There are over 100 cookie recipes on my blog. To say that I am passionate about cookies would be an understatement. I think that cookies are the perfect way to end a meal. Just a small bite of something sweet. I’m always puzzled why more restaurants don’t put cookie plates on their dessert menus.
Of the more than one dozen cookie cookbooks on my shelf, the one I reach for more than any other is Cookie Love by Mindy Segal. If you’re looking for quick one-bowl, stir and scoop cookies, this is not the book for you. This book is filled with cookie projects. Multi-layered and textured cookies that are a labour of love and a work of art.
These are an intensely coffee flavoured cookie. The recipe calls for instant coffee crystals, like Folgers. It’s important to use instant coffee crystals and not powdered instant coffee You want those specs of coffee to be visible in the dough. Powdered coffee would just dissolve. The cookies are sprinkled with a touch of turbinado sugar before baking. They add a lovely crunch to the cookie.
The buttercream filling is made with a mix of dark and milk chocolate, butter and sour cream for a hint of tang to balance out all the chocolate richness. The buttercream gets piped around the border and the centre is filled with a dollop of Nutella.
Because we’re fancy around here, I dipped the end in melted chocolate and then studded them with chopped toffee bits and chopped toasted hazelnuts, for crunch. We are team texture here at saltandserenity.
I’m not going to lie. One of the reasons I wanted to make these cookies was that they gave me an excuse to buy one of these. I have always wanted a pastry docker. They look like so much fun to use. Of course the docker is not mandatory. You can always poke the dough with a fork to prevent it from puffing up. But a docker is so much more amusing. Plus, it doubles as a great back scratcher. The recipe for these comes from the brilliant mind of cookie wizard, Mindy Segal. I wrote about her book, “Cookie Love”, a few weeks ago.
I strongly urge you to bake these cookies very soon. My lame-ass description of these cookies can’t possibly live up to just how delicious they are. A filling of caramelized white chocolate buttercream and raspberry jam is sandwiched between two smoked almond shortbread cookies. To further embellish them, Mindy asks us to dip them into bittersweet chocolate. I have learned to do exactly what Mindy tells me to. She has yet to lead me astray. If you are a passionate cookie person, you owe it to yourself, and your loved ones, to make these cookies. Admittedly, in typical Mindy style, there are a few recipes required to produce these cookies, but you can spread the work out over 2 days if you like.
Start with the dough. You will need to grind salted smoked almonds with some all purpose flour in the food processor.Do yourself a favour and roll out dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper while the dough is still soft. Then, chill dough and cut into shapes.I drew a rectangle on my parchment paper, so I would know exactly how much to roll it out. The caramelized white chocolate filling begins with roasting good quality white chocolate in the oven for about 20 minutes. Give it a stir and continue roasting and stirring until it looks like peanut butter. You can buy caramelized white chocolate if you wish to save some time. About 1/4 cup of the caramelized white chocolate is incorporated into a butter and icing sugar frosting. To make your life easier, put frosting into a piping bag, fitted with a round tip. Mindy also gives a recipe for making your own raspberry preserves, but I decided to use a good quality store bought raspberry jam.
Start by piping a W on half the cookies. Dollop on a scant spoonful of raspberry jam and swirl with the buttercream. Top each frosted cookie with a lid and chill just until filling firms up. Then dip in chocolate and chill to set the chocolate.
According to my sister Bo, if I post any more of Melissa Clark‘s recipes I will be veering dangerously close into stalker territory. We both have a bit of a girl crush on Melissa. She is pretty awesome. To date, I have posted 9 of her recipes on my blog. I think that 10 is the line I must not cross or the restraining order will be shortly forthcoming.
Not to worry Melissa, I have a new girl crush. Her name is Mindy Segal. Although her book, Cookie Love, was released in 2015, for some reason, I just discovered it last month. Which, for a cookie fanatic like me, is kind of surprising. Mindy has turned the cookie world on it’s ear, taking the classics and updating them into fun and most decidedly delicious little bites.
Deciding which cookie to bake first, from this gem of a book, was not easy. As you can see, I have bookmarked lots.This is not a book for those looking for simple mix and scoop cookies. Many of the recipes in this book involve multiple steps and several “mini recipes” within a recipe. If that sort of thing bugs you, then this is not the book for you. If you are looking to up your cookie game, and enjoy spending time in the kitchen, creating little master pieces, then look no further, you have found your guru.
I decided to start with her cinnamon brickle rugelach. Rugelach, for the uninitiated, are a small Jewish pastry, of Eastern European origin. You can learn more about the history of rugelach in this post.
For these cookies you need to make a cream cheese dough, cinnamon nut brickle, and caramel sauce. All three of these components can be done several days ahead and you can assemble and bake the rugelach on another day if you like.
I started with the caramel sauce. Mindy’s recipe makes a generous 4 cups, and you really only need about 1/4 of this amount for the rugelach. But the caramel sauce keeps in the fridge for 6 months and it’s always a good idea to have some caramel sauce around in case of emergency. I don’t know about your emergencies, but some of mine can be resolved with a spoonful of salted caramel sauce. You can of course buy caramel sauce in a jar, but please don’t. Homemade is so much better. While the caramel sauce is cooling, make the cream cheese dough.This is a supple dough, easy to roll, with no cracking. Mindy suggests you roll it into a rectangle and then cut it into triangles. I read her instructions for doing this 3 times and could not figure it out. Geometry was never my strong suit. I decided to form mine into a circle, and used a 13 inch round plate to make my circle perfect, because that’s how we roll around here.
The dough needs to chill for about 30 minutes before you can make the rugelach, so go on to the cinnamon nut brickle. Brickle refers to something with little elasticity; hence it is easily cracked or fractured or snapped. Does anyone else remember Butter Brickle Ice Cream from their childhood? My mom used to buy the “light” version and we’d end up eating twice as much.
We’re essentially making nut toffee here. Butter, sugar and cinnamon are heated until melted. Mixed salted nuts are coated in this concoction and then tipped out onto a baking sheet to harden.Then get out the food processor and make some noise. There will be leftover brickle after forming your rugelach. It will keep for over a month, and is excellent on yogurt or ice cream, in case of another emergency.Now for some fun.
I altered Mindy’s recipe slightly, using less caramel sauce and less brickle than she does. A pastry wheel or pizza cutter make quick work of forming the wedges. You could also use a sharp knife. Make sure you brush with beaten egg whites so that the cinnamon sugar will stick. Mindy topped her rugelach with more brickle, but I found that most of it just fell off and burned on the baking sheet, so I left that step out. I did however, sprinkle them lightly with flaked sea salt (Maldon), before baking. The salt really balances out the sweetness of the caramel sauce and brickle filling. The rugelach will ooze quite a bit of their filling so don’t be alarmed. Those little pools of ooze will harden into a delicious toffee. Keep a ring of the toffee around each rugelach for a more delicious treat.
I have been wanting to make the cookie equivalent of those candy conversation heats for some time now. You know the ones I mean, they have the taste and texture of chalk, but are kind of cute.When I went to buy some for the photo shoot, I discovered that SweeTarts also make a version of conversation hearts, and if you’re a fan of that mouthwatering fusion of sweet and tart, you’ll love them. I was thinking of doing an iced cookie, and piping the messages on them, but my fine motor skills aren’t precise enough for detailed piping and besides, my #1 valentine doesn’t like iced cookies. So, onto plan B. I remembered seeing these cookie letter stamps online.
Even though these are a novelty cookie, I still wanted them to be as delicious as possible. I thought I would try making them with a shortbread cookie dough. I used Mindy Segal’s recipe from her exciting and edgy new book, Cookie Love. After making the dough, I rolled it out using my new precision sticks. These have changed my life. I have always had difficulty rolling dough evenly, and then I was reading an article by cookie maven Dorris Greenspan. She was talking about these dough rolling sticks. They come in 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch and 1/16 inch thicknesses. They are genius in their simplicity.After rolling out dough between 2 sheets of parchment, I froze the sheet of dough before cutting out the hearts. I stamped the cookies with their messages before baking, but as soon as they were done I realized that would not work. The cookies puffed up a bit during baking and the letters were not crisp and clear anymore. I decided to try stamping the cookies immediately after baking, before cooling, while they were still soft. To make it manageable, from a timing perspective, I only baked 6 cookies at a time, so that the cookies would not harden before stamping. These cookies are both adorable and delicious. I was thrilled with the results.
