Come Christmas time, I become a cookie fanatic. Every year I bake at least 10 different varieties. There are a few that I make every year, but mostly it's, "what is new?! what haven't I tried?! what sounds super delicious?!" Last year I stumbled on alfajores and this year they were the first cookie on my list.

Alfajores: the most delicious cookie you've never heard of. I'm afraid I don't know very much about the origins of these cookies. I believe alfajores (I took German, not Spanish, so I can't tell you how to pronounce it) are a South American treat. Wherever they are from, thank you, because they are the best thing that happen to my cookie loving self.

There are a lot of different recipes out there for alfajores. The cookie part changes: sometimes it's a crispy spice cookie or more of a shortbread like cookie. But the cookie I make is a barely sweeten pie crust sprinkled with a bit of crunchy sugar on top. Between the two little cookies is a big dollop of dulce de leche--a gorgeous confection, addicting in its own right.

Together the flakiness of the cookie and the creaminess of the dulce de leche make a cookie that is homey and sophisticated at the same time, rich but not cloying, sweet with a hint of savory. And, omg, unbelievably good. Now that you are drooling, let's get to the recipe shall we...

Alfajores

(adapted from Martha Stewart)

for the dulce de leche:

• two (14 oz) cans sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
• pinch of coarse salt

directions:

1. Pour condensed milk into a pie plate or shallow baking dish
2. Mix in salt
3. Place baking dish into a larger pan. Pour water into the larger pan until it reaches half way up the sides of the baking dish.
4. Cover the dish tightly with foil.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 1-2 hours. Checking now and again to stir the milk and making sure there is always water in the larger pan.
6. It will be a beautiful brown and carmelly color when it's done. There may be lumps, but you can whisk it a bit (or not). When it cool it should be the consistency of creamy peanut butter.

Dulce de leche makes a fine Christmas gift on its own. When it's hot out of the oven pour into small jars. It keeps for about a month in the fridge.

for the cookies:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup water
• Sanding sugar or powdered sugar, for sprinkling

directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar briefly. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

3. With machine running, pour in the water in a slow stream, and process 20 seconds. The dough will probably not come together, but that's okay. Roll out a length of plastic wrap and put half of the crumbly dough onto it. Wrap it up tightly in the plastic wrap, then with the heel of your hand press the dough 5-10 times until it comes together. Repeat with the other half of cookie dough. Refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.

4. Flour your surface and roll out one disk of dough to between 1/4 in and 1/2 in thick. The cookies should be thick, but too thick and you won't be able to fit the finished cookie in your mouth!

5. Cut out rounds (roundish cutters are best, those stars up there? they fell apart right away) from the dough and transfer to a parchment lined cookie sheet. Continue with the rest of the dough. Gather up your scraps and re-roll, but only re-roll once (they will be tough otherwise).

6. Sprinkle half the rounds with sanding sugar or if you don't have sanding sugar, sift powdered sugar on half the baked cookies (when cool).

7.Bake until golden brown and a little puffed up, about 15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

8. Spread a heaping teaspoon of dulce de leche on half the cookies. Top with the sugar coated cookie and serve. These cookies are lovely right away, but I like them best the next day when their flavors have melded a bit.

The cookie baking blizzard came and went this year already (and weirdly, left no snow). All the butter! All the cream! All the chocolate! All the nuts and dried fruit! Okay, so the last one isn't so exciting, but there was a lot of fruit and nuts in this house for a while. Panforte, anyone?

I don't think I made any new recipes this year, which is odd.  No wait, I made one new recipe, but I can't tell you because there are some of you out there getting it! Oh and the linzer cookies were new to me, but not terribly exciting. I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are the deets:

caramels: three kinds, all by martha, gingerbread, chocolate, and plain with sea salt on top

sugar plums: Honestly, I make these mostly because of the name. How could you pass up sugar plums at Christmas? These are spice filled, honey sweetened, date and almond laden-ed bits of christmas past. And they are vegan to boot.

hazelnut thumbprints: My daughter and I like these the best. This year I put a bit of ganache in the middle instead of the usual jam. Surprisingly, the jam is better, but no one has complained about the chocolate.

english toffee: I make this every christmas, but this year I got all fancy and cut it in squares instead of breaking it in pieces. You have to cut it when it's not too hot and not too cool. And hey, it worked! Also, I ate all the ones that broke.

alfajores: These were a new addition to the cookie roster last year and I've been thinking about them since! Creamy, caramelicious dulce de leche sandwiched between two light, flaky cookies with a crunch of sugar on top. Bomb! And hey, I wrote up a recipe for you on Dana's blog for her Sweets and Treats Christmas Countdown.

Oh and those linzers up there at the top of the page: wow, linzer cookies are kind of a pain in the butt. They just look so damn christmasy I had to make them. I used Karen DeMasco's recipe from The Craft of Baking (a killer book by the way). It was chock full of orange peel and nutmeg and hazelnuts. The texture was perfect, but I wasn't keen on the taste. It was almost too grown up and boring. Maybe a boozy filling would have made it grown up in a good way.

Gingerbread men too: well you have to make gingerbread men (look more instagraminess).

Merry Christmas everyone! We're off to Grannyma's. I'll see you back here on Monday!

Panforte is usually described as the Italian fruitcake, but that would lead you to believe it sucks, which it most definitely does not.  Panforte is indeed a mix of fruit and nuts, but the similarity to weird American fruitcake ends there.

Panforte isn't really a cake at all or a bread, as its name implies. It's more like candy--a lovely piece of grown up christmas candy. Sliced very thin and eaten with a glass of red wine or a strong cup of coffee, it's delicious.

The recipe is staggeringly simple and ridiculously adaptable. My mom has perfected it over many, many christmases (all failed attempts were also delicious).  Take whatever dried fruit and nuts strike your fancy and mix them up with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, cocoa, black pepper and a bit of flour.

On the stove bring some sugar and a bit of honey to a boil and pour it over everything. Mixing is probably the most difficult part, but your bicepts will thank you for it.  At some point I ditched the spoon and just used my hands to get everything together. Then it goes in whatever round pan you've jammed parchment paper into and into the oven.

That's it. Panforte keeps for weeks. Before you serve it, sprinkle powdered sugar mixed with some spices on top for a snowy christmas look. Small ones make lovely gifts. Or you can do like I do and cut a big one in quarters--makes it easier to keep a bit for yourself. Last year we had panforte with oranges as our pre-dessert (or maybe post-dessert dessert? I can't remember, but I know there were multiple desserts and cookies and pies were in there somewhere).

Panforte

(recipe provided by my lovely mother--thanks mom!)

note: I made a double batch, so the amounts you see in the pictures will be different than yours. Also, this recipe doubles easily :)

• 1 lb mixed dried fruit (you have to have a lot of figs, but other than that most everything is fair game. I used black mission figs, calamata figs, apricots, dates, cherries, and candied orange peel.)
• 1 lb mixed nuts (about 1/2 lb should be almonds and then, again, anything goes. I used almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons cardamom (freshly ground if possible)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspooon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cloves (freshly ground if possible)
• 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon cocoa
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

1. Toast nuts at 300 degrees for about 10 minutes.  Use a different pan for each kind of nut because they all toast at different rates. Check them often. When they are toasty throughout, they're done!

2. Mix nuts and fruit together. Do not chop! Everything is kept whole.

3. In a bowl mix together cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.  Take 1 Tablespoon of the mix out and reserve for sprinkling on top.

4. Add flour, cocoa, and black pepper to spice mix.

5. Add flour/spice mixture to fruit/nut mixture. Mix well.

6. In a saucepan bring sugar and honey to a boil. Boil for one minute.

7. Pour over fruit and nuts. Mix well. All the flour must be hydrated--make sure there are no little floury bits at the bottom.

8. Put parchment in a round pan (a 9 or 10 in springform pan works really well, but anything will work) and butter well.

9. Press the panforte into the pan. It should be no more than 1 to 2  inches thick.

10. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Let cool completely.

11. Mix powdered sugar with the reserved spices. Sift over the top.

12. To eat the panforte slice into 1/4 inch (or thinner even!) slices. Enjoy!

Getting ready for tomorrow:  a little pumpkin pot de creme in my grandmother's china.

an army of them!

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Happy Thanksgiving!

Here in the Midwest the weather this fall has been a little ridiculous: hot one day, freezing the next, perfect for a while, and then humid? in fall, really? Dinner planning got rather difficult. I would start something warm and stew-y in the chilly morning and would be sweating while I was eating it in the evening. Not all that pleasant.

But then I made this beautiful slow roasted salmon recipe from Suzanne Goin's book Sunday Supers at Lucques. Now I adapted it to my let's hurry up and get dinner on the table attitude because Suzanne's recipes are all day, three course affairs, but I think the salmon is still super delicious. It's warm, but light at the same time--just right for when the weather can't figure out what season it is.

slow roasted salmon

with roasted beet and potato salad

heavily adapted from Sunday Supers at Lucques

for the salmon

• a side of salmon, skin on, about 2 lbs (I used coho salmon and it was a bit cheaper)
• zest of one lemon
• 2 teaspoons minced tarragon
• 1 teaspoons thyme leaves
• 1/4 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
• 2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• fresh ground pepper

for the salad

• 1 lb small potatoes
• 1 lb beets (various colors if possible)
• a few sprigs fresh thyme
• salad greens (arugula is nice, but any lettuce is fine)

for the mustard vinaigrette

• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Roast the vegetables first: heat your oven to 400 degrees F and roast the potatoes and beets whole for 30 minutes or until a knife pierces them easily. In a small bowl whisk together all the ingredients for the mustard vinaigrette. When the beets are warm slip off the skin and cut into 1/4 inch slices. Cut the potatoes similarly and pour the vinaigrette over both. Toss carefully as the beets can color everything bright purple!

Right after the vegetables come out of the oven turn it down to 250 degrees F. Mix everything for the salmon (except the salmon) in a small bowl. You should have a thick lemony, herby paste.  Place the salmon, skin side down, on a parchment lined pan. Rub the paste on the salmon.  Put the salmon in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes. Because we are cooking it so slowly, the salmon will not change color much.  To test if it is done, peek between the flakes with a fork.  If it doesn't separate into flakes, it's not ready yet.

When you are ready to serve the salad gently toss the salad greens with the warm potatoes and beets.  Squeeze a bit of lemon over the hot salmon and put everything on the table.

For a few summers now my favorite thing to make (and eat!) has been a watermelon, feta, tomato, and basil salad.  Goat cheese is pretty damn good in it too. This summer I thought I'd branch out and make other fruit and vegetable salads. Every single one of them was delicious.

The basic formula is fruit + veg + herb + olive oil + salt.  Here are a few that have been extra good (they all have a glug of olive oil and a sprinkling of good crunchy salt on top):

• purple cabbage, pluot, red pepper, and cilantro--this is more of a slaw than a salad

• tomato, peach, and tarragon (pictured)

• cucumber, mango, mint, basil, and maybe a fresh chili or two  (rice vinegar or lime juice is good on this one)

Got any good ones?

School starts up next week, so I'm trying to have as many slow, lingering breakfasts as I can before it's all, where is my backpack; oh crap I forgot to make lunches; just get your shoes on already we're going to be late! So waffles with yogurt and apricot peach compote it is for a few more lazy mornings.

I never had frozen waffles before and bought some in college to find out what all this leggo my eggo shit was all about. They were kind of a disapointment. Homemade waffles are so much better and, really,  dead easy to make.  So make a batch before it's all cold cereal and yelling in the morning:

just your basic waffle

adapted from Betty Crocker

• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup) melted and cooled
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 salt

Fire up your waffle iron. In a big bowl whisk first 4 ingredients together.  Sift in flour, soda, baking powder and salt.  Mix until most of the lumps are gone. That's it. Bake in the hot waffle iron.  Makes about 8.

If you want to get fancy you can brown the butter first before adding it--makes the waffles a little extra delicious. Also, Betty Crocker has a fantastic footnote in the orginal recipe: "Fresh bacon fat is good in waffles." Damn straight it is! he compote I made was 2 peaches, an apricot, and a couple Tbls. sugar cooked for a bit and smashed a little.

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and now for the winner of the Tea Collection giveaway: comment number #101

sarah says:

August 22, 2011 at 7:18 pm(Edit)

your kiddos are about the ding dang cutest things i've ever seen. (i mean, except for mine). and your talent is above amazing. thanks for this great giveaway.

The spring rain in these parts has been turning to snow more often than not. And I've been trying to celebrate the good bits of winter before they are gone for good. Granted sometimes it's done with gritted teeth, like when I'm putting on my coat and hat and scarf and mittens for the bajillionth time, but hot chocolate is still delicious even if it is April. Baking a batch of these nutty, jammy bars warms up the house, makes it smell delicious and they are just right with coffee.  All the good, cozy things about winter and they taste pretty damn good too.

I combined a few different recipes to make these bars--one called them breakfast another dessert, so feel free to eat them all day. The biggest change I made was to brown the butter before I added it to the rest of the ingredients. If you've never done this before you will soon find yourself searching out ways to add brown butter to everything. Seriously, it's like butter only better. To make it, put the butter in a light colored pan (so you can see it brown) and wait, stirring now and then, until it melts, then stops spitting and sputtering and turns a lovely dark shade of brown--about the color of maple syrup. Then take it off the heat right away so your lovely butter doesn't turn black.

You can have your kids mix up all the dry ingredients while you cook the butter, then pour the butter in, scraping all those good browned bits off the bottom of the pan and into the bowl.  Actually your kids could probably do most everything. It's dead easy: press two thirds of the dough in a pan, slap some jam on top and crumble the rest of the dough on top. It's the perfect recipe to play around with too. You could use apricot jam and a little cardamom, or grind up pecans instead of almond flour and maybe even find some peach jam. Whatever you have in your cupboard is going to make these delicious, so you don't really have much of an excuse to not make them right now. Unless it's summer where you are right now, in which case poo on you.

brown butter bars

• 1 1/4 cups oatmeal
• 1 cup almond flour (or whichever nut you'd like, ground up fine)
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tea salt
• zest of one orange
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, browned
• 1 cup jam

Combine all of the ingredients except the butter and jam in a large bowl. Brown the butter: cut butter in pieces and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the milk solids (the little bits at the bottom) turn a deep brown color.  Quickly take it off the heat and pour it into the dry ingredients, scraping the pan into the bowl. Mix. Press two thirds of the dough into an 8x8 pan lined with parchment paper. Spread the jam on top and crumble the rest of the dough over it. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until nicely browned. Cool and cut into squares.

This recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a 13x9 cake pan. It's pretty much my go to "shit! I need to bring a snack for preschool tomorrow!" recipe.

I wanted to make a little something for all the people who helped us out while we were gone on our trip (thanks guys!), so I made two big batches of brownies. Nick Malgieri's supernatural brownies have been my basic recipe for a few years, mostly because it has a ton of chocolate in it and not very much flour--because really it's not about eating cake it's about eating chocolate buttery goodness. They were good, but not as good as I remembered. Luckily I just found a brownie recipe with just as much chocolate and even less flour (1/4 cup) in David Lebovitz's new book Ready for Dessert. These I might not share at all.

And I found these perfect little plates to put the brownies on while I was at the thrift store. They look Dutch, don't they? but they actually say Lad n' Lassie on the back. So, Happy St. Patrick's day I guess? Now go make some brownies.

Supernatural Brownies

from the New York Times

2 sticks (16 tablespoons) butter, more for pan and parchment paper
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar, such as muscovado
1 cup granulated sugar (I would say 1/2 cup is probably enough, unless you use super crazy dark chocolate)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or 3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional.

1. Butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, or on low power in a microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. Cool slightly. In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs. Whisk in salt, sugars and vanilla.

2. Whisk in chocolate mixture. Fold in flour just until combined. If using chopped walnuts, stir them in. Pour batter into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until shiny and beginning to crack on top. Cool in pan on rack.

Yield: 15 large or 24 small brownies.

We celebrated my little boy's fourth birthday this past weekend--a week late. On his actual birthday we were all too sick, or if not sick then too crabby, to do much of anything.  But this week we were better! We ventured out of the house! And we had a sledding party!

My son actually came up with the idea (is he secretly reading crafty blogs?) while we were in Hawaii oddly enough. And it seemed perfect: the sky had just dumped ridiculous amounts of snow on the midwest. But then we got back and it was 40 degrees and you could see the grass! In February!  The day before the party it snowed a few fluffy inches, just enough to fly down the hill on. Thank you weather.

It was a small party, so making favors was a pleasure rather than a production. We made vanilla marshmallows, which we packaged in waxed paper bags all prettied up with snowflakes. I doubled my friend Lily's recipe for hot cocoa mix only used regular sugar and threw in a few teaspoons of salt for good measure.  Some of the hot cocoa mix went into jars I scrounged up and with the rest I made a vat of hot chocolate for the party. And then made a vat of whipped cream to go with it.

Obviously, I stole the tail gating idea from Courtney and actually I think this was the first time I've ever even been to a tail gate party. Not a lot of sports fans in the family.  It is awesome (if you didn't know). And it is super awesome for a little kid's party. They just come and go when they please, while you help yourself to another spoonful of whipped cream in your coffee. dontmindifIdo.

Slowly everyone's toes froze and it was time to go home. But before that there was much sledding and snacking and frosting on faces. I say it was a success and my big four year old boy says so too.