Pumpkin Cookie Pointers

In an attempt to feel festive and fallish, I baked up a batch of Martha’s pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing. The recipe is included in her “Cookies” book and is also online here.

The cookies are beyond delicious, but the path to achieving such deliciousness was not easy. Rather than give you a play-by-play of the recipe, I’ll share a few pointers to consider in case you find yourself with nothing to do one afternoon and a hankering for some pumpkin cookies.

-- Give yourself a block of about four hours to make these. If you don’t have that much time to spare, consider halving the recipe.

-- I would also recommend halving the recipe if you don’t have an immediate need for six dozen cookies. The cookies are really hard to store because of the icing – You can’t stack them on top of each other in a Tupperware container unless you want a sticky mess. Because of this I have several trays of them covered in plastic wrap lining my counters right now.

-- I didn’t really read the recipe before I started and therefore experienced total panic when I got to the part that said I had to pipe the dough onto a cookie sheet using a pastry bag. I am not a friend of pastry bags, but I decided to give it a try and it was actually pretty easy (even though I have the cheapest pastry bag ever and I'm sure I didn't use the right kind of tip). Definitely more time-consuming than simply scooping the dough, though. I do wonder if they would come out the same if you rolled the dough into a ball and then flattened the ball. If you’ve tried that technique, let me know!

-- My icing came out runnier than it looked in the photo featured in the “Cookies” book. I guess I could have tried adding more powdered sugar, but I didn’t want to potentially ruin a good thing. Instead, I put down some waxed paper and iced the cookies over that for easy cleanup.

I hope I haven’t discouraged anyone from trying this recipe, because the cookies truly are scrumptious. They turn out a cakey texture and the browned butter really adds a unique and tasty flavor. Be prepared to be stuck in the kitchen for a while, but don’t worry – the reward will be a sweet one!

What’s your favorite pumpkiny treat for fall?

Martha's Peanut Butter Cookies

From time to time I like to flip back through some of Martha's older cookbooks, some of the less hefty ones that are almost more like magazines that have really dedicated themselves to going to the gym. I'm sure they were once issued in hardback, but now they're more widely available in paperback, which is how I have them. These are mostly "Best of Martha Stewart Living" compilations, and include "What to Have for Dinner" and "Favorite Comfort Food."

In looking for a cookie recipe to make that wasn't the standard Toll House that we normally make around here, I found Martha's Peanut Butter Cookie recipe. Unlike several other cookie recipes I'd been eyeing, this one required no 30+ minutes of chilling dough. I was on a deadline this day, and didn't have time to chill dough.

This recipe turned out a tender, delicately peanut butter flavored cookie. I often find peanut butter cookies too heavy on the peanut butter flavor for me (I know it sounds odd, but I prefer a more subtle flavor than a cookie that tastes like it's peanut butter with a couple of token ingredients added to keep it from being all peanut butter).

These are fast and easy, and the recipe only makes two dozen cookies, which is nice because then they don't hang around until you're sick of them. I did feel that I needed to add an additional 1/4 cup of flour to the dough; it was just a shade sticky. My kids loved helping because they could make balls of dough and play with it, then smash them flat with a fork.

Peanut Butter Cookies
from Martha Stewart's Favorite Comfort Foods
makes 2 dozen

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter (crunchy may also be used)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 to 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
Dry-roasted, salted peanuts, for sprinkling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 and line two baking sheets with parchment. Set aside

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, peanut butter, and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix on medium speed until well combined.

In a medium mixing bowl, sift 1 cup flour and baking soda together (full disclosure: I did not sift--I just added them both to the mixer and hoped for the best). Add to the butter mixture, and beat to combine. The dough should be slightly sticky, but not so sticky that you can't roll it into balls. If this is the case, add the additional 1/4 cup flour and mix it in.

Scoop the dough out in tablespoons and shape into balls. Place on the prepared baking sheets, about 3 inches apart. Dip the tines of a fork in warm water and press the dough balls down lightly with the back of the fork to flatten slightly (dip the fork back in the water for each dough ball, to prevent sticking). Sprinkle with a few peanuts, if desired.

Place sheets in the preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden, rotating sheets between the shelves halfway through baking. Transfer sheets to a wire rack to cool. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

Picture from The Modern Apron

Making Macaroons

The Easter Bunny (my mom) tucked Martha’s new “Cookies” book in my basket this year. This week, I decided it was high time I crack it open and try one of the recipes. Except that I couldn’t decide which one I wanted. They all look so luscious, and I was mesmerized by the pictorial table of contents.


All of the cookies are organized in the book by texture (e.g. Light and Delicate, Rich and Dense, and Cakey and Tender). This only complicated matters. Everything sounded good – I couldn’t even narrow it down to a texture.

Enter my husband, who quickly flipped through the book and declared Martha’s coconut macaroons (in both plain and chocolate varieties) the easy winner.

Hmmm ... I’m not much of a macaroon fan, but I do enjoy coconut. And the chocolate ones seem a bit Mounds-ish, which can’t be bad. Macaroons it is!

Here’s what you’ll need:

3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
(Makes 1-1/2 dozen)

The recipe calls for unsweetened shredded coconut, which it indicates you can find at health food stores. Well, I made a visit to my local health food store, and it didn’t have ANY type of coconut. I was able to track down the sweetened variety at a chain grocery store. The recipe says that is OK, you just need to change the sugar in the recipe from 3/4 cup to 1 tablespoon.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy this recipe is and how few ingredients were involved. You just add the coconut, sugar, egg whites, vanilla and salt in a bowl, and mix it together with your hands.



The recipe then says to use your hands to form mounds of the mixture, but I used my trusty cookie dough scooper. I recommend really packing the dough tightly no matter which method you use. Otherwise, the macaroons kind of crumble apart when baked.

Also, the recipe recommends covering the cookie sheets with parchment paper ahead of time, but I used my Silpats instead. What a baking rebel! Put these in an oven preheated to 325 degrees F.



The book says the cookies should bake until golden brown, about 17 minutes. They took about 20 in my oven. But most things do take a little longer to cook in there. I’ll be sure to put oven calibration on the top of my to-do list!

For the chocolate variety, you follow the same instructions, except you add 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate and 1/4 cup of sifted unsweetened cocoa powder. And instead of 2 1/2 cups of the coconut, use 2 2/3 cups.

Martha says you should melt the semisweet chocolate in a double boiler. I didn’t want to wash that many dishes, so I broke the chocolate up into small pieces, put them in a bowl, and stuck it in the microwave for 30-second increments, stirring between each one. Below is my chocolate at the one-minute mark. It took 90 seconds to melt completely.



Then you just add it to the other ingredients in the bowl and mix it up with your hands, following the identical baking instructions as the plain coconut batch.


I was kind of surprised with the texture of these (though I shouldn’t have been, as they’re appropriately filed in the Soft and Chewy section of the book). They’re just sort of like gooey piles of coconut with a little crunch on the outside. All of the macaroons I’ve had before have been more cakey. A quick Wikipedia search indicates that those were not true macaroons, as they likely contained flour.

My husband and I both agreed that the plain coconut ones were better than the chocolate, which were a bit rich (and not really Mounds-ish at all). Perhaps they could do with a bit more sugar. But overall, they were pretty good.

I’m not sure which recipes in the “Cookies” book I’ll try next. I definitely have my eye on the rum raisin shortbread and the carrot cake cookies.

Have you tried any of the recipes in this book? Did you find any keepers? Has a cookie recipe of Martha’s become a favorite in your home? Let me know!

Martha Stewart Surprise Cookies

Of all the cookie recipes I've baked, it didn't exactly come as a surprise that my favorite cookie of all time was from Martha Stewart. With a rich chocolate flavor, a tender cookie base, and a soft marshmallow on top, there is a little something for everyone.

A few years ago I actually mailed a batch of these cookies to my boyfriend while we were doing the long-distance thing (we're now married with a 5 month old daughter, Violet) and they held up amazingly well and were just as delicious as the day I baked them.

Image from Divine Domesticity

Surprise Cookies
Makes 2 dozen

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
12 large marshmallows, cut in half horizontally

1. Preheat oven to 375°. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg, milk, and vanilla, and beat until well combined. Add reserved flour mixture; mix on low speed until combined.

3. Using a tablespoon or 1 3/4-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto ungreased baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies begin to spread and become firm, 10 to 12 minutes.

4. Remove baking sheets from oven, and place a marshmallow, cut-side down, in the center of each cookie, pressing down slightly. Return to oven, and continue baking until marshmallows begins to melt, 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

5. Spread about 1 tablespoon of frosting over each marshmallow, starting in the center and continuing outward until marshmallow is covered.

Image from Divine Domesticity

Chocolate Frosting
3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Place confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk in butter and cocoa powder. Add milk and vanilla, and whisk until well combined.

Recipe from Martha Stewart Kids Magazine

New Cookie-of-the-Day Feature

Just in time for holiday baking, there's a new feature over at MarthaStewart.com--the Cookie of the Day. The feature started last Sunday, so already there are nine fabulous-looking recipes to choose from, including classic Chocolate Brownies, Butter Cookie Sandwiches, and Double Chocolate Cookies, along with some out of the ordinary offerings, such as Cornmeal-Cherry, and Cranberry Hearts (which would make a nice "light" dessert on Thanksgiving for those who were too full for pie right after dinner...because we all know that on Thanksgiving, sooner or later, there has to be pie!) Since we all know that the wonderful folks at Martha Stewart are famous for their amazing cookies, this should be a great source for recipes for holiday sweets.