We need to get going on the holiday food
. . . So it was 38° at 2:30 this morning–it having been 31° at 5:30 yesterday evening when I dragged my personal jungle resentfully indoors again–and 43° and raining when I got up at 8:30 which means that not only did I have plants all over the kitchen floor unnecessarily but I also had to water them when if I’d merely left them outdoors they’d've been watered. Grrrrr. And because of all this unsuitable warmth not only are they drying out faster than they usually do in the dormant season but one or two of them are scratching their heads and then deciding well okay and trying to grow. Feh.
I put the chocolate cosmos back out on the front steps this morning thinking, never mind, hurrah, at least the polar bears have left, but noooooooo, we’re supposed to have another frost tonight and tomorrow we get sleet. Probably all day. Joy. I’m thinking I’ll just turn the begonias into houseplants for the winter. I’ve also been bringing in a perfectly hardy little rhododendron because it has fallen into the pleasing but somewhat inconvenient habit of flowering twice a year and its second go is now. I’ve been expecting both its and the camellia’s flowers to fall off in dismay at the mad temperature fluctuations but it’s doing fine (so far) and the camellia is flowering away like anything. Maybe it’s a mountain camellia and accustomed to very hot days and very cold nights . . . and merely says to itself, oh, those silly humans, they got the temperature switches reversed.
And I’m thinking, it’s December. What we need is lots of holiday food.
This is (appropriately) adapted from COLD WEATHER COOKING by Sarah Leah Chase. You’ll see her and it again (as well as various other Silver Palate alumnae). I have no idea why they’re supposed to be Christmas cookies. They work all year if you’re asking me, and they have the advantage that they seem rather exotic while the ingredients are all just stuff you could have around for sudden cookie-making whims. Assuming you’re the sort of person who has tinned sweet cherries in the back of a cupboard, which I am.
Black Forest Christmas Cookies
1 ¾ c all-purpose flour
¼ c barley flour*
2 tsp baking powder
½ c lightly salted butter
½ c dark brown sugar
½ c granulated sugar
3 large eggs**
1 tsp vanilla
6-8 oz dark or semisweet chocolate***, melted and cooled
1 c canned pitted sweet cherries, drained
Cream butter and granulated sugar together till fluffy, then the brown. Then beat in eggs one at a time and the vanilla. You can do this perfectly well by hand but I admit it’s easier with an electric mixer. I usually start out by hand and then use the mixer for a last burst of about a minute on high, till everything is beautifully light and homogenous and several shades paler than it was when you started. Beat in chocolate, then slowly shake/sift in the flour and the baking powder, and mix thoroughly. Divide into two balls or heaps–you want flattened heaps so they’ll chill through faster and more thoroughly–and refrigerate for half an hour. Leave the second wodge in the refrigerator while you make cookies out of the first.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper.
You want a biggish spoonful–a heaping real-tea-spoon as opposed to a measuring teaspoon, approximately–of dough per cookie, but you’ll figure out your measurement soon enough. Dig your thumb into the centre of it and then squish it to make a kind of thumb-shaped and -sized tube. Do not squeeze it so thin that it breaks or leaks. Put a cherry in the tube and then pinch it closed: it should look a bit like a squashed Hershey’s kiss. It’s not a tragedy if one leaks, but you want it not to, and I am telling you that if you close it up below the top, it will leak.
When you’re finished with the first wodge, take the second wodge out of the refrigerator and keep going.
Place the cookies in rows on your cookie sheets about an inch and a half apart.
(If you run out of cherries, a few nuts and raisins will substitute. If you have a ripe pear bits of that with a few currants are so divine a filling that I’ve kept meaning to do that deliberately some time and never mind the cherries, but I haven’t got round to it yet.)
Bake till the tops puff and begin to crack–remember what I said about leaking?–10-12 minutes, probably, but you know your oven best. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.
* * *
* I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned before my habit of throwing a bit of rogue flour in a lot of my baking. The usual thing is to pretend to make Sugar Seizure cooking wholesome and beneficial by replacing half a cup or so of the white flour with wholemeal/wholewheat. Fiddlesticks. You want wholesome, stick to tofu.^ But a little barley or oatmeal flour gives a nice background resonance. Barley in particular I think heightens sweetness without frightening your liver any further. But you can’t use more than about 2T per cup or whatever you’re making gets very crumbly.
^ I like tofu. I have . . . let me see . . . at least one tofuloafu and one marinated tofu recipe that even Peter will eat, and he does not like tofu.
** You can get away with two large eggs if you forgot to buy extra eggs. The other thing I’ve done is used a few spoonfuls of the cherry juice. Taste it: if it’s good, use it (although you’ll then want less sugar). If it isn’t, use your third egg. If you’re only using two eggs you might make the 2 tsp of baking powder a little heaping.
*** The original recipe calls for less, but I want my chocolate chocolate. I’ve found that the texture of the final dough varies significantly less from the amount of chocolate than from the brand or type. I personally recommend something softer rather than harder because that means the dough won’t stiffen as much and you can get more chocolate in. There is also always the ¼ c cocoa powder option, although I’ve never done that with these.
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