Best Chocolate Passover Cookies

Friends, listen up. This weekend, I went undercover. For you. In search of a perfect Passover cookie that could fool even the most discerning dessert connoisseur, I brought a batch of Passover cookies to the pre-wedding festivities of one of my oldest friends. Now surely you're wondering why I'd subject some of my favorite people to those little bricks that taste like chalky potatoes and twice-cooked crackers. The answer, of course, is that I'd never do that. Friends don't make friends eat Passover cookies. Nope. What I did do was treat my near-and-dear to a big tupperware container full of soft, chewy, chocolatey cookies. Also on the menu: muffins, bagels, croissants, and all sorts of other leavened things. And you know what? My chocolate cookies went first.

These are the real deal. Unlike other Passover cookies, these are neither flimsy nor flavorless. In fact, they taste like pure chocolate and they're addictively chewy in that way that good chocolate chip cookies are. They're something you can really sink your teeth into. Oh, and they're also gluten-free. And one more thing: if you're like me and have about 3 Passover dishes, these are your cookies; they require nothing more than a metal bowl, a pot, and an appetite. Best-ever? I think so.

This is the first of two Passover cookie recipes I'll be posting, so stay tuned for round 2.

Best Chocolate Passover Cookiesadapted from a The Pioneer Woman

8 oz. good quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder, optional 3 tablespoons butter 2 eggs 1/3 cup sugar 3/4 cup almond flour (or finely ground almonds, which you can make in a food processor)

Melt chocolate in a double boiler (metal bowl over pot with some water in it). When chocolate has fully melted, stir in butter and espresso powder (if using). Let cool 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk eggs and sugar until light, about 60 seconds. (I used a fork for this, just to make sure you didn't need a whisk. A-ok.) Add to cooled chocolate mixture and stir until combined. Add ground almonds and stir just until combined. Cover mixture and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, the texture should be like fudge.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Scoop dough into tablespoon-sized pieces and roll into balls. Place on a lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-9 minutes.

Makes about 35 cookies.

Party Wings

I may seem delicate, with my ginger-infused biscuits and meyer lemon streusel muffins, and you know what? Maybe I am. But boy, do I love a good chicken wing. Whether battered and fried or sauced and crisped, great wings have become something of an interest. The crunchy skin and juicy meat, the sheer mess of it all, allures me.

I make wings on the rarest of occasions, so I get quite picky about which recipes to try. Last time, I made David Chang's Momofuku wings. They might have been the best chicken wings I've ever made. But they also were the most work-intensive wings I've ever made, requiring all manner of pots and pans and way too much time. Frankly, they were too complex to post.

Back to the drawing board I went, in search of savory, juicy, flavorful wings without so much effort. I found one from none other than Cathy Barrow, aka Mrs. Wheelbarrow, a core member and anchor of the DC Food52 crowd and one of my favorite new friends. Cathy has a fantastic blog, and is also at the helm of Charcutepalooza, a yearlong charcuterie-making project. Needless to say, she's a force.

Cathy's recipe for party wings reminded me of things I cooked in college. Chicken, marinated in brown sauce, simply baked until crisp outside and tender within. A simple, no-fuss recipe. Of course, one look at Cathy's recipe and I realized this actually was nothing like my dorm room fare. I didn't have any fermented black beans in my college fridge. And in fact, I didn't when I made these, either. I don't think they suffered, but I guess I won't know until I've tried to make them with the beans.

I wanted a spicy wing, and sriracha was a welcome addition here. While I worried that the flavor would be a bit muddled given how many ingredients are called for, they really weren't at all. The horseradish and mustard come together to balance the sweetness of the molasses, hoisin, and brown sugar (which I reduced, since I omitted the beans), and the garlic and sesame oil give a strong undercurrent to the marinade. The bake-and-baste method is so easy, it seems almost like a fluke when perfectly moist, crispy wings emerge from the oven. That's Cathy for you - always hitting it out of the park. D proclaimed these the best wings she'd ever had.

In the next couple weeks, I hope to make the Charcutepalooza founder proud; I'm planning to make my own corned beef. Supposedly a very easy task, though I have a keen ability to mess up even easy things. Wish me luck; assuming all goes well, I'll have a recipe for ya' soon.

Party WingsAdapted from Cathy Barrow

6 pounds chicken wings 1/4 cup fermented black beans (I omitted these) 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil 1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar 1/2 cup brown sugar (I cut to 1/4 cup) 1/4 cup molasses 2/3 cups hoisin 1/4 cup horseradish 1/4 cup dijon mustard 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1/2 cup ketchup 2 tablespoons sriracha

How's this for an easy recipe? Cut the wings into three parts, reserving the tip for stock.

Combine all the other ingredients in a deep bowl or (easy!) a plastic bag. Add chicken wings. Marinate for several hours (I left them in there for two or three days).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil (a must, since the sauce sticks to everything) and arrange wings in a single layer, drizzling some of the sauce overtop. I stopped adding sauce when there was a small pool around the wings but they weren't drowning.

Bake the wings for about 45 minutes, basting and flipping them halfway through. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Triple Ginger Biscuits

Sunday brunch used to be my favorite meal. I loved standing over the stove in robe and slippers, flipping pancakes and stirring eggs over barely-there heat with Avishai Cohen serenading me in the background. Friday night was a time for big dinner parties that required hours of advance prep (sometimes even days). But Sunday was a time to mosey into the kitchen, cook something delicious, and feed people. Plain and simple.

These days, Sunday means errands. It means returning things at Bed Bath and Beyond, finding a framer to frame our brit (Jewish marital contract), and visiting my grandmother, who recently moved to town from Chicago. My Sunday breakfasts are even more harried than what I eat on weekdays. We're talking oatmeal, toast with ricotta and avocado, yogurt and granola, the usual. I haven't had a pancake in eons.

But then I read Molly's post about biscuits, and it woke me up. Molly is a wonderful writer. Read her posts, and you'll want to sneak into her world, be her friend. In this case, boy will you want to eat her biscuits.

I'm pretty sure that within minutes of reading that post, I was in the kitchen. In gym clothes and sneakers, hair still back in that sloppy ponytail, I was nonetheless determined to have biscuits. And have biscuits I did: these are the easiest to make. No butter to mash, no liquid to delicately drizzle; just dry ingredients and a wet one, a fork, and five minutes.

As I was gathering ingredients, I remembered a scone I once had at Teaism. It was a ginger scone, and it wasn't great; but it left me intrigued by the possibility of a great ginger scone. I grabbed a nob of ginger from the fridge and took down some candied ginger pieces from the pantry. I grated fresh ginger into the dry ingredients, then added bits of candied ginger.

DSC_0098

The results? Delicious. Obviously. These biscuits are king. Molly's right - the things grow to three times their size in the oven, and when they come out, piping hot, you should reward yourself and your guests by eating them, right then and there. At room temperature, they're just not as good.

But I was hung up on the ginger; it wasn't as prominent as I'd hoped. The next time, I used twice the quantity of fresh ginger, half of which infused the cream. I also added ground dried ginger for a subtle but important gingery base note. Out of the oven, and -- yep, these were the biscuits I'd been hoping for. Perfumed through and through with ginger, pleasantly crunchy both from the crust and from the candied ginger pieces, and people, as flaky as biscuits can be.

DSC_0082

Ginger BiscuitsAdapted from this recipe

In her biscuit recipe, Marion Cunningham calls for a range of 1 to 1 1/2 cups of cream. The amount of liquid you use really depends on the weather, humidity, etc. I started with about 1 1/4 cups, to split the difference, and found my dough stuck together but wasn't sticky. I think this is the texture you're going for. If you're not sure, add 1 cup, whisk with a fork, and if dough still looks really dry, add by the 1/4 cup until it adheres.

2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon baking powder 2 teaspoons sugar 1 teaspoon dried ground ginger 4 tablespoons grated fresh ginger 10 pieces candied ginger, chopped 1 to 1 ½ cups heavy cream (I used about 1 1/4) 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 425 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (If not using parchment paper, no need to grease the pan.)

Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, ground ginger, candied ginger pieces, and 2 tablespoons fresh ginger in a medium bowl and whisk to combine.

In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup cream with remaining fresh ginger until hot (but not boiling). Turn off heat, and allow to steep for 1 hour in the fridge.

Mix the 1 cup of ginger-infused cream into the dry ingredients while mixing the dough. Gather the dough gently; when it holds together and is tender but not sticky, you've added enough cream. If the dough feels very shaggy or there are dry pieces at the bottom of the bowl, add some of the additional cream until dough holds together.

On a lightly floured workspace, gently knead dough about 1 minute - you're looking for a consistently smooth dough, but you don't want to overwork it. Pat the dough into a 1/2-inch thick square or circle. If square, cut into 12 squares. If circle, cut into 8-12 wedges (I made 8). Brush with melted butter so all sides of each biscuit are coated. Place biscuits on baking sheet 2 inches apart. Bake for 15 minutes, until browned around the edges. Serve hot.

Hamentaschen

from the archive, just in time for the holiday.

Among the many traditions associated with the quickly-approaching Jewish holiday of Purim, perhaps the most widely-kept one is the consuming of copious amounts of alcohol hamentaschen. Are you surprised that it's my favorite holiday in the calendar?

haman31.jpg

Fashioned after Haman's pocket, hamentaschen are cookies filled with anything from poppyseed to raspberry jam to Nutella, and folded up to resemble a triangle. They're not too sweet, flavored with vanilla and lemon zest, and perfectly crunchy outside while soft within. Everyone has a favorite filling, and mine -- poppyseed -- is, unfortunately, hated by many folks. I appeased the masses this year by making a large batch of raspberry-chocolate filled ones. I'll save the poppyseed for myself. I also scored a tub of halvah (sweet sesame paste), so that should make for some interesting cookies as well.

haman4.jpg

The number of hamentaschen recipes I've tasted reaches the teens. From the ones in Israel (which are non-dairy, and inevitably made with way too much scary margarine) to three of my mom's recipes, to countless others we receive from friends each year, I settled on my uncontested favorite long ago. That recipe, which I've posted here, is what I have used to make hamentaschen for four years running. While other recipes may be easier to work with, they produce a cookie that's neither crunchy nor chewy, but merely soft and unpleasant to bite. They come out more cake-y than cookies ever should, and less flavorful as well. The recipe I post here requires a fair amount of patience, but the resulting hamentaschen make up for the (minimal) hassle. You'll see.

haman5.jpg

By now, many of you have emailed me asking for the recipe, so without further ado, here it is. I made my two batches on Sunday, and they came out delightfully crispy and cookie-like, just as I love them. Please note that if you need to make twice or three times as much as the recipe produces, make the batches one at a time; this recipe does not like to be doubled.

haman5a.jpg

hamentaschen2

Hamentaschen

makes 20-25, depending on size

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. lemon extract or lemon zest (I prefer the latter)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• pinch salt
• 2-3 cups flour

1. Cream butter and sugar about 1 minute.
2. Add egg and extract/zest, and mix about 1 minute more.
3. In a separate bowl, combine baking powder, salt, and 2 cups of the flour.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix on low to combine.
5. Add up to one more cup of flour, just enough that the dough comes together and does not feel sticky.
6. Gather dough into plastic wrap or wax paper, and refrigerate 30-45 minutes (much longer, and it'll be tough to work with).
7. Sprinkle working surface with flour, and roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick.

8. Using a 2-inch cookie cutter, slice cookies out of the dough.
9. Lift each circle off the table to ensure that it doesn't stick.
10. Drop about a tsp. of filling onto each circle.
11. Wet the rim of the circle with a bit of water, and bring up the sides to form a triangle (as pictured).
12. Place on a baking sheet with 1/2-1 inch room in between hamentaschen.
13. Bake for 10-16 minutes at 375 degrees, until the tips of the triangles are golden.
14. Allow to cool completely before storing, and if you are tempted to try one with jam inside, wait a while or it'll burn your tongue! :)
Store in between layers of wax paper in an airtight container.