Beautiful! I can see these used a soup bowls…
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More cookies: Tutu’s sugar cookies. https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/tutus-super-crispy-sugar-cookies Pretty sure I got the recipe from someone on CH! Also yummy…
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I love those cookies!
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YES, I’m the one who never stops talking about them (walker on CH) … I press mine down thinner and add 1/2 cup of finely chopped candied ginger.
(Secret Ingredient: Rice Krispies)
I love the story behind them!
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Ah!!! Thank you! I thought that there was a ginger variation, but wasn’t bold enough to try this time ( I love ginger)…
The ginger taste isn’t strong. It’s only ½ cup; try it and report back!
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Thanks, googled St. Urhu Day. Nice to know about it. And its a lovely loaf.
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Just took some brown butter Meyer lemon bars out of the oven. Gonna be tough waiting for these to cool!
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2 fairly unphotogenic but delicious bakes today: the creamy leek tart from Classic German Baking and a rhubarb upside-down cake from a recipe I copied out for my mum from who knows where.
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I have a lot of milk powder, so I decided to toast it and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I used this recipe.
The cookies are very good, but I would leave out the espresso powder, which I find greatly takes away from the brown butter flavor. And I’d simply use water to replenish the moisture loss in the butter. That’s what I’ve always used and I think is best. I know people seem to be afraid to simply use water, but the neutral aspect of it is preferable and water is what was in the butter.
I’m definitely going to use bread flour for soft cookies going forward due to the nature of the AP flour here. Although I know it’s popular to use them for more chew, I never felt any need to do so, but with the AP flour here not having much absorption, I find cookies just flatten out too much here.
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Can you confirm the oven temperature for these cookies please? I’d like to send these in a care package. Thanks
300°F
From the first time, these cookies came out perfectly. When the time comes to flatten them, I use a fish spatula to tap tap tap them down; regular spatulas stuck.
Did you find the recipe on Food & Wine?
Recently I was discussing blondies and how I hate the need to brownify them that has happened the last few years, particularly on social media. I see recipes for blondies with excessive butter and sugar, the blondies greasy and resembling doughy, underbaked bricks in an effort to force blondies to be fudgy and gooey like brownies are. But blondies aren’t brownies. And for myself, I will always pick a blondie over a brownie. A blondie should be moist and chewy, but as it contains a lot more flour than a brownie, it isn’t supposed to resemble something made up mostly of chocolate.
This came up when some people on Reddit were talking about their blondie troubles and expressing that they’d never managed to bake a blondie worth eating. I pointed them to a couple of my favorite recipes and someone actually made one of them and reported loving the result!
Meanwhile I decided to try out Cook’s Illustrated’s blondies because I know I can trust them to know what the right texture is while still innovating. Their blondie recipe includes corn syrup in order to reduce sweetness but retain moisture that sugar brings.
Well, I still reduced the sugar in these because the amount is crazy. 
I made half of a recipe and cut the sugar down to 150 grams from 175.
I didn’t use the salt to top these because I know some people here can be weird about the extra salt, but I made sure to use 2% in the blondies themselves. And I reduced the vanilla because I’m using artificial for these and there’s no need to use so much with artificial vanilla.
I personally prefer no chocolate in my blondies, but I left it in.
To experiment I put 2 tbsp toasted milk powder in half and baked in an 1/8 sheet tray with foil as a border to separate.
Unsurprisingly the ones with milk powder are darker, but they also rose a bit more, which makes sense since milk powder does help yeast-raised breads achieve more rise.
The brown sugar here is very light, so any baked goods based on brown sugar will never look like they would if I had American brown sugar or access to molasses. The milk powder ones look closer to the recipe.
The blondies have a great texture, but I still think they are sweeter than they need to be and the chocolate is for me unnecessary. I still prefer my other favorite blondies, though with some tinkering these could certainly become a favorite, too.
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Having done the blondie deep dive, I couldn’t agree more with your thoughts on the increase in butter and the greasy result. In older recipes 4 tablespoons is the norm ( 8x8) and honestly, I find that works for me. Even 8 T seems excessive. (smitten kitchen, for example…but I love Deb!)
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I use more, but it’s the proportions that are the issue. Recipes basically try to decrease the flour and increase butter so you end up with equal weight and the sugar outweighs everything because people look at a brownie recipe and see similar proportions. These ATK blondies have 6 oz of butter, but the flour is almost twice the weight.
Oh, and you see a lot skipping leavening for this same reason— because brownies don’t have any. In fact this might be the easiest way to discern if a blondie recipe is any good. Blondies absolutely should have leavening!
This is a partial fail… I made a simple chocolate cake which turned out fine, but the frosting is the fail part. Sunshine and I saw this Betty Crocker Coconut Pecan frosting at the grocery store and decided to try it. It’s OK, just not out “cup of tea”. Oh well.
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I am in agreement about the espresso powder; it belongs in an all chocolate creation and would over power other flavors.
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Looks good to me; I can see that canned frosting woukd disappoint, tho.
