nap and set her down on the floor outside my room. I mutter something along the lines of “Take a hike, sister,” and shut my door. My short stumble back into bed is probably the closest I’ll ever come to a walk of shame.*)
   
   *A “walk of shame,” for those who aren’t familiar, is the forlorn trip home after having spent the night with someone who, among other dubious qualities, lets you walk out their door the next morning without so much as a plate of sugar-dusted French toast.

Yep, I’d call it a successfully formative year. And as it came to a close, there were two takeaways—the impetus of which I cannot pinpoint exactly—that stood at the forefront of my mind:

1. If you want something to happen—if you REALLY want something to happen—you better find a way to start doing it on your own. I know, this sounds a little obvious and a lot bleak, but I’ve met enough rejection and seeming dead ends this year to understand it on a level that’s both sobering and galvanizing, depending on my state of mind. I cannot wait for a personal champion. That person is me. Hi. I’m her.
2. Bake more cookies. Really. Bake more cookies, even to the exclusion of other baked goods. Somewhere between the shock of working at a high-volume bakery and the tedium of piping frosting onto 150 cupcakes for my friend’s wedding on New Year’s Eve (right, that happened, too), my already robust appreciation for cookies was renewed tenfold. During its most intense period, my cookie infatuation was comprehensive, spanning the chewy, gooey, crunchy, oat-y; cakey, crumbly, fudgy, blobby; jammy, chew—okay, I’ll stop.     (I could go on, though. Just know I could go on.) I think what struck me was the cookie’s versatility within what I consider a very soothing, familiar process. The creamy base of butter and sugar, the imperfect mounds of chunky dough dropped lazily on the pan…it all makes my heart content. Warm from the oven and dipped in milk, these self-contained, bite-size treats are quite possibly the single greatest antidote to a really awful, no-good day. 

Highlights of my cookie bender include chocolate gingers, peanut butter blossoms, oatmeal chocolate chips, cranberry white chocolates, and double chocolate mints.

*Deep, cleansing breath.*

They were good.

And after I ate them all, I took a break. Nothing drastic, just a small breather. It’s like when you just started dating someone really great, and you get so caught up in it that pretty soon you can’t remember the last time you went a whole morning without sugar-dusted French toast.

Once my blood sugar had returned to normal levels (maybe, I wouldn't know for sure), it was time to bake my first cookies of 2016. I chose these Danish salted butter cookies. They're a good fit for January in Minnesota, as they're rather austere, both in look and taste. But this is why I love them, you see. They're nearly identical to the four-ingredient punitions I made more than a year ago, only these are flecked with vanilla bean seeds and sprinkled with sanding sugar. Really, it's the perfect cookie for a month that almost invariably finds me listless, ambivalent, and in need of easy comfort.

I've never been able to roll out dough into a uniform thickness. In consequence, the thicker cookies bake to perfection as the thinner ones burn. I could've removed all the discolored ones from the shot so it'd look like I only make perfect cookies...but that would've been kind of a sad thing to do. On multiple fronts.

As much as I liked the conjoined heart/weird bat shape cookies, I simply didn't have the patience for more. And this--this!--is the beauty of the cookie. We'll take 'em fancy, and we'll take 'em blobby.

I recognize that you and I are different. Just as I cannot assume we share similar fears and ambitions, I also cannot assume that you, like me, use comestibles to fill emotional voids. But that's not going to stop me from urging you, my friend, to get your hands on a cookie. When the temps are subzero or professional efforts have proven fruitless or the thought of advocating for your tired, weary self day in and day out sounds too damn exhausting to reckon with—get your hands on a cookie. Bake it yourself, grab it from the nearest bakery, or, Christ, rip open a sack of Chips Ahoy.

Now sit down.

Pick up the cookie, dip it in milk, and eat it.

Punitions (French Shortbread Cookies)

When I first told people I was moving back to Minnesota, I was surprised at how many of them responded with, “Just in time for winter!” It confused me a little bit every time someone said it, because I moved back to Minnesota at the tail end of September.

“Just in time for fall, actually,” I would say.

It's sad to think the impending winter is so daunting to some folks that they gloss over what comes before it. I don't really dread the winter. I’m okay with being cold, and the snow has never driven me to seriously question why I live where I live. Mostly, though, I’m too busy loving the fall to think about what's next.

Right now we are entering the unique subseason that is late fall. The clouds hang low, the evenings are long, and the trees sit bare, except for the few odd leaves that cling to the very tips of their spindly branches. My mom says that this time, late fall, is like a sigh of relief. All through the peak of the season we’re almost frantic from the overwhelming pressure to take in all the gorgeous colors while we can. But now, things start to quiet down. We settle into lamplight by 5:30, and we watch the tall pines out our window turn to silhouettes, then disappear completely. And if we have a minute, we throw butter, sugar, egg, and flour into the mixer for punitions, the thin French shortbread cookies that taste like crunchy butter. 

Punitions, or "punishments," are shortbread cookies specific to the Parisian bakery Poilâne. The closest I've come to baking cookies like these is with Betty Crocker's deluxe sugar cookie recipe. We love our sugar cut-outs, but next to the four-ingredient punitions, they seem overwrought. There's powdered sugar and vanilla and almond extract and baking soda and, my goodness, cream of tartar. And yeah, they're really, really good. We make them once or twice a year on special occasions and roll them out super thin so they are delicate and savored. 

But for a chilly afternoon in late fall when it's just me, and I'm just baking to bake, there's deep comfort in needing only a couple measuring cups and the most basic baker's ingredients. The dough rolls out thick and ragged, and the cookies bake up pale and crunchy. We eat them by the dozen with coffee, and the evening stretches on for miles.

Apple Pie

I'm one of those people whose spiritual well-being is reliant on four fully distinct seasons. Balmy, mild winters with very little snow make me feel cheated and dyspeptic. Early summers that smother the cool, fresh, and so very tenuous onset of spring find me disconsolate, and only made moodier by all you "the-only-nice-day-is-a-sunny day" revelers. But I find one seasonal encroachment more devastating than all the others. A fall overtaken by clear skies, bright sun, and 70-80 degree weather? OH HELL NO.

Forgetting the past winter, in which I spent many days hosting a scornful tirade against Minnesota, shaming it for this pitiful excuse of a season it's supposed to be known for and daring it to move to California if it's so keen on candyass winters (no, that doesn't make any sense, but I'm telling you - this is how I am), I've been feeling spiritually well for the past six months.

And now fall is here, and so far, I think I've done a pretty good job celebrating. I bought a chai latte mix for mornings and a hot cocoa mix for the afternoon. I went to an apple orchard where we had apple brats and cider. I baked pumpkin bread and apple pie cookies (pictured below) with my sister. I bundled up to watch a UofM soccer game under the lights, the requisite hot chocolate in hand. I go on a walk every afternoon, and every time I see a leaf on the ground that has taken on mind-blowing colors, I practice restraint, knowing that in five more paces I'll see another masterpiece. And just today, my morning walk went from a trip to the corner post box to a much longer outing fueled by the compulsion to walk down every street framed in red and gold. My ears were getting cold, but I willed myself not to think it a discomfort.
I reminded myself how good it felt to be cold again.

Lucky for me, I know some ladies who want to celebrate fall as much as I do. Last week we came together with the tastes of the season. I thought I would be bringing the piece de resistance, the quintessential fall treat. But I showed up and there was spicy butternut squash soup, stuffed mushrooms, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. My apple pie was one of many in a spread of fall bounty.

Five honeycrisp apples went into my pie. I'm sure many would advise against this, as honeycrisps are exceptionally juicy. I chose not to worry about it.

One could spend hours researching the "right way" to do apple pie. Will you cave and use shortening for a flakier crust, or stay true to butter? Then you need to read up on proper technique - all the tricks to keeping the touchy pie dough happy until it hits the oven and you can finally breathe. And don't even bother searching for "the best" baking apple. There are too many, depending on what you're aiming for, and they all have their weaknesses. 

My opinion? Grab your favorite apple and move on.

The crust fuss, however, is warranted. Here's what I know. The butter must be cold and solid the entire time you're working with it. Ignore the natural impulse to work toward a homogeneous, uniform dough - visible bits of butter must be kept intact! Pie dough does best under minimal handling. Bring it together into a crumbly mass, and leave it that way.

For me, that's where the rigor of apple pie stops. You always hear how baking is an exact science, and it is, mostly. But with apple pie, I can bake like a cook. I eyeball the filling, from apples to spices. Maybe this is a bit lazy, and I'm certainly not maximizing my chances of delivering an exquisite, deeply nuanced apple pie. But there's something rustic and messy and real about literally throwing things together and then plopping it all in the oven, knowing that whatever comes out will be delicious and enjoyed.

And it was.

Five o'clock mustache

This is a story about the business of baking. It is a small tale of great toil, tribulation, and ultimate success.

Early this week my housemate called me at work: the ad agency she works at was planning a mini ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Skyway Museum and they wanted cookies for the celebration. She asked if I would be up for making them. I said yes.

I was to make two dozen cookies of my choosing. The only requirement: mustaches.

There was no question about it - I would make my sugar cut-outs, cover them in vanilla butter cream, and pipe on the black mustaches. Right then.

On Wednesday night I commit myself to the kitchen. I mix up the dough right after work and put it in the fridge to chill. Then I mix up the icing and put that in the fridge. A couple hours later I take the dough out.

Too soft. Much too soft. Maybe I didn't add enough flour?

So I work some more flour into the dough...a bit more...okay, one more handful - good - then pop it into the freezer to harden it up a bit. When Caitlin and Josh arrive, it is time to roll out the dough.

I pull it out of the freezer and flour the work surface. Twenty seconds later, the dough is soft and sticky. More flour!

But that's not doing the trick. It's just too hot in here. The dough can't hold its own, and the cut-outs are a floppy mess. Caitlin suggests rolling the dough into balls and then flattening them on the pan. Yes!

And it works beautifully. Hooray for us, we have overcome. We make 30-some cookies that way, and they don't look bad at all.

Ah, but then we taste them.

Flour. They taste like flour. And they are dry as a bone. Oh, what fresh hell.

But oh well, we think, the icing will save the day. And the mustaches! They will be charming little cookies no matter what. So I practice piping the mustache on a cookie, and after one flub, I perfect it. Whoopie, we did it, it's smooth sailing from here! My sister leaves and we begin to clean up.

But I'm not feeling good about it. There is a growing knot in my stomach. I am feeling more and more devastated by the minute. I say to Josh, "Maybe I'll just tell them they don't have to pay me."

But that doesn't help. I take another bite of the sandy little cookies and my heart sinks. I can't be proud of these cookies, no matter how much icing I load on top. I float around in a daze for fifteen minutes before accepting my brand new task: I must make another batch.

10:30 p.m. and I re-enter the recently cleaned kitchen. It doesn't take long before the dough is mixed and wrapped up (with NO extra flour) and in the fridge for the night. That was easy. My dismay is in the five a.m. alarm.

I go to bed and sleep lightly until 3 a.m. I toss and turn from there. What if the second batch doesn't turn out? What if I'm forced to serve the first? What if I don't have enough black frosting for the mustaches?

The stress!

I am relieved when my alarm goes off.

The kitchen is cool and silent when I turn on the lights. I flour the work surface and take the dough from the fridge. It is cold, solid, and ready to be rolled out.

A minute in, however, the same thing happens. It turns soft and sticky. There will be no cutting cookies. I resort to the method of the previous night and get those cookies baking.

They look gorgeous out of the oven: light, thin, perfect circles. I let them cool. I take a taste.

YYYYES! Bingo! Yahtzee!

All that's left is frosting and decorating. I am judicious with the butter cream, and I have just enough to drape each cookie with a smooth layer.

Now, the 'staches. I pipe the outlines only, thinking that if I don't have enough icing, I will at least have the shape of a mustache. But all my worrying is for naught. I have plenty to go around, and I make those mustaches sing.

Sweet relief comes, and this time it stays. As I help pack the trays into Sara's car, I feel proud of what I've done. A few hours of sleep is a small price to pay in exchange for a product I can stand behind.

And you: you stuck with me through this harrowing account. Here's what you've been waiting for:

Was it worth it?

French Macarons

Have you had the pleasure? I hadn't, until this past weekend. A trip home brought me back to a cozy, fully-stocked kitchen, a trusty baking partner, and an open afternoon. I'll take it.

We might have made our default chocolate chip cookies had I not still been tinged by the afterglow of my recent coup des croissants. An affinity for recipes of the finicky French kind sprung from that experience, and I was ready for the next challenge. Macarons had, for quite some time, a definite mystique. I knew what they looked like, and I knew what they had to offer: a creamy filling harnessed by two light, airy cookies. I did not know how the exquisite sandwiches came to be, and to be honest, I wasn't entirely sold on such a textural combination. All we could do was follow the recipe, step by step. And so we began.

Did you know that powdered almonds are the "flour" of macarons? Yep. Our recipe called for whole blanched almonds that were to be pulverized in a food processor. We had whole almonds, but not blanched. We had no food processor, but an adorably tiny coffee grinder. Now, take pause here, because this was an incredible breakthrough for my mom and me. We learned that we could blanch our own almonds by pouring boiling water over them, then waiting a minute before slipping off the seedcoat. (We also learned that we don't need no stinking food processor.) With a spark of ingenuity and mutual enthusiasm, we powdered those almonds.

After that we were running on what I dare describe as la cocaïne de le chef Francais: a high only achieved by the knowledge that you've done more than purchase and combine ingredients - that you have, in fact, made your ingredients!

All right, I've had my say. Now feast your eyes on the rest of this confectionary venture, because it's just as beautiful and fascinating as the onset.

With macarons now demystified, I can attest to the gustatory trip these petit sandwiches promise. The coalescence of crispy, chewy, and creamy is ethereal, and impossible to meet with your eyes open.

Betty Crocker Sugar Cookies and Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Valentine's Day. Probably the most polarized holiday out there, wouldn't you say? Many decide early on that this day is one to deplore for its exclusive nature, denounce as solely commercial, and demonize as the perpetrator of an express-your-love-one-day-a-year mentality. Then there are people like me, who look at Valentine's Day and see pretty colors, heart-shaped delectables and delicate confections. Why look any further than that?

This year, in addition to our deluxe sugar cut-outs, we tried out homemade peanut butter cups. My roommate had happened upon the recipe before I left for home, and it looked much too simple to pass up.

I needn't say more. Next up was our coveted sugar cut-outs, an ever-so-slightly modified version of Betty Crocker's Deluxe Sugar Cookies. These morsels come out of our kitchen three times a year at most, due in part to the (lovable) tedium of the process, but mostly out of respect: to make them too often would dilute their novelty status. Sounds a bit overblown, but we've never met a better sugar cookie. We'll accept yours if you offer - you know, to be polite - but when we do we're indulging more in our own superiority than in the taste of your mediocre cookie.

Whooa, I just got nasty! But listen: the cookies are thin, light and flaky, and still manage to tout the softest notes of almond butter. The icing achieves an artisanal consistency between frosting and glaze, finishing each cookie with almond-vanilla bliss. Once you're introduced, there's no going back.

Jewelry schmewelry.