My massed throngs of admirers *snort* are demanding the secret to my oatmeal cookies!  Well, I have but one secret to give:  it's the Quaker Oatmeal recipe you can get on the inside of the lids.  Yup, it's the best one going if what you want is chewy, buttery, oatmeal-y goodness.  Fer real.  I've tried a bunch.  I'll admit, I also enjoy the crispy, buttery, thin ones, in which case I would suggest inverting the measures for brown & white sugar, and maybe even melting the butter first, but otherwise, Monsieur Quaker, he got it right. 

Quaker Oatmeal Cookies

1 C butter, softened
1 C brown sugar, packed
1/2 C granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 C oats
1 C raisins

1. Cream together butter and all sugars until fluffy.  Add both eggs and vanilla and mix until well-blended.
2. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  Add gradually to the butter mixture and mix until barely combined.
3. Add oats and raisins and continue to mix until well-distributed.
4. Make drop cookies and bake for 9-11 minutes at 350*F.
5. Eat.  Lots.  Yum.

You know, I'd planned on getting a better lit photo of this but... well... we ate it all. Ah well. You'll just have to make it for yourself to see how wonderful it really is. Also, please note that this recipe calls for a full QUART of blueberries. The whole purpose of the buckle is to provide a slightly sweetened suspension medium for ghastly amounts of blueberries--so many blueberries that the cake itself "buckles" in the center. All of these berries actually fit, with batter and streusel, into a 9" round pan. True story. And the streusel provides a lovely hint of cinnamon which would have been out of place in the cake itself, but which sets of the whole thing beautifully.  This can be a coffee cake by adding a cup of coffee on the side, or a dessert by, well, just eating it.

 

 

Yeah, alright, it's not the prettiest picture I've ever taken (I'll make up for it below with the ice cream pic).  Partially, this is because I forgot that I needed to take pictures, and so it just wasn't set up properly.  Partially because, well, it's just not a very pretty dish.  But it tasted good!  The paneer potato balls are good, but they need a little work--a little something more.  Admittedly, this time we decided that the "little something more" was Major Grey chutney out of a jar, and decidedly non-local, but next time I've got other ideas.  These would go great with a cucumber raita, but we don't have any cucumbers yet.  Ah well, more's the pity.  The strawberry raita I did made was wonderful, but not particularly good on the paneer balls--great on it's own, though.  And the kale?  I don't know what I did, but it was knockout good.  I mean, damn.

Paneer Balls
Paneer:  homemade, cowshare milk, ~20 mi
Potatoes:  Good Life Farms CSA, ~35 mi
Cornmeal:  Bridgeton Mills, ~20 mi
Cilantro:  backyard
[not local:  many indian spices, lemon juice to make paneer, salt & pepper]

Raita
Strawberries:  Amish farmer, ~20 mi
Yogurt:  homemade, cowshare, ~20 mi
Ricotta:  homemade, cowshare, ~20 mi
Honey:  local, don't know where from exactly though
Ginger Mint:  backyard

Kale
Kale:  backyard
Butter:  cowshare, ~20 mi
Cream:  cowshare, ~20 mi
[not local:  pinch of sugar, salt & pepper, nutmeg]



Well, at least here's a pic worth looking at, if for no other reason than it's ice cream!

Strawberry Ice Cream
Strawberries:  Amish farmer, ~20 mi
Cream:  cowshare, ~20 mi
Milk:  cowshare, ~20 mi
[not local:  sugar, salt, vanilla, vodka]

Here's my recipe for scones for my scone-impaired friends.  These have been compared favorably to anything you can get in the Fair Isles (I wouldn't know, I've never been there, but that's the rumor).  This recipe is pretty much straight out of Cook's Illustrated.  Hey, they got it right, why mess with it?

Okay, I'm not going to actually give you a recipe, because what I'm going to tell you here can be adapted to nearly any pie crust recipe you have.  I would suggest, if you are making one anyway, that you use a recipe which contains both butter and shortening--this combines the wonderful tenderness of the shortening with the flavor and flakiness of butter (so speaketh Master Alton Brown).

Now, here's the trick:  you know where it says to add, say, 3-6 TBSP of ice water (or more if you're making a double crust), and how desperately important it is to only barely add enough water for it to come together or the entire universe will come to an end?  Substitute half of the water for vodka.

Yes, I said vodka.  The colorless, volatile liquid used in screwdrivers.

Here's the deal.  The reason adding too much water to a pie crust is bad is that it makes the crust tough; it does this by reacting with the flour to create gluten.  But vodka does not create gluten when combined with flour!  Ha-ha!  So you can use vodka in place of half of the water, and no longer live under the tyranny of little old grandmothers screeching in your ear that you've added too much liquid.  Your pie dough will actually be manageable, rather than constantly breaking apart from lack of liquid (in fact, if anything, I've been inclined to make the dough almost too wet, and I have to roll it our in a lot of flour).  The reason you only want to use half, instead of all, vodka is that if you add too much vodka, it will in fact start to taste boozy, which isn't usually a desirable feature of a crust for, say, apple pie (but maybe it would be for a quiche...).  But the vodka buys you enough room to be able to use enough water that the dough is really easy to work, making pie-crust making a breeze!  Whoopee!

(Got this tip, and nearly all the rest of my cooking knowledge, from Cook's Illustrated.)

These, gentlepersons, are the World's Best Sugar Cookies.  Would I steer you wrong?  Of course not!  This is an old family recipe, which I am sharing with you all in the spirit of friendship, love, and the desperate need for good cookies to flood our houses this holiday season.  One thing, though--this recipe is not appropriate for rolling & cutting cookies, believe me, I've tried (yes, I've also tried refrigerating it for hours/days before rolling; I've tried freezing for 30 min; I even tried upping the flour--ick).

Now, before I get to the recipe itself, some words about cookies and cooking them:

1. Cook your cookies on parchment paper.  Just do it.  They come out better (less likely to burn), and are easier to remove from the sheet.  You can scoop out sheets worth of cookies all at once, rather than having to wait for cookie sheets to come out of the oven.  And, finally, if you're lazy (like me), you can safely ignore mild ickiness on cookie sheets and get on with cookie making, rather than having to slave over the sink before slaving over the stove.
2. For perfect cookies--step away from those bloody teaspoons!!!  Head down to your friendly local restaurant supply store (no, not Wal-Mart, and no, not Sur la Table--find a place that looks like the ass-end of a warehouse and you've found the right place).  Purchase a #40 disher/scooper.  This looks just like an ice cream scoop, but smaller (the "40" indicates how many scoops it takes to make a quart; so, the larger the number, the smaller the scoop).  A #40 scoop will make perfectly shaped 3" cookies easily--that is, no weird gymnastics with two teaspoons, or running afoul of the germ police by *gasp* using your finger to push the dough off.  Incidentally, a #24 disher scoops out the perfect amount of batter for my 1/2 cup muffin tin; for a slightly larger tin, a #22 or #20 would probably work a treat.
3. Make the full recipe of any cookie recipe, but only cook as many as you're likely to eat soon.  Get out a spare sheet of parchment, put it on a cookie sheet, and scoop out the remaining dough, placing them very close together but not touching, to get as much on as possible.  Throw them into the freezer until frozen through, then bag 'em, tag 'em, and keep them frozen until use.  (If you didn't use the parchment paper, add 2 hours of chiseling the frozen cookie dough off of the cookie sheet to your "to do" list.)  To bake, do not thaw, follow the original baking instructions, but add a couple of minutes to the cooking time.  Quick, fresh, homemade cookies anytime--and a godsend for the holiday season, when propriety demands that you have 14 gazillion buttloads of cookies available at the drop of a hat.

Okay, enough of that--on to the recipe!

Alright, I know I've totally been slacking off on my Recipe of the Weeks (now they're more like Recipe of the Months, or maybe Recipes of this Diurnal Cycle, or something).  But I will make amends with this recipe.  Go.  Make it.  Now.  You have no time to waste.  Another minute without your having this ice cream in your life is another minute wasted!  If you're vegan... well, figure it out!  There's vegan cream & stuff out there--use it! 

Before I get into the recipe, allow me to say that I am totally and completely in love with vegan cookie recipes.  There are 3 reasons for this:

1. No waiting for butter to soften.
2. They are dead easy to mix up.
3. They rock all over the place!

I have only made vegan cookies out of Vegan with a Vengeance, but maaaaan, are they good.  I will probably post some periodically until people tell me to stop it, or until legal personelle contact me about copyright violations (hey, I always credit!).

The brownie recipe, however, is not vegan.  At all.