blackberry butter cookies

I’m off for a month-long research trip to Buffalo, NY, starting tomorrow.  While I’m there, I’ll be doing research for a new project and making the last great push on my dissertation.  But I don’t think you’ll miss me much — I’ve been so busy I have a backlog of blog posts just ready for the postin’.  And I might find some excellent eats in Buffalo, too.  And anyway, I expect you’ll be too busy with the opening of the farmer’s market downtown on April 4, and all the stirrings of spring, to be reading inside!

There are many, many things I’ll miss this month, but not really the Great Purpling my yard undergoes each April.  Someone (not me) was a big fan of the color purple, and planted all purple and lavender flowers around my house.  I have a big swath of purple double irises, lavender and pink rhododendrons, vinca vine under the incense cedar, and tons of grape hyacinth just waiting to burst.  Over the years, I’ve tried to counteract the purpling with some red and yellow, but it still takes over.

So in honor of what I’ll be missing, I baked up some very purple cookies, using the rest of a jar of blackberry varenye.  They’re variations on Poilâne’s punitions again, but with salted butter and some of the sugar replaced by homemade blackberry Russian-style, pectin-free preserves.  The blackberry and salt give the cookies a little tang, a little sadness…perfect for leaving home.

Blackberry Butter Cookies

• 5 oz. (1/2 c. + 1/8 c. or 1.25 sticks)  salted Noris Dairy butter, or other very high quality butter
• 1/4 c. blackberry varenye or frozen, sweetened blackberries with a bit of sugar added
  
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 2 c. flour
• 1 egg
• turbinado or other non-melting sugar for sprinkling on top (optional)

Allow egg and butter to come to room temperature.

Process butter until smooth in a food processor with the metal blade. Scrape down, add the sugar and blackberry varenye, and process until thoroughly blended into the butter, scraping down the sides once or twice.

Add the egg and continue to process, scraping down the bowl as needed, until the mixture is smooth and satiny.

Add the flour all at once, then pulse 10-15 times, until the dough forms clumps and curds and looks like streusel.

Roll dough into log on saran wrap and wrap tightly, chilling in the refrigerator for at least four hours. If you opt to roll out the dough later instead of slice it, form the dough into two equal-sized flattened disks instead.

When you are ready to bake, position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350°F.  I find parchment paper isn’t necessary, but it makes cleanup easier, especially if you’re using the sprinkling sugar on top of the cookies.

You’ll want cookies that are between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Either (A) cut log in slices that are no more than 1/4 inch thick with a sharp, thin knife, or (B) roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, and cut with a cookie cutter no more than 2 inches in diameter.

Place on cookie sheets, leaving about 1 inch space between them.  Carefully turbinado sprinkle sugar on top, if using.  It gives a nice sparkle to these cookies, and a touch more sweetness.

Bake the cookies for 6-7 minutes, or until they are set but pale.  They will lose their sheen when ready.  Transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature.

Dorie Greenspan says the dough can be wrapped airtight and refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. The finished cookies can be kept in a tin at room temperature for about 5 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 1 month.  They won’t last that long.

Makes about 4 dozen small cookies.

 

hazelnut punitions for naughty oregonians

I’m fond of a good sadomasochism joke; it’s no lie. And visual puns all the better. But when it involves cookies AND a story AND France AND corporal punishment, well, there’s just no stopping me.

Punitions are petite butter cookies made famous by the French bakery Boulangerie Poilâne, where you can help yourself out of the basket by the register as you pay for your pain Poilâne or buy ‘em by the box. Une punition is ‘a punishment’ in French, and M. Poilâne tells Dorie Greenspan that in Normandy, grandmothers baked these simple cookies and then called in their charges for ‘punishments,’ beckoning them over while hiding the cookies behind their backs. This is how they do punishment in France, you see: eat this, become as fat as an American! OK, that last part was my embellishment.

The important part of punitions is that you need absolutely pristine, lovely, unsalted butter. These are butter cookies, and with so few ingredients, one must use the best. I use, of course, our excellent local Noris butter. I found this tastier than the cultured Vermont Butter and Cheese Company butter, somehow clearer and purer in heart. (Oregonians, the Noris website is up again, and you can check out their products here.)

Something else I love about these petite punitions is that they’re delicious as is, but you can also add one (ONE!) extra ingredient to personalize them. For us, that would be fresh roasted Willamette Valley hazelnuts, the best example of the specimen in the whole world. The internet tells me that up to 99% of the country’s hazelnuts are grown here in the Willamette Valley, and they’ve been grown here for 150 years. We get hazelnuts that are huge and plump and roasty, collected from local trees and sold at markets in the fall. I’m not sure if the variety that remains here is different than what is shipped out, but man o man, is it better than what you can get elsewhere.

But in the interest of keeping it local, I’d suggest you substitute hazelnuts for whatever local add-in might be yummy. I could see adding macadamia nuts to punitions in Hawaii, or a bit of candied Meyer lemon peel in the SF Bay Area, or a few dried cranberries in Bandon, OR, or some maple sugar in rural Connecticut. One more ingredient is the limit, though. I wouldn’t recommend doing anything fancier with them, although the temptation is huge. NO SPRINKLES. You’ll get a spanking. I mean it.

You can see from the Poilâne website or Chocolate & Zucchini (both linked above) that punitions are tiny, with fluted edges. When I bake mine with hazelnuts, I prefer to chill the dough in a log and slice thin, irregular, rustic-looking cookies with a sharp knife. But you might prefer to roll them out and cut them in fancier shapes. My only advice is to keep them small.

Retrogrouch recently ate a plate of these cookies made from local eggs from our CSA, Oregon flour, and the Noris butter, plus some Willamette Valley hazelnuts; he’s a glutton for punishment.

I liked those munitions cookies, he said, they were tasty.

Bang bang, I said, in complete agreement.

Hazelnut Punitions

(adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in Paris Sweets)

5 oz unsalted, fresh, high quality butter (1 1/4 sticks or 1/2 cup plus 1/8 cup), at room temperature
Slightly rounded 1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 cups (280 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped roasted hazelnuts

Process butter until smooth in a food processor with the metal blade. Scrape down, add the sugar, and process until thoroughly blended into the butter, scraping down the sides once or twice.

Add the egg and continue to process, scraping down the bowl as needed, until the mixture is smooth and satiny.

Add the flour all at once, then pulse 10-15 times, until the dough forms clumps and curds and looks like streusel. Add hazelnuts and pulse a few more times to blend.

Roll dough into log on saran wrap and wrap tightly, chilling in the refrigerator for at least four hours. If you opt to roll out the dough later instead of slice it, form the dough into two equal-sized flattened disks instead.

When you are ready to bake, position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

You’ll want cookies that are between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Either (A) cut log in slices that are no more than 1/4 inch thick with a sharp, thin knife, or (B) roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, and cut with a cookie cutter no more than 2 inches in diameter. Place on cookie sheets, leaving about 1 inch space between them.

Bake the cookies for 6 to 8 minutes, or until they are set but pale. Transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature.

Greenspan says the dough can be wrapped airtight and refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. The finished cookies can be kept in a tin at room temperature for about 5 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 1 month.

Makes about 4 dozen small cookies.

 

buckwheat cocoa nib cookies, diamonds in the rough

I’m still learning how to use Word Press. I’ve been blogging for many years in various places, but I’ve never blogged here, and I’ve never done a dedicated food blog, but I do have a whole bunch of recipes that I’m eager to share here, and I’m planning to start bragging about some of the great local products we have in the Willamette Valley and rustle up a list of links to PNW food and drink bloggers in the next week or so. But right now, I’m busy eating incredibly delicious cookies:

I don’t even know what to say about these Buckwheat Cocoa Nib cookies, they’re that good. You would never, ever think that buckwheat flour, a smallish amount of sugar, and unsweetened cocoa nibs would turn out a cookie this delicious, but they are truly irresistible, as the lovely Orangette claims in her blog entry, from where I stole the recipe. There’s no added chocolate in these cookies; they are just darkened by the buckwheat.

I only have one suggestion — a few of the cocoa nibs in my bag from Dagoba (a nice Oregon company out of Ashland) were large and hullish, so it’s a good idea to sort through the nibs before adding to the dough. I used the plain, unsweetened nibs, but I suppose you could use the fancy ones, too. The plain ones gave plenty of chocolatey flavor to the cookies, plus a nutty afterglow.

 

what’s black and white and read in eugene?

On January 1, we started receiving the local paper. This marked the first time I’ve regularly read a local paper in over 15 years. It’s partly a fluke — the New York Times delivery person refused to deliver the paper to my porch, which meant that more often than not I’d have to get dressed, go outside in the cold rain BEFORE my coffee, and retrieve the wet, besmirched paper from the muddy grass or behind my car. After repeated calls, I gave up and just stopped reading the paper in the morning.

The Eugene Register-Guard is no New York Times. I feel my IQ dropping each time I read it. Still, it has its charm. I’ve had limited knowledge of local politics for years, since I don’t watch much TV and only occasionally pick up the alternative weekly. Eugene is such a small town, with small-town insular attitudes and chatter, that we really lose an ability to communicate with our neighbors and friends when we don’t have access to news in the vernacular.

All in all, it seems like Eugene is often a chicken running around without a head. To a newbie, the yuppie v. hippie battles are very amusing, the slapstick routines of local government less so. There’s some ridiculous, everchanging plan about a new hospital, and another about wasting a few mill on a new stadium. Meth addicts are stealing copper wire from power stations, so The Man made a plan to start painting wire in identifiable colors. The newspaper editors removed a comic about a black family after segregating it to the classifieds page. Someone’s up at arms about the design for the new pizzeria, complaining that the modern-style architecture (excuse me, “Northwest contemporary with an urban buzz and shadows of ancient Italy”) will fit into the neighborhood less well than its current design (Gay 90s green, red, and white Farrell’s ice cream parlour with encrustations of light bulbs ). A charter has been taken away from a free-for-all alternative school thanks to assessments like No Child Left Behind. No laggards here in Eugene, that’s for sure!

I think I like the obituaries the best. Horrible writing. It’s been a while since I’ve seen formulaic prose done so poorly. Someone who was murdered had an entry last week, as did a grandmother who was known for her baking. Something you’d never seen in the NYT? They published a recipe for her chocolate chip cookies in the death announcement. So I bring you, with all due respect:

Deceased Grandma Chocolate Chip Cookies (edits in brackets are mine)

2/3 c. butter or margarine

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

2 eggs

[1 t. vanilla]

2 1/2 c. flour

1 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1 c. chopped walnuts

1 – 12 oz. package chocolate chips.

[Preheat oven to 350 degrees.] Combine the butter, sugars and eggs. Beat well. [Add the eggs after creaming the butter and sugar and vanilla, and ignore "add vanilla" later.] Add the dry ingredients, beat well. Add the vanilla, nuts and chocolate chips. [And mix with wooden spoon to combine. Drop dough in tablespoon-sized portions on a cookie sheet lined with foil.] Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Enjoy!

The family obviously loved grandma, and I like the idea of the recipe addition to the obituary very much. I’m pretty sure, though, without checking, that this is a variation of your standard Toll House cookie recipe, which makes the recipe addition even more fascinating. To be remembered most of all for your standard recipe that has been printed on the back of chocolate chip packages for decades? Awful? Or is it the same quest for — and certain achievement of — immortality that grips artists and writers? I can say this: I made the cookies, in memoriam. They are honestly an old-fashioned cookie: a bit cakey and rather plain. I served them to my husband, who said they weren’t anything like my regular chocolate chip cookies. Indeed, quoth he, they reminded him of his (dead) grandma’s cookies.

And that’s why I like reading the local newspaper.