What makes the Engine of Creation Run? Not Physics but Ecstatics Makes the Engine Run:

Let Deep Roots Grow:
If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress:
Seek Not to Fathom the World and its Delicate Particle Logic:
You cannot Understand, You can only Destroy,
You do not Advance, You only Trample.
Poor blind children, abandoned on the earth,
Groping terrified, misguided over
Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain:
HOBBLE YOURSELVES!
There is No Zion Save Where You Are!

--Angel, Angels in America: Perestroika, Tony Kushner

It was so beautiful to spend the weekend of the Rapture writing a lecture about Angels in America. That whole scene about how God left after the 1909 earthquake: it's just perfect. The Great Work Begins, my dears. It's such a treat to read aloud to yourself on a Saturday afternoon, to have a play fold you under its wing like that.

It's funny because in posting about the simple things that really do it for me-- literature, butter-- I forget that sometimes I do cook things with steps and that this is a cooking blog and maybe I should give you all some recipes to try. Do you want to make some pretty good cookies? These are nice cookies: what they lack in my ecstacy over sunflower seed butter or olive oil (hot&heavy baking loves), they have in old fashioned chewy goodness. There is nothing particularly sexy or interesting about these cookies, but I will say that sometimes old school kind-of-boring buttery cookies are just a very good idea. John Barricelli-- Martha's right hand man and Norwalk local (holla!)-- notes that these cookies are a good addition to a lunchbox, which I think sums up their friendly-but-not-wholesome-but-not-decadent-either appeal.

"Nice" cookies
from the Sono Bakery Cookbook

+2 cups flour
+1 t baking soda
+2 sticks butter at room temp
+1 1/2 cups sugar (1 cup granulated and 1/2 cup brown, although I ran out of brown sugar so whatever)
+1 t salt (or a little more. Mine weren't salty enough. Did I forget the salt? I might have forgotten the salt)
+2 eggs at room temp
+1 1/2 T vanilla
+12 oz chocolate chips, I chopped a bar into small chunks (er, Sonia chopped a bar into small chunks, thanks) and I liked the mixture of big & little pieces of chocolate. Maybe do that.
+1 cup shredded coconut
+1 cup rolled oats

--Preheat the oven to 350.
--Beat the butter and sugar and salt for a few minutes and "make sure it tastes ok"-- ahhh this is my favorite part of making cookies for real. Also the oats in this dough are awesome for making sure you don't just sit and eat the whole thing of dough, do uncooked oats give other people a stomach ache? Is that a thing?
--Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Now the dry ingredients, make sure the flour is kind of fake-sifty and the baking soda doesn't hide in gnarly clumps. Now fold in the chocolate and coconut and oats all gentlelike.
--Make these cookies big-- like a full quarter cup each. Bake 15-18 minutes, they will still be soft in the center and that's a good thing. As Martha would say. Or the guy that developed her recipes would say. Or I would say as I bring not one but five of these cookies in my lunchbox.......based on a true story.

superlative chocolate cookies

Well, I made it out of the desert unscathed. In fact, some of the best things about Burning Man were moments of food-sharing: a fried bologna sandwich first thing in the morning, getting the last marshmallow and roasting it on the back of a stranger's bike, the guys who brought a SOFT SERVE MACHINE to the middle of nowhere and let me have as much ice cream as I wanted, despite the half-hour line winding around the block behind me. I think I had about four-cones worth of ice cream in my mug, and I ate it as I walked back to camp-- sweaty and exhausted-- while I cried.

First-year exams are in two days. My normal reaction, I guess, to anything, is to prepare foods just in case. Just like during the "great quick-bread frenzy of late August" the oven is again in high gear while my actual work-ethic dwindles... there are worse things, I hope, than compulsive cookery.

These cookies are nothing new in the blogosphere, but maybe you haven't made them yet. They are far better than Tollhouse or the How To Cook Everything cookie (my two standbys), even if you only let the dough rest for a few hours. Other than the rest-time, the key is the saltiness (something my mom discovered a long time ago, I have to say), the quality of the chocolate, and the audacious chip to dough ratio. This version-- halved-- makes enough cookies for a weekend of self-indulgent critical-theory-agonizing cookie-monstering.

THE KING OF CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1 1/2 + 1/3 cup flour (yeah, you do the math)

1/2 + 1/8 teaspoons baking soda (Yeah, sorry. Easier to think it through in fractions I think)

3/4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoons coarse salt

1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter

1 + 1/8 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar

1/2 cup regular sugar

1 egg

1 t vanilla

1/2 + 1/8 pounds (10 oz) dark (at least 60%) chocolate chips, chunks, or feves, as classy as you can afford. So in my case... Trader Joes.

1. Cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla. Then add the dry ingredients (making sure there are no unseemly clumps of baking soda!) and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate gently and swiftly.

2. NOW! Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate as long as you are able. I don't know what it is about aged dough but it does make a difference. 12-72 hours is best but even 2 or 3 hours in the fridge makes a difference.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Scoop the dough into golf-ball sized cookies. You might want to flatten them slightly, as the "aged" dough is fairly stiff. Sprinkle the tray with some sea salt-- never a bad idea, actually, in general.

4. Bake about 18-20 minutes, let cool, eat them all.

http://1000awesomethings.com/2009/04/22/782-mixing-cookie-batter-with-your-bare-hands/

why has it taken me so long to discover this blog? how completely right are they about this? my hands are the best pastry cutter in the whole world. sometimes i even wash 'em first!

off the chain good "peanut" butter cookies

Ok, so maybe I am biased because I lived for ten years without peanut butter in baked goods and now that I can have sunflower seed butter my brain has melted. YOU MEAN AS GOOD AS THIS IS IN A SANDWICH IT IS BETTER WITH SUGAR AND BUTTER? You see where I'm going here?

I feel like I am justified in making up lost time... which is also how I feel about my massive consumption of blue cheese dressing, turnips, and vanilla malts. I am not so slowly turning into my dad, which is somewhere between awesome and terrifying. Basically, I have made these cookies 3 or 4 times since March, tweaking the recipe to Ultimate Perfection. They never last more than a day or two.

OFF THE CHAIN SUNFLOWER-SEED BUTTER COOKIES
(adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance, delicious)

+1 cup flour (rock out with your whole wheat or spelt out, if that's your thing... these cookies are so good you will just be like what is that wholesome nutty taste? and not like ew a vegan cookie)
+1 cup oats
+1 t baking powder
+1/2 t salt
+1/3 cup veg oil
+1/3 to 1/2 cup sunflower seed butter or of course peanut butter or some other nut butter, what the hell.
+1/2 cup sugar (white or brown)
+1/4 cup milk or soy milk or even water
+1 t vanilla

OK so preheat the oven to 350.
Mix together all the goopy/wet stuff with the sugar. Add the dry ingedients... the dough should be kind of stiff. Flatten into discs however big you want... Domestic goddess Isa notes that these can be those HUGEASS cookies that people pay good money for at bakesales or fancy stores, so if you want to grab a massive hunk of dough and smoosh it down to a cookie that is the size of your head and 1/2 inch thick, go for it. I usually make them your average cookie size. Bake 8-10 minutes for normal/petite/snack cookies, 12-15 minutes for giant/bake-sale/june gloom cookies. Next step: grinding own sunflower seed butter in NEW FOOD PROCESSOR. Yeah bitches, first an apron and now this.

snack cookies

Like with that everyday cake, you should probably not take my nutrition advice. But these are good and easy to grab as you run out the door in the morning, stumble home at night, refill your tea in the afternoon, etc. I guess if you are really an upstanding citizen you can treat them like real cookies, too.

Carrot Ginger Cookies inspired by 101 cookbooks and carrots languishing in the crisper

1 cup (whole wheat) flour
1 cup oats
1 cup finely shredded carrots (2 hefty ones)
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup veg oil
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, maple syrup, or agave
2 t real (!?!) grated ginger (otherwise these would be boring as all get out, I suppose if you don't keep a knob of ginger in the freezer for times like this you could just dump in a bunch of pumpkin pie spices and do okay for yourself)

Oven to 375.

Mix it all up, dream about summer. Oh yeah, mushy baked good dough, it is almost like being on an island somewhere with Paris Hilton singing island tunes in your ear. That's hot.


Press them into pretty flat discs, since they don't collapse on their own. Bake for about 10 minutes-- they won't really brown, so watch closely.

spicy hot chocolate snickerdoodles

Hot damn were these good. They were the first vegan cookie I have ever made, and the first vegan baked good I have ever liked. It just took reading and re-reading vegan cookbooks for school, I guess, to drill the wonders of vegan baking into my thick skull. Or my, uh, allergic mouth? I want to go out and buy whole-grain vegan cookies like the best of them, but the inevitable mouth-hives and fear of impending death just kind of kill that do-gooder buzz for me.

But enough about me! More about these cookies! They are just straight-up delicious, easy to make, presentation-worthy. All the things you would want from a cookie. And vegan, so you can look your cat or other animal friends straight in the eye, if that's your thing.


These cookies can be made with what basically everybody has in the house, if you bake sometimes, which is awesome. No pictures exist since I took them to a potluck and everybody ate them all, but I think that's a good sign. They looked exactly like the PPK version... the first recipe ever where my rendition looked as pretty as the picture. Gah! What are you waiting for! These are so fast and east it makes my head hurt! Maybe I should make another batch right now? Yes? No?

Spicy Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

1/2 cup canola/ veg oil
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup (I used corn syrup. Nutrition fail!)
3 T non-dairy milk, or water if you are not a hippie. It works out.
2 t vanilla extract (you could sub out chocolate extract, which I am told exists, or maybe even peppermint extract to make a thin-mint version minus the spices! somebody try this!)
1 2/3 c flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t chile powder/cayenne
I also threw about 1 t total of ginger, cloves, and cardamom in there. I am easy for "pumpkin pie spices." I don't know if it made the cookies more interesting, probably not. Also I read in the Cosmo in our bathroom (thanks Missy!) that MEN are easy for pumpkin pie spices. Somebody dissertate that ish.

OK! Are you ready for Formula 1 fast cookies?

+ Preheat the oven to 375
+ Dump all wet or sweet stuff in a bowl (oil, sugar, syrup, vanilla) and beat it up
+ Add everything else and mix it up until it is doughy.
+ Pour some sugar and cinnamon on a plate, pull off little balls of dough and roll them around in the sugar-mix, then press them flattish on the baking sheet. Give them room to spread, like 2 inches on each side.
+ Bake for 8-12 minutes. Mine were done in 10. They should be kind of crackly on top. Let cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes before bringing them to a potluck, making everyone eat them, then announcing like a douchebag, "AND THEY'RE VEGAN!" Or before eating them, they are better once cooled.

Compost cookies

Soon I will be back in New York, where I can eat the food I love with the people I love. Is there anything better than that? And I know that I will go to Momofuku Milk Bar and get some cookies, because they are made of magic and whimsy. My previous attempt to recreate the Cornflake Marshmallow cookies was pretty lame. Way too much flour, they turned out puffy. But apparently the compost cookie recipe was on Good Morning America, and I made a hybrid with the leftover marshmallows that have been sitting in my cupboard for 6 months. Disturbing! But not disturbing enough to keep me from eating so much of the dough that I could not bring myself to try one fresh out of the oven because I felt sick. Beware!

These. are. awesome. There are some sneaky things that I didn't figure out on my own, like the fact that you use corn syrup/ glucose syrup to get that undercooked thing going on. And that you cream the butter, sugar, and eggs for a really long time. I don't know what the point of that is, but I do feel like I have earned my hand-mixer-impulse-purchase so that's good. Apparently my resistance to consumer capitalism plummets when kitchen wares are involved.

Compost Cookies

3/4 cup butter (a stick and a half)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 T corn syrup
2 T coffee grounds
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup flour
2 t baking soda
2 t salt
1 t baking powder
3 cups of random crap. Original has oats, pretzels, potato chips, butterscotch and chocolate chips. I used: 1/2 cup marshallows cut into bits, 1/2 cup chocolate chips, 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup crushed cheerios, 1 cup crushed tortilla chips. Obviously, they were super good.

+OK, rev up that slightly overpriced but oh so convenient mixer. Cream together the butter and sugar things.

+Now add the eggs and set a timer for TEN MINUTES while you beat the crap out of your cookie dough. Apparently this does something to the sugar crystals to make these cookies completely irresistible to those who work at home and have no willpower. Hypothetically. Do some sweet squats around your kitchen to prepare your body for the onslaught of sugar that will soon course through your veins.



+Add the flour, coffee grounds and dry stuff. Don't overmix here, otherwise your cookies will NOT BE CHEWY. Heaven forefend!

+Add the junk food/baking ingredients, stirring until just blended. Now cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for an hour or overnight. They need to rest, just trust the process. Imagine the fat stack of two dollar bills piling up in your pocket that you are not spending on each single one of these cookies. That is worth at least an hour of your patience. OK.

+Preheat the oven to 400. Scoop these out, leaving a couple inches on each side to spread. Bake for about 10 minutes. Count the days until the semester is over (14!)

shortbread

Back from the dead! Kind of. I made a really delicious and impressive looking tarte tatin, but the "fancier" "in focus" photos got lost in the ether, so you kind of have to trust me.



There was a request from the peanut gallery up in Newton for scientific cookie analysis. I do you one better! Shortbread recipes always make a reasonable amount of cookies and the ingredients are mad convenient, if you are "into having a couple pounds of butter around." Also shortbread are very sophisticated cookies and will make you feel inspired to say everything with a British accent. Mostly just lines from the Harry Potter movies. Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!



Shortbread Cookies

(ala Mark Bittman)

1/2 lb butter, softened
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornstarch (leftover from those home science experiments)
3/4 cup sugar
an egg yolk (I bet the whole egg would fly if you cook them longer)
a little salt
EXTRAS: Add chopped crystallized ginger and a serious pinch of ginger. Or chocolate cookies. Or rosemary, if you are feeling herbal. Better yet, add each of these to chunks of the dough as you press them into the pan, like a variety pack.

--Preheat the oven to 300
--Leave the butter on the counter, go watch Dancing with the Stars

--Oh right, I said I would make cookies
--Softened? Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg.
--Add the flour and cornstarch and a pinch of salt. Blend.
--Is that all? Yes. Except that you can add some stuff now, if you are making a variety pack.
--Press the mixture(S) into a greased cake pan of some kind. Here's the beauty-- no matter what, you'll end up with pretty much only cookies & a cookie snack for your crew, not enough cookies for IRRESPONSIBLE COOKIE SNACKING. Good heavens. 8x8 is right on; a loaf pan will make less cookies, but they will be kind of hefty.
--Check up after half an hour, but it might take 40 minutes or so.
--Snack attack!