old-fashioned scottish shortbread

I've had Scotland on my mind lately.

At the end of January, Scott and I hosted a big Robbie Burns Day party, where we ate Scottish meatballs and everyone wore plaid. Our friend Niall also read Burns poems in Old Scots wearing his Campbell kilt. It was glorious.

When I think of Scotland, I think of mountains and strong black tea and beautiful woolen blankets and ... shortbread.

I've made gluten-free shortbread before, but I was hankering after something a bit more old-fashioned in the shortbread department.

One cold January afternoon, I pulled out my recipe binder for cookies. I kept turning the pages until I found my Great-Aunt Marjorie's recipe for shortbread.

Well, Marjorie gave it to me but I think she got it from her mother-in-law. Although I'm not actually completely sure about that. In any case, it's called "Mom Allison's Shortbread" and Allison is a Scottish name, so I feel good about its authentic Scottish-Canadian roots.

All that to say — it's just what I was looking for. You bake it in an 8-inch tin and then cut it into "petticoat tails," which look like triangles, for the uninitiated.

The recipe says that letting it sit in a sealed tin for a couple of days brings out the flavour, and that is true. However, it was also fantastic an hour out of the oven. So it's good on all fronts: right away, two days later, ten days later. I can't give you any longer time frames because it won't last that long in our household.

one year ago: gluten-free sandwich bread
two years ago: cheesecake in a jar with passion fruit sauce and tomato soup with two fennels
three years ago: nuts and bolts and tuscan white beans

print

mom allison's shortbread
bakes an 8-inch round you may cut into 8 or 12 pieces
note: whether you use wheat flour or the gluten-free flours, you still also add the white rice flour

vanilla castor or berry sugar to sprinkle on top*
6 oz. all-purpose wheat flour
     or gluten-free: 
     2 oz. millet flour
     2 oz. potato starch
     2 oz. sweet rice flour
     1 tsp. xanthan gum
2 oz. white rice flour
3 oz. berry or castor sugar**
1/2 tsp. kosher salt (or 1/4 tsp. table salt)
5 oz. salted butter, at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whisk the dry ingredients together. Rub in the butter with your fingers or use a stand mixer to make a stiff dough.

Roll the dough out between two sheets of plastic wrap. Remove the top layer of plastic wrap and invert the dough into an 8-inch cake tin. Now, peel off the new top layer of plastic wrap.

Mark into 8 or 12 pieces and prick all over with a fork. Bake in the mid-oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until it's set and just the edges are slightly golden.

Take it out of the oven and sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Mark pieces off again.

Once it's cool, you can try some right away. You can also let it sit in a sealed container for a couple of days to bring out the flavour. We found it just gets better with time but it still great the first day.


* Make your own vanilla sugar by immersing a split vanilla bean into the sugar for some time. If you just think of this right before baking — no problem. It still works and you can use the leftover sugar for future baking projects.

** If you don't have this finer sugar on hand, just whiz it up in the food processor for a little while until the grains look smaller. This worked for me.

ginger meringues

I grew up with the German Kaffee time – usually around 4 o'clock on a weekend or summer afternoon. If the weather was good, we'd get out a blanket and sit under the cherry tree out front. The adults would drink coffee and everyone would eat slices of cake.

It's a good tradition, and I follow it pretty religiously when we visit Germany and Austria. Even at home in Canada, we often have coffee, tea or hot chocolate around that time on weekend afternoons.

So when I heard about a new book called Fika – about the Swedish coffee time – I had to check it out of the library. It's a bewitching little book full of lovely illustrations . . . reminding me yet again how the right illustration can say so much more than a photograph.

I've got my eye on quite a few recipes, including oat crisp chocolate sandwich cookies, hazelnut coffee cake, chocolate buttercream almond rounds, and a sticky chocolate cake with poppyseeds (!) on top.

But last weekend, Scott brought orange sorbet home from the grocery store, and I remembered the ginger meringues. Almost before he put the groceries away, I was in my corner, wiping the stainless-steel mixing bowl with a slice of lemon and separating eggs.

The meringues were incredibly easy to make and their beauty – whipped clouds with tiny flecks of ginger if you looked hard – was so satisfying.

We ate them that night with the sorbet, and the ginger and orange soon became good friends. But the next day, we had them as part of a lazy Sunday afternoon with coffee and tea. Of course, they were perfect for fika or Kaffee.

P.S. If Fika showed up in my stocking this Christmas, that would be one smart Santa. Just sayin'.


one year ago: chard salad with feta and capers 
two years ago: three-nuts chocolate torte
three years ago: homemade ricotta cheese

ginger meringues
fika by anna brones and johanna kindvall
bakes 15 large or 30 small

slice of lemon
3 egg whites, at room temperature
3/4 c. (148 g., 5.25 oz.) white sugar or natural cane sugar
1 tsp. ginger, grated

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (95 degrees Celsius). Take out one very big or two regular cookie sheets and line with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

If you have a stainless-steel bowl – or a regular grease-free bowl – wipe it with the lemon. Discard the lemon. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar and keep beating until it's glossy and you see hard peaks. Beat in the ginger.

Use a tablespoon to plop the meringue batter onto the cookie sheet. About 1 tablespoon makes a small meringue and about 2 tablespoons make a large meringue.

Bake 1 1/2 hours for small and 2 hours for large. They should feel crisp on the outside and sound hollow when they're done. Leave them in the oven to cool down after you turn the oven off.

Store in an airtight container for a few weeks.

shortbread peppermint pattie cookies

This cookie is undeniably messy.

You'll just have to get over that.

I mean, let's think about shortbread. The best shortbread has so much butter packed in that it's just waiting to scatter all over your best black sweater. But we deal with that because we love that buttery taste.

So you take that buttery, scattery shortbread and you use it as a sandwich to hold a creamy, dense, chocolate-covered peppermint patty. And what do you get?

One of my very favourite Christmas cookies.

Also: a cookie that must be eaten on a plate.

I remember encountering these at my grandma's house when we were visiting for Christmas. I think I looked at it for quite a while, dumbfounded. I mean, this was a brilliant, brilliant idea. How had I never seen it before?

I made it my business to eat as many as I could. I don't know how Grandma came up with it – maybe it was suggested in a magazine or maybe she thought it up herself. I don't think she used a special shortbread recipe, just her regular, no-nonsense shortbread that also got topped with little bits of maraschino cherries in other forms.

Somehow, I forgot about these cookies for almost 20 years, but this year I ate a chocolate-covered peppermint pattie at work last week and suddenly realized it needed a shortbread sandwich around it.

So I went into my gluten-free kitchen and whipped these up. Don't tell – they look so fancy – but they were very quick to make. Now I also know why Grandma, who was a very practical woman, liked making them.

one year ago: annie's sundried tomatoes
two years ago: potato chip cookies and cheese ball
three years ago: roasted tomato soup and asiago lace and dominosteine and christmas treats
four years ago: walnut slugs and spicy cajun almonds

gluten-free shortbread peppermint pattie cookies
inspired by my grandma, elizabeth mitchell
bakes 13 – 14 sandwich cookies

note 1: Here's the gluten-free shortbread recipe, but if you don't need to be gluten-free, go with your favourite basic shortbread recipe. Make sure you do the sandwiching while the cookies are still warm, so they slightly melt the peppermint pattie and make it stick.

note 2: I'll try to get you weights soon!

1/2 c. cornstarch
1 c. brown rice flour
1/2 tsp. xanthan or guar gum
1/2 c. icing or confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. butter
13 – 14 small chocolate-covered peppermint patties (I like York)

Prepare a pan with parchment paper or a silicone lining.

Stir the cornstarch, brown rice flour, xanthan gum, icing sugar and salt together to form one flour. Cut the butter into 6 or 8 pieces and drop into the bowl. Blend together until it forms a dough.

Shape into balls that are slightly smaller than 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter. Place on baking sheet at least 1.5 inches apart. Press down with a fork slightly to make a fat pattie. Chill at least 10 minutes.

Bake in 300 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 18 – 20 minutes, until the edges have just the tiniest hint of colour. Don't overbake.

Leave the cookies on the pan but place the pan on a rack. In about 4 – 5 minutes, get out a cutting board and carefully put the cookies on it upside-down. (They are in a fragile state right now.) Gently press a peppermint pattie down on one shortbread cookie and gently press another shortbread cookie on top. Place on rack to cool.

oatmeal chocolate cherry cookies

Oh, the power of a humble little cookie.

I work at CBC Radio and with all the government cutbacks over the last little while, morale is low. One Thursday a couple weeks ago, we were all bracing for yet another lay off announcement.

But that morning – before the announcement – we couldn't help but smile. My colleague Niall got up early and made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. He passed his "gratitude cookies" around with little napkins that thanked us for our hard work and said our work was valued.

It was such a small thing but also such a big thing.

It was a reminder that we are still doing good work and that people do care.

Also, his cookies were really good -- warm and comforting in the way that only oatmeal cookies can be. They reminded me how much I love making oatmeal chocolate chip (not raisin) cookies.

Now, making a chewy cookie gluten-free is not an easy feat. I dug out my favourite old Martha Stewart recipe, which I first came across back in 2004. You know, back when it seemed like Martha Stewart was the only reliable recipe provider on the whole world wide web?

This recipe also has the added bonus of calling for dried cherries and toffee bits. I didn't have the toffee bits, but I did have a leftover piece of marzipan calling my name, so I grated it up.

I pulled out my scale and weighed the gluten-free flours and hoped for the best . . .

And you know what?

They baked up chewy and rich, full of comfort and chocolate and cherries and marzipan. A small victory, but I'll take what I can get.

one year ago: asian slaw and silken chocolate mousse
two years ago: salmon with warm tomato basil oil and balancing tofino and the plane
three years ago: kristina's nuss kuchen and german zucchini soup
four years ago: honey orange cream and loganberry jelly

oatmeal chocolate cherry cookies
adapted from Martha Stewart
bakes about 24 3-inch cookies

1 1/2 c. wheat flour
     or gluten-free flours:
     60 g. sweet white sorghum flour
     40 g. pure oat flour*
     60 g. sweet rice flour
     50 g. tapioca starch
     1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 c. butter, room temperature
3/4 c. white sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 c. oatmeal
1 c. dried cherries, chopped
1 c. dark chocolate chips or pieces
1/4 c. marzipan pieces or 1 c. toffee pieces**

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line your cookies sheets with parchment paper.

Stir the flour(s), salt and baking soda together and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 – 3 minuets. Mix the egg in well. Follow with vanilla extract and make sure you scrape the sides of the bowl down. Slowly add the flour mix and stir until it's fully integrated. Stir in the oatmeal, cherries, chocolate and marzipan/toffee pieces.

Divide the dough into 3 and use plastic wrap to roll 3 logs that are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Cut into 3/4 inch pieces and place fairly far apart on baking sheets. (I only put 6 on my regular cookie sheets because they like to spread.) If using gluten-free flours, chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

Bake until golden-brown, about 8 – 10 minutes. Let cool on the pan for a few minutes before removing to a rack.

* I make oat flour by grinding rolled oats in the food processor. Make sure you use "pure" oats, which are not grown near wheat or contaminated in processing.
** You should find toffee pieces in a bag next to the chocolate chips at the grocery store.

salted butter break-ups

The salted butter break-up is like no cookie I've ever eaten.

I thought about calling it French shortbread, but that's not quite right.

Instead, it's like a crisp but still tender cookie shot through with layers of butter and salt.

Can you kind of see what I mean?

I am torn about the best part of the salted butter break-up: the taste or the process.

The taste, of course, is buttery with a haunting hint of sea salt. The crumb both shatters and gently releases itself in your mouth. (You see, I really can't decide if they are crisp or tender.)

And the process! Well, you roll out a big messy rectangle of dough, brush on some egg glaze, and bake until it puffs into a golden expanse of firm but slightly springy dough.

Once that big cookie is cool, you literally(!) break it up!

Seriously. You just break corners and work your way into the middle until you have pleasing shards of cookie that are perfect alongside your afternoon tea.

Or – if you make this for a dinner party – you can just bring the whole big cookie to the table and let your guests break it up. How fun is that?

All my gratitude goes to the lovely Isabelle from The Little Red Kitchen, who first gave my Celiac husband a little container of these break-ups and said I could eat one, and who also converted them to be gluten-free. And, of course, many thanks for introducing me to Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table, from which these break-ups originally come.

one year ago: spiced red lentil stew with greens and lemon
two years ago: cheddar corn chowder
three years ago: grand forks borscht
four years ago: canadian boterkoek

salted butter break-ups
via the little red kitchen 
adapted from around my french table by dorie greenspan

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
     or gluten-free:
     127 g. (4.5 oz) tapioca starch
     42 g. (1.5 oz) sweet rice flour
     42 g. (1.5 oz) sorghum flour
2/3 c. sugar
3/4 – 1 tsp. sel gris* or kosher salt
9 tbsp. (127 g./4.5 oz) cold butter, cut into 18 pieces
3 – 5 tbsp. cold water
1 egg yolk, for the glaze

Pour the flour(s), sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse to mix. Drop the butter in and pulse until it loks like coarse meal with pea-sized and smaller pieces. While the machine is running, slowly add some of the cold water. Only add enough water to make a dough that almost forms a bowl. It will be very malleable.

Move the dough onto a big clean cutting board and form it into a square. Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for about 1 hour (or up to 3 days).

When it's time to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and make sure your rack is centred. Line your baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

Roll the dough out between sheets of plastic wrap until it becomes a rough rectangle that's about 1/4-inch thick and about 5 by 11 inches. Peel it onto your prepared baking sheet.

Whisk the egg yolk with a few drops of cold water, and use a pastry brush to brush the dough with the egg glaze.

Bake 30 – 40 minutes, or until golden. It should be firm to touch, but with a little spring when you press its centre. Dorie says the perfect break-up is crisp on the outside and still tender on the inside. When it's not too fragile, transfer it to a rack and let it cool to room temperature.


*Dorie says sel gris is "a moist, slightly grey sea salt with crystals that are large enough to be picked up individually." I used Maldon sea salt flakes and loved it.

chocolate coconut macaroons

I am very picky when it comes to macaroons.

In fact, I often won't even try them because when I do, I find that the coconut is too dry and the whole cookie is too meh to fill the cookie-shaped hole in my stomach.

My poor husband has to eat them all the time because they're often the only gluten-free cookie he can get at a coffee shop or bakery. While I'm happy he has a cookie option, I'm sorry they're macaroons.

Which is why you could now knock me over with a feather, because all I can think about is when I can reasonably make another batch of these macaroons. I even bought an extra can of condensed milk and two bags of flaked coconut at the grocery store last weekend so that I'd be ready.

It all started when my friends Corey and Gina brought some over for a little party celebrating Scott's 40th. I didn't get to try any that night, but I stashed a few before I sent them home. After all, I had never eaten anything Corey baked that wasn't amazing.

The next morning, I thought I'd try one. It was so good that I ate another.

That was before noon. I ate another one right after lunch and then cut myself off.

The macaroons were fudgy and intensely chocolate-y. In fact, it was almost like eating a really good chocolate that was chewy and the size of cookie. You can see why I fell hard.

I begged Corey for the recipe and made them as soon as I could. So should you.

This is a macaroon I can whole-heartedly recommend. I would never feel sorry for anyone who had to eat this macaroon.

In fact, I would ask him to share it.

P.S. It's dollop of cream's four-year anniversary! I am going to make more macaroons to celebrate.

one year ago: chocolate ginger cookies and dutch babies
two years ago: gumdrop cake
three years ago: whisky marmalade and bacon-wrapped dates with almonds and olives
four years ago: muesli, lemon loaf and olympic nanaimo bars

chocolate coconut macaroons
adapted from diana rattray
bakes about 30 cookies

1 can (398 g./14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk
3/4 c. (72 g./2.5 oz.) cocoa powder
2 tbsp. vegetable shortening
1/4 tsp. salt
2 2/3 c. (227 g./8 oz.) flaked coconut*
1 tsp. vanilla extract
a handful of chocolate chips to top the cookies

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Stir condensed milk, cocoa, shortening and salt together in the top of a double boiler, or bowl suspended over boiling water. Stir often until it's all melted together. Take it off the heat.

Mix the coconut and vanilla in well.

Drop rounded tablespoons of dough about 2.5 cm or 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheets. Press about 3 chocolate chips onto the top of each cookie.

Bake for about 12 – 14 minutes, until the cookies look set. Let cool on a wire rack.

*I'm really into flaked coconut right now because I like the texture so much better than shredded coconut. But I'm sure shredded would also work. Flaked should be right next to the shredded at your grocery store.

jane's pecan puffs

Growing up, I remember sugar cookies.

My mom and I would roll them out into bells and stars, and then paint them with a lemon glaze. The best part was watching the red and green sprinkles wash into the glaze like a water colour painting.

In the meantime, my dad would be down in the cold room, dousing a fruitcake with dark rum every few days in the couple months before Christmas.

When Christmas finally came, we'd pull out tins and make plates of sugar cookies, Christmas cake, brandy beans, dominosteine, stollen and mandarin orange pieces. For about two weeks, we would make a plate almost every afternoon around coffee time.

Now, Scott and I have different cookies, but we usually keep the brandy beans, the dominosteine and the mandarins on the plate. Sometimes, we add walnut slugs or shortbread or Mozartkugeln. This year, it's pecan puffs and – if I have time – these buttermilk cookies, which remind me of the sugar cookies of my childhood.

My friend Amanda gave me this recipe for pecan puffs in Victoria a few years ago. They were her mother's cookies, she reports, and she likes to make them to remember her mother. So we're calling these Jane's pecan puffs, in honour of Amanda's mother.

I am sure Jane was a wonderful baker because these puffs are fragrant with pecans and so delicate that they almost burst into sleigh bells and all things magic at Christmas as soon as they hit your tongue.

I hope you have time to make at least one batch of cookies this holiday season. I have been putting all my energy into planning special radio shows to raise money for the food bank, but these cookies help me step away from it all and remember that Christmas is indeed coming.

one year ago: hot lemon honey tea
two years ago: spiced ginger mounds and cheesy grapes
three years ago: butter lettuce for a break and tipsy rum balls

jane's pecan puffs

1 1/2 c. pecans
1/2 c. butter
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt (fancy, if you have it*)
1 c. cake flour
     or gluten-free:
     70 g. rice flour
     35 g. cornstarch
     18 g. potato starch
     18 g. tapioca starch
icing sugar, for rolling

Grease two cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper.

Grind the pecans in a food processor (not a blender) until small but not until they become pecan butter. Set aside. If using gluten-free flours, mix them together well. Stir salt into the cake flour or gluten-free flours and set aside.

Cream sugar and butter. Stir in the ground pecans and vanilla. Stir in the flour-salt mixture. Roll into small balls (about 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter) and place on prepared cookie sheets. If using gluten-free flours, chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the cookies for 23 to 30 minutes, depending on size. Their bottoms should become lightly golden. Once they are cool enough to touch but still somewhat warm, carefully roll in icing sugar.

*I used Maldon sea salt flakes and found it worked very nicely with the pecans.

chocolate ginger cookies

In the small town of Courtenay on Vancouver Island there is a very, very good farmers' market.

There's something about the town that seems to draw old and young hippies who are gifted bakers and farmers and coffee-bean roasters.

Even Scott – who could definitely use an attitude adjustment when it comes to hanging out at farmers' markets – trails along happily behind me and my dad at the Courtenay farmers' market.

We always end up at the gluten-free baking booth, where we buy a loaf of maple oat bread for Scott and chocolate ginger cookies for all of us. We usually save the cookies for whatever adventure we get up to that afternoon: canoeing around Jim Mitchell Lake or walking the beach at Royston or forging trails in the bush on my dad's land.

And the cookies are always just right: rich and chocolatey, with a good kick of ginger and molasses to perk you up. In short, they do exactly what a cookie is supposed to do mid-afternoon.

This fall, my dad told me that the mother-daughter team behind the booth, Sweet Surprise, was publishing a cookbook. Now, we haven't been able to go to the Courtenay farmers' market since we moved to Edmonton in September – the commute is just too long.

So what do you think I thought about first?

That's right. These chocolate ginger cookies.

Luckily, my dad gave me the cook book for Christmas and it had the recipe. (Thank you, Heidi and Alex, for including it!)

People, I am here to tell you: these chocolate ginger cookies are even better than we remembered. I make them a bit smaller and possibly bake them for a bit less time . . . and they are chewy and bright with ginger and the chocolate is melting on our fingers and I always think I haven't made nearly enough.

Now we are set: I will keep making these chocolate ginger cookies and they will tide us over until we can get back to Courtenay (fingers crossed!) in the summer.

one year ago: gumdrop cake
two years ago: whisky marmalade (Does anyone in Edmonton know where I can find Seville oranges?)
three years ago: ugly vegetables make beautiful soup: creamy celeriac soup

chocolate ginger cookies*
slightly adapted from sweet surprise and martha stewart
bakes about 34 cookies

80 g. (1/2 c. + 2 tbsp.) brown or white rice flour
42 g. (1/4 c. + 1 tbsp.) sweet sorghum flour
54 g. (1/4 c. + 1 tbsp.) potato starch
40 g. (1/4 c. + 1 tbsp.) tapioca starch
3/4 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
90 g. (1/2 c.) room-temperature butter or coconut oil
1 tbsp. fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1/2 c. brown sugar
175 g. (1/2 c. + 1 tbsp.) molasses
200 g. dark chocolate, chopped
3 tbsp. white sugar or coarse blonde sugar for rolling


Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl so that they mix well. Set aside.

With your mixer, beat the butter, ginger, brown sugar and molasses until it's very creamy. Then slowly mix in the dry ingredients. Add the chopped chocolate and mix. Try not to worry about how wet the dough is at this point.

Take out two rectangles of plastic wrap. Divide the craggy dough in half and put each half on one of the rectangles. Use the plastic wrap to form a log on each rectangle. It should be about 5 cm (almost 2 inches) in diameter (roughly). Chill for at least one hour or overnight in the fridge.

When the dough has chilled, prepare 3 baking trays with parchment paper. Put the white sugar into a small bowl. Slice the dough into even pieces – about 16 to 18 per log. Roll each slice into a ball and flatten it slightly. Roll that in the sugar. Place the dough balls on the tray about 6 cm (2 inches) apart. Let the dough balls chill in the fridge for a further 10 minutes.

While the dough balls are chilling, move the rack in your oven so that it's in the upper half. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.** Bake for about 10 minutes. The top will have a crinkle appearance and the cookies will look somewhat set, but will still be very fragile – this is key for a chewy cookie.

Let the cookies rest on their tray for about 10 minutes, until they are coherent enough to transfer to a rack to finish cooling (they will be much stronger at this point). Let cool.

Note: Sweet Surprise says the unbaked dough keeps in the fridge for about a week, if you like to do that. I always need to bake them right away because it never seems like there's enough . . .

* I have only tested these cookies with gluten-free flours since that's how Sweet Surprise wrote the recipe. The Martha Stewart version with regular wheat flour is very similar – try it if you don't need to go gluten-free.
** My mom tried this recipe and found the cookies baked better (and chewier) at 325 degrees Fahrenheit in her oven. If you think your oven runs hot, try that.

potato chip cookies

Happy hour arrived at four or five in the afternoon at my grandparents' house.

A big bowl of ripple chips and a smaller bowl of salsa would appear on the table. Granddad would start pouring drinks: rye and ginger ale for the grown ups, plain ginger ale for the kids.

With dinner just around the corner, I generally couldn't believe my luck. There I was, being served pop and chips – two commodities that weren't exactly free-flowing at home.

Somehow, the ripple chips were just the right thing with a bit of salsa and ginger ale. After all, I would have spent a hard afternoon digging in the sand at the beach or playing in the yard with my cousins, trying not to step on the brittle grass with my bare feet.

All of this leads me to . . . potato chip cookies. I feel like I remember eating these cookies at Grandma's, but I don't know for sure.

I found this recipe in my Grandma's 1970s church "COOK BOOK," which includes gems like gumdrop cookies, sour cream coffee cake and applesauce spice cake. Grandma's good friend, Betty Rennison, submitted the recipe for potato chip cookies.

I mean, they definitely taste like a treat at my grandparents' house. For one thing, they contain the ripple chip. The ripple chip is subtle here: it gives a new kind of crunch and a hint of a salty flavour.

Besides the potato chips, these cookies do not have any bells and whistles. In fact, they only have five ingredients (six, with my tinkering). But they make a rich, buttery cookie . . . almost like shortbread with little bits of crushed ripple chips strewn through it.

They are – obviously – already very good eaten in the late afternoon with a cup of tea or just before bed when you have the nibbles. I think they'd also be ideal on a plate of assorted Christmas cookies.

Oh, and I haven't even told you the fun part yet! (Although it's possible you may have already used a pictorial clue to guess it.)

It is this: how often do you get to start making cookies by taking out your rolling pin and rolling a bag of chips?

Right. That's what I thought.

Old-fashioned recipes are so fun.

one year ago: roasted tomato soup and asiago lace
two years ago: butter tarts and walnut slug cookies

potato chip cookies
adapted from betty rennison
bakes about 50 small cookies

100 g. (heaping 1 1/2 c. when crushed) ripple potato chips
200 g. (3/4 c. + 2 tbsp.) butter, at room temperature
120 g. (1/2 c.) sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
245 g. (1 3/4 c.) wheat flour
     or - gluten-free flours:
     50 g. sweet white sorghum flour
     45 g. oat flour*
     75 g. sweet rice flour
     75 g. tapioca starch
     1/2 tsp. guar or xanthan gum
coarse sea salt

Prepare 3 baking trays with parchment paper. Set aside.

Take out a big cutting board and rolling pin. Use a small knife to prick a couple holes in the chip bag. Lay it on the board. Roll it until the chips are quite fine. Pour the chips onto the board. If they still need to be finer, roll them directly with the rolling pin. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar for a couple of minutes until it's light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla. Set aside.

If you're using gluten-free flours, whisk them together well. Stir well into butter mixture. Mix in the crushed potato chips.

Drop by the teaspoon-full onto the prepared trays. Use a fork dipped in cold water to flatten them a bit (not too much or they'll spread too much later). Sprinkle 3 – 5 grains of sea salt on top, as desired. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for about 15 minutes. They will puff up and look more set, but only colour slightly around the edges. Let them cool on the pan for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling.

Store in an air-tight container. Serve with potato chips if you're feeling fun.

*Make sure this is an oat flour that specifies it is wheat-free. If you can't tolerate oat flour, you could try brown rice flour instead.

nougat marzipan cookies

The other morning, I was supposed to be writing.

Instead, I just sat there, staring out the window and thinking about nougat.

In fact, ever since I got a box of Toffifee for Christmas, I have been thinking a lot about German nougat and how I can incorporate more of it into my life.

German nougat, by the way, is very different from French nougat. The Germans combine nuts and chocolate to form a magical substance they call nougat. The French, sadly, leave chocolate right out of the equation and still call it nougat. Even more sadly, Canadians hardly eat any kind of nougat at all.

Then, as I sat there, I thought about how I was in the mood for something that is not a cookie and not a chocolate. I wanted something in between. Something small and chocolate-ish, but also cookie-ish.

And I wanted it to have nougat. Suddenly, I was composing not a story but a cookie.

Enter the marzipan left over from my stollen-making expedition in early December . . .

Add my desire to eat shortbread over the holiday . . .

Drop a few lines of melted dark chocolate left over from that disastrous truffle-making episode . . .

And the chocolate-ish, cookie-ish thing is born: the nougat marzipan cookie.

If you would also like to compose an itsy-bitsy cookie, here's what you do:

Bake mini shortbread cookies.

Make German nougat (which is not difficult) and dollop it on top.

Pull out your extra marzipan and mold it into a patty to fit over top.

Melt some chocolate and start drizzling.

Voilà! – you're done!

A new little cookie for those times when you can't stop thinking about nougat and you want something that is in between a chocolate and a cookie.

Happy New Year!

May you eat many cookies, chocolates, and everything in between.

Last December: tipsy rum balls (also in between!)


nougat marzipan cookies
bakes about 20 wee cookies

about 20 shortbread bottoms
nougat (adapted from here) :
      1/3 c. heaping cashews or hazelnuts
      1/3 c. icing or powdered sugar
      1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
      2 - 4 tsp. cocoa powder
      2 tsp. strong black coffee
150 g. (5.3 oz) prepared marzipan 
50 g. (1.8 oz) dark chocolate

First, make the little shortbread bottoms. A half recipe from here works perfectly.

While the shortbread is baking and cooling, make the nougat. Grind the nuts in a food processor until they look like couscous. Add the icing sugar and grind until fine, but not until you have nut butter. Empty into a medium-sized bowl. Add 2 teaspoons cocoa and stir well. Mix in the vanilla and coffee. If it is now a firm but spreadable texture, you're done with the nougat. If it's not thick enough, keep adding a bit more cocoa until it is.

Once the shortbread is cool, spoon a bit of nougat on each cookie. Cut pieces of marzipan and roll them into balls. With your fingers, shape each ball into a patty. Carefully attach the patty to the cookie, over the nougat centre.

When all the cookies have nougat and marzipan, start melting your chocolate in the top of a double boiler or in a metal bowl suspended over simmering water. Once it's melted, use a small spoon to drizzle chocolate over each cookie. Refrigerate until chocolate has hardened. Eat!