Pre-Easter-Butter-Is-Awesome-Overload

You can imagine my joy, dear reader, when Mark Bittman published his now million-times-shared-and-retweeted-and-emailed article entitled "Butter is Back" in the Times last week.

In response to this article I have only one question to ask:

HOW AM I DOING, BITTMAN?

LEMON SHORTBREAD

Ok, so this is ostensibly still part of my aforementioned Donna Hay kick, and credit goes to her for the recipe. However, being me, I totally changed it. Her version was for shortbread circles, which I didn't want. I wanted shortbread fingers, which I always think look nice and organised. And I also knew that it would be significantly easier and less messy if I just manhandled the dough into a baking tin and cut it into rectangles rather than rolling it out and cutting it into circles. So. Yeah.

Scrappy Shortbread Shortcut!

The recipe below is the one I used aka invented on the fly based on kitchen contents and oven times and desired shortbread results. See the BEETLE NOTES for what and why it made sense to me at the time.

LEMON SHORTBREAD

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 sticks butter, soft
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbs lemon zest (or lemon extract) 

Beat butter and confectioner's sugar in your mixmaster until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and lemon and mix again. Add the flour in batches, beating after each addition until the dough comes together. 

Press the dough into a non stick baking pan (I used my 9 x 13 brownie pan here), aiming for about one centimetre thickness all over (what I think of as the standard shortbread finger thickness but honestly what the hell do I know). 

If, like me, you have excess dough after that, you can absolutely pull out a springform pan and press the dough into the bottom, with the express intent of cutting it into petticoat tails. Or you can make thicker shortbread fingers. Or you can freeze the dough and make more later. 

All roads lead to shortbread, is what I'm saying.

Score the dough BEFORE you put it in the oven. With a paring knife, lightly draw the lines where you want the cookie breaks to be, and use a fork to pierce the top of each piece a few times.

Fingers 

Petticoat Tails

Bake at 350 degrees for about 60 minutes. You will have to keep checking because the cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your dough in the pan. It's done when the top is a nice deep golden brown. 

You'll probably have to rescore the dough at least once if not twice during cooking. And you definitely want to do this. Because shortbread is so crumbly, trying to cut it once it's cooked and cooled will just result in total destruction, and you will be presenting people will broken bits of cookie and explaining that they were SUPPOSED to be rectangles and triangles. Scoring and rescoring just ensure that they break evenly and cleanly and it makes everyone's lives so much easier and more enjoyable in the long run. 

Let it cool in the pan completely before finishing off the breaks and removing. 

BEETLE NOTES

So Donna Hay had these cut into 4mm thick circles (???) and a resulting baking time of 8-10 minutes. Mine did take almost an hour (which is the standard shortbread baking time I've come across) because they were significantly thicker and also done in a baking pan as opposed to alone on a baking sheet. 

She also says to swap out 1/2 cup of the all-purpose flour with rice flour. This I am sure is interesting. I would imagine it makes everything a bit lighter, and possibly a teensy bit sweeter. However, I had no rice flour, so it was all all-purpose for me. 

Same reasoning behind the lemon zest actually. It was a Wednesday, I'd used up my lemons with fish on Sunday night, I only had lemon extract. Subbing it for the same amount seemed to work, the dough smelt nice and lemony, and my most excellent tasters reported that the taste absolutely came through, but was not overpowering or too tart.

I have to pause here and say that this winter especially I've had such good luck with using extracts in place of zests. I know it's not the same thing, and definitely much less "farm to table" but at the same time it means I can buy a bottle that keeps almost indefinitely and then when I need it it's there, as opposed to buying a lemon which I then have to throw away if I don't use it pretty soon. It's also proved itself a really neat and fun way to add flavour to things, thereby helping me perform my insane Beetle culinary experiments. 

These went down a TREAT with Mum and my LL's. I ended up giving Mum the pan of petticoat tails, and the pan of fingers to the LL's. They reported back that the Lemon Shortbread fulfilled their two basic criteria, namely that a) lemony and b) buttery. They approved. Huzzah. 

I also had the additional approbation of aunt and uncle who visited last weekend. I put them plus Lemon Thumbprints on a cookie plate and sent it out to the library after dinner. Ten minutes later when I was just putting the tea things together, my aunt came back with the cookie plate, upon which only the shortbread were present.

Me: Do you need more Thumbprints? 

Aunt: No. 

Me: What's up?

Aunt: [handing me the plate] These need to stay out here. Away from me. 

So there you have it, Bittman. Butter is back, it tastes like lemon, and it is so good. 

Blackberry + Plum + Ginger + Almond = Yay

First off,  dear reader, I am sorry to have neglected you for the last week and a half. There were SCHOOL VISITS and INTERVIEW MARATHONS that had to happen, and as much as I would prefer otherwise, those kind of do take precedence. Imagine what my future employment prospects would look like if I responded to an overnight interview request with "Yeah, I have these jam bars to make, so Monday's not really going to work for me . . . "

*brief pause where I urge the collected readership of this blog, all 14 of you lovelies, to cross your fingers and toes and eyes and anything else crossable. TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE.*

HOWEVER. I am back at the farm, back in my day-to-day attire of oversized leggings and ancient sweater vests (for real, I didn't even REMEMBER I owned the one I'm currently sporting but it's awesome so there), and back to KITCHEN ADVENTURES. 

To whit:

Let's also state for the record that I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what day it is anymore, because on Wednesday morning I pulled out mixing bowls and measuring cups and started getting ingredients together for Easter Cake, and Mum, ever pleasant and accommodating, said, "Oh, are you doing a trial bake of that?" and I was all "No, what are you talking about don't be ridiculous it's EASTER ON SUNDAY, DUH" and she was all "Um, DUH YOURSELF, look at the calendar" and then I was all "Ohhhhh" and put the marzipan and powdered sugar back in the cupboard. 

I've been on a Donna Hay magazine kick recently. Sometimes it's just fun / depressing to flip through and pretend that I am a glamourous Australian 30-something spending a posh glamping weekend with my equally glamourous friends, and we're nostalgically indulging in salted caramel popcorn and homemade chocolate swirl marshmallows and later on we're all going to go ice skating before returning my floor-to-ceiling-windowed-high-rise-with-24-hour-amenities-and-walk-in-closets-and-state-of-the-art-applianced apartment and roasting an entire grass-fed pig with root vegetables and herbs whilst lounging in front of my fireplace and reveling in how beautiful and successful and carefree we all are. 

And sometimes during these little imaginations I think "maybe if I make the Blackberry Ginger Bar recipe that's featured in this spread I'll get a job and move to Australia and get prettier and more fashionable and my life will become like that. 

And then I go WORTH A TRY, BEETLE. WORTH A TRY. 

It's been 2 days. 

Nothing yet. 

BLACKBERRY PLUM GINGER BARS

Note the addition of "Plum" to the title of this recipe. I needed to make up some jam volume, and I'd cleaned out the Blackberry and was gazing in blind culinary panic at the jam section of the cupboard, and lo and behold a jar of Damson Plum came to my rescue, and . . . long story short . . . these became Blackberry PLUM bars.

The "ginger" of the name refers to the dough itself rather than the filling, which is vaguely different and fun. This is SERIOUS dough, you guys. SERIOUSLY AWESOME. More than just flour and butter and ginger, it's got cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and almonds. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 sticks plus 2 tbs butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups almond meal
• 1 tbs ground ginger
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• Blackberry Jam
• confectioner's sugar (for optional dusting purposes. I straight up FORGOT to to this until right now and it's too late because the librarians have already eaten them all so sorry, guys)

Beat the butter, brown sugar, and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, beat everything together until it's pale and fluffy. Add the flour, baking powder, almond meal, ginger, and mixed spice and beat again. 

Divide the dough in half, wrap each piece in clingfilm, and refrigerate for at least half an hour. 

When it's ready, roll out one of the halves so it fits the bottom of a 9 x 12 inch or similar baking tin. (Mine is 9 x 13 for example.) Spread the jam over the base as evenly as you can. Roll out the remaining dough, slightly larger this time, and lay over the jam, squishing it at the edges. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until the top is browning and the jam is bubbling. When it's cool, slice it up, and if you remember to dust it with confectioner's sugar so much the better but I don't think it's a dealbreaker. 

BEETLE NOTES

Obviously, I could never just make the recipe. Psh. That would be sensible and practical, and why would I bother being either of those things, huh? BORING. 

The big switch out happened because the recipe calls for 3 cups of almond meal. 

Ahem. 

1. THAT'S A LOT OF ALMOND MEAL

2. I only had HAZELNUT meal (I mean, what kind of person does that make me?)

3. I toyed with the idea of using hazelnut, but somehow with the ginger and spice and blackberry (this was before the plum) I didn't feel it would be a perfect combination. I don't know, hazelnut has a whole different personality than almond, and a straight substitution was making me all nervous and twitchy. 

In the end, I used straight flour for the whole thing (3 extra cups) plus 2 teaspoons of almond extract plus a few tablespoons of milk for the added moistness that nut meals have. And it didn't ruin them. It gave them an almond-y-ness that was delightfully aromatic and that made me glad I didn't opt for hazelnuts or get rid of the "nut" idea completely. 

The "mixed spice" phenomenon is something you only encounter with British or Australian recipes. It's technically I think just a mix of "the baking spices" so I did the incredibly accurate and easily repeatable method of "pull out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom and give each on a hearty couple of shakes over the mixing bowl." Again, didn't ruin them.

As previously discussed, I threw half a jar of Damson Plum Jam in there because the Blackberry on its own was looking so woeful and anemic and sad and my theory is that if you're going to bother making Jam Bars, MAKE THEM JAMMY. And plums and blackberries are quite friendly with each other, especially when almonds and spice are involved.

I love how in the recipe Donna is all "roll out the dough to 3mm thick and place in a baking tray then roll out another rectangle and place over the jam filling" AS IF IT WERE AS EASY AS THAT. I am here to tell you, dear reader. IT IS NOT  AS EASY AS THAT. It might have been because of my tweaks, it might have been because I almost never chill it for the required time because I'm too impatient and always want to get the show on the road already, it might have been because, unlike Donna Hay and everyone in her magazine, I am not perfect and my dough ALWAYS sticks to the rolling pin, tears, squishes, and generally behaves like a recalcitrant sticky mess.

For the base layer, I rolled it out to something generally resembling a large rectangle, then used my fingers and my palms to shove it into the required shape and tried to make it even all over. For the top . . . well . . . funny you should mention that . . . hilarious, actually. You'll notice in the photos that the top of this is . . . how shall I put it . . . patchworked? That is because I rolled out a BEAUTIFUL rectangle of lightly-spiced-almond-scented dough, picked it up at the edges, and watched it immediately rip and fall and crumple and generally commit dough suicide on my pastry mat. This happened the second time I did it. And the third.

I gave up after that and rolled out three small rectangles and laid them end to end. Then patched the holes where the jam was showing through. It wasn't the most beautiful thing in the world. In fact I think my glamourous 30-something Australian counterparts would have taken one look at them and gone to the apartment next door where they know how to do things RIGHT. But. I figured out that if you slice the bars along the line of the secret dough overlap, it doesn't show. SO THERE. TAKE THAT. ARMCHAIR KARATE CHOP OF TRIUMPH.

Once they were cooled, ugly or not they sliced up really well with only minimal crumbling at the bottom. And some of them actually were quite pretty and not deformed in appearance. See below.

This is the part of the post where I am thankful to have a mother who is happy eating the visual rejects.

She's cool like that.

Next up, Lemon Shortbread from last week. As soon as I go put on another sweater vest. 

(Sort of) Jammie Dodgers of Hope

I broke another coffee pot this morning.

I say "another" since this is, rather spectacularly, the third coffee pot I have broken in my life, specifically in the last 5 years. Both of us at Beetle HQ are pretentious and affected and therefore eschew "pedestrian" drip coffee in favour of French Press. And because we both drink it at the same time and are freakishly possessive of our own blends of coffee (truly, the ridiculousness in our house knows no bounds and is I believe getting worse every day), we employ TWO presses every morning, one for each of us. This may seem crazy, but were you ever to witness the alternative and its subsequent emotional and psychological fallout, you would understand.

My French Press is (or rather, was until two hours ago) a gorgeous double walled thing of beauty from Bodum. (see image at right) It is now a large heap of shards in the bottom of the rubbish bin. This time I actually, helpfully, managed to shatter it on top of the kitchen block. I'd like to think that as time goes on I grow more discerning in my shattering skills. The first time was truly glorious. I smashed it against the faucet in the kitchen sink and spent the next two hours trying to pick tiny pieces of glass out of the drain. Points for contained mess, but serious deductions for length of time involved. The second time I really and truly dropped it on the floor of my apartment, reducing the amount of walkable space in my already infinitesimal kitchen to approximately 6 square inches, and pushing back "coffee and newspaper time" significantly as of course, being me, I couldn't move forward until I had swept, dusted, vacuumed, and for good measure washed the kitchen floor.

I would like to point out that one of the aspects of the double walled pot, as advertised on the Bodum website, is that it is, a direct quote, "unbreakable."

I live to defy convention, clearly.

Anyway. This morning brought the grand total to three. And after vacuuming, apologising to the cat for several minutes, and digging out one of the emergency pots we have above the stove (oh, dear reader, we have three backups FOR REAL YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW FAR THIS GOES.) I was able to enjoy coffee and my current murder mystery (Raven Black by Ann Cleeves; Book 1 of the Shetland Island Quartet), only occasionally interrupted by Mum asking the standard morning questions like "ok, so what IS a jpeg, exactly?" and "why is everyone on Twitter it just seems so stupid?"

But moving on. To cookies.

The criteria this week was that I had to use the Strawberry Fig jam we'd bought at a fair in the Berkshires. (I find it helps if I give myself SOME kind of guideline because otherwise it's just a recipe free for all brain overload and the sheer number of baking possibilities makes me hyperventilate. I swear, you guys, sometimes being me is not the funnest thing in the world.)

But. Just because I've narrowed it down to "involving Strawberry Fig Jam" does not mean that the search is over. Far from it. I'm trying to continue down the "weather change by suggestion baking" path by making things that are vaguely spring-like, or at least not overtly cold-weather. So I toyed with the idea of making a sponge cake and layering it with jam, and then with making jam rolls, or even Jammie Dodgers . . .

This is a Jammie Dodger. 

See? It's a black hole.

But it was actually the Jammie Dodger idea that got me going.

Beetle, I said to myself. Beetle. Make a shortbread-y biscuit with a Strawberry Fig jam filling. That is perfect.

But Beetle, I responded. Beetle. Isn't that a thumbprint? And haven't you made about a gazillion thumbprints in the last few months? Aren't you getting a little boring with these thumbprints?

Ohhhh but BEETLE, I said back. BEETLE. WAIT FOR IT. I'm going to make a shortbread-y biscuit but put WALNUTS IN IT so that it will be a WALNUT THUMBPRINT WITH STRAWBERRY FIG FILLING AND DOESN'T THAT SOUND BETTER AND MORE INTERESTING AND POTENTIALLY DELICIOUS?

To which, I said right back to myself. YES. YES IT DOES, BEETLE. WELL DONE. 

So.

WALNUT THUMBPRINTS WITH STRAWBERRY FIG JAM*

*for real, typing "thumbprint" is apparently one of the hardest things ever it's taken me about an hour to get through the last paragraph

The dough for these is the best all-round butter cookie dough I've come across, namely the Joy of Cooking "Rich Roll Cookies." They are buttery and delicious and I've used them for thumbprints, sandwich cookies, cut out cookies, everything. I've had equal success with putting them straight into the oven (like here) out of the mixing bowl, or chilling and rolling and cutting, and it doesn't seem to make any difference what you do with these, they will come out really nicely. And, as I just found out, adding nuts doesn't have a bad effect either.

Walnuts and Strawberries and Figs work together, right? RIGHT. 

If there is a more spring-like and hopeful image than freshly beaten butter and sugar, my name's not Beetle. 

I stirred in 12 oz. of chopped walnuts right at the end, then went from there. Joy of Cooking says to chill the dough for an hour, but since I was just going to hand form balls and do a smoosh in the middle, chilling would just be silly and waste time on both ends. 

I was worried that 12 oz would not be enough nuts . . . 

And then that it would be too much . . . 

But thankfully, they had a Goldilocks moment and 12 oz. was JUST RIGHT. 

Gotta say, too, plain old Buttery Walnut cookies . . . not the worst thing on earth. 

But if jam is on offer . . .

I mean. It would be rude to refuse, no? 

That's what I thought. 

So the mission was to use the Strawberry Fig Jam in a baked good that hinted at warmer weather to come. And if I simultaneously figured out that adding nuts to my basic butter cookie recipe did NOT ruin it, but in fact enhanced it given the right circumstances, so much the better.

And somehow strawberries and walnuts and figs DO kind of conjure up sun and porches and sitting outside enjoying the breeze, no? You know, actually wearing dresses with bare legs, bringing a sweater "just in case", checking your face for freckles at the end of the day . . .

Do they do that? I hope they do. I really hope they do. Because in another few weeks, I think the entirety of New England is going to mutiny and possibly keelhaul every local meteorologist on sight.

OPTIMISTIC JAMMIE DODGERS

JAMMIE DODGERS OF HOPE

We'll get there in the end, you guys. We will. And until then . . . well.

Cookie? 

Belated Cookies and Explanations

Things That Prevented Me From Doing This Post Last Week and/or This Weekend

Anise Cookies that are the subject of this Belated Post

• Bobby the grocery checkout guy who felt the need to explain why he was bagging my groceries the way he was for 15 minutes. Bobby is 245 years old and has hearing trouble. 
• We bought a new table for the library! This is actually a SUPER HAPPY bullet point. I've been wanting to for a long time, and so has Mum, it has just never been mutually expressed at the right moment. However, walking into the corner for the 23470298th time prompted me to, um, tactfully say that I think we should buy a new one. So we did. ON THE INTERNET, NO LESS. As you can imagine, this took A REALLY LONG TIME, interspersed as it was with borderline hostile discussions of finish and colour, openly hostile discussions of oval vs. rectangular, and accusations on both sides of dictator-like behavior. We got there in the end, but we both had to lie down in darkened rooms afterwards. 
• I would like to note that the table we currently use (upon which I am resting my feet at the current time) is old enough to have hosted a significantly smaller diaper-clad Beetle in her sassy seat when it was in our apartment in Cambridge. Many a bowl of Cheerios has been upset on its surface. 
• The disinfecting of every surface in the house in a fit of stress-induced germaphobic cleaning. This included disinfecting the cats with PETA-approved-skin-enhancing-wipes.
• Begging the cat to get out from under my bed after she headbutted the door open and crawled underneath. Realising eventually that it was not her desire to vacate the premises that was stopping her, it was the fact that she's too fat to do it gracefully and/or quickly. 
• Seeing Divergent on Saturday! 
• I read the first book. I hated it. Therefore, I expected to be ok with the movie, and on the whole, I was. Wasn't great, but wasn't awful. Good costumes, good sets. Extra points for Kate Winslet and her strategically-placed-pregnancy-hiding file folder. Somehow dealt with the fact that the plot makes no sense and every main character suffers from an acute lack of common sense. 
• Also dealt with the hilarious tattoo scene where people who are professedly Dauntless visit what appears to be an upscale Asian Lounge with metallic pouf chairs and are treated to the most pain free, nonsensical, non-Dauntless tattoo application I've ever seen. 
• Explained to Mum that whilst my own tattoo experiences are in no way extreme, a better way of showing a "dauntless spirit" would have been to have had Tris (ps worst. name. ever.) sit down opposite a 6'5'', 300 pound bald man named "Big Steve" whose entire skull is covered with a dragon spitting flames and whose forearms and hands show the bones that lie underneath the skin, get the area in question shaved with a disposable Bic razor, then have the aforementioned Big Steve lean his complete 300 lbs on the area in question, start the gun, say "Ready?" and get to work, all whilst listening to screaming death metal and the ravings of a "friend of the establishment" who comes over halfway through the tattoo eating a chicken wing, leans over to inspect the proceedings, then looks up and shouts over the music (exposing a large quantity of missing teeth) "You know that's gonna look like SH*T in ten years, right?", then get the tattoo wrapped up in bloody Vaseline and Cling Film and take the 6 subway home from Astor Place trying not to touch anyone or anything. 
• I'M JUST SAYING that having the beautiful Maggie Q put a piece of tinfoil on your collarbone and press a button and poof tattoo is not really all that hardcore. 

HOWEVER, DEAR READER. Cookies were made, and they must be shared. 

ANISE COOKIES 

I love Anise. Let's just put that on record. Licorice is one of the things that I am never allowed to buy and/or be trapped in the same room as for long periods of time because I will lose all self control and eat it until I get sick or die, whichever comes first.**

*this list also includes spice drops and marshmallows

*I speak only of BLACK licorice. Red licorice is vile. 

HOWEVER. Baking with Anise provides that nothing-is-more-beautiful licorice smell whilst removing the no-self-control-death-by-licorice danger. So what's not to love?

I actually made these a week earlier, and got Mum approval, before sending them to the LL's. They are one of the million permutations of Beatrice's "Basic Cooky Recipe" (yes that's how she spells Cooky) and only a hop skip and a Finnish housewife jump away from my fav Cardamom Cookies.

ANISE COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups butter, softened (that's 2 1/2 sticks) 
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 heaping tsp anise seeds or ground anise
• 2 beaten eggs

Combine the flour, sugar, and anise in a small bowl and whisk together.

Blend the butter and the beaten eggs well. It will be a very thick, bright yellow mixture. Pour that into the flour mixture and mix everything together. 

Beatrice has a lot of instructions at this point involving words like "1/8 inch thickness" and "crimped pastry wheel" and "cut the entire surface into diamond shapes." If that's your thing, you go right ahead and more power to you. Personally, in a kitchen approaching glacial temperatures, with a cat headbutting your bum, and with the desire to watch something other than Middle East Business report on television, I would advise forming small cookie balls by hand and flattening them with the bottom of a glass on your baking sheet, sprinkling them with a few anise seeds, and throwing them in the oven. 

But that's just Beetle.  

BEETLE NOTES

This method did not, apparently, have any long-lasting detrimental effects to the cookie (cooky) tastiness overall. I would go so far as to say that it is an acceptable alternative, should you, dear reader, ever find yourselves in similar culinary circumstances.

FINAL BEETLE NOTE

To all those people who hate licorice and/or black licorice I will only say in calm and measured tones that you are completely wrong and imbecilic and I weep for you and also send all your black licorice to me at Beetle HQ and I'll take care of it. 

Or actually don't.

No. No definitely don't. Please don't. 

I'll die.