Cookies – Mado Food

Cookies! White choc macs

Fine baking is all about good ingredients and a reliable recipe. That’s why I turned to one of my baking idols, Bonnie Stern, for this cookie recipe’s foundation.

Desserts, first published in 1988 and revised ten years later, is over 200 pages of sweet perfection. My revised paperback edition is well-loved, covered in stains and filled with dog-eared page after page of handwritten notes. I found “Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies” on page 108, where I had scribbled “Great!” 20 years ago and made plans to substitute half the chocolate with macadamia nuts.

Mac lovers have a thing for these nuts from Hawaii and you’d think I’d have no trouble finding them on Vancouver Island, just 2,361 miles away… After two supermarket scans, I had given up all macadamian hope until David pounced on two bags at Country Grocer in Cobble Hill.

Bonnie wrote this recipe after lunching with “Mr. Chocolate Himself” (Bernard Callebaut) making me woeful not to have a chunk of his white stuff in my cupboards. I had to make do with PC white chocolate chips.

Luckily, butter fared better. Freshly purchased from Cow-Op, I had a glorious half-pound of Avalon organic unsalted butter that was whipped into a frenzy by Krystal, driving our cookie operation inside the KitchenAid mixer.

Ten minutes earlier, Krystal had placed two cold eggs from the fridge into a bowl of warm water to gently warm them up to room temp for the bake. I knew Promise Valley’s farm stand eggs were the finest and freshest I could find, their deep orange yolks ready to enrich this already rich mix.

For added flavour and a hint of nutrition, I substituted all-purpose with True Grain’s Sifted Spelt. Whether it’s sprouted, whole or sifted, spelt doesn’t disappoint in chocolate cookies.

This recipe delivers gooey, sugar-loving smiles and zillions (okay, just 50) cookies. If you can, hide some in the freezer — a tactic I’ve employed too often to really call successful any more.

Macadamia White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Servings: 50
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1 cup/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, room temp

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp water

2 cups whole, sprouted or sifted Spelt

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp sea salt

1 cup white chocolate chips or shredded

1 cup macadamia nuts

Preheat oven to 350 F

In a mixer using the whisk attachment, cream butter, brown and granulated sugar on high for about 2 minutes or until very light. Mix in one egg at a time. Mix in vanilla and water.

In a medium bowl, whisk together spelt, soda and sea salt.

Add flour mixture to creamed butter in mixer using paddle attachment until combined. Add white chocolate and nuts until just combined.

On a baking sheet lined with parchment, drop cookie mix by the teaspoon and gently roll into balls.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Leave on baking sheet for 5 min. before transferring to a cooling rack.

February 7, 2021September 14, 2021

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Red Fife Ginger Molasses Cookies

My ode to Red Fife comes in the form of a cookie.

This recipe starts like so many of its cookie counterparts with sugar and butter. (Sorry vegans.) Butter not only makes cookies exceptionally rich in flavour but it creates a luxurious mouthfeel, too.

Recipes ask bakers to cream these two foundational pillars of Cookiedom. That won’t happen if your butter is cold. Pull out an unsalted stick or two at least two hours before you plan to bake.

A KitchenAid mixer is a must if you bake as regularly as I do. Drop butter and sugar into the mixing bowl, attach the whisk, press “Go” and watch these two ingredients intermingle and transform into a light, magical creamy mass.

Next, crack an egg into the mix and lightly oil a measuring cup to ensure easy lift-off for the half cup of molasses needed.

That’s a little trick I share with my daughter Krystal as we bake up a batch. She has never baked with molasses before and feels less than patient as it endlessly pours in a feathery stream out of our almost empty Crosby’s Fancy Molasses container. Likewise, she’s wholly unimpressed with this sweetener’s slightly metallic, smoky taste.

But she complies with my teaching suggestions today, knowing I insist on constant tasting, sniffing and touching to learn baking’s alchemy.

She also knows there are white chocolate chips in the mix.

Ah, white chocolate chips. These are forefront on Krystal’s mind as we search the kitchen cupboards and drawers for this cookie’s ingredients. Unlike cloves, which we grind, sniff and sift fresh, or candied ginger, instantly proclaimed “yuck” when sampled, Krystal needs little encouragement to gobble a handful of chips after she measures a very generous half-cup.

It’s the Red Fife that excites this baker. Canada’s heirloom wheat varietal adds incredible flavour to these cookies, especially if it’s locally sourced and freshly milled.

Luckily, that’s what 1847 Stone Milled Flour is all about. They’re very busy filling orders in the midst of this pandemic, but if ever there was an essential ingredient needed for baking security, it’s flour. Check it out.

Red Fife Ginger Molasses Cookies

Servings: 30
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Red Fife Ginger Molasses Cookies

These are thin, saucer shaped cookies with gingery buttery goodness. Makes 30

3 cups Red Fife

1 ½ tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp ground ginger

¼ tsp cloves (freshly ground if possible)

¾ cup room temp butter (1½ sticks)

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup organic white sugar

½ cup molasses

1 large egg

1 cup white chocolate chips

Rolling Mixture

1/3 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger

Preheat oven to 350 F

In a medium bowl, whisk together flours, baking soda, salt, ginger and cloves.

In mixing bowl cream butter, brown sugar and ¼ cup granulated organic sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in molasses and egg.

In thirds, add in flour mixture and continue mixing until just combined. Sprinkle over with white chocolate chips. It’s a heavy dough that’s not easy to mix.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop tablespoons of dough arranging 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Put sugar in small bowl. Form each cookie into a ball and lightly roll in sugar to coat. Place a chopped piece of candied ginger on each sugared ball. Using the bottom of a glass, flatten into 3 inch rounds.

Bake until golden brown 12-14 min

Cool on a wire rack

April 13, 2020September 14, 2021

MadoFood3 Comments

Cardamom Biscotti

Sometimes it just has to go cardamom in my kitchen. I start dreaming about flavour swaps and find my hands magically clutching a baggie of army-green pods from that crazy mishmash called my spice drawer. I hold the bag and … sigh.

No, I start cussing, wondering aloud if I have the cooking mojo in me to ferret out their cache. Will my cold, stiff fingers find the fortitude to single out each and every one of these tiny seeds that bear an uncanny resemblance to mouse turds?

Cardamom pods aren’t like those happy, smiling pistachio nuts, each cracked and cooperative. These babies are sealed shut like an exotic, perfumed temptress.

Thus, they bring out the pounder in me.

I’ve tried crushing them under my chef’s knife like garlic cloves – but lo, they slide and slither. I’ve grabbed a sheet of wax paper and hammered a rolling pin over them a few times, to absolutely no avail, except for a heap of shredded wax paper.

Luckily, an adorable silver mortar and pestle comes to my rescue.

I throw a handful of pods in the bowl and happily clunk the silver pestle down until I hear crunch after satisfying crunch, splitting and cracking, dispersing their wealth.

The very first pod reaps a clump of tar-black seeds. I can hear my East Indian cooking teacher intoning “Only the black ones are good” as I crack open pod after pod that she’d obviously throw out. A sliver fuzzy membrane is scattered among my largely brown, verging on beige collection. I drop it all into my spice grinder and grimace, again, because fifteen minutes of finicky fine motor work hasn’t even covered my spice grinder’s blade!

Despite this ominous beginning, the seeds whirl into a satisfying silvery and soft powder that trails up into my waiting nostrils with an explosion of menthol and sweet, peppery perfume that is unmistakably cardamom.

Why don’t I just throw up a white flag and buy it ground?

Because I want flavour. Whole spices that are crushed or ground right before use, release essential oils full of oomph. And oomph is what I have planned for this special little biscotti packed with toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds, filled with organic flours, eggs, sugar and vanilla then made perfect thanks to cardamom in the batter. I finish each and every log of biscotti dough with a sparkle of cardamom sugar.

Just a pinch will do it.

Cardamom Biscotti

Servings: 5-6 dozen
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I really can’t live in a house without biscotti. They are my go-to cookie and a welcome gift to friends and family . Thanks to the double bake, they store for weeks, even months in a closed glass container and travel well on airplanes and road trips.

Biscotti Batter:

1 cup whole, raw almonds

½ cup pumpkin seeds

1 ¼ cup organic all purpose flour

1 ¼ cup organic soft whole wheat flour

1 1/4 cups organic granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp salt

4 large eggs

3 tsp vanilla

The Finishing Touches:

1-3 tbsp flour (for rolling out logs)

½ tsp ground cardamom

1 tbsp organic granulated

Preheat oven to 350 ° F.

To toast almonds, arrange on a baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Add pumpkin seeds to the sheet and bake another 5 minutes. Allow nuts and seeds to cool completely.

In a large bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, cardamom and salt. Use a whisk to mix thoroughly.

Whisk eggs and vanilla in bowl of an electric mixer until frothy. Use the paddle attachment to mix in flour and sugar mixture. As soon as the dough clumps around the paddle, add toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds and mix until just combined.

Dust countertop with flour. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Spoon out one quarter of the sticky dough, dust lightly with flour and working quickly, roll into a 8-10 inch log. Transfer log to baking sheet. Repeat 3 times.

In a small bowl, mix sugar and cardamom. Sprinkle over logs with pinched fingers.

Bake for 30 minutes or until biscotti logs are golden and firm. Completely cool logs on a rack for at least 30 min. Using a serrated knife, cut crosswise into 3/4 inch wide slices. Arrange cut side down on baking sheets and return to 350 oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden-brown and crisp.