I swapped out my gluten-free flour blend and an equal amount of ruby chocolate for the chopped chocolate at the end.
And a word to the wise: weighing the ingredients for this recipe is important. I measured by volume the first time around and was totally unimpressed. Measuring by weight changed the whole experience. This recipe makes 36 cookies, and they can be frozen, baked, or frozen unbaked and sliced/baked when ready.
You could also skip the ruby chocolate if you like and make them as written, and you wouldn’t be sad, but this is a theme. 10/10 recommend finding some ruby chocolate for the cookies — you need it for the ice cream anyway, so why not?
Next, make the ice cream. This ruby chocolate ice cream is velvety smooth and rich, studded with unsweetened coconut and chopped walnuts. It’s not the same flamboyant pink of other recipes on the interwebs because I opted not to add food coloring or beet powder, but it you want that shock of pink in your mouth, add a 1/2 teaspoon of powder or as many drops of food color as you like.
New to ruby chocolate, which is a relative newcomer to food? Read more about ruby chocolate here from the company that discovered it.
Ruby Chocolate Ice Cream With Coconut And Walnuts
Ingredients
1 ½ cups heavy cream
½ cup coconut milk
⅓ cup sugar
3 egg yolks
6 ounces ruby chocolate
Optional: Beet powder or red food coloring
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
Method
Heat cream, coconut milk, and sugar in a heavy saucepan over medium heat until bubbles appear at the edges.
While the milk heats, place the egg yolks in one bowl and the ruby chocolate in a slightly larger bowl and prepare an ice bath for the slightly larger bowl.
Once the bubbles appear, turn off the heat and very, very slowly drizzle the heated cream and coconut milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. If you go too fast or don’t whisk you’ll end up with sweet scrambled eggs. Go slow.
Return the mixture back to the heat, turn the flame to medium low, and get ready to stir until it thickens. This can take a minute (up to ten), but don’t get impatient and turn up the heat or you will end up with — you guessed it — sweet scrambled eggs.
When the milk mixture coats the back of the spatula and is thick (like a custardy sauce, not quite pudding), it’s done. Place a strainer over the bowl with the ruby chocolate and pour the milk into it. This catches any stray bits of egg (it happens).
Stir until the ruby chocolate is completely melted and incorporated. If adding beet powder or food coloring, do it at this step.
Place the bowl of what is now delicious, delicious ruby chocolate custard into the ice bath and stir until cooled. Wrap the bowl in plastic and chill until totally cold (at least four hours, but overnight is good, too).
When the custard is cool, process according to your ice cream maker’s directions. I add the coconut and walnuts in at the last five minutes, and it works like a charm.
Sandwich between two cookies, eat out of the ice cream maker, or freeze and serve later.
Note:
This recipe doubles easily.
You can also substitute milks (non-dairy, no heavy cream, etc), but you will not get the same richness.
My office window, viewed through a breakfast cookie filter.
I don’t know about where you live, but here in Maryland we have just gotten our first glimpse of fall.
This past week overnight temps hovered in the mid-60s, and daytime highs were just around the upper 70s. Dry, clear blue skies, and the beginnings of leaves drifting out of the tops of trees.
I am predicting it here, though: we are in for a big winter. Lots of cold and snow.
This may be dire news for you, but I am here to console you with breakfast cookies. I like a warm, good-smelling house in the fall, and I also like an easy and comforting breakfast in the morning. If we were all rushing off to work and school as in the past, these would be an ideal way to get some food in you on a busy morning, too.
You can also tell yourself that these are good for you – there is very little added sugar, and really, less than that doughnut or French toast you may have been having.
Plus, even though we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, these breakfast cookies are portable bundles of goodness. These days I like to take them with me on hikes. Quick and easy nutrition that’s not filled with preservatives.
And, in the spirit of my Depression-era grandmother, you can use whatever you have on hand for these, pretty much. Make your own granola (Best Granola Recipe included in Recipe Notes), or finish up the dregs of multiple boxes of breakfast cereal, whatever kind you like.
They are simple and ready in about 15 minutes, start to finish.
Breakfast Cookies
This recipe makes 12-14 cookies. I portion them with an ice cream scoop and freeze. Pop them in a preheated oven and you have fresh cookies in 12 minutes.
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable/canola oil
2/3 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour (see Recipe Notes)
3 cups cereal (granola, multigrain flakes, anything you like – see Recipe Notes)
Method
Preheat oven to 350. Line baking tray with parchment (or silicon sheet) and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine oil and brown sugar and whisk to combine.
Add baking soda and eggs and give it a sturdy whisking until the mixture lightens slightly.
Add flour and mix well with a spatula, the add cereal and mix well with same spatula until well-combined.
Scoop onto a cookie sheet (ice cream scoop works here, or use two heaping tablespoons per cookie). Flatten slightly.
Bake for 8-10 minutes until brown and set. Cool on the pan for one minute, then move to a wire rack and cool completely. OR eat them warm, which is what I do because they smell so good when they are cooking that I cannot wait.
Recipe Notes
Best Granola Ever: Preheat oven to 250. Line baking sheets with parchment. Combine 3 cups oats, 2 cups nuts, 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes in a bowl. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and 3/4 teaspoon of salt, then pour over oat mixture and stir to combine. Spread on cookie sheets and bake for an hour, stirring every 20 minutes. Remove from oven and add 1 cup dried fruit, any kind, mixing well. THAT’S IT. Substitute any kind of nut or dried fruit, add spices (cinnamon, clove, pumpkin pie spice, etc). Whatever you like.
Feel free to use any flour that floats your boat here, literally. I use my gluten-free AP flour, but I have also used oat and, when still eating gluten, wheat flour. They all work.
As for cereal, use the Best Granola Ever from above, or add literally any other kind of cereal you can imagine. Go as trashy or as healthy as you like.
MAKE THESE VEGAN: Use whatever egg replacer you normally use to replace the two eggs here.
I dare you to make these and then argue with the title of this blog.
If you are just here for the cookie (and I don’t blame you), you can find the recipe on Smitten Kitchen. Everyone knows the best chocolate chip cookies are crispy and chewy, and that’s exactly what I searched for and exactly what I got.
Of course, these use my gluten-free flour blend, and I used a mix of regular and mini semisweet chips. Also, because I am sheltering in place on my own, I baked half of the batch only. The rest I scooped into individual cookies with an ice cream scoop and am freezing. Pop a cookie onto a baking sheet and bake it up whenever.
For those of you who are here for cookies and the rest of the blog, keep going.
“You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Followed by this from Paul Éluard: “There is another world, but it is in this one.”
If ever there were a book for our time, it is this one.
We are all (most) of us, sitting, and some of us (like me, now) solitary. I am waiting, I guess, not exactly solitary, and there might be the problem. With our shithead of a president failing to lead (or demonstrate his ability to be anything but the inept moron and terrible person he is), infections and deaths rising in what I believe are falsely deflated numbers, and people feeling the sting of isolation for two weeks (official two weeks isn’t even close here in Maryland – we have only been under stay-at-home orders since March 30), we are still filling up our time and mental space with what we used to do, only now it’s online.
Certainly, we mourn the freedom of movement we used to have, but whenever you get too down in the mouth about that, imagine you are in prison right now, and your prison has just been issued stay-at-home orders for two weeks, and your home is an 8×10 cell that you share with another person who is not of your choosing.
But I digress.
The point is (and for the chocolate chip cookie people who stayed, I know. Sometimes it takes a minute to get to the point. But I usually make it there eventually), once we come out of this, if we have not gotten quiet, and still, and solitary, what will we come out to?
I think one positive part of this (if one could spin anything to be positive) is that the terrible, anti-functional parts of life in the U.S. have been laid bare. Too many people are one paycheck away from disaster.
Our hospitals are not equipped for large-scale disasters. Our healthcare system essentially ensures that the poor and the brown among us will die from lack of care or be destitute following the minimal care they receive.
The entire country feels this lack – witness, among other things, the rabid clearing of all toilet paper from stores and the hoarding of everything from masks to hand sanitizer to, of all things, flour and yeast. It is a true thing that when our survival is threatened, grasping for things we can hold (e.g., toilet paper) provides us with a feeling of stability.
Someone on Instagram wrote that they thought rationing (as in World War II) would be better because then at least you would be guaranteed your carton of eggs.
We have no guidance, no leadership, no calls for coming together at the federal level (including the laughable federal “stimulus” package that bails out the few large businesses at the expense of the small and of individuals. And the people who pick our vegetables and toil in the fields? They are fucked.). In Baltimore, and in my neighborhood, there are community resources being made available for those who are suffering, and I have seen beautiful examples of people helping each other.
But on the national level, Congress and the Shithead-in-Chief are pointing fingers and worrying about whose fault it is, still propping up big corporations that can absorb the shock better than the little guy, and probably scanning the globe for a war that might pull us out of what looks to be headed in the direction of the Great Depression, part deux.
If we think we can emerge from this pandemic the same as we went in, we are mistaken. We cannot compare this pandemic to the flu in the sense that most of the world had no idea the rest of the world had the flu, too. The name “Spanish flu” was coined by Spain because they thought they were the only ones who had it. With the internet, we are so globally intertwined that it is impossible to ignore the shuddering halt to which we have come and the consequences. I don’t think as many people in the U.S. have ever thought about the term “supply chain” as much in the history of this country.
I don’t want to be the same. I want our whole country to not just stop and be quiet but to listen and be still, to evaluate which parts of the old system are good and valuable and which parts we can discard like so much rubbish.
I think it’s obvious that we have reached late-stage capitalism and that center cannot hold. Note: if you click no other links in this post, click the late-stage capitalism one. Jesus.
I think it’s also obvious that our healthcare system is unutterably broken. We have been looking at this pandemic not as a public health issue with the potential to ravage the country but instead as a drain on resources, the same drain that occurs when uninsured people are forced to avoid going to the doctor until they end up in the emergency room. Healthcare is the privilege of the wealthy; this was clearly illustrated for me when Idris Elba reported receiving a COVID test in the earliest days of the pandemic because he had been in contact with a person who tested positive.
Pause here to give props to Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland (I am a raging liberal Democrat who did not vote for him) who saw this coming in January and took some steps to get ready. Not enough, but more than the federal government who knew for sure it was coming and ignored it.
WE CANNOT BE THE SAME COUNTRY COMING OUT OF THIS.
We cannot allow the same inequity to persist. We cannot choose corporations over people. We cannot allow our elected representatives on both sides of the aisle to get away with lip service and pandering this election year.
Personally, I think the changes we need to make to emerge better from this pandemic are too sweeping and too hard for the small-minded people in power to comprehend. States seem to be doing a better job on their own (most of them, except for these nine states, plus Georgia).
I despair of any resolution to this. We are too big to not fail, it seems.
As I write this, I hear a peal of laughter from my neighbors down the street. They do still get together outside but no longer huddle in a close circle with their children ranging ’round. The chairs are there, the kids are out, but they are a studied six feet apart.
The wisdomkeepers might say that things are unfolding as they must – that this is part of the revelation (which, as my book points out, has a curious Latin root word that means “to veil.”
I feel like the world is actually rolling freely, unmasked, at our feet, if not in ecstasy but then certainly with wild abandon. If there is another world in this one, now is the time it will reveal itself, I think. Perhaps we are not quiet or still enough to notice yet. Perhaps we never will be.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo mentioned above) challenges people with no prior experience and no good sense to crank out 50,000 words of fiction in 30 short days (1,667 words a day for those keeping track). You may not know this about me, but my fiction writing is crap. However, I see this as a writing exercise, a way to stretch my creative writing muscles and perhaps come up with something different from what I have been doing – a new approach, genre, or entree into something expansive and good.
To kick off this process, I am deconstructing my creative practice and the manner in which I express myself through this blog and in other ways (e.g., cooking, photography, the occasional painting). I am intensely curious about why people do what they do, most specifically in this case creative people. In Imagine, there is a lot of research about how one of the mechanisms of our brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC), is responsible for impulse control (as well as cognitive function and flexibility). These mechanisms are not quite formed in children and teenagers, which is why we want to push their faces in so much of the time.
In adults, impulse control is perhaps too well-established. We have forgotten how to “dance as if no one is watching.” While everyday people have no real issues with this, for creatives types, this is highly problematic. It is impossible to let go and write paint draw dance sing play if you continually run up against the wall of your own self every time you pick up the instrument of your art.
The good news is that when we take ourselves out of everyday life, not only does our impulse control loosen a wee bit (think the excessive amount of drinking and cavorting that occurs on your average vacation versus everyday life), but we also become more innovative and creative. But you don’t need to fly across the globe to responsibly (and affordably) shut off your impulse control. Novel experiences (get it? NOVEL experiences?) can inspire your brain to lighten up a bit. This could be as simple as walking down a different street or looking at a piece of art. Additionally, boring and mundane tasks allow us to relax a bit in the prefrontal cortex. It is true that some of the best ideas occur in the shower – your brain is not so busy monitoring and dissecting every little piece of sensory input and can relax into new thoughts and ideas.
Side note: The majority of this blog was dictated into my phone on the way down to Virginia from Baltimore to take my mom out to lunch for her 75th birthday. Turns out, long road trips are also a good tool to relax the brain’s firm grip on reality. Just ask Jack Kerouac.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is, of course, a novel at the end, but that’s it. Quantity over quality in this case. Imagine also points out that in terms of quality, the most creative people are also the most prolific, producing vast quantities of insufferable crap for each polished gem. So that is encouraging for two reasons:
It does not have to be good, which releases me from any kind of judgment as far as ability goes, which is nice because I have that creativity-stifling characteristic in spades.
Also, Imagine notes that when you think too much about what you are doing the ideas stop flowing and creativity suffers. This is also positive because in addition to the 50,000 words of the crap novel I am about to write, I also have to write my standard 35,000-50,000 words of non-crap that I actually get paid for. So the goal of 1,667 words every day just has to come, loose and easy.
One of the suggestions the NaNoWriMo people make (presumably for people with full-time jobs and multiple young children running around) is to stock up on snacks and treats with which to fortify yourself. This is not, they say, the month to get fancy or complicated with your nourishment. So in honor of the month, and the deconstruction, again, of my creative practice, I present these amazing morsels that just get better as they sit.
It’s fashionable to badmouth Nutella, I think. It reminds me about how people talk shit about Obamacare but when each part of it is broken down they love it. So if I call these toasted hazelnut and chocolate biscotti, I bet haters would convert because they are far more delicious than they perhaps have any right to be. They taste like a big spoonful of Nutella, minus the rainforest-killing palm oil and questionable texture.
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, chopped (get fancier if you like; this is what I had in the house)
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Toast whole hazelnuts in a dry skillet over medium heat until they begin to smell nutty (and maybe brown slightly). Remove from heat and let cool. Rub as much of the papery skin off as you can, then coarsely chop and set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine flours, salt, and baking powder and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine sugars, olive oil, and eggs and mix thoroughly. Use a spatula to add flour, completely incorporating both mixtures.
Add hazelnuts and chopped chocolate and mix completely.
Divide dough into two and place on parchment paper. Shape into six-inch logs that are about three inches wide.
Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until firm and golden brown.
Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees.
Using a serrated knife, slice each log into one-inch slices. Place sliced side down on the parchment paper and bake again until fully crisped, turning over once, for a total of about 30 minutes – maybe more. Some days I slice the biscotti too thick and it takes longer, or I don’t cook them enough the first time and it takes longer. You are looking for a dry texture. They will continue to dry out as they cool. You can even bake for 30 minutes and then turn the oven off, leaving the biscotti in there to continue to dry out.
Let cool thoroughly. Store in airtight container, or give away. You can’t really go wrong.
On my 30th birthday, my father asked me to shave his head.
He had just started a round of chemo and was beginning to lose his hair, fine tufts of fine hair that were beginning to come out in clumps and clog the drain. He figured he would head the eventuality of baldness off at the pass and just shave his head to see what kind of egg he would be dealing with.
He carried the stool out to my parent’s deck in Peachtree City, Georgia. They lived at the very back of a wooded cul-de-sac, cut through with golf cart paths. It was March, and fairly warm. He had already sharpened and oiled the clippers and draped an old towel over his clothes.
He turned around to look expectantly at me as he walked through the screen door.
I told him no. I couldn’t do it.
So now, instead of my 30th birthday being the day that I shaved my father’s head, it’s the day I refused to shave his head. I can still see my stricken look reflected in his eyes. He was trying to make the best of a situation, and I was not quite able to ride shotgun for that.
For many people around me, the holidays seem like that this year. Like me with my dad and his shaved head, many people are trying to be cheery and go along for the ride, but cannot quite get there. Behind their eyes I can see the despair and anguish and quick darting glances, looking for an escape hatch. Literally. They have in their looks the knowing of a deeper, harder, longer road ahead, no matter how sparkly the tinsel or bright the lights.
All things being equal, and with my personal year of hell and death in 2013 being the high bar for awful, this year has not been terrible for me. I fell in love, worked hard enough and saved enough pennies to send my kid to France, and started a new business cooking for people. I have had a couple parties with really wonderful people, and I will ring in the new year with one of my oldest friends and his wonderful wife and kid(s). On an individual level, things have been okay.
Nationally and internationally, the world is folding in on itself. Implosion isn’t the right word for this descent into hell that humanity is experiencing. Hate crimes, genocide. Violence and fear.
Things feel desperate and washed out at the same time. If the water is rising but there are no boats and you can’t swim, what the hell are you supposed to do?
I think the only thing for me is to alternate between taking care of myself by turning off the internet and social media so that I can read, write, and engage with myself and welcoming people into my home (or, in the spirit of the crappy dinner party, popping in to theirs).
After the holidays, I have Galentine’s Day on the horizon in February, but in the meantime I have started to line my nest with comforting food-type things. I baked cookies and caught up with my friend Terri at her house last week, and this week I have been sipping Golden Milk and making biscotti.
I know, I know: the last thing people need is another holiday cookie. I prefer to think of this as Winter Breakfast.
This biscotti recipe has infinite variations and is very, very forgiving. It takes a little over an hour, most of which is baking, but the flavors just get better as they sit, so make a double or triple batch and let them sit on the counter for whenever you want a snack.
As I am overly fond of rosemary, I have used it liberally. Feel free to modify any and all amounts to your taste; suggestions are listed below the recipe.
Make sure and take good care of yourself and keep the connections to your people strong; ask for and offer help. Notice when someone isn’t doing well and make some sort of gesture to lighten their day.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, combine flours, salt, and baking powder, rosemary, and lemon zest and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine sugars, olive oil, and eggs and mix thoroughly. Use a spatula to add flour, completely incorporating both mixtures.
Add cherries and mix.
Divide dough into two and place on parchment paper. Shape into six-inch logs that are about three inches wide.
Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until firm and golden brown.
Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees.
Using a serrated knife, slice each log into one-inch slices. Place sliced side down on the parchment paper and bake again until fully crisped, turning over once, for a total of about 20 minutes – maybe more. Some days I slice the biscotti too thick and it takes longer, or I don’t cook them enough the first time and it takes longer. You are looking for a dry texture. They will continue to dry out as they cool.
Let cool thoroughly. Store in airtight container, or give away. You can’t really go wrong.
Recipe notes:
Add ginger, cinnamon, and chopped chocolate for gingerbread/chocolate biscotti.
Orange zest and cranberries (and maybe toasted chopped walnuts) are very festive.
Dried blueberry, lemon zest, and fresh chopped thyme are also ridiculously delicious.
No need to use best-quality olive oil.
Golden Milk
In the beginning, there were spices…
Note: Many claim that this will cure what ails you. Improved digestion, decreased inflammation, and improved sleep are just three of the many touted benefits. I find it warming and comforting and delicious. Whatever is good for me is a bonus.
Ingredients
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
pinch black pepper
2 cups milk of your choice
agave, to taste
Method
For best results, place all ingredients (except agave) in a blender and blend until smooth. Place this mixture in a pot and heat, adding agave to taste.
Recipe notes
Coconut milk is often suggested for its benefits. Whatever you choose, use the unsweetened variety.
You can also use fresh ginger and turmeric instead, but powdered is a fine substitute.
