Simple Vanilla Drop Sugar Cookies (or Whoopee Pies?!)

Although I love the simple vanilla flavor of sugar cookies, I hardly ever make them.  I think its because they’re a little pesky to make – they usually require lots of refrigeration time.  The dough must be rolled out on the countertop, and regular readers of this blog will recall from photographs that my kitchen countertop is tiled – its not the usual smooth Formica or granite or whatever surface it is that most people have in their kitchen.  The textured tile countertop makes it basically impossible to roll out cookies.  (Don't ever put a tile countertop in your kitchen.)

If I want to make cut-out sugar cookies, I have to haul the dough and cutters and cookie sheets over to a family member’s house, invade their kitchen, and make them there.  Consequently, I usually only bother with sugar cookies once or twice a year, generally only around a holiday, and make cut-out shapes of Christmas trees and angels or Easter bunnies and tulips over at my Dad’s house with my sisters.

To satisfy my sugar cookie fix during the rest of the year, I’m always looking for a good soft drop sugar cookie recipe.  This one works pretty well – no refrigeration required, and the fact that I don’t have a smooth countertop is irrelevant.  The mixing process is easy enough your kids can put the recipe together.  Unlike most sugar cookie recipes, you don’t need to plan to make the cookies four hours ahead to allow ample time for refrigeration.  The cookies are simply dropped onto the cookie sheet with a cookie scoop.  The addition of sour cream gives the cookies great flavor, and keeps them ultra soft, as long as they don’t get excessively overbaked.  They taste good either frosted or unfrosted.

My mom found the first version of this recipe’s ingredient list and baking times somewhere, it apparently came from compilation cookbook put together by Beta Sigma Phi, “The Millennium Cookbook.”  She might have made a few modifications on her end (the recipe was originally supposed to be a roll-out sugar cookie recipe, but my mom found it to be way too soft to easily roll out).  We thought it might make a good drop cookie recipe, and thus I began experimentation in my kitchen.

Turns out, the resulting unbaked “dough” IS really soft – its really more like a thick cake batter than it is like any other cookie dough I’ve ever made.

I have no idea how anyone could possibly roll the dough out without making a huge mess - multiple cups of flour would need to be dusted onto the countertop during the rolling process, and the cookies wouldn’t be nearly as tender with the addition of all that extra flour.  The original recipe concept seemed so difficult and inconsistent – the drop cookie method as I’ve written it below is definitely the way to go.

During experimentation, I discovered these cookies work pretty well as the cake portion of a whoopee pie.  Since the cookies are vanilla and are not strongly flavored, they pair well with a tangy lemon curd filling.  I’ve included an easy-to-make lemon curd filling recipe below the cookie recipe in case you want to try that out.  It uses good-quality store-bought lemon curd, and therefore is way less complicated to make than it would be if you were to make the lemon curd yourself.

Soft Vanilla “Drop” Sugar Cookies

Makes about 4 dozen cookies, depending on how big your cookie scoop is

1 cup butter

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

Finely grated zest from one small lemon

4 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

One 8-oz. container sour cream (3/4 cup)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Using a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the vanilla, eggs, and lemon zest; mix until well-combined.

While the mixer is running, in a separate medium bowl, blend together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Mix half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture until batter is well-combined.  Then mix in half of the sour cream until the batter is uniform.  Add the remaining flour mixture, and once it has been mixed in thoroughly, add the remaining sour cream, and mix until the batter is combined.

Cover your cookie sheets with aluminum foil.  Use a cookie scoop to drop heaping tablespoons of batter onto the sheet, spacing them several inches apart as they will spread slightly.  (My cookie scoop dropped .75 ounces of dough with each scoop.)

Bake the cookies at 350 for 11-13 minutes.  The cookies will look pillowy and should only be barely browned.

Let the baked cookies rest on the warm cookie sheet for 5 minutes before transferring the sheet of foil to a wire cooling rack.  The cookies will be too soft to remove from the foil at this time, but will firm up as they continue to cool.  Once the cookies have cooled completely, remove them from the foil.  They may need to continue to sit on the racks a bit longer until they are firm enough to move to storage containers.

The cooled cookies can be frosted, filled-and-sandwiched into whoopee pies, or just enjoyed plain.

Easy Lemon Curd Filling

in case you want to make whoopee pies out of the cookies

2 cups unwhipped heavy whipping cream

2 Tbsp sugar

1 cup prepared lemon curd, I used storebought Dickinson's brand

In a medium bowl, whip the cream and sugar on high speed until soft peaks form.  Set aside.

Put the lemon curd in a small bowl (I like to use a 2-cup glass measuring cup).  Spoon in about 1/2 cup of the whipped cream.

Stir vigorously to incorporate the lemon curd into the cream.  It may not be entirely lump-free but stir it until it is mostly smooth.

Transfer the lemon mixture into the bowl containing the remaining whipped cream.  Use a spatula to gently fold the lemon mixture into the cream.  Don’t overmix it, just fold it until the color is uniformly lemon yellow.

Pair up your cookies - match them up so you have similarly-shaped pairs, so your finished product looks better.

Dollop the lemon cream mixture onto one of each of the cookie pairs, then sandwich them together.

Since this filling recipe contains cream, you’ll need to refrigerate the cookies if you aren’t planning to serve them right away.  The cream is quite soft at room temperature, but is more firm at refrigerator temperature, and is quite delicious served either way.  I think I preferred the refrigerator temperature personally, but that’s just me.  They will last about a week in the fridge (if you haven’t eaten them all first!).

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Buttered Pasta

I have a weakness for uniquely-shaped pasta. I could buy a box or bag of pasta every time I go to the grocery store. I have an entire cabinet devoted to pasta storage, and even though I already have every shape imaginable, I can’t resist picking more up any time I see something that looks interesting.

To feed my pasta-buying addiction, I visit “The Hill” neighborhood here in St. Louis, the old Italian neighborhood with lots of wonderful restaurants and several fun little grocery stores where good-quality tomatoes, olive oil, wine, and balsamic vinegar are the norm. The pasta selection is outstanding, of course, and you can get a lot of neat shapes I’ve never seen anywhere else, all imported directly from Italy.

I made this pasta dish with the last half of a bag of fusilli col buco, which is a long, hollow, corkscrew-shaped pasta. It’s thick and chewy and works great in a dish like this, with simple accompaniments, where the pasta really stars. Bucatini (the straight version of what I used) would work great: it has the same chewy texture but is a little harder to eat gracefully because it is just a little too thick to swirl around your fork. If you cannot find either specialty pasta, you can use fettuccini or linguine – something thick and chewy, not thin.

Although these subtly flavored, buttery noodles are a great side dish to go with any Italian entrée, they are the perfect accompaniment to something delicately-flavored like Chicken Piccata, because the noodles and their sauce will not overpower the Piccata sauce. They’re fast and easy to make, and don’t require a lot of expensive ingredients. There’s just a touch of garlic in them, but it, and the butter, salt, and pepper is all secondary to the pasta.

If you have any leftover noodles, take them to work for lunch – they reheat well in the microwave.

Buttered Pasta
Serves 4 as a side dish (smaller portions)

8 oz pasta
5 oz fresh spinach (least expensive if you buy it from the loose spinach bin, not the prebagged/prewashed kind)
1 loosely-packed cup Italian parsley
4 Tbsp butter
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/3 cup snipped green onions

In a large pot (one that has a lid), cook the pasta, uncovered, according to the package directions. Do not overcook the pasta!

Wash and dry the spinach. If the spinach leaves are particularly large, you may wish to roughly chop the spinach. Set it aside.

Chop the parsley – I find the easiest way to do this is to just stick my scissors into the measuring cup and snip away until its all uniformly chopped.

Once the pasta has cooked, drain it and set it aside. In the empty pasta pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add a pinch of salt, a generous quantity of freshly-ground black pepper, and some freshly grated nutmeg (I usually do equal quantities of black pepper and nutmeg).

Turn the heat to medium-low. Return the pasta to the pot; add the green onions, spinach, and parsley, and stir to incorporate everything. Taste the pasta and adjust the seasonings…you may need more salt. Cover the pot (still on medium-low heat), and wait several minutes until the spinach has wilted slightly, stirring the pasta once or twice to give it all a chance to cook.

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Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcakes with Vanilla American Buttercream Frosting

The day after New Year’s Eve is a great day for a lazy day – most people probably need a little bit of recovery time after their New Year’s Eve festivities, so no one really expects anything other than just that.  Assuming you’re not working, you can sleep in, be unmotivated to accomplish much of anything, lounge around the house, take a nap, watch TV, and think of nothing of any importance.

So, being as the day I baked this recipe did happen to be the day after New Year’s Eve, and being as I had it off from work, I took full advantage of the opportunity for a lazy day, and slept most of the morning, surfed the internet, spent the day in my PJ’s, and just plain took the day off.  The most complicated thing I thought of was whether or not I should take a nap (I initially decided against it since I slept in that morning and didn’t want to screw up my sleeping schedule for later that night, but then decided I was tired and a nap was definitely in order.).  I also thought about what I might want to make for the blog next.

I initially thought of cookies, but I guessed that most people are rather cookied-out now that we’re at the close of the holiday season.  (Posting any kind of cookie in January seems a little unfashionably late.)  Then my mind moved to cupcakes.  I haven’t made cupcakes in a long time – not since the last time I made my knockoff Hostess cream-filled cupcakes.  Those are delicious, but I decided they were too much work for my low brainpower day…however something a little less difficult would be perfect – like a classic vanilla cupcake with a swirly crown of frosting.

These cupcakes are super easy to make, so they are perfect if you’re having a lazy day like I was, or if your kids want to bake and you want to give them a recipe that is simple and uncomplicated.  The recipe is no more difficult to make than a batch of cookies (they actually kind of taste like sugar cookies in cupcake form), and it is made with things I almost always have in my fridge and pantry.  The recipe does call for both cake flour and all-purpose flour, and you should definitely use both as the recipe is written or you’ll end up with a cake that is too dry and dense.  The only ingredient that might be slightly more unique is buttermilk.  I always keep a container of dry powdered buttermilk in my fridge for recipes such as this (it takes a very long time for it to go bad, so I recommend you do the same even if you hardly ever use it).  If you don’t have that in your fridge, the chances are better that you might have some milk in there, and hopefully you have some vinegar somewhere around your house, so you can do the old fake buttermilk (vinegar-in-milk) trick in lieu of actual buttermilk.  (I’ve included the directions for this substitution in the recipe ingredients list.)

Note that one reason the recipe is so simple is because there are no egg whites to whip.  The lack of whipped egg whites means the cakes aren’t going to be as light and airy and perfect in texture as a cake with whipped whites included.  Sometimes I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of texture in favor of simplicity…sometimes I'm not.  If you’re just looking for a quick and easy cupcake recipe and don’t require perfection in the sponge cake world, these cupcakes will definitely fit the bill.  What I'm hinting at is, while these cupcakes aren't bad, nor are they going to be the cornerstone recipe of the next cupcake boutique shop.  But they are nice, easy-to-make, simple, unassuming cupcakes.

This recipe originally came from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes cookbook.  While the cupcake recipe was pretty good given the limitations I’ve described above, I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the frosting recipe that accompanied the cupcakes in the cookbook.  It didn’t make enough frosting, was excessively dense, buttery and greasy, and just wasn’t very good.  The frosting was so bad that I tossed it and made something different - much better tasting.  You should make the frosting I’ve posted below, or whatever your favorite buttercream frosting happens to be, instead of the frosting recipe written in the cookbook.

Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcakes

Makes about 42 standard-sized cupcakes, more or less, depending on how full you fill the tins.  The original recipe claimed a yield of 36 cupcakes, but I got 48 out of the batch...

3 cups cake flour

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

2-1/4 tsp baking powder

1-1/2 tsp coarse salt

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp unsalted butter (that’s 2-1/4 sticks), room temperature

2-1/4 cups sugar

5 whole eggs, plus 3 egg yolks

2 cups buttermilk (or use dry buttermilk according to the package instructions, or substitute fake buttermilk:  place 2 Tbsp vinegar in a 2-cup liquid measure.  Add milk to fill up the measure to 2 cups)

2 tsp vanilla extract

frosting and sprinkles, to decorate

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line standard muffin tins with liners.  (I got these neat Wilton cupcake liners for 99 cents from Hobby Lobby!)

In a medium bowl, whisk together both flours, the baking soda, baking powder, and the salt.  Set the bowl aside.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time (both the whole eggs and the egg yolks), beating until they are completely incorporated between each addition.  You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times as you work.

Add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each.

Beat in the vanilla.

The finished batter is thinner than the above photo (it shows the batter mid-way through the mixing process).  Divide the batter between the cupcake liners, filling each 2/3 to 3/4 full.

Bake about 18-20 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.  Turn the cupcakes out onto racks and cool completely before frosting.  The cupcakes will taste best when they’re served the same day they are baked.

(Oops, one cupcake liner was kind of bent in!  You know what that means?  Taste test cupcake!!) 

Vanilla “American” Buttercream Frosting

Makes 6 cups, which is about 58 ounces of frosting.  And there's a reason I gave you the yield of the frosting in ounces:

If you intend to frost your cupcakes with “cupcake shop”-style swirly tops (using a piping bag and a Wilton #2110 (1M) tip), this makes just enough to top 42 cupcakes assuming you use no more than 1.4 oz of frosting per cupcake.

If you intend to frost your cupcakes using the “smear with a knife” method, you can probably just make a half batch of this recipe, because my experience is that you’ll use much less frosting per cupcake (usually about half, so no more than .7 oz of frosting per cupcake), and therefore won’t need as much frosting to get the job done.  If you anticipate you’ll have a heavy hand with the frosting, you might want to make 2/3 or 3/4 of a batch of frosting.

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

6 Tbsp shortening

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

12 cups powdered sugar (about 3.2 pounds)

3/4 cup milk

Beat the butter, shortening, vanilla, and salt on medium-high speed until everything is well incorporated.  Meanwhile, I suggest that you measure the powdered sugar into a new, separate mixing bowl. (Doing so means you wont have to keep track of how many cups of sugar have been added to the frosting as you’re making it.)  Similarly, its easier to make the frosting if you have the milk measured into a liquid measuring cup with a spout.

After the butter has been fully mixed, the powdered sugar and milk should be added to the butter mixture a little bit at a time, alternating between the two.  I turn the mixer to low (or powdered sugar will be everywhere!) and use the pouring shield to drop in 1 cup of sugar.  I wait until the sugar has been incorporated into the butter mixture, then add a splash of milk, about 1 tablespoon for each addition.  Once the milk has been incorporated, I add another cup of sugar, wait for it to mix in, then add another tablespoon of milk, and so forth, until all of the sugar and milk has been added to the frosting.  It takes time to make the frosting, but you’ll have smooth, airy, lump-free frosting when you make it this way.

After the ingredients are all mixed in, beat the frosting on high speed until it is creamy and smooth.  It should be spreadable and pipeable, but you may need to adjust the consistency with a small addition of powdered sugar (sift it over the surface, then mix it in) or an additional drop or two of milk.

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Chicken Picatta

Want to know a secret I use to help with portion control?  This particular recipe involves chicken, but my little secret also works well with pork chops or even steaks.  And although I have mentioned it before on this blog, I only devoted a few sentences to it, so it is worth mentioning again.    Whenever possible, I slice my chicken breasts in half horizontally, like this:

The end result:  Two roughly equal-sized pieces of meat.  One serving of meat has become two.  Yes, they are thinner servings, but because the cut still looks (from the top) like it’s the same sized piece of meat, your brain is fooled into thinking you’re eating the same quantity of meat even though you’ve reduced the size by 50%.  Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly hungry and one cutlet just isn’t going to be enough, I’ll make both halves and have “seconds” (which still really isn’t overeating).  Or, I’ll just add some pasta or a salad to the menu to help fill me up.  Slicing the meat in half is also a great way to stretch your food dollar – you’ll get twice as many servings out of one package of chicken breasts.

This recipe is another super easy one to make.  It is delicious served with a bit of buttered noodles, something that is a rather neutral (but still delicious) side dish.  (The acidity in a tomato sauce would compete with the lemons, and a cream sauce would be too heavy and would mask the bright flavor of the Piccata sauce.  The buttery noodles complement rather than compete with the lemon-caper flavor.)

You can substitute veal for the chicken, if you like.  A veal cutlet might take slightly less time to cook than a chicken cutlet (and neither option takes particularly long to cook because both are very thin) so be prepared to pull it out of the pan pretty quickly.  There are no other changes to the recipe ingredients or preparation, so its easy to make the substitution.

When choosing a wine to use for this dish, pick something you’d drink (NOT a grocery store “cooking wine”).  Choose something dry, and not particularly sweet, because the sweet flavor will be further concentrated during the cooking process.  I usually use pinot grigio because that’s usually what I keep in the house, but you could also use a sauvignon blanc or any other dry white wine.  Plan to serve the remainder of the bottle with dinner, then you’re not opening a huge bottle of wine for one small recipe quantity.

The recipe has one ingredient in it that you may or may not be familiar with:  capers.  My grocery store usually stocks these in the same aisle as the pickles, olives, mustard, and other condiments.  Capers look like this:

…and you should not omit them from this dish.  I know they seem unusual if you’ve never had them, but give them a shot because they are necessary to produce the proper flavor for the sauce (otherwise its not “piccata,” its just a lemon and butter sauce).  Capers will keep in your refrigerator for a very long time, so don’t worry about them going bad before you can use them up.  Before you add them to the dish, capers should be rinsed under cool water because they are packed in a salty brine.  I put the necessary quantity in a little sieve and run them under the tap for a few seconds.

Chicken Piccata

Serves 4

salt & pepper

4 thin, boneless, skinless chicken breast cutlets (cut from two breast halves, see the photo above)

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp capers, rinsed & drained

1-1/2 cups dry white wine

juice of two smallish lemons

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 cup unwhipped heavy cream (not coffee creamer), or you can use half-and-half if you're out

Sprinkle salt and pepper over the surface of the chicken cutlets.  In a deep skillet, over medium-high heat, sauté the cutlets in the olive oil, turning once, until they are lightly browned on both sides and the chicken is just barely cooked through.  (Don’t overcook the chicken - err on the side of slightly less done because later we’ll return the chicken to the pan to reheat it.)  Remove the chicken and set it aside.  Reduce the heat under the pan to medium.

(Anyone who says you cannot brown in a nonstick pan hasn't tried these nonstick pans.  They're awesome.  Love my Anolon Advanced cookware.)

While the chicken is cooking, place your capers in a small sieve and rinse them under cool running water.  Drain them, then give them a rough chop.  Set the chopped capers aside for later.

Add the wine and lemon juice to the same skillet, stirring to scrape up any browned bits.  It will probably be bubbly and noisy when you add the liquid – keep stirring the pan!  Cook the liquid for several minutes over medium heat until it has reduced by about half.  

Reduce the heat to low.  Add the butter, rinsed capers, and the cream or half-and-half. Stir to incorporate the ingredients and melt the butter. Once the dairy products have been added to the pan, take care to avoid allowing it to boil (you may need to reduce the heat further).

Return the cooked chicken to the pan and heat it through, just long enough to bring the chicken back up to the proper serving temperature.

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Homemade Barbeque Sauce

In anticipation of better weather (and in protest of our current not-winter-anymore-but-not-quite-spring-either weather), I've started grilling outdoors.  We have a nice covered porch which makes it easy to use the grill even if it's raining.  Barbequed chicken is pretty easy to make outdoors because it doesn't require much babysitting.  The chicken is brushed with sauce and is placed on the grill.  After a few minutes, it is flipped once, brushed with more sauce, but is otherwise left alone while it cooks.  Pretty simple.

Homemade barbeque sauce is really easy to make. Onions are browned in butter (olive oil can be substituted for a somewhat healthier sauce…but the butter tastes better), then everything else is added and simmered over medium heat. There’s not much to it.

One thing that's great about this sauce: you can make it ahead and freeze it. You can also make it in larger quantities.

Homemade Barbeque Sauce (for chicken)
Makes about 3 cups of sauce

1 small onion, finely chopped (a mini food processor works well!)
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice (2 large lemons yielded the proper amount of juice)
1/2 cup dry red wine (I used a Malbec on this particular occasion, but I usually make it with Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz)
Several shakes (to taste) of Tabasco or similar hot sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup spicy mustard
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ancho chili powder (another type will also suffice if you don’t have ancho)
1 cup water

Place the chopped onions and the butter in a medium skillet. Spread out the onions so they cover the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat to medium-low and allow the onions to brown slowly. The moisture will begin to cook out of the pan and the onions will begin to brown at the edges. Avoid stirring the pan until this starts to happen. The pan looks like this when it’s time to stir (see the browned edges?):

Stir the onions and allow them to continue to brown slightly longer, so they are evenly browned. Transfer the browned onions to a medium saucepan and add the remaining ingredients.

Simmer the sauce over medium heat, stirring often, to reduce the sauce by approximately one third.

I usually serve this sauce with grilled chicken. I pour a small amount of the sauce over the chicken pieces as a marinade. The remaining sauce is saved to mop the chicken as it is grilling. (Remember, should any of the reserved basting sauce come into contact with raw meat, be sure to return the sauce to a boil before using it to baste cooked chicken!)

The chicken in these pictures is served with my Bacon and Spinach Couscous. It’s really yummy – give it a try.

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Bacon and Spinach Couscous

I’ve been in search of a new couscous recipe. I love my cranberry and spinach couscous recipe, but I make it so often that I’d like to try something different for a change of pace.

This couscous recipe is full of flavor and is easy to make. It’s especially easy if you have a mini food-processor (you can use it to cut up the onion and garlic). The couscous is flavored by bacon, has a touch of sweetness due to applesauce, and is embellished with a bit of cheddar cheese. The combination of flavors results in a pretty tasty side dish.

As with my other favorite couscous recipe, this recipe also uses Israeli couscous, a.k.a. pearl couscous. It is larger in size than regular couscous and the resulting texture and taste is completely different. If you think you don’t like couscous and the only kind you’ve tried is the standard small-size couscous, you should give this type of couscous a try. Here’s what the two types of couscous look like – you can see that there’s quite a difference in size between the two.

Bacon and Spinach Couscous
Serves 3-4 as a side dish

4 thickly-sliced strips of bacon
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped (I splurged and used morels because they were available at the grocery store, but you can use baby portabellas with good results)
1 cup Israeli (pearl) couscous
1 tbsp grainy Dijon mustard
1/4 cup unflavored applesauce
1-1/2 cups chicken stock
3 ounces baby spinach, roughly chopped
3/4 cup shredded white cheddar cheese

You’ll need a deep, wide sauté pan that has a lid. If your frying pan has a lid, that should work.

First, dice the bacon. Place it in your deep sauté pan and cook it over medium heat until the fat has started to render but the bacon is still not crisp. Caution: don’t let the bacon crisp up just yet! Give it a stir every now and then.

While the bacon is cooking, chop the onion and garlic. I like to put them together into a mini food processor because it’s easy!

As I've indicated above, we don’t want to let the bacon crisp up just yet. Once the bacon has released fat into the pan (but before it turns crisp), carefully pour or spoon out as much fat as you can. You can discard it or save it for another purpose. Add the chopped onion and garlic to the pan. Continue to cook over medium heat several minutes until the onions begin to brown – the bacon will start to brown too, and that’s fine. Just give it a stir periodically to keep it from sticking and burning.

While the onion mixture is cooking, chop your mushrooms; stir them into the pan.

Pour in the couscous and stir to combine. Continue to cook over medium heat while you complete the next step…

In a small bowl (I like to use a 2-cup liquid measure), stir together the mustard, applesauce, and chicken stock. Pour the mixture into the pan – stir it to combine the ingredients. Bring it to a simmer over medium heat.

Once the liquid begins to simmer, cover it with the lid. Reduce the heat to low and cook it for 10 minutes, or until the couscous has absorbed the liquid.

While the couscous cooks, roughly chop the spinach and set it aside. Grate the cheese and set it aside.

Once the couscous has completed its cooking time, remove the lid. Stir in the spinach (you may need to stir it in two additions – it seems like a lot of spinach, but it will wilt down to practically nothing). Sprinkle the cheese over the couscous; stir it in to combine it and melt it.

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Tortellini in Cream Sauce

One of St. Louis’ great neighborhoods is called The Hill – it’s kind of a little Italy. Nestled between the cute little homes are lots of Italian restaurants, several great Italian grocery stores, bakeries, and even an Italian deli. One of St. Louis’ favorite restaurants, Cunetto House of Pasta, is on The Hill.  Amongst many other delicious entrees, they have an outstanding tortellini and cream sauce dish: tortellini, mushrooms, peas, and prosciutto enveloped in a velvety cream, butter, and parmesan sauce. It is quite good. If I lived closer, I’d eat supper there all the time.

Since it is at least a 45 minute drive to get to The Hill, I have my own version of tortellini and cream sauce that I can make at home. It is surprisingly quick and easy – so easy it can easily be made on a weeknight. My version isn’t an exact copy of their dish, but it tastes good enough that the difference doesn’t matter to me. It is not exactly health food, but it is One Good Cream Sauce, worth ignoring the calories and eating it every once in awhile.  To help with portion control, the recipe I’ve posted here makes enough for a smallish main dish.

There are several keys to success with this recipe: One – have everything ready to go before you start to make the sauce. (You can prepare everything while your pasta water is coming to a boil.) You don’t want to be scrambling to grate cheese while your butter overheats. Two – don’t omit the nutmeg – its just a pinch – and please use freshly grated nutmeg!  Three – when you select your cheese, please don't use the powdery stuff in the green container.  This is a dish where real Parmigiano Reggiano makes a difference.

Tortellini in Cream Sauce
Serves 4 as a smallish main course

1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (I use the medium sized holes on my box grater)
2 ounces prosciutto
3 Tbsp unsalted butter
1-1/4 cups heavy cream (unwhipped heavy whipping cream, not coffee creamer)
freshly grated nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper
4 cups frozen packaged fully-cooked tortellini
1-1/2 cups frozen peas


Fill a large saucepan or small stockpot with water, bring it to a boil. (This will be your pasta water.) While the water is coming to a boil, prep the rest of your ingredients:

Grate the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, set it aside. Finely chop the prosciutto, set it aside. Locate your butter, measure the cream, and get the nutmeg and pepper out so you’re ready to go.

Once your pasta water is boiling, stir in the frozen tortellini. Watch the pot closely; as soon as the tortellini begin to boil (and it wont take long – just a couple of minutes), add the frozen peas.

Again, watch the pot closely; as soon as the pasta mixture begins to boil, remove it from the heat, drain it, and set it aside.

Add the butter to the empty pot – melt it over medium heat. Add the nutmeg and the black pepper; stir the butter mixture a few times until the spices have heated and are aromatic. Stir in the prosciutto; heat it through. Stir in the cream and heat it through, stirring constantly. Add the grated cheese, then return the cooked pasta to the pot. Gently stir the pasta to melt the cheese and coat the pasta evenly. Serve hot. The longer the sauce sits, the thicker the sauce will get.

A note for vegetarians: The sauce is nearly vegetarian – except the prosciutto. If you omit the meat, you might want to add a little bit of salt to the sauce. (The prosciutto is very salty; you’ll need to make up for its absence.)

A note for those who don’t want to use cream: You can cut back on the fat slightly by substituting half-and-half for the heavy cream. The sauce won’t be quite as thick and will not taste quite as good, but you might feel its worth the reduction in calories and fat.

White Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies, with Simple Hot Cocoa

Today was a snow day for me. It doesn’t snow too often in St. Louis – usually just a few times each winter. So when we have four inches of accumulation, most schools and many businesses go ahead and call off. I was given the day off! Great! Besides, it was really one of those days where you might as well just stay indoors curled up in a blanket, sip on a hot chocolate, and enjoy a good book…and I had off from work and didn’t have to go anywhere, so that’s exactly what I did.

I knew I wanted to bake something today. With the beautiful – but cold – blanket of sparkly white snow just outside my kitchen window, I wanted to make something that would heat my kitchen up and ward off the chill. I also didn’t want to have to go to the store to collect ingredients – it was just too cold outside! Fortunately, I had all the ingredients at home for oatmeal cookies…

And, I’ve been craving oatmeal cookies lately. My version is a soft and moist cookie, spiced with a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg. They are studded with sweet Lambert dried cherries, compliments of my mom’s summer cherry harvest (thanks, Mom!). White chocolate chips are folded into the dough – they give a creamy flavor counterpoint to the sweet cherries.

White Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies
Makes about 3 dozen cookies

1-3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1-3/4 cups dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
2-1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c dried cherries, either sweet or tart will work, but I used sweet, because that is what I had on hand
3-1/2 cups oatmeal (not instant!)
1 c white chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cover your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, use a whisk or a fork to mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set this aside. (I tend to measure my nutmeg and cinnamon generously, like the next picture…)

Place the butter and brown sugar in a clean large bowl, preferably one that goes to a stand mixer. Beat the butter and brown sugar together until it is well-incorporated. Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until a smooth batter has formed.

While the batter is beating, roughly chop the cherries to approximately the size of a raisin. Set them aside.

Once the butter mixture is smooth and well-mixed, add the flour mixture, stirring only until the ingredients are combined.

Add the oatmeal, cherries, and white chocolate chips. Stir until all ingredients are incorporated. (The batter is very stiff – this is definitely a recipe that is easier to make in a stand mixer.)

Use a small ice cream scoop to portion out 1.5-ounce balls of dough, approximately the sized of a ping pong ball. Place the cookie dough balls about two inches apart on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of parchment paper or a Silpat.

Bake at 350 degrees until the cookies are pillowy and are almost firm to the touch, 6 to 9 minutes. They should appear slightly underbaked. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them sit on their cookie sheet, undisturbed, for five minutes. Transfer the parchment paper to a cooling rack and let the cookies sit on the paper until they are firm enough to transfer directly to the cooling rack.

What goes better with cookies on a cold winter day than…hot cocoa! Its super easy to make and tastes so much better than the stuff that comes from a packet. I don’t own a microwave, so I just make mine on the stovetop, but if your kitchen is so equipped, you could zap your milk long enough to heat it just until its steaming hot.

I have several small mixing bowls, so I mix each drink’s cocoa individually, that way I don’t have to worry about evenly portioning the cocoa mixture. I just use a fork to stir up each bowl of cocoa.


Simple Hot Cocoa
For each drink, you’ll need:

1 cup of milk
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1-1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder
A teeny, tiny pinch of salt

Scald the milk over medium heat. (That is, heat it over medium heat, but don’t let it boil. It should be steamy and warm, but not bubbling.)

While the milk is heating, in a small bowl, combine the granulated sugar, cocoa powder, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk it together with a fork until it is well-incorporated and all of the large cocoa chunks have been disintegrated into powder. Pour the cocoa mixture into the bottom of your mug; top with the warm milk and stir to incorporate.

If you’re feeling particularly decadent, top your hot chocolate with whipped cream and a drizzle of homemade caramel sauce.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know it’s still a little early to talk Christmas (I don’t like seeing the Santa Claus and Christmas tree decorations in stores while I'm shopping for a Halloween costume either), but today is November 1, and if you are the type who likes to hand-make your Christmas cards, you’ve got to start thinking about them kind of early. If you’re hand-making cards this year, if you haven’t already started on them, you’ll need to start soon.

I love to make handmade greeting cards. If I had all the time in the world, I’d hand make all my Christmas cards, and I’d write personalized notes inside each one. In recent years, I haven’t had time to do all of that...life has just been too crazy busy lately.

Several years ago I felt particularly ambitious. I decided it would be cute to make little Christmas cards with an original recipe included. Fortunately I decided this early enough in the year that I had time to pull it all together.

I chose to feature a cookie recipe primarily because of space limitations. Cookie recipes are usually pretty straightforward: cream the fat and sugar, add the wet ingredients, then stir in the dry ingredients, followed by anything chunky like chocolate chips or nuts. There are usually not a lot of complex instructions to write out (no primer on whipping egg whites, for example), so the recipe is short enough in length that it doesn’t take up much physical space on a small index card.

Another reason I chose a cookie recipe: baking cookies is a classic Christmas activity for my family. My sister and I make batches upon batches every year. A cookie recipe enclosed in a Christmas card just seemed to “fit.”

So, I needed a good recipe – chocolate, of course. I came up with this triple-chocolate cookie recipe. I tested and retested it several times in my kitchen because I have several great cooks spread throughout my family, and I didn’t want to give them something that would end up flopping in their kitchen. (I think I even asked my mom to test the recipe in her kitchen, too.) After a little bit of adjustment here and there, the recipe was ready to go. Now I just needed a way to present the recipe, and a greeting card to go along with it.

I thought long and hard about exactly what the Christmas card should look like. I have always liked the retro look of polka dots, and since the cookies were chocolate, a chocolate-colored card with some kind of polka-dotted paper seemed to fit the bill. But I couldn’t find any polka dotted paper that was just right (all the dots were either too large or too small for what I envisioned).

Rather than settle for something less satisfactory, I ended up designing my own polka-dotted paper in Photoshop. I printed it out on my color laser printer, deckled the edges, and wrapped it around chocolate brown cardstock I got for free from Archiver’s (if you shop there often, you’ll know they have those great Free Cardstock! coupons). Bonus, the Christmas cards didn’t cost too much to make!

I baked up one last batch of cookies and shot a few pictures, one of which I Photoshopped alongside an as-abbreviated-as-possible version of the recipe. I used brown papercrafting rivets to attach the printouts to the front and back sides of recipe card-sized cardstock. Voila, my recipe card insert to my Christmas greeting card.

Unfortunately it’s been several years since I did this project, so I don’t have any of the finished cards left. (Silly me, I mailed them all.) If you were one of the recipients of those cards, and still have it floating around somewhere, let me know so I can borrow it and take a picture of it! Therefore, as of right now, I have no pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine the card in your brain. Aside from what I’ve already described, it was cute, but pretty basic: just a fold-over card with a place to write a Christmas greeting. The thickness of the cardstock protected the enclosed recipe card from the mail sorting machines at the Post Office.

For your viewing pleasure, I do have the file of the polka dot paper saved (I made two color variations).

I also still have the Photoshop files I used to do the card layout.

 

If you’re not into making a zillion Christmas cards but want a nice hostess gift for someone, you could make up a batch of the cookies, type up or handwrite a cute recipe card, and package it all in a cute Christmas tin.

Or just forget the crafty stuff and make the cookies anyway! Yum!

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 2 dozen cookies

4 ounces 70% cacao dark chocolate (In my most recent batch, I used Lindt, but I have made it with both Scharffen-Berger 70% and with Baker's brand chocolate.)
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp unsulphured molasses
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 egg
1/2 cup cocoa
1/8 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
12 ounces semi-sweet mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roughly chop the chocolate.

In the top half of a double boiler, melt the chocolate, stirring frequently. Do not heat the chocolate excessively. Set it aside and allow it to cool slightly.

In a clean large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Add the melted and cooled chocolate, molasses, vanilla and egg, and beat until combined.

Add the cocoa, salt, flour, baking soda, and baking powder.  Stir to thoroughly combine all ingredients. The dough will be stiff and might seem overly dry, but will hold shape when pressed together. Add the chocolate chips; stir to distribute evenly throughout the dough.

Press dough together into ping pong ball-sized spheres on a cookie sheet lined with foil or parchment paper, spacing them several inches apart. Each ball of dough should weigh approximately 1.5 ounces.

Bake 10-12 minutes. Whatever you do, DON’T overbake the cookies! They will still be soft – almost too soft - when they are done.

Cool the cookies five minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring the foil/parchment to a wire rack. As the cookies firm up, they can be transferred directly to the rack to complete the cooling process. Store them in an airtight container.