Easy Recipes

Several years ago, I was working a boring administrative job, and would often eat my breakfast and lunch at my desk. One evening, as I was washing out my little container of cereal and half-pint jar of soymilk, I wondered — why I was going through this packaging hassle (in my dishwasher-free life)? Why not save myself the trouble? The next day, I brought along a whole box of cereal, and quart of soymilk. And proceeded to eat three complete bowls over the course of the morning. Oooh, thats why.

My measure of self-restraint has grown somewhat in the intervening decade (and is no longer compounded by a soul-killingly boring job). But still. There are times I just cannot be trusted, and some sort of rationing is definitely in my best interest. Which is why I thrilled to see a recipe that yields just two chocolate chip cookies.

Make no mistake, these are nice, hefty cookies — two will more than satisfy. And they are great examples of the genre, crisp and golden on the edges, gooey and yielding on the insides. Yes, its a bit of a waste to turn on the oven for just two cookies. But cmon, we know theyre at their best in a just-baked state anyways. And if your must-eat-all-the-foods instincts kick in, well, theres really not much harm done.


Two Chocolate Chip Cookies

from the mad genius over at No. 2 Pencil
yields, well, you know

2 tablespoons of butter, softened to room temperature
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon sugar
hefty pinch of kosher salt (smoked salt, if youve got it, is also nice)
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
¼ cup flour
3 heaping tablespoons chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

My dog has a basket of toys by the front door. There are a few that he plays with nearly every day -- bones to gnaw and hollow rubber thingies to fill with peanut butter -- but then there are a handful that he ignores. Some promotional stuffed animal that he stopped caring about once he realized it couldnt be destroyed, or the twisted rope he liked to play tug-of-war with five years ago. Hell toss them aside to reach the more exciting items underneath, but for the most part they sit around gathering dust. Until another dog comes to the house. Magically, the value-adding property of another dogs interest renders a treat infinitely more appealing. You want that thing Ive ignored for five years? Suddenly I want it too! So much!

I laugh a bit at this transparent ridiculousness, but truth be told I can be the same way. My friend Robert once noted that somebody could be eating poop on a cracker, and hed be angling for a bite. It can happen easily. A few weeks ago, I took the cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking out of the library. I thumbed through the pages, earmarking a few, thinking maybe Id make them someday. But then I saw an enticing version of Bakeds peanut butter chocolate chip cookies on the lovely blog A Little Ginger. And suddenly I wanted them too! So much!

Ive eaten my share of peanut butter cookies over the years, but these are easily the best Ive had. Hands down. Perfect cookies. They have a toothsome texture somewhere between soft and crisp, with a deep, slightly salty peanut butter flavor. They keep well, like any cookie, but I think theyre especially lovely the first day.

And speaking of ridiculous notions that consume your thoughts, I recently was so taken with the zucchini dishes I saw posted everywhere that I decided to host an All Zucchini Dinner Party. It took a bit of recipe-testing, a mountain of zucchini, and some very game friends, but in the end a good green meal was had by all. You can read about it (and get more recipes than you can shake a squash at) in The Oregonian.


Perfect Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
yields ~36 cookies

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar, plus more for topping
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
6 oz chocolate, milk or dark, coarsely chopped

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, soda and salt. Set aside.

In a mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, mixing until combined. Add the vanilla and peanut butter, mixing until well combined.

Fold in the dry ingredients until *just* combined. Fold in the chocolate bits, and place in a covered container and refrigerate overnight.

On baking day, remove the dough from the refrigerator, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Plop out rounded tablespoons of dough onto lined cookie sheets, at least 2" apart, and flatten slightly with the heel of your hand to smush the doughballs into chubby disks. Sprinkle a bit of granulated sugar on each cookie, enough to give a light dusting (this will make a lovely, sweet-crunchy crust).

Place sheets in oven and bake 10-12 minutes, until the edges just turn golden brown. Remove from oven, let cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, and then remove to finish cooling on a rack. Enjoy.

Time can be one of your best friends when cooking. A few hours of a hands-off simmer can turn a pot of vegetables and water into a deeply flavorful soup. And an overnight slow rise can turn out loaves of home-cooked bread that can hold their own against your local artisan boulangerie. And it turns out that the same holds true for sweets. Last year, The New York Times ran an article profiling what they deemed the definitive chocolate chip cookie recipe, which the blogosphere resoundingly endorsed. The recipe seems pretty standard, with the usual players of creamed butter, brown and white sugars, flour, leavening, vanilla and chocolate. But then it instructs you to set your batter back in the refrigerator. For a full day. Or even two. The resulting cookies sport a caramel-like sophistication, handily beating out their less-mature brethren in taste tests.

Now, Im all for richly complex baked goods. But sometimes time isnt on your side. Sometimes you want to whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to share with your friends who are about to board a plane (and to console yourself after their departure). But yet you still crave toffee-like layers of flavor, a step above the standard wan Tollhouse variety. At times like these, theres brown butter.

Brown butter, or beurre noisette if youre feeling French, is simply butter thats been heated until the milk solids separate out and darken. The French name translates to "hazelnut butter," which aptly describes the toasty, nutty flavor that this process imparts. Its your quickest shortcut to the deep, complex flavors that usually take hours to develop. Yes, theres a small bit of fuss. Youve got to swirl the pan a bit as the butter melts, to ensure even heating, and make sure to use a light colored pot so that you can see the butter darkening, and dont miss the brief window before it becomes bitterly burnt. But isnt that easier than twiddling your thumbs for several days, while delicious cookie dough calls to you from the refrigerator with its siren song?


Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Cooks Illustrateds Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
yields 16-24 cookies, depending on the size

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 packed brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees.

Sift together flour and baking soda, set aside.

Place 10 tablespoons butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan or skillet. Heat over medium-high until the butter melts. Continue to cook until the butter is a deep golden brown, swirling the pan constantly (~1-3 minutes). Pour thebrown butter into a large bowl, and immediately add the remaining 4 tablespoons of reserved butter. Let sit, swirling occasionally, until the remaining butter has melted.

When all the butter has melted, add the sugars, salt and vanilla to the bowl, and whisk to combine. Add the egg and egg yolk. Whisk until the mixture is smooth, ~30 seconds, and then let sit for 3 minutes. Repeat the whisking and resting two more times. The sugars will begin to dissolve, and the mixture will become thicker, shiny and lighter in color.

Stir in the flour mixture until just combined, and fold in the chocolate chips. Scoop balls of dough onto a prepared cookie sheet, using 2-3 tablespoons of dough (depending on how large you like your cookies). Bake, one sheet at a time, until the edges are beginning to get golden, but the centers are still puffy and soft (8-14 minutes, depending on cookie size and oven temperature).
Cool on a rack.

 Yes, I have promised you stories of European adventure. And yes, there are constant reminders that I am far from Portland. Traditional dancers and musicians piped their way through the streets shortly after I dropped my bags. Breakfast consists of bowls of milky sweet coffee, with crusts of last night´s bread crumbled in. I have held five-day-old rabbits that peed in my hand, and politely declined the offer of a walking stick during a farm stroll, only to be informed that it was in fact a pushing-back-cows stick. I will be terribly sad to leave.

But as for cooking, and taking pictures of said food, I´ve been a bit remiss. And it´s not for lack of amazing food. The first evening brought a lovely potato tortilla and croquettes, but after 18 hours of travel I wasn´t really following what was happening. Last night I ate dinner that was cooked on an actual wood-fired stove, but given that my inability to speak Basque was enough of an imposition, I decided not to make things worse by sticking my camera around. I promise salt cold aplenty to come, but for now, I´ll tell you about the snacks I baked in Portland and carried with me.

If you´re looking to represent America abroad, it´s hard to go wrong with chocolate chip cookies. And if you´re looking to make chocolate chip cookies, it´s hard to go wrong with a buttery dough, aged for a few nights in the fridge. And, per my latest obsession, bolstered with rye flour.

When this chocolate chip cookie recipe first surfaced, it seemed like perfection. Take the usual easy-peasy formula, wait a few days, and almost by magic the dough develops a caramel-like depth. But after writing an article about the wonders of rye flour, I couldn´t help but swap some into this formula (cutting the amount down just a wee bit, to account for the moisture-absorbing prowess of rye´s whole grain). And the result is just lovely, my all-time favorite. It has been politely demanded that I bake more before my departure. If only the Basque Country sold rye flour...


Chocolate Chip Cookies with Rye Flour


adapted from Jacques Torres in The New York Times
yields 2-4 dozen cookies, depending upon size, and must be made at least 1 day before baking

4 1/4 ounces bread flour, 1 1/3 cups (I feared this could yield a tough consistency, but it´s called for in the original, and nicely offsets rye´s minimal gluten, though it´d probably be fine without)
4 ounces rye flour, 1 heaping cup
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp coarse salt
10 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
5 ounces (2/3 cup) brown sugar, packed
4 ounces (1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 4-ounce bar (or more) chocolate of your choosing, chopped into small cubes and bits

Sift together the bread flour, rye flour, soda, powder and salt. Set aside.

Place the butter in a mixer or large bowl, and beat together with the sugars until very light. Add the egg and vanilla, and stir until well combined. Add the flour mixture, stir until just mixed, and then add the chocolate and stir to distribute evenly. Place in a bag or covered container, and chill 2-3 days.

When you´re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a few baking sheets with parchment (or grease them well and hope for the best). Scoop the dough out into cookies -- Torres favors large cookies for a nice crisp-outside-gooey-inside consistency, but I find you can arrive at something similar if you make small cookies and watch them like a hawk.

Bake until golden brown yet soft, 10-15 minutes depending upon cookie size. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for a couple minutes until they firm up enough for you to move them, then transfer to a rack to cool completely (it´s difficult to end up with soft cookies if you don´t pull them soon enough). Devour when warm, with milk, or let cool fully and pack them in an airtight container for your travels.

At Thanksgiving about a decade ago, my friends 3-year-old nephew was "helping" with the meal. After the dessert plates had been set out, he carefully began laying out a cookie on each plate. An elderly relative tried to halt him, gently explaining that not everyone wanted a cookie. This was mind-blowing information for a 3-year-old to incorporate. "Why dont they want a tookie?" he asked incredulously. "Its just a tookie. Its just sweet."

Even though Ive got something of a grown-ups palate these days (i.e. I no longer dream about purchasing a can of frosting for a birthday meal), I feel the same way about these cookies. Some other desserts, sure. There are desserts for particular palates, or suited to particular meals or seasons. But these cookies are always perfect. Always. Theyve got a thin crisp outer covering which cracks in crags, letting you see the moistness inside. I cant think of the last time I baked cookies that werent these.

Amazingly, this recipe is vegan, missing the eggs and butter which normally give cookies body and flavor. But you would never know. Theyre soft and chocolaty, deeply-flavored and studded with chips. If you know a vegan, or someone who has to avoid dairy, make them these cookies. And if you have friends who do indulge in dairy, they wont know the difference. I know, I know: many vegan and dairy-free recipes make similar claims, but leave you with cookies that crumble, dont spread, or feature a distracting soy or margarine flavor. I promise, these cookies just taste like great cookies. And who doesnt want a cookie?


Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Isa Moskowitz, The Post-Punk Kitchen
makes 4 dozen cookies

In order for you to have nice chewy cookies, youll need to make sure these cookies dont cook beyond 10 minutes. Theyll seem a bit under-done at first, but theyll continue to set outside of the oven. This recipe is easily halved if you dont want the full yield. But you know whats a better idea? Bake the full amount, then freeze any leftovers for a secret stash. We thaw ours in the microwave, but Ive been known to gnaw still-frozen cookies.

4 tsp ground flax seeds (ground to a mealy powder in a spice grinder)
1/2 cup milk or soymilk
2 cups all purpose flour (or finely-milled whole wheat pastry flour)
3/4 cups cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup neutral oil (like canola)
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flax seeds and soymilk, and let sit at least ten minutes (IMPORTANT: this allows the flax seeds to release whatever it is they release into the milk, which binds the cookies into a nice chewy consistency. If they dont sit long enough, youll have disappointingly flat cookies).

In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

Whisk together oil, sugar and vanilla. Add the flax mixture, and mix well. Fold in the dry ingredients in a few additions, being careful not to overmix. Add chocolate chips.

Form the dough into cookies, either by forming 1" balls with your hands, or scooping them out with a tiny ice cream scoop. Place on a cookie sheet (no need to grease), leaving 1" between cookies. Bake 10 minutes -- no longer! Let set on the sheets for 5 minutes, then move to a wire rack or plate to cook completely.

The past day or so, I have been craving a good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookie. And then I saw a picture, and suddenly I was craving a good new-fangled chocolate chip cookie. With a coating of sesame seeds. And, hidden underneath, just the merest whisper of clean, fresh ginger, and the salt jolt of soy sauce. Who knew there could be an improvement upon the chocolate chip cookie?

This brilliant sesame-studded idea came from Joy the Baker. She tucks some seeds inside, but I like the idea of the standard smooth dough-and-chocolate cookie on the inside (I swapped in my current favorite recipe), with a crunchy, nutty coating on the outside. And I love the idea of using soy sauce instead of salt for a slightly malty Asian spin (I also added a bit of ginger, after loving the combination in these sesame-ginger rice krispie treats). The flavors in these cookies are fairly subtle—they dont knock you over the head with gingery heat, or a wow-thats-salty hit of soy-based umami. Theyre just a classic chocolate chip cookie, with all of the goodness that entails, given a slight tweak. And a coating of crunchy sesame seeds. And theyre really, really good.


Sesame-Coated Chocolate Chip Cookies

combination inspired by Joy The Baker, recipe tweaked from Jacques Torres in The New York Times
yields 2-4 dozen cookies, depending upon size, and must be made at least 1 day before baking

8 1/2 ounces flour (scant 2 cups) — substitute up to a (slightly scant) quarter rye or whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
10 Tbsp (5 ounces) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
5 ounces (2/3 cup) brown sugar, packed
4 ounces (1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp ginger juice (its easiest to grate the ginger, then press it through a garlic press to extract the juice)
6 ounces chocolate of your choosing, chopped into small cubes and bits (~1 cup)
~1/2 cup black sesame seeds
coarse salt (optional)

Sift together the flour(s), soda, powder and salt. Set aside.

Place the butter in a mixer or large bowl, and beat together with the sugars until very light. Add the egg, vanilla, soy sauce, and ginger juice, and stir until well combined. Add the flour mixture, stir until just mixed, and then add the chocolate and stir to distribute evenly. Place in a bag or covered container, and chill 2-3 days.

When youre ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a few baking sheets with parchment (or grease them well and hope for the best). Scoop the dough out into cookies of the size you prefer — large, 3-inch balls of dough easily make for a nice crisp-outside-gooey-inside consistency, but I find you can arrive at something similar if you make small cookies and watch them like a hawk. Roll in the sesame seeds to give a fairly heavy coating, and place on the prepared sheets. If you fancy a bit more salt in your sweet, you can also top each cookie with a whisper of coarse salt.

Bake until golden brown on the edges yet soft, 10-15 minutes depending upon cookie size. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for a couple minutes until they firm up enough for you to move them, then transfer to a rack to cool completely (its difficult to end up with soft cookies if you dont pull them soon enough). Devour when warm, with milk (or, if youd like to keep with the theme, soymilk).