The Way the Cookie Crumbles

My love of baking began when I was little when my mom and I used to bake sugar drop cookies with oil (I never then and still don't now understand why "with oil" was part of the recipe's name) once every couple of months. We never branched out to try other flavours - every time we decided to bake I was insistent that we make those ones. They were fairly simple but I always opened The Joy of Cooking to the right page to follow along as we baked, the page stained with drops of oil and grains of sugar from years of making the recipe. (This habit of looking at the recipe even when I make it all the time and really should (do) know it by heart persists to this day, with many of my cookbook pages similarly stained with ingredients.) My favourite part was at the end when we got to dip the balls of dough into sugar, and then put them on the cookie sheet.

For the six years between 1996- 2002 when I went to the same school, I used to go to Bagelworks (just across the street) and buy a peanut peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie at least twice, usually more times, a week. Oh my gosh those cookies were delicious - especially when I could get them warm/fresh out of the oven when the chocolate was still melted. Sadly, Bagelworks (which at some point between 1996-2002 changed its name to Bakeworks but I always still called it Bagelworks) closed that location (although it is now this popular vegetarian restaurant called Fresh which I like) and I haven't had one of those cookies in years.

In the fall of 2008, the month of October to be exact, I began to bake from scratch for the first time (in way too long) since my mom and I used to bake those sugar drop cookies with oil. I was in Austin at the time and was taking this seminar on early Modern European History and I had to present on the readings to the class and was very nervous. I decided a good way to make myself feel better and make the class more fun was to bake cookies to bring with me for everyone. I went for chocolate chip as it is just a classic cookie type and very reliable. I just googled chocolate chip cookie recipe and found this one which is still my go-to recipe today. When I was a kid my brother used to make really delicious chocolate chip cookies (I think he got the recipe from The Joy of Cooking too) so probably as a result of that chocolate chip has always been my favourite cookie type. So I made them that day and they were a huge hit, and since then I've been a faithful cookie baker.

I think two of the secrets to my chocolate chip cookies' deliciousness and success are that I always add either walnuts or pecans; and I use milk chocolate, instead of regular, chocolate chips. I've had people who take cooking/baking really seriously and cookbook authors (including Dorie Greenspan) go on about how the quality of chocolate used in chocolate chip cookies is so super important and that it's best to buy expensive chocolate and chop it into chunks or chips yourself for all your cookie needs. I couldn't disagree more. The one time I had homemade chocolate chip cookies which had been made with expensive chocolate I wasn't particularly impressed. In fact, I mostly thought how my cookies using regular old Hersheys or Toll House or grocery store brand chocolate chips are better. (Is that a terrible thing to think? I hope not :) ) I agree that quality ingredients produce quality end results but I think that applies much more to dinners and hearty food or desserts involving fruit than it does to cookies.

As my previous blog post attests, I am a cake girl through and through and will always love it best. Cookies, however, do have their charms and are better than cakes in a few ways. First, baking cookies usually requires less ingredients and easier clean up because I beat cookie dough by hand and not with an electric mixer. Second, cookies bake in 8-10 minutes which is much shorter than cakes. Third, one of my favourite things about cookie recipes in general is the mix of both white and brown sugar in chocolate chip cookie recipes. Such a fabulous combo! Fourth, it's easier and better to eat cookies straight out of the oven. I love them freshly baked when they are still hot and the chocolate is still melted. I also love them an hour later, 2 hours later, the next day, etc. But being able to eat them off the tray is fabulous, and something I can't do with cakes which need time to cool before they can be eaten. Two important things that homemade cookies and cakes do share, however, is that both give one's kitchen/house/apt a wonderful aroma while baking, and that it is so hard to eat just one cookie or just one piece of cake.

Before I finish this entry, I have one more cookie related item to write about. Around the end of March/beginning of April, K. made (and gave me one) these chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. They were so good! And they made me realize that I still had an almost full bag of oats in my cupboard (left over from the fall when I decided that instead of making my own granola every week - 10 days I was just going to buy Nature's Path granola) and that I needed to use it before it expired in July. So when I got home that day, I googled chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipes and I found one. An amazing one that resulted in cookies which that got lots of compliments and tasted super delicious and which I'm really happy about. Here's the recipe - you should try it: you won't regret it! But note: the walnuts are optional and substitute in milk chocolate chips.

Oh I'm craving a cookie right now! And writing about those Bagelworks peanut butter chocolate chunk ones makes me crave those, and since I've never before baked peanut butter cookies I think I'm going to try to make them this summer!

I want to be the girl with the most cake

In the 2000 teen romantic comedy Down to You (which my friends and I watched at my 17th birthday party) Julia Stiles' character at one point exclaimed: "cake is my world." (Truth be told I was considering naming this blog post that. But I love the line from the Hole song so much I had to go with that. I’ve always loved it. Ever since I first heard it when I was 16.) It was undeniably a kind of odd thing to say, but I also got it. Cake really is so good and so delicious and so satisfying. I like to ask people if they prefer cake or ice cream. When I asked E. she said neither, and that her favourite was pie. I guess on one level I get that some people prefer pie - different tastes and everything - but on another level I just don't get it at all. Cake is so much better! It’s so moist and sweet and icing is such a great (and necessary) addition that pie does not have. Pies also do not have layers, and layers separated by the same icing you put on the top of the cake are crucial. Yes, for icing and layers and more, pie doesn’t even come close.

Back when I was a kid and all through high school and actually through university too, I was the cake mix queen. My favourite was Duncan Hines Fudge Marble and I acted like I had this special talent for baking that cake when really anyone who followed the instructions on the back of the box, who added the oil, water and eggs, would come out with the same tasting cake. It wasn’t until the winter I was 25 that I finally started baking cakes (well really cupcakes, but those deserve and will be the topic of a future blog post all on their own) from scratch. I am proud to say I’ve left my cake mix days behind me, and now love trying out new recipes. I love looking for recipes online but I also got this amazing and huge baking cookbook called Baking by Dorie Greenspan (see picture below). It is so massive that at times it seems almost a bit intimidating. There are so many recipes to try! Some are annoyingly and unnecessarily complicated like baking cheesecake over a pot of boiling water; but there are tons I still haven’t tried but am very eager to.

The best recipe I have made out of it is for a classic coffee cake. (It’s funny because while I do love icing, I also adore this coffee cake. Just goes to show there’s a time and a place for everything. This coffee cake is great in the morning, for snacks, and pretty much anytime you want it. Whereas I think I would always feel guilty eating (and therefore never do eat) a big piece of icing laden cake in the morning.) Dorie writes that the coffee cake never goes out of fashion. She said she first made it in the 1960s and that it has been consistently good since then. While I obviously wasn’t around (let alone eating coffee cake in the 1960s) I agree that it will likely always be a fashionable cake. I think the key to its long lasting popularity lies in two of its ingredients: cinnamon and sour cream. Both have such unique tastes in baking (sour cream is my favourite condiment for nachos and so good in baking too) and really make the cake an absolute delight to eat.

While not my favourite place in the world, I was consistently able to eat great cakes in Austin. The Whole Foods in Austin is the original first ever Whole Foods in the world. It has an amazing cake selection. My absolute favourite was the tres leches cake. It’s hard to describe it - it’s name in English means three milks. It was a white cake base covered in a delicious creamy icing and also soaked in this milky syrup. I’m not doing that great a job describing it but I can assure you the taste was just unbelievably delicious. I used to go get it maybe once a month? I could have eaten a piece of it few times a week though. I also once bought a lemon blackberry cake there which had real blackberries and just the right amount of lemons. Sadly, over the two years I was in Austin I only saw (and bought) that cake once. It left a strong (and good) impression though. My other favourite place to get cake was at the Mexicana bakery in south Austin. I first found out this bakery existed when Leah gave me one of their wall calendars (which you can get for free) for 2006, back when we were both still at Berkeley. I was so excited to finally go there (and get calendars – which I did for 2008 and 2009) when I moved to Austin. The bakery is open 24 hours a day (although the latest I went there was probably 11 and the earlier 8 am?) and they had this really simple (no layers, just a sheet cake) white/vanilla cake with pink icing called pink cake. It was so good and so cheap. I still miss it!

A decent enough substitute but not up to the same standards as the cakes at Whole Foods is this little Italian (sort of? The people who own it/work there are definitely not Italian but it has an Italian name and lots of Italian food on the menu) restaurant D. and I like to get take out from. I think there was a stretch in February where we went and picked up food there 3 Fridays in a row. Anyway, they also have this glass case with lots of big cakes that ooze (in a good way…) icing. We’ve tried red velvet (really good), carrot (also delicious) and a bunch of different chocolate ones, some better than others. We actually haven’t had any cake from there in a while and I’m suddenly craving some. I’ll have to get some soon.

To close out this post, I am glad to say that when it comes to baking cakes, I make a fabulous cheesecake (whose recipe does not require a hot water bath but does include sour cream! Yeah!); and Dorie’s coffee cake. My mom makes this really great vanilla cake with chocolate icing (with a layer!) which I have made a few times, and while it was good, it wasn’t as good as when my mom makes it so I’d like to master that. And, ever since my time in Austin, I have wanted to make my own version of Whole Foods’ lemon blackberry cake. Mine will consist of: a basic white/vanilla cake with a layer of lemon buttercream icing and fresh blackberries in the middle and then more lemon buttercream icing and blackberries on top. What am I waiting for? I need to make this soon!