sigh.

In reading another blog, Roots and Grubs, which is seriously prolific and I'm not quite at the end of the archives, I realized it's not called Baker's Illustrated at all, but rather, Baking Illustrated. I will assume this just makes it harder to Google and keeps me a few more steps away from being arrested for copyright infringement.

C is for Chocolate Cookie

These peanut butter chip chocolate cookies I've been eating constantly are pretty amazing. I made them for my friend's birthday (Happy Birthday!) and took them to her when we met in South Carolina. She agreed about the amazing-ness. I've made them before with white chocolate chips instead of peanut butter, and while I don't really like white chocolate (there was some deep symbolism involved in the recipe having them though) they were promptly eaten by my roommates and I instead of being given to our new neighbors, as was the original intention. Things have been sort of tense with them ever since.
Anyway, given that half a recipe made 20 cookies and had a whole half-pound of chocolate, there's pretty much no way they couldn't be delicious. The recipe comes from Baker's Illustrated, which I love more than my firstborn. If, you know, I had one. Ahem. I'll adapt it here, not out of any sort of altruism to you (and obviously not to the publishers) but so I can make it anywhere I have access to the internet. So:

Chocolate, chocolate, and more (yet optional) chocolate cookies.
(Adapted from Thick and Chewy Triple-Chocolate Cookies from Baker's Illustrated)
(Also, this is for the half-recipe, but you can double it. Or triple it. Or quadruple it. But I might stop there.)
Sift 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt together.
Melt 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate somehow.
Lightly beat 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract together, and 1 teaspoon of instant espresso powder on top.
Beat 5 tablespoons softened butter, add 1/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Add egg mixture, then chocolate, then dry ingredients. Stir in 6 ounces of chips of some sort if desired.
Cover with plastic wrap in bowl, let sit at room temp for 1/2 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Place spoonfuls on sheets. Bake for 10 minutes, switching racks at the 5 minute point. (I should add here that I left the darker baking sheet in for 9 minutes, and the lighter one in for 11 minutes. They will still look soft and maybe just a little uncooked in the very center though.) Cool on pans for 10 minutes, then remove cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling. Eat.

As astute readers will have noticed, the previous post indicates I still have half a roll of phyllo dough leftover for the Great Spanakopita Experiment. As is my wont, I turned to Baker's Illustrated again. Seriously, this is the best investment I've made. (By which I mean, the best Christmas present my sister got me that I didn't even ask for or know about.) Only after I bought ingredients for half a recipe did I realize that I completely missed the step where they mention they only use half of the phyllo dough anyways. I amended this by using two sheets nearly every time they wanted two. Also, they wanted all sorts of finicky things like fresh dill and fresh parsley, and I am neither made of money nor like parsley, so I omitted them, and made up for it with...a couple of dashes of dried dill. I'm pretty terrible. Finally, they wanted scallions. I was at the farmer's market when I realized that I have no idea what I scallion is. That is, I knew they were either green onions or shallots. Another recipe I was looking at for the GSE had green onions, but I couldn't recall ever having green onions in spanakopita. So I bought shallots, since I've never had shallots before, and I figured they were all onion-like things anyways, so it wouldn't make any difference. When I was walking home, I decided that scallions were almost certainly the same thing as green onions. (This is fascinating, I know. I could go on about all my thought processes concerning alliums. And I will!) Wikipedia indeed confirms that scallions are green onions. HOWEVER. A few sentences down, the good people of wikipedia mention that:

"Scallion" is sometimes used for Allium ascalonicum, better known as the shallot. The words scallion and shallot are related and can be traced back to the Greek askolonion as described by the Greek writer Theophrastus

Hence, I am vindicated. Assuming there's not some insane scallion-obsessed person trying to prove it is the same thing as a shallot. I used one shallot (whereas the recipe requested 3 scallions, and see, now even I'm getting confused typing all these out) since it was much stronger than I expected.
All these troubles aside, the GSE was a huge success and was incredibly delicious. I also got to use my new microplane grater for the first time, courtesy of Cook's Illustrated, as I decided I wanted some sort of magazine subscription, and it happened to come with something I was planning on buying eventually anyway.

In which I tempt fate yet again

My newly made jam is crying to be eaten. Biscuits are clearly called for. But...the buttermilk in my fridge has been sitting there for a few weeks. The expiration date is June 29th. However, the good people of the internet seem to agree that buttermilk is really okay after the date, especially if you're just cooking with it, not drinking it. Since it seems to be liquid still, more or less, biscuits with buttermilk being the title ingredient in order.

If I don't update tomorrow, I'm probably dead from a one-two combo of botulism and salmonella. But I feel fine now, after eating three biscuits. The recipe is from Baker's Illustrated, as usual. Their tip for making biscuits sans food processor was to grate frozen butter into the dry ingredients with a cheese grater. This worked out really well except for the last bit of butter, which started to melt in my hands, so I quickly chopped it up when I couldn't grate anymore. I made a half recipe, for 6 biscuits, which I really should have just turned into 4. Still, they came out charmingly and delicious.

Fresh from the oven.

With jam and brie.