I wasn’t planning to host a cookie gathering, but I stumbled upon a comment by Jackie of La Casa de Sweets on Twitter about a virtual bake sale she was hosting to benefit Share Our Strength and I decided to get in on the project by hosting a cookie party.

Dorie Greenspan's famous World Peace Cookies

I invited friends over to enjoy a buffet of sweet treats and convivial socializing and asked them to bring a few dollars to drop in a collection basket for Share Our Strength. Through the end of the year donations to Share Our Strength are being matched by their corporate partners, giving every dollar collected twice the impact.

Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove

It’s always good to have multiple motivators, so I took this cookie baking opportunity as a chance to dig further into Maida Heatter’s Cookies cookbook that I’d received as a review copy from Andrews McMeel Publishing earlier in the year.

Maida Heatter's Cookies and Maida Heatter's Cakes cookbooks

These beautifully simple paperbacks are newly published collections of Heatter’s classic recipes gathered from earlier works without glossy photos or a hefty price tag. Maida Heatter is a master when it comes to desserts with nine classic dessert books to her credit and an endless list of accolades. I find myself reaching for these books first when I’m thinking about doing some baking largely due to her reputation for recipes that work, but also because of the enormous variety of classic recipes in each book accompanied by descriptive head notes with helpful tips and valuable words of warning like, “They are very fragile and not suitable for picnics.” I highly recommend both of these books if you are looking for a go-to cookie or cake book. They’d also make an excellent gift for anyone starting to build their cookbook collection.

Maida Heatter's My Mother's Gingersnaps

Wintery weather and holiday festivities must include gingery spice cookies so I selected Heatter’s recipe called My Mother’s Gingersnaps. A recipe she grew up making year around with her mother and after tasting them, I won’t limit them to holiday baking either. Crystallized ginger, ginger powder and freshly ground black pepper give these crisp little “throwing stars,” as David called them, their spicy kick.

Maida Heatter's Swedish Rye Wafers

The fantastic use of spices throughout the book instantly caught my attention when I first flipped from cover to cover. Many are classics that have been passed down for generations and have roots in cultures all around the world. There are five recipes in the book that use caraway seeds for example. How many cookie books give you five ways to put your caraway seeds to sugary, buttery, good use? I can tell you first-hand that both the Swedish Rye Wafers and the Caraway Sour-Cream Cookies are excellent. Clearly I need to make the other three recipes just to be sure they measure up. Cardamom, sesame seeds, anise seed, poppy seeds, ginger, and black pepper all get play in various recipes. Spice flavor is very much a use-it-or-lose-it situation, so why let your spices languish in the back of the cupboard until they are lifeless and unidentifiable when you can put them to good use in cookies?

Maida Heatter's Blind Date Cookies

I was participating in a Twitter chat a few weeks ago and someone posed the question of what to do with all the dates she had on hand. I flipped open Maida Heatter’s Cookies that happened to be sitting on my desk and noted eight recipes using dates. The Blind Date Cookies immediately went on my “must make” list. A walnut stuffed date is dropped in batter to coat and then dressed with a simple glaze after baking. Apparently this recipe originated over 100 years ago at a famous Milwaukee pastry shop. These cookies are sweet and delicious with a soft cakey dough surrounding the chewy, crunchy surprise hiding in the center. They’re a great make-ahead cookie too because they were even tastier on the second day.

I deeply appreciate the generosity of everyone able to stop by for a sugar rush and donate to Share Our Strength. Your donations will connect 150 kids with up to 10 meals each. Here are some of Share Our Strength’s accomplishments for 2011 and your donations will help them achieve even more in the New Year. Thank you!

• No Kid Hungry campaigns up and running in 17 states, expanding reach and increasing participation in key programs like school breakfast, summer meals and afterschool snacks.
• Increased the number of summer meals served by nearly 1 million over last summer in six “No Kid Hungry” states alone.
• Provided $6.9 million in grants to more than 400 community organizations working to ensure that kids receive healthy, regular meals.
• Cooking Matters classes, teaching how to make healthy meals on a budget, reached 100,000 individuals at risk for hunger in 37 states.

With one out of every five American kids facing hunger — more than 16 million children — there’s still a lot of work to do before the goal of ending child hunger in America is achieved. If you’d like to help, please make a donation, and remember all donations made before the end of the year will be matched making double the impact.

A special thank you goes to Jackie for inspiring me to pull together this last minute cookies-for-a-cause party. And to think some people say Twitter is just a waste of time!

Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels always round out a cookie party.

Recipe Links

• Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels
• Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove
• Swedish Rye Wafers by Maida Heatter
• World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

I’ve made a lot of special cakes to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births, and even cakes simply for cake’s sake, but this cake was particularly exciting because it was for Neil Gaiman. What kind of cake to make for a world renowned writer with a delightfully dark, mind-bogglingly creative style? Just as I began to ponder this, the message that it needed to be a gluten-free was delivered. My excitement crumbled into a pile of dread, fear and bewilderment.

Chocolate Cake with Rum Chestnut Cream for Neil Gaiman

I have no experience with gluten-free baking and don’t even know the fundamentals behind this niche specialty. Though I was acutely aware of the real possibility of turning out a terrible cake, I wasn’t about to let this happen. I have an extensive tribe of food-obsessed friends and social media acquaintances and a handful of them are gluten-free specialists, so I started clicking around on their blogs to see what I could learn.

It was a post by Jeanne Sauvage, author of the blog Art of Gluten-Free Baking, about how she developed her Gluten-Free Flour Mix that made me think I could in fact pull this off. She is someone who loves baking as much as I do and shares the philosophy that baked goods are treats that should taste good rather than be healthy. I knew I was on the right track. Working with a fabulous chocolate cupcake recipe I’d just developed, I gave Jeanne’s gluten-free flour mix a try. What do you know? The gluten-free cake tasted great. Though the flavor was spot-on, I thought I could improve the texture by swapping out the brown rice flour for potato flour which has a smoother texture. Bingo! A little fiddling with the butter and oil ratios, which had more to do with converting a cupcake recipe into a layer cake than anything to do with the gluten-freeness of it, and I had Neil’s gluten-free birthday cake recipe. Drawing flavor inspiration from Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake and Francois Payard’s Ardéchois with Chestnut Cream cake, the remaining elements fell in place.

Chocolate Cake with Rum Chestnut Cream and Chocolate Ganache

Each layer of rich chocolate cake, three in total, got a splash of rum simple syrup and sandwiched a blanket of chestnut cream gently spiked with more rum for good measure. Stacked one upon the next, the three layers of cake and two cushions of cream were cloaked in dark chocolate ganache. Resting on a cake stand, the cloaked layers of cake and cream appear to be nothing more than a large puck of chocolate. Uniform in color and texture the appearance is unassuming as if to convey there is nothing of interest to see here, so please move along.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer

A few years ago we got into the habit of feeding Amanda Palmer and her accompanying musicians and performers whenever she happened to be performing in Seattle. In January of this year she married Neil Gaiman and the two of them put together a show and set off on a six-show West coast tour ending in Seattle. It was essentially a mashup of music and readings from the two of them that delighted all who were lucky enough to catch it. A few weeks prior we learned that Neil’s birthday was the day after the Seattle show and that Amanda wanted to present him with a cake on stage. So, one birthday cake was added to the catering menu and I started to ponder various design options. One glance at their tour poster, however, and I had my décor plan for the cake.

The show poster on my backstage pass

As life seems to go, this big project fell in a week packed with other activities and responsibilities. Though I managed to get started on the gum paste work early in the week, I didn’t have the luxury of being able to re-do things once I crested the gum paste learning curve. My infrequent gum paste encounters require me to revisit the entire learning curve each time. Of course if I remade the décor again this week, it would be 100% easier and better. I might even avoid dumping an entire container of gold luster dust on my left shoe and the floor. Imperfections be damned. I contend that intention counts for a great deal and the cake was tasty, which counts for even more.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer in gum paste

When I was learning to quilt my sister-in-law gave me some sage advice about fretting over mistakes, “If you can’t see it from a moving train, don’t worry about it.” When it comes to making cakes to be presented on stage, I say if you can’t see it from the second balcony, don’t worry about it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbO-yDmhZsE

In addition to the cake appearing on stage, our living room sofa was part of the set and enjoyed center stage for the entire show. Yes, our living room sofa has cushioned the derrieres of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman and we have the photos to prove it. Being newlyweds, they’re always smooching. We on the other hand have been married for 23 years, but can still smooch like newlyweds.

Just making out next to Neil & Amanda

Happy birthday Neil Gaiman. It was such a pleasure to meet you and bake you a cake.

David, Carol, Neil, Amanda

Recipe link

• Neil Gaiman’s Birthday Cake

Someone overseeing the great lima bean empire realized there was a perception issue with lima beans and took action. Today, April 20th is Lima Bean Respect Day!

Lima beans

I realized I have completely ignored this ingredient my entire adult life, and with good reason. All that has changed and I have a new found respect for this misunderstood bean along with three great recipes to share with you.

Sauteed Lima Beans with Coriander Seed and Fresh Herbs

Do you cower at the thought of lima beans? Do you suffer from bad lima bean related childhood memories? Well there’s hope because lima beans really can be a culinary delight. Check out my guest blog post on Girl Power Hour along with some great recipes.

Butter Bean Puree

Read my blog post on Girl Power Hour

Recipe Links

• Sauteed Lima Beans with Coriander Seed and Fresh Herbs
• Butter Bean Puree
• Lima Bean Soup with Swiss Chard and Mushrooms

The aroma of freshly baking bread can only be beat by the aroma of freshly baking cinnamon bread.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is a rich, buttery, yeast dough accented with a spiral of cinnamon, cocoa, and raisins. That is, if you aren’t out of raisins like I am.  I assure you the bread is completely satisfying without the raisins and David would argue it’s greatly improved by the missing ingredient.

If yeasted bread is beyond your baking realm, reconsider before discounting the possibility. If you have a stand mixer there is no excuse not to give this a try. Not that bread requires a stand mixer, but this dough is really wet and would be difficult to mix by hand. Too time consuming you say? What if I told you I mixed this up in about 20 minutes and then placed it in an oiled bowl, covered with plastic wrap and and left it in the refrigerator overnight? I put the bread on my time schedule by letting it retard in the refrigerator overnight rather than waiting for 1 ½ hours for the first rise. Not only did this suit my schedule better, but a long slow rise allows the bread to develop more flavor.

This morning I pulled it out of the fridge and let it warm up for about an hour while I went to my swim workout. It was still quite chilled when I rolled it out which makes me think it would probably roll out just fine right from the refrigerator. To roll it out, spread with butter, sprinkle on the filling and roll it up took all of about 10 minutes. I let it rise for about an hour and baked it.

The biggest challenge for me in baking bread is getting the timing to fit in with what I have going on in a day. One of the best discoveries I’ve made is the slow refrigerated rise. This dough would have been fine to leave chilling a day or two longer if I needed to. The nice thing about this technique is it can be applied to any bread recipe. I find it so much easier to mix dough at night after dinner and then just leave it in the fridge until I have a long enough block of time at home to let it rise and bake.

With a little practice making bread will seem as easy and familiar as anything else you cook regularly. Enriched bread like this that uses milk, butter and egg is a great place to start. Even if it doesn’t rise enough, or rises too much, it will still taste really good. Once you get the hang of making this type of dough you can make  cinnamon rolls, babka, crumb cakes, brioche and the list goes on; they all use essentially the same type of dough.

If you take advantantage of  the free 14 day membership to Rouxbe online cooking school you can access their outstanding bread lessons and you’ll be a bread-baking-pro in no time. What’s this Rouxbe deal all about, you ask? Here are the deatils about our Rouxbe affiliation. 

Click here to get your FREE
14-day membership to Rouxbe!

Thanks to Susan of Food.Baby for filling our house with the incomparable aroma of baking bread. She has the recipe posted on her blog and I hope you will give it a try.

Recipe Link

Raisin Swirl Bread

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 130 recipes completed 91 to go!

I have kitchen organization progress to report ! This is all driven by my participation in Apartment Therapy’s Kitchen Cure; a four week plan to cure kitchens of clutter and disorganization. I started out last week with the goal of organizing the pantry, hot beverage cupboard, and condiment cupboard and the assignments to date have been:

• Take before photos
• Clean out old food
• De-clutter equipment, tools, gadgets, dishes

The big reward for my efforts in cleaning out the hot beverage cupboard was discovering all the great teas I had squirreled away in there. I was in a routine of drinking the two teas that were in front and easy to grab, boy have I been missing out. Now it’s a different tea every day.  Out went the few teas that I just really didn’t like, random empty containers, and a couple of mugs that I didn’t enjoy drinking from. The biggest improvement is having all the tea in visible, accessible containers. Yes, SpiceCare can be used for more than just spices!  Bring on the cold weather; I have my hot beverages at the ready.

 I thought the solution for the condiment cupboard was going to be in readjusting the shelves, but it turned out the problem was all the non-food related stuff being stored in there. I can’t believe how much stuff I pulled out of this cupboard. I found a few food surprises, like I was working out of two different bottles of rose water and discovered two large unopened bottles of orange flower water. Extra containers of salt, baking soda and baking powder were all condensed. The clutter came from numerous early SpiceCare prototypes which are now properly archived in a box in the basement. Apparently any open shelf is fair game for whatever I happen to have in my hand that needs a home.

I knew there was an issue with storing empty glass jars in the pantry. I didn’t realize how out of control it had become. This is what I found in there during the de-clutter phase!

Most of these are jars that should be stored in the basement with my canning supplies. I have a nice box they fit in, but once emptied and cleaned, it’s just so easy to toss it on a shelf in the pantry.  Unused gadgets and dishes were purged, and a few old food items tossed. I am giddy over the order and open space. After all the clearing out and reorganizing, I will be much more conscience about what lands on those nice open shelves.

The refrigerator and freezer generally stay relatively orderly because I have set zones for specific foods. Not needing two vegetable drawers, the bottom one is used to store flour and grains. The freezer drawers are all designated for specific categories as well with the bottom drawer storing what we call “freezer food”; individually portioned leftovers that are instant meals.

The best organizational tool for the kitchen? Painter’s tape and a fine point Sharpie! Just about everything gets a blue tape label.

I encourage you to join the Kitchen Cure, or at least take an hour some evening and clean out one messy drawer or cupboard. You will be thrilled with the result and might even unearth some great stuff! Please share any great discoveries.

One last thing, I was asked how I store sugar and flour by a commenter in my last Kitchen Cure post. I like the large plastic containers sold at restaurant supply stores as well as large GaldWare containers. In addition to the label of what’s in the bin, I list weights for common measurements, so I can use a scale rather than measuring cups when baking. It’s faster and more accurate to weigh ingredients, plus there aren’t any measuring cups to wash.