This one will take a bit of work, but how cute would monogrammed cookies be for a party at which the guests’ names all start with a different letter?
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You could cut the cookies in letter shapes if you have enough cookie cutters, or pipe the letters onto each cookie individually. Wrap them in a pretty cellophane bag, attach a name card to the bag, and let your guests have fun finding their cookie on the table…and obviously you’re done with dessert this way too!
Dessert is difficult for a girl who really likes to serve appetizers. Guests fill up on the apps and on dinner and by the time dessert rolls around, no one wants any more to eat. I told my mom about this dilemma once and she said “You probably shouldn’t serve appetizers then.”
Which literally had had not ever occurred to me. Not serve appetizers?! That wouldn’t be a dinner party! That would just be dinner.
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So I have to serve appetizers, even if its just some warm nuts and olives. I also have some sort of trigger in me that requires a finish to the meal; something sweet to mark the end. So I’m leaning towards starting to do small tidbits, petit fours style. Maybe meringues, or small brownies with a homemade sauce. Cookies are an obvious choice, or cupcakes. If the meal hasn’t been too cheese-heavy, an assortment of cheeses with fruit and a nice port would go over well. Or, if I really have to make a pie or a cake, I’ll tone down the heaviness of the meal…or just warn everyone before that they’d better come ready for true gluttony.
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Martha Stewart the Goddess has a lovely idea for caramel apples to take home – both a dessert and a party favor! I love this idea because I feel like I’m giving guests something to end the meal, but they can enjoy it when they like. AND, I could use them as placecard holders!! Just tie on a little slip of paper with a name on it, and you’re done. I love love love this idea. Especially because caramel apples are so easy to make and inexpensive, and have a great sense of childlike fun about them. Oh, Martha: so genius….
I’m going to post a series of placecard holder/favor ideas from Martha over the next few days, because they’re so lovely and I’m always looking for innovative placecards.
Well, things have been a little rough around here with the passing of my grandma, who was my mom’s only immediate family besides my sister and I. I’ve been writing pages and pages about her very interesting life and want to condense it into something readable, but am finding it difficult – hopefully will manage it soon just to make myself feel like it’s finished and I can stop writing every detail before I forget. And I tweaked my back last week on my way to California for the funeral, so I’m right now sitting up very straight with a hefty pillow behind me. My mom is convinced that your back’s health is a metaphor (or simile?) for how supported you are in your life, so I guess according to her I’m not supported enough – though I feel like that’s a big world of excuses just begging you to come in, and really I just picked up my suitcase wrong when getting on the plane last week. I have lots to do for Christmas that doesn’t involve lifting or twisting; there is no snow here anyway, so I don’t feel badly about not being able to snowboard for another week or so; I have a massage therapist who is incredibly good at inflicting a lot of pain on me; and with family and friends all descending on Jackson Hole for the holidays everything is really just fine. This is even my view while I write, looking south into the valley and over the Snake River:
Plus, I’m completely obsessed with Christmas in general and love love love this time of year! Lights everywhere, merry people, and presents galore for all the good little girls and boys – and everyone I love was very good this year ;)
I’m trying to come up with my Christmas Eve menu. We always have fried oysters for Christmas Eve; I don’t know why, yes it is a strange tradition, and I think it just originated because my mom likes fried oysters and who goes to the trouble of such a thing on non-holidays?!
Coconut & LimeSo it has to be centered on the oysters, and I really want to make brussel sprouts just because they’re in season and I’m completely obsessed with them right now, plus they’re also, like the oysters, a little different and fun. But what else? Oysters and brussel sprouts do not a meal make.
A nice simple potato would be quiet enough to meld with the strong oyster flavor and also go well with a nice aioli sauce for the oysters. I like this plan: oysters, new potatoes, and brussel sprouts (please continue for the recipe) for the meal. Something like poached pears for dessert, because my mom has to have her fruity desserts, and I think no appetizers because we’re all going to be crammed into the kitchen cooking and frying until everything is hot and ready to be devoured. Patience is not a virtue in my family when there is hot food waiting to be eaten.
Oh, pie crust. The goal is the flaky, lightly browned, crispy yet soft enough to cut with a fork perfect crust we all imagine but rarely encounter.
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I’ve tried several different pie crust recipes and still haven’t found the perfect one. Just because my mom makes great crust (and she does) doesn’t mean her recipe will work for me (and, since I don’t have a food processor, it doesn’t). I don’t know why, but it’s just one of those things that you have to figure out for yourself, like eyeshadow colors and significant others. So I’ve decided to test out pie crusts until I find the recipe that works for me every time, and I’m going to share my attempts in the hope that maybe one of the options will work for one of you.
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Yes, you read me right: I will be blending it by hand because I don’t have a food processor and honestly don’t really want one. I have a big kitchen by NYC standards, but it’s small by any other standard and I don’t have room for an appliance I’ll rarely use. I can see wanting one someday, if I get tired of hand-chopping and not being able to blend various things, but in the meantime I’ll happily use my pastry blender and get a nice arm workout.
Here is my problem: who will eat all the pies that are going to result from my experiments? My friends are forever avoiding sweets and never want to take entire pies home with them for fear of gorging themselves (which, of course, is exactly why I try to give all the sweets I make away!). I really need to make better friends with my neighbors so I can just force a constant stream of desserts on them.
It’s finals time for me, which means that I’m officially not allowed in the kitchen because I will procrastinate my way through many recipes and not learn what I need to learn. Cooking is my worst procrastination tool because I can justify it – I need to eat, so I obviously have to cook something anyway, and if I’m cooking anyway I might as well try something new and fun and tasty that will take four hours and require many dishes to be washed….and then half a day later I’m full and happy and utterly ill-prepared for my exams. So I am not allowed in the kitchen. I eat a lot of Subway during finals.
That said, I totally broke my own rule and made some fluffy, gorgeous biscuits.
I couldn’t help it: Smitten Kitchen put them up and they only have five ingredients! All of which were all in my kitchen! It’s my kryptonite. So easy to just throw together. Plus, a good friend was arriving from out of town tonight. PLUS, another friend was coming over for to kill some time before a date. The confluence of those events just can’t go by me without my offering some sort of homemade food!
So, I threw together the biscuits at lunchtime (using a wine glass to cut them, since I don’t have a biscuit cutter) and stuck them in the fridge so I could bake them ten minutes before everyone was supposed to arrive. I followed her recipe, so I won’t be redundant and repost it here – just click here to go to the recipe.
My dough made eight normal-sized biscuits and one baby biscuit.
I served them with an assortment of creamy butter, clotted cream, jams, honey and raspberries and oh my gosh, all of the toppings together was the best combination.
These biscuits are really tasty right out of the oven, but don’t keep very well. We made fried egg/cheddar cheese/turkey bacon breakfast sandwiches with them the next morning and they were too dry (but no matter: I just threw some extra ketchup on that bad boy and called it good!). However, they’re so easy to make ahead that they’re great for dinner parties. I would make them for an unusual dinner party appetizer with either honey butter or herb butter, or for a dinner party dessert with a fruit sauce and spiced whipped cream. So tasty.
Longest cookie name ever. However, you have to trust me: these cookies are deserving of such a laden moniker.
First, a bit of a meandering introduction to my preoccupation with creating the perfect peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. I grew up in Fairfield, Iowa until I was fifteen, and then my family moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and has lived there ever since. Large pieces of me still are connected to my Iowan roots, including the sense-memory of the most amazing, incredible, perfect peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies made by Cookies From the Heart in Fairfield – cookies to which I have never tasted the equal (and which apparently doesn’t have any sort of web presence). All my readers from Fairfield, you know what I’m talking about – and you should all run, not walk, to Everybody’s and get yourself one of those cookies right now just because you can.
Since I live in New York, not Fairfield, and thus don’t have regular access to those cookies, I have been working on figuring out how to make my own. I knew the key was bringing the full richness out of the peanut butter without overpowering the chocolate chips, but every recipe I tried fell short. So I made up my own recipe, tried it out, and lo and behold FINALLY I’ve found it and it was so obvious it is almost ridiculous. Oh brown butter: you come through every time.
Seriously: I ramped up every rich flavor-filled ingredient, added the brown butter, and added only enough flour as was needed to achieve the cookie consistency. The result is a magnificent creation. I did not eat dinner the night I made these. I only ate cookies.
Brown Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Very adapted from All Recipes
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Brown the butter over medium heat in a saucepan (see Brown Butter instructions) and let congeal in the refrigerator until solid.
To make the brown butter mixable, either leave it out until it has reached room temperature or microwave at low power until it is soft enough to blend but not melted.
With an electric mixer, cream the brown butter, peanut butter and sugars together until smooth and fluffy (about one minute). Add eggs, vanilla and corn syrup and mix on medium speed until combined. Stir flour, baking soda, and salt together, then add the dry mixture on low speed, beating until just combined. Fold in chocolate chunks.
Line your baking sheets with parchment paper (optional, but helps to avoid sticking). Drop large tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet, leaving at least half an inch between each cookie. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the cookie is set and does not indent when you touch it lightly. My oven bakes on the slow side, and I took these out at exactly 15 minutes, so if you know your oven let that be your guide.
Let the cookies set on the baking sheets for a minute or two before transferring them to wire racks to cool.
Now eat, possibly with milk to dunk them in, and give up any hope of wanting anything else to eat for quite a while. It’s not the worst thing in the world :)
