h o m e * e c o n o m i c s

Martha's Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies

I love Martha Stewart. I know I’m not alone in that, and I know it’s no surprise given the title of this blog, but I just thought I’d put it out there. This fall Andrew and I spent a few days in the Bay Area to celebrate his having earned his PhD. Our innkeeper in Yountville was a laid-back Phil-Hartman lookalike in Ugg boots who we caught on his way to yoga class. For some reason he started chatting with us about Martha Stewart, saying that he didn’t know why people give her such a hard time. “She’s just a lady!” he insisted more than once, “She’s just a lady, with feelings and problems like everyone else.” Although I grant her her feelings, I don’t really agree with his position that Martha is just a regular gal. Regular gals don’t start multimedia empires; that takes extraordinary drive and a fair amount of talent, as far as I’m concerned.

Martha-love is not universal, of course. Last year I was explaining to my mother-in-law over lunch how disappointed I’d been when I did not land a job working on books at MSLO. (The job went to an internal candidate, which I had to respect, since I was at that time resentfully moldering at a company that literally never promoted editors from within. Ahem.) It was all she could do to choke back the words, “Why would anyone want to work for Martha Stewart?” Which is funny, because as a crafty, can-do kind of woman I suspect that my MIL would actually enjoy the do-it-yourself attitude Martha promotes if she could get past the concomitant air of perfectionism.

When I finally left that dead-end job for the precarious but delightful world of freelance work, it seemed obvious that turning the TV on during the day would not be a Good Thing. I didn’t even have to think about it, really; goodness knows the internet provides ample distraction. But then I discovered that Martha is on at 1pm here, perfect for my lunchtime break. Have you seen this show? It is hilarious, especially when something goes a little wrong or Martha catches and announces a spelling error on the teleprompter. As a huge fan of being Correct, I find Martha’s passion for Correctness endearing. I wasn’t sure at first about the combination of celebrities and crafts/cooking, but it’s amazing. My only suggestion for improvement is that Isaac Mizrahi should be on at least once a week.

Although I don’t watch every day, I did catch a fair amount of Cookie Week and so was super-excited when my mom sent me Martha’s new cookie book for my birthday. The first cookie I turned to was the Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookie. It sounded like a perfect compromise dessert for me and Andrew—chocolate for him, chewy sugar cookie texture for me—so I got out my mixing bowls right away.

Even though I overbaked them just a little, these cookies were realllly good and very satisfying, kind of like a cookie version of a great chocolate brownie. For some reason, though, they are crazy big—the recipe instructs you to make only 8 cookies, each of which contains 2 tablespoons of butter (!). When I make them again I think I’ll make them smaller and cut the baking time a little. They would make amazing ice cream sandwiches.

Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies
From Martha Stewart’s Cookies

Preheat the oven to 375F. Whisk together 1.5 cups flour, .5 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder [I used un-Dutched cocoa powder, and it was fine], 1 teaspoon baking powder, and .5 teaspoon salt.

Cream together 1 stick softened (room temperature) unsalted butter and 1.5 cups sugar. Beat until pale and fluffy. Mix in 1 stick melted and cooled unsalted butter (or .5 cup melted and cooled vegetable shortening…but I don’t use shortening). Add 1 large egg and 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract; mix until creamy. Gently, gradually mix in the flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Using a 2.5 inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Leave about 4 inches between cookies. Bake until edges are firm, 18-20 minutes. Cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.

an obama supporter bakes hillary clinton's cat cora's snickerdoodles

Politics has been big in this apartment for the last two months. Maybe I should say instead “bigger than ever,” since it isn’t as if Andrew stopped paying attention between 2004 and now. He reads newspapers and political blogs as hungrily as I read food blogs, craft blogs, cookbooks, and Vogue*, which is good news for me because I effortlessly end up with something in my head other than food blogs, craft blogs, cookbooks, and Vogue: since last summer, he has routinely turned to me with excitement to share the latest national poll results or a graph about the shifting borders of congressional districts in Texas. Besides offering these statistical treasures, he’s also like my personal news digest. 

It’s a good thing we both support Barack Obama, because I have a feeling there would be trouble in the nest if we disagreed. (As the situation stands, the only domestic trouble I predict for us with regard to this election is that we are expecting our first child in early September. I have already warned Andrew that there will be problems if he is more interested in the run-up to November than he is in our baby!) Since at least 2004 I have believed that Hillary Clinton is unelectable. It isn’t very fair, and it isn’t 100% her fault, but it is, I think, true. And it isn’t because she’s a woman; it’s because she’s the woman she is, and a Clinton to boot. As a woman who feels no burning need to see a woman in the White House—it will happen, and why not to a woman who does not count “experience as First Lady” among her top qualifications for the office?—I’ve been surprised by the number of women who do yearn for this validation. Many women my age (30) simply seem to think it would be a good idea; many women my mother’s age seem downright angry that this first serious opportunity might not pan out. It’s made me question my experience as a woman in our society, and frankly it has made me very uncomfortable. I’m still working on it. But today, thanks in large part to the work done by women Clinton’s age, I definitely can’t think of white women who went to top schools as a significantly disadvantaged cohort.

The other great divide that has caused me discomfort is between Democrats who believe Republicans must be crushed and Democrats who believe their opponents must be lured into cooperation by sensible policies. The former group scoffs at the naïve idea that Republicans will ever cooperate; I think it’s naïve to count on vanquishing the Republicans, a feat whose means of accomplishment have eluded Democrats during my entire adult life. It definitely won’t be accomplished if the next Democratic president is elected with a slim margin and without a Democratic congress, as I believe would be the case if Clinton did manage to win. What’s more, I’m not convinced that she is significantly more experienced and effective than Obama, who has not exactly been at home giving teas and baking cookies. Her vote to authorize the war in Iraq is, as far as I’m concerned, unforgivable. (Yes, I felt this way at the time, too.) It shows poor judgment and reveals her to be calculating. Like you, I realized in high school philosophy class that all politicians are self-interested and calculating; but if their calculations end up hurting not just their constituents but also themselves and their own political prospects, that’s some pretty poor reckoning. With the judgment she has shown she would make America’s muddle worse; he would help Americans see the ways that they themselves can contribute to making it better. That’s why it’s so irritating when people claim he asks nothing of his supporters and just promises them magic. I don’t know whether he can deliver (because we don’t know whether any of these people would be able to deliver on their promises once elected), but at least he is willing to try a better way.

This is all by way of saying that yesterday after seeing Hillary Clinton’s Cat Cora’s Snickerdoodles on her campaign website (via Gawker), I couldn’t resist making them. In a short clip on Thursday night’s David Letterman Clinton announced the presence of the recipe on her website; the whole thing was very weird. I’m sure it was supposed to be lighthearted and self-deprecating, but I thought it rather leaden. Why would Hillary Clinton bring up cookies again, when they’re sure to stir up many of the sentiments that make people uncomfortable with her—whether you’re a homemaker insulted by the tea-and-cookies comment or a feminist irritated by the fact that she had to provide a chocolate chip cookie recipe to prove her suitability as First Lady? And I’m dying to know how Iron Chef Cat Cora got involved—is she a big Hillary supporter? Did the campaign decide to do the Letterman bit and then assign someone, “Quick, call Cat Cora, we need a cookie recipe!”

Anyway, the cookies were good. I don't think it would be very sporting of me to repost the recipe here after trying to make the case against her, but you can find it on HRC's campaign website.

*Disclaimer: I read some other stuff, too, just less devotedly than Andrew.

bittersweet chocolate truffles

I feel weird about Valentine’s Day. Most people seem to hate it when they’re single and love it when they’re in a relationship, but I’m the opposite. When I was a little girl, I really loved making Valentines, and my mother always gave us sweet presents in the morning before school. When I was a bigger girl and single, it seemed like a fine occasion to wear red or pink and drink margaritas with my friends. But when I’ve been in relationships (and now that I’m married) it just feels weirdly forced and inevitably disappointing. I don’t really want to celebrate it (and goodness knows Andrew doesn’t want to celebrate it), but I end up feeling cheated when we don’t. For some reason I can’t just pretend it isn’t going on. My most passive aggressive self emerges, and everyone has an unpleasant evening. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.

I decided to try to avoid the ordeal this year by making chocolate truffles. I’d get to make something I’d never made before, Andrew would get the chocolate dessert he claims I never make him, and it would feel celebratory in a low-key, at-home way. My reserves of bitterness prevented events from unfolding quite so smoothly (sorry, patient husband!), but—the truffles were very good, and I look forward to making them again. When I do, I will make them much smaller—I think I’d prefer them the size of two small bites—and might experiment with different flavors. They are much easier than pie and one of the nicest textures you could hope to sink your teeth into, a more voluptuous shot of pure chocolate than you get from a shattery bar.

Chocolate Truffles
Makes 20 truffles (or 36 small truffles, the size I would prefer)

This is Ina Garten’s recipe from Barefoot in Paris. I made a few adaptations: she uses half bittersweet chocolate and half semisweet, but I used all Valrhona 70% Guanaja. And she includes Grand Marnier and coffee, but I skipped them because I wanted very straightforward chocolate flavor (I increased the amount of cream, in case more liquid was necessary, which seemed to work out fine).

Chop finely and put in a bowl 7 ounces good bittersweet chocolate.

Heat 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons cream in a small saucepan until it boils. Immediately pour the hot cream through a fine strainer into the bowl of chocolate. Use a wire whisk to stir the cream and chocolate until the chocolate is completely melted. (If the chocolate doesn’t melt completely—mine did—put the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir just until it melts.) Whisk in 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Cover and chill 45 minutes to an hour, until pliable but firm enough to scoop.

With 2 teaspoons or a 1 1/4 inch ice cream scoop, make dollops of the chocolate mixture on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. (When I do this again, I’d like to use a 3/4 inch ice cream scoop or melon baller.) Refrigerate for about 15 minutes, until firm enough to roll into rough spheres (I waited 30 minutes, which was a mistake—the dollops were too hard to roll; it wasn’t a disaster, but I would have preferred spheres to lumps). Roll the spheres in cocoa powder and chill.

Ina says truffles are best when they’re allowed to set overnight in the refrigerator, but they are also pretty good right away. If you like, roll in powdered sugar before serving. Serve chilled or at room temperature. I think they’re best about 15 minutes out of the refrigerator, still cool but a little softened.

chocolate pound cake

This is a little picture I like to call “Pound cake don’t last long ‘round here.” 

In the first few days of the year I took my good intentions to Fairway and bought millet, quinoa, kasha, and wheatberries. Forsaking easy and delicious white rice and white bread, I was finally going to start eating more whole grains. Quinoa and wheatberries I love; kasha I like when it’s properly cooked, which is not always in my kitchen; and millet—well, I’ve only tried it once so far, and it wasn’t love at first bite. But I had decided to do this thing, and I moved the new sides into the rotation, where they were greeted as a sneaky punishment.

Two Fridays ago, Andrew came home from work and asked, “What’s for dinner?” “Sweet potatoes, broccoli, and millet, or we can go out.” We went out for hamburgers.

Last Friday, Andrew came home from work and asked, “What’s for dinner?” “Chard and kasha with mushrooms, or we can go out.” Convinced now that whole grains were just my way of forcing him to take me out to dinner, Andrew braved the kasha and chard but demanded a treat in return. How could I say no?

Chocolate Bread (Chocolate Pound Cake)

I don’t make pound cake very often because I love it not wisely but too well. I feel as if I am increasing the sum total of delight in the universe every time I enjoy a slice, and how can I resist that? This is Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe from The Cake Bible, which I have had since I was a little girl. Then I preferred Sara Lee pound cake to homemade, but I’ve come a long way in the last decade or two! Though I had to make a few adjustments according to what I had on hand, this turned out to be a lovely cake, incredibly tender, light but also good and chocolatey; Andrew said it was like a grown-up chocolate cake. We took it down in 48 hours.

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, whisk together until smooth 3 tablespoons boiling water and 3 tablespoons plus 1.5 teaspoons (.75 ounces) unsweetened cocoa. (She calls for Dutch-processed, but I had on hand only non-Dutched, and it was fine.) Allow to cool to room temp and then whisk in 1.5 teaspoons vanilla and 3 large eggs.

Combine in a large mixing bowl 1.25 cups (4.5 ounces) cake flour, .75 cup plus 2 tablespoons (6 ounces) sugar, .75 teaspoon baking powder, and .25 teaspoon salt. (If you don’t have cake flour, measure the same amount of all purpose flour but replace 2 tablespoons of it with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch.) Mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend everything evenly. Add half of the chocolate mixture and 13 tablespoons of softened butter and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. (I only had 10 tbs butter, so I added all of that plus 3 tbs vegetable oil, and the cake was still delightful.) Then beat on medium (in a stand mixer) or high (with a handheld mixer) for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and add the rest of the chocolate-egg mixture in 2 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition.

Grease and flour a loaf pan; line the bottom with parchment paper and grease and flour that, too, for best results. You’re supposed to use an 8x4 inch loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, but my loaf pan is 10x5. I just began checking for doneness at 30 minutes, and I think I took it out at about 40. (Every time I think I have mastered the skill of just figuring out when a cake is done, I have some mishap—overdone or raw in the middle—but this time I lucked out, and it was perfect. I took the cake out when a piece of spaghetti plunged into its heart came out looking wet but not chocolatey.) Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes.

cinnamon sugar palmiers: do it!

"It is hard to describe how sublime homemade palmiers are," Jane Daniels Lear writes in this month's Gourmet. Even more than the tantalizing pictures, this sentence convinced me that I had to make these palmiers, and soon; if J.D.L. wasn't even going to try to render their tastiness in words, they had to be pretty good. Besides, I had been wanting to try my hand at puff pastry (ok, modified, easier, less time consuming puff pastry) for a while.

"Do you like a recipe that you have to get out the ruler for?" Andrew teased; yes, yes I do. I had a lot of work to do on Sunday, and I found that I enjoyed the rhythm of going back and forth between the work and the pastry: work for an hour, roll out dough, chill; pay bills and deal with paperwork for an hour, roll out dough, chill; make dinner for an hour, roll out dough, chill; it went by pretty quickly. I really am a pastry chef at heart. There were a few hairy moments with folding sticky dough, but thanks to my silicone mat and my pastry scraper everything came out fine.

It's extremely gratifying to see the crumbly flour-butter-salt-water that you worried wouldn't come together turn into a smooth (and strangely elastic?) sheet of dough. It's even more gratifying to peek into the oven and see that the unpromisingly skinny little dough slivers with which you populated a cookie sheet have puffed up into hearts, just as they should.

A school of palmiers, just out of the oven. This is the first batch, which got a little burned but still tasted mighty fine. I had gotten the hang of it by the second batch but had also lost my patience with food photography!

Here is the recipe. I didn't tweak it at all, and my only complaint is that it's not fun to grate frozen butter. (I wonder if you could put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and grate the frozen butter in with the grating attachment without spoiling the texture of the dough? It would definitely be faster, so more butter would be more frozen when it hit the flour, surely a good thing.) I'm pretty sure my puff pastry wasn't perfect, but it was fantastic nonetheless. These cookies have a wonderfully pure butter-cinnamon-caramel taste that is not overwhelmingly sweet. (Wondering whether my fondness for butter and cinnamon sugar could be more easily stoked, I made cinnamon toast with some of the leftover cinnamon sugar, half expecting it to be just about as good as the palmiers. Silly girl. No comparison at all.) A good chunk of the pleasure of eating them is their texture; something about their light crunch invites compulsive eating because you (ok, I) want to experience that firm flakiness over and over again.

I know this close-up is blurry, but seriously, imagine sinking your teeth into those layers. Homemade palmiers, you and I will meet again.

Even though I made these not for Christmas but for my own greedy self, I'm sharing them virtually witih Food Blogga for her amazing Christmas cookie roundup. They'd make a terrific addition to any Christmas cookie plate or package (and for some reason I am obsessed with the idea of serving them with ice cream...maybe a good holiday dessert for those of you in warm places). Thanks, Food Blogga!

Two other things I am excited about: the Wintermarket downtown (via wonderful Manhattan User's Guide). And TasteBook (via wonderful Heidi). I have been wanting to figure out how to organize all my recipes in an internet-accessible way, and TasteBook seems perfect, though I am worried there is something I'm not getting about it (am I going to be required to order a book at some point?). I got started last night. That is all.

Houston travel advisory: Shipley donuts

For me, donuts mean SUNDAY and DAD (inexplicably, since mom was surely there, too, when we ate donuts; he wasn't serving them for dinner in her absence or anything like that). We always bought donuts from Shipley's; even as a small child I maintained intense brand loyalty and looked down on Dunkin, I knew not why. Now I know that Shipley Do-Nuts (that hyphen kills me!) is a little local chain that eventually spread through the south, not a national giant. I've lived away from Houston for years, during which time I have eaten donuts only rarely--Entemann's in college, maybe a Krispy Kreme in Penn Station, sublime Polish donuts in Greenpoint, wet cardboardy Dunkins in moments of desperation--but I visited this summer and discovered the most delicious variety Shipley's has to offer: glazed plain cake.

This donut is utterly irresistible: a delicious, tender, spice-flecked interior that melts in your mouths enclosed in a thin layer of glaze that softens the donut's crust but also offers a slight, pleasing resistance to your bite. I have had other glazed cake donuts before, but none hold a candle to this (though the ones in Greenpoint are not at all bad). Forget some spongy cake...this is the real angel food, as far as I'm concerned. Now I have to eat them every time I go home, on top of all the Mexican food and barbecue. Sigh.

(I should mention that I've never liked glazed donuts, though I did eat them from time to time during the Krispy Kreme kraze. Shipley's glazed donuts are very, very good, for those of you who like that sort of thing. But this glazed plain cake is the true queen of the display case.)

If you find yourself in the south, stop into a Shipley's, and try a kolache, too, while you're at it. N. B.: that link is well worth following--there's a recipe there for bread pudding made with day-old donuts. !

Middle of the Night Molasses Cookies

In the past few years I have decided that one of the major advantages of adulthood is freedom to bake. Maybe you don’t have long, lazy summer vacations any more, and maybe you miss slumber parties, but you can make cookies any time you please, and you can sneak as much raw dough as you like.

(Some of you may have had baking freedom as children, but no one in my family was overly friendly with the oven. In fact, my sister and I once adventurously made a batch of cookies while my parents were out, and the reward for our intrepidness was an oven floor covered with dough that was literally blazing, having spilled off the baking sheet. We turned off the oven and let the fire burn itself out, but the lesson we learned about the dangers of following your sweet tooth was not so quick to die.)

Baking cookies makes me feel as carefree and mischievous as a child and as powerful and self-determined as a woman. They’re so easy: crave a cookie at 9pm on a lazy Sunday and you can have a freshly-baked specimen in your hand by 10. Maybe they’re too easy: when I bake a really good batch, I feel obliged (in a life-is-short kind of way) to give in and eat as many as I want. But somehow the mediocre batches seem to disappear pretty quickly, too, and it isn’t all Andrew’s doing.

I have a secret, actually: I’ve started eating cookies in the middle of the night. This is New York, and my kitchen is one wall of the living room, which is also the only room. Essentially we live in a kitchen from which a bed is separated by French doors. When I wake up in the middle of the night and stumble across the apartment to the bathroom, I cannot avoid passing the cookie jar. Sleepily scarfing one down before falling back into bed somehow seems less crazy in the dreamy dark, however sheepish I feel in the morning. I wish I could blame this on Ambien or some other drug, but it’s just acute cookie madness. And let me tell you, my tummy is not looking so acute any more. I’m going to give you a wonderful cookie recipe, but please exercise your right to bake responsibly. Bakers with little willpower, beware!

Mary Jones from Cleveland’s Molasses Cookies
from Sunday Suppers at Lucques

Makes about 20 big cookies

These are big, flat, soft, and spicy, just like the Archway molasses cookies I loved as a child and gave up in my 20s because they were full of transfats and other nasty things. I was first thrilled to find the recipe in Suzanne Goin’s reliably wonderful cookbook and then shocked to see that it calls for shortening, which I just don’t use. I had learned from America’s Test Kitchen that creaming sugar with melted and cooled butter (instead of merely softened, room-temperature butter) yields a cookie that is chewy instead of crisp, and so I substituted melted butter for the shortening. The results are outstanding.

-Preheat oven to 325. Melt a stick of butter (1/2 cup) and allow it to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
-Sift together:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground ginger

And then stir in ½ tsp salt.
-Cream together ¼ cup molasses, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 extra large egg, and the melted butter. (Suzanne Goin recommends 3 minutes on medium in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk, but my stand mixer is too inconveniently stored to haul out for something as easy as cookies. I use the handheld mixer and beat for 3 minutes on high.) Mix in half the dry ingredients on low speed; scrape down the sides; and mix in the rest of the dry ingredients.
-Chill the dough for 15 minutes. Suzanne Goin rolls the dough out to 1/8 inch thickness and uses a cookie cutter, because her cookies are destined for ice cream sandwiches. I can’t be bothered with this and instead deposit 1.5 tablespoon lumps of dough on two parchment paper lined baking sheets, then flatten them to about ¼ inch with the bottom of a glass dipped in water. Sprinkle with turbinado or granulated sugar and bake 12 or 13 minutes, depending on how crispy you like your cookies.

Tarte Tatin

Wow, so, it's been an awfully long time. When Andrew and I got engaged, I dropped blogging to make room in the schedule for wedding planning. I didn't drop cooking, though; and in fact, when I cooked especially delicious things, I felt kind of anxious about the fact that I wouldn't be able to take their picture and write them up. I was afraid I would forget. Now that we're an old married couple, I'll start again, I think, and I'll do it tonight instead of waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.

I was moved to action in part by The Art of Simple Food, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday. It is so lovely, to look at and to read, that I had to cook from it immediately. Last night was braised chicken legs; tonight, tarte tatin, something I have never eaten before but have always, always wanted to make--caramel! apples! crust!

I had enough dough for an 11 inch buttery crust in the freezer--Ina Garten's crostata dough, which I thought would do--and last weekend at the Greenmarket Andrew had thoughtfully bought twice as many apples as he was supposed to. Because I'm a slow worker, it took me 35 minutes just to peel and core the apples. The finished product was lovely to look at (um...in a rustic sort of way; my camera battery is dead and the charger is nowhere to be found, so lucky for me I will not have to substantiate this claim with a photo). It tasted straightforward and not supersweet; I liked it (and Andrew did, too, to my surprise...I didn't think it would be his kind of thing), but I guess I was expecting the caramel to be thick and sticky. Instead, it seemed to have gone liquid, softening the apples and suffusing them with flavor. Next time I would try to get the caramel a little closer to burnt, I think, or add a more generous pinch of salt; mine was very dark but could have used more flavor. I would also use firmer apples, as suggested.

Still...I am very excited about this book, which is the book I've been waiting for: everyday food from Alice Waters.

-Roll out sweet tart crust into an 11 inch round. Refrigerate until ready to use.
-Peel, core, and quarter 3.5 pounds apples. I used Macoun and Cortland instead of the recommended Granny Smith. Don't worry if they start to brown...the caramel will turn them completely brown in the end anyway. Preheat the oven to 400.
-In a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, combine 2 tbs butter and 6 tbs sugar. (Recipe called for a 9 inch skillet, but I used my 12 inch because that's what I have. It seemed to work fine, and in fact, I was not able to fit 3.25 pounds of apples into my 12 inch skillet.) Swirl and stir the butter and sugar until you have a bubbly, dark brown caramel. You want it to get as dark as it can without burning. When it has reached that point, remove it to a rack to cool while you further slice the apples. I gave my caramel a very very scant sprinkle of fleur de sel at this point and would use a little more next time.
-While the caramel cools, halve the apple quarters lengthwise. Arrange them, round side down and wedge pointing up, in two concentric circles in the caramel skillet. Then fill in the spaces between the apples with apple wedges pointing down.
-Lay the dough on top of the apples, tucking it between them and the skillet. Make 5 little slits in the dough with a knife, so steam can escape. Bake 35-40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.
-Let rest 5 minutes on a rack, then invert onto a plate. We did not have whipped cream, but I wish we had, or maybe some cinnamon ice cream.

easy salty caramels

I am not completely insensible to the appeal of chocolate, but what really tempts me in the dessert department is butter and burnt sugar. Nine days out of ten I’d take apple crisp over warm chocolate cake. Making my own caramel always seemed a scary prospect, right up there with deep frying in terms of potential injury to person and property, but last year I made a few baby steps toward caramel self-sufficiency: I made a very light caramel sauce for sticky buns; when that went off without a hitch, I tentatively made caramel for coffee caramel ice cream; and with that under my belt, I produced a creamy caramel to top the caramel-pecan cheesecake from the holiday Chow. All this meant that when Amanda Hesser and Mark Bittman both published recipes for caramel candies in one week, I was ready to fill a saucepan with sugar and go.

What I was not ready for was the salty caramel’s crack-like addictive properties. Curse you, Amanda Hesser! This substance is easily produced in your home—more easily than you’d ever guess, if you have a candy thermometer—and irresistible. You can taste the butter and the salt (at moments, I thought, even the cream), and their chewiness is indescribably satisfying. Please note that my chocolate-oriented friends pronounced my caramels 1)“disgusting, how can you put that into your body,” and 2)“yeah, those are okay,” so not everyone was as smitten as I was. It must be admitted, too, that after being cut into sharp, glossy ranks of delicious caramel squares, they sloooowly collapsed into formless (but still-delicious) caramel puddles—so you’ll want to cover them in chocolate or wrap them up in neat little packets instead of leaving them to their own devices as I did.

--Line an 9-by-9 inch pan with aluminum foil, making it lap over the sides, and grease with vegetable oil.

--Bring 1 1/3 cups heavy cream to a boil in a medium-sized saucepan. This is not as scary as it sounds. Add 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup light corn syrup, and 1/3 cup honey; stir constantly with a wooden spoon until it boils again. Cook, stirring occasionally (we stirred only very occasionally and it was fine), until the mixture reaches 257 degrees on a candy thermometer, which will take somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.

--Remove the pan from the heat and, being careful about splattering, stir in 6 tbs butter in cubes, 1 tsp vanilla and 2 teaspoons fleur de sel or sea salt. Adding these things to the hot sugars will make the sugars hiss and spit, so wear oven mitts and long sleeves if you are nervous. Pour into the prepared pan and let cool.

--When the block of caramel is completely cool, turn it onto an oiled cutting board, oil your knife, and cut it into squares of a pleasing size.

gougeres

When I was given a very nice bottle of Veuve Clicquot rose champagne for Christmas, I heaved a sigh of relief (New Year's Eve champagne all taken care of) and, in a matter of seconds,  resolved to make gougeres to go with the bubbles. I think I first heard of gougeres in a review of the restaurant Artisinal. I never made it to Artisinal, but I couldn't stop thinking about the hot, delicate cheese puffs they served at their bar, as described by the reviewer. They sounded impossibly heavenly. Finally, in December 2004, Per Se served me a gougere with a flute of champagne as I looked over the menu. It was good, but that Times reviewer (was it you, Grimes?) had done me a disservice, making me dream it into something greater than any cheese puff could possibly be.

Still, I wanted to make my own--even brought down to earth, a cheese puff is still pretty good. I used Ina Garten's recipe from Barefoot in Paris, which was easier than I expected. First you make a kind of roux, then you pulse that in the food processor with cheese and eggs. You can make the puffs with a pastry bag, but, finding myself bagless, I shaped mine with spoons. Unfortunately, I felt as if I had been cooking all day and so was not patient enough to make them quite as small as they should have been. The photos will give you an idea how outsized they were. Ina seemed to suggest you bake two trays at once, and so I did. Since they baked completely unevenly, I will do one tray at a time if I do it again. The one change I made (besides my lazy shaping) was to substitute cayenne pepper for nutmeg, which I do not keep around (though I'd like to).

What's great about gougeres is how light and airy they are--they won't spoil your appetite at all. (I think this might be my secret objection to them, too; somehow I want them to be more substantially cheesy. Bad American.) In fact, they are hollow in the center. Thinking this was a result of some error of mine, I went to my Larousse, which informs me that baked choux dough, which is what a gougere is, should be hollow. (It's the same kind of dough you use for cream puffs and eclairs; you just pipe the hole full once the puff is baked.)

[I was getting some weird traffic to this picture and had to remove it]

No, I didn't eat the whole tray of gougeres (and yes, I am dressed for preteen day camp on New Year's Eve...it was a night of strenuous cooking that took a turn for the worse, as I will relate in the fullness of time). Ina says you can freeze them, then reheat at 425 degrees for 5 minutes. Now I have a bag full of frozen gougeres waiting for lucky visitors.

-Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
-Heat over medium heat 1 cup of milk, 1 stick of unsalted butter, 1 tsp kosher salt, 1/8 tsp black pepper, and a shake of cayenne pepper until just before the milk begins to boil. When your psychic powers tell you the milk is just about to boil, dump in 1 cup of flour and beat it with a wooden spoon until everything comes together. Cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring all the time.
-Dump the flour ball into your food processor. Pulse in all at once 4 extra-large eggs (I used 5 large, which was fine), 1/2 cup grated Gruyere, and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan; pulse until incorporated into a smooth, thick dough.
-Pipe or spoon dots onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. The dots of dough should be 1.25 inches wide and .75 inch tall. Brush the tops of the gougeres with a wash of 1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water. Sprinkle a little extra grated Gruyere on top. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown.