Tis the Season

It's that time of the year. The music is playing, lights are going up on houses, trees are being decorated, and the kitchen smells like delicious baked goods. Yes, it's Christmas. This should come as no surprise, but my favorite part of the holiday are the baked goods. There are so many festive treats to make and plenty of reason to package them up and share with loved ones. This weekend, I have a holiday party to go to, giving me a reason to bake some treats. Today, I tried out a recipe for walnut snowball cookies. They remind me a lot of my favorite cookies at King's Hawaiian Bakery in Torrance, CA--except theirs have macadamia nuts which is much more fitting. I found this recipe in a Food & Wine magazine and it looked so simple. A traditional shortbread recipe with walnuts, baked and rolled in powdered sugar. The results were amazing. Light, buttery cookies that have just the perfect amount of sweet with some crunch from the nuts. As the recipe suggests, you can easily change this recipe to add a different type of nut, some cardamom, or any other flavors. It's a great basic cookie. And how much more festive can you get than eating a snowball?

Walnut Snowball Cookies
from Food & Wine Magazine

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts (6 ounces)
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped (OR 1 tsp vanilla extract)
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Spread the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool, then coarsely chop. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°.
2. In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter with the vanilla bean seeds at high speed until pale, about 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of the confectioners’ sugar and beat at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, scraping down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula halfway through. At low speed, mix in the salt, then gradually add the flour and walnuts and beat just until the cookie dough comes together, scraping down the side of the bowl halfway through.
3. Roll level tablespoons of the dough into balls and arrange them on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake the cookies in the upper and lower thirds of the oven for about 17 minutes, until they are lightly browned on the bottom; switch the sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking. Let the cookies firm up on the sheets, about 5 minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool slightly.
4. Put the remaining 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl. Roll the warm cookies in the sugar to coat and return to the rack to cool completely. Roll again in the sugar.

MAKE AHEAD The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

These are Corn Cookies

I have kind of been on a Momofuku Milk Bar high recently. After discovering The Mind of a Chef, there has been a lot of influence from David Chang in our cooking. JC attempted to make his top ramen gnocchi, and today I made Milk Bar's Christina Tosi's Corn Cookies. What are corn cookies you ask? Basically, a cookie with lots of corn that tastes absolutely wonderful. Lots of butter, sugar, and corn (does that count as a vegetable serving?). It reminds me a lot of Captain Crunch, but better. The hardest part of this recipe is finding freeze dried corn. I went to Whole Foods and called Sprouts with no luck. After doing some internet searching, I found that local grocer Basha's carries the Just Corn product, so I stopped by and stocked up. Even if you don't use all of the corn for baking, it makes a great snack and you can use it for plenty of other things like soups, stews, anywhere you would normally use corn. For the cookies, use the Just Corn product and zap it in your food processor to get a powder. The recipe also called for corn flour. I didn't know exactly what that was, so I just substituted finely ground corn meal and it worked great.

Tosi also says you can squish a few cookies into a pie crust and fill it with strawberry ice cream. I thought it would be easier to scoop out some strawberry ice cream and sandwich it between two cookies. Yum.

**You can watch Tosi make the cookies in this episode of The Mind of a Chef: Sweet Spot (it expires on 12/21/12)

Corn Cookies

by Christina Tosi from Momofuku Milk Bar

Makes 13 to 15 cookies

225 g butter (2 sticks), at room temperature 

300 g (1 1/2 cups) sugar 

1 egg
225 g (1 1/3 cups) flour 

45 g (1/4 cup) corn flour 

65 g (2/3 cup) freeze-dried corn powder 

3 g (3/4 teaspoon) baking powder 

1.5 g (1/4 teaspoon) baking soda 

6 g (1 1/2 teaspoons) kosher salt 

1. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes.

2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, corn flour, corn powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3. Using a 2 3/4-ounce ice cream scoop (or a 1/3-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature--they will not bake properly.

4. Heat the oven to 350°F.

5. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. After 18 minutes, they should be faintly browned on the edges yet still bright yellow in the center; give them an extra minute if not.

6. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before transferring to a plate or to an airtight container for storage. At room temp, the cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.

Save Me San Francisco

I recently spent a week in San Francisco for spring break. This is quite possibly one of my absolute favorite cities, largely due to the food scene. Every time I visit, I feel like all I do is eat, and I'm not complaining. This past trip I got to try some new dishes like the chicken porridge at Out the Door, pho ga at Turtle Tower, xiao long bao at Shanghai Dumpling King, "salad basket" at Suppenkuche, bi bim bap at Be Bop, and a dosa at  Udupi Palace. I also hit up some of the tried and true favorites like crawfish beignets at Brenda's, honey lavender ice cream at Bi-Rite, pizza at The Cheeseboard, and chai tea at Philz. I could not have stopped by all these places without my wonderful hosts Krista, Ralph, and Jennifer. Thanks all of you!!

One snack I loved and was inspired by was the sea salt lavender shortbread cookie from Batter Bakery. I actually thought I might be able to replicate it, so I did some searching and found a recipe for honey lavender shortbread cookies. These are super yummy and are not soapy tasting at all. To make things even better, they are incredibly easy to make, you just throw everything into your kitchenaid mixer :) and press it all into a pan. Definitely try these out, they are delicious.

Sea Salt and Lavender Shortbread Cookies
from Spache the Spatula

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp culinary lavender
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3 tbsp honey
• Sea salt for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8″x8″baking tin with butter or non-stick spray. Line with parchment paper and grease the parchment paper as well (make sure there is enough overhang of the parchment paper so that you can easily lift the cookies out of the tin). Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine all of the ingredients and mix in low speed until combined (it’s fine if the dough is crumbly).
3. Press the dough into the prepared tin. With a fork, poke the surface of the dough all over.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown and the cookies feel firm when lightly pressed
5. After you remove to cookies from the oven, sprinkle the tops with sea salt. Allow to fully cool in the pan before removing and slicing into 16 equal squares.

Everything in Moderation

JC and I have recently been on this workout kick. With my love of food, I realized the scale and I were not the best of friends, so I needed to take control. I am a huge advocate of healthy living and eating, but sometimes I am not the model spokesperson. I admit it, I love my sweets. My new rule: everything in moderation. Most of you know my passion for baking. I have decided I will only allow myself to bake if I plan on sharing the goods. I can keep a few for myself, but the rest have to get out of the house. That way I still can have fun in the kitchen, have some tasty treats in moderation, and get to feed my friends all together. I think it is a win-win situation.

Speaking of being gym rats, JC and I have been hitting the gym nearly every day for the past month or so. This is the longest I have ever stuck with a workout regimen. I have tried all the videos P90X, Insanity, Zumba... they just get boring after a while. I can't listen to Tony Horton say "do your best and forget the rest" one more time. Going to the gym has been fun and I have been learning how to use all the machines. I have been switching off between the Wellness Center at UMC and the Rec Center on main campus. I think it is hilarious to see the difference between the two locations. For instance, at the Rec Center, I'm probably one of the oldest people there by a few years. At the Wellness Center, I am probably the youngest person there--by about 40 years. At the Rec Center, you hear frat guys grunting as they lift way more than they should. At the Wellness Center, you hear oxygen tanks rolling on the ground. One of the things I love most about the Wellness Center is that the windows look right towards the smoking deck. As I'm running, I get to watch people smoke their cigarettes while eating a bag of potato chips. It drives me to work that much harder.

With all that said, here is a great cookie recipe. Only make these if you are planning on taking them somewhere because they are addicting. One of my favorite cookies are white chocolate macadamia nut. I found this recipe with a slight twist on a classic. It is an oatmeal cookie with white chocolate and sea salt. The oatmeal keeps the cookie nice and soft and the salt is the perfect touch to compliment the white chocolate. You could easily substitute something instead of the white chocolate, just keeping the oatmeal cookie base. I think it would be great with some butterscotch chips, or dried cherries and dark chocolate, or with some chopped nuts. Let your imagination run wild. The only thing I would have changed would be to use some nice big flake sea salt. I only had some fine sea salt, which was fine flavor wise, but the cookies look so much nicer with the sparkle of those big salt flakes. It's not a big deal, just purely aesthetic.

This is a really really great recipe. Enjoy these tasty cookies, but remember: moderation is key!

Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies
from Smitten Kitchen

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• 14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 6 ounces white chocolate chips (or chopped white chocolate bar)
• 1/2 teapoon flaky sea salt (like Maldon or fleur de sel) (for sprinkling on top)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or Silpat or grease. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and table salt in a medium bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula, then add egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down bowl again. Add flour mixture gradually and mix until just incorporated and smooth. Gradually add oats and white chocolate and mix until well incorporated.

3. Grab about 2 Tbsp of dough and roll between palms into balls, then place on lined baking sheets about 2 1/2 inches apart. Using fingertips, gently press down each ball to about 3/4-inch thickness.

4. Sprinkle a flake or two of sea salt on each cookie

5. Bake until cookies are deep golden brown, about 13 to 16 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack to cool.

Spring is Here

I am 100% sure Spring has sprung. My itchy nose and eyes prove it. The trees have new green leaves and the plants are blooming. The weather is amazing right now, blue skies, a slight breeze, and sun shiny days. In honor of the new season, I decided to whip up some springy cookies. These are so cute with the blue glaze and these adorable pastel sprinkles. I have a confession, I have an obsession with sprinkles. My favorite place to get them are from the dollar aisle at Target. They come out with new sprinkles every season/holiday and I probably have almost every single one. I have a large plastic box that I keep all of my decorating supplies in. It's filled with sprinkles, frosting, food coloring, cupcake liners, piping bags, cookie cutters, and lots of other goodies. Here is my sprinkle collection:

On a side note, last night I went to a the Cindy Wolf Humanism in Medicine talk featuring Dr. Rachel Remen. She is the author or Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings and also the creator of The Healer's Art program. She is inspirational. Myself and a group of other medical students just finished the Healer's Art course and I loved it. I truly do believe what I learned and experienced will make me a better doctor. Last night, Dr. Remen told stories. She is a master storyteller. I have heard almost all of the stories she told nearly three times now, but they still brought tears to my eyes last night. They are so touching and moving, yet most of them are so simple.

Back to the treats. These cookies are really really tasty. The recipe called them teacakes because they are like a dropsy cookie on the outside but light and cakey on the inside. They aren't too sweet, which I like, and the glaze adds the perfect touch. These are the perfect cookies to bring in Spring.

Teacakes
adapted from Delicious Inspiration

For the cookies:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups flour

For the glaze:

• 2 cups confectioner's sugar
• Enough water to make a thin glaze
• Food coloring
• Sprinkles

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. and grease a few cookie sheets.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, adding the eggs one at a time and then mix well. Add the vanilla extract, then the flour and stir until everything is well incorporated.

Roll dough into small balls and slightly smash down and place onto the baking sheets and bake until lightly golden on the outside, about 8-12 minutes. Let cool completely on a rack before glazing.

In a small bowl, make the glaze by whisking together the sugar and water, adding as much as you need to get a thin, pourable glaze (this should only be a couple tablespoons of water, add it slowly!). If your glaze gets too runny, add a little more powdered sugar until you get the right consistency. Add the food coloring until you get your desired shade of happiness (I added one drop of blue to get my springy blue color), then dunk the cookies in and let them dry on a cooling rack, sprinkling away before the glaze sets.

Food as Medicine

This Friday the Integrative Medicine Club is having a Healthy Integrative Bake Sale. We held the first healthy bake sale at the end of last year and are continuing this great event. Our healthy approach has been so popular it has even been mimicked by a variety of other organizations. Although at first I was a bit saddened to see our original idea taken by other groups, in the end I am really happy that our club has taken the entire concept of a bake sale on a 180 degree turn. I am glad that our idea was so popular that other people wanted to do it as well. I say no to obese med students! Who made it a rule that baked goods had to be fatty and loaded with unhealthy ingredients? The Integrative Medicine Club strives to educate and demonstrate the importance of nutrition on health. We are really the only club that addresses this topic and the reason why we love our healthy bake sales. Simply put, food is medicine.

I have been busy working in the kitchen all day. I made three batches of cookies today: chocolate almond, matcha green tea, and ginger cookies.

We'll focus on the ginger cookies. Ginger is a great food and has a variety of health benefits. It has a long tradition of helping to relieve gastrointestinal distress and is also loaded with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. Gingerols, the anti-inflammatory compound, may help to alleviate the pain in patients with arthritis. These cookies also do not contain any white sugar. Rather, the sweetness comes from brown sugar and molasses. Sweeteners like refined white sugar and corn syrup are void of virtually all nutrients and artificial sweeteners like saccharine and aspartame do not provide any nutrients and may cause health problems. Molasses is a sweetener that is rich in nutrients such as manganese, copper, iron, calcium, potassium, and magnesium. So basically, these cookies are sort of good for you.

The original recipe called these cookies "gingersnaps" but I would change the name to "gingerchews." These are definitely not your normal crispy gingersnaps that actually snap when you break them. Instead, these are soft and chewy, which I definitely prefer. I rolled the cookies in some sugar to give them a little shine, but it would be even prettier to use to larger grain turbindo sugar. These don't have a strong taste of ginger, to be honest, I don't really like the flavor of ginger. There is more a flavor of the nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger mixed together with the molasses. It's a nice combo. These are really yummy cookies and so easy to make.

Quick plug: These will be featured at the Integrative Medicine Club Bake Sale this Friday from 1:30-3 on the plaza between COM, CON, and COP. Find our table under the tent to taste all of our tasty treats!

Gingerchews
adapted from Sweet Pea's Kitchen

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• sugar for rolling

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, spices, and salt. In another bowl, combine together the brown sugar, molasses, vegetable oil, and egg until smooth. Mix the flour mixture into the brown mixture, stirring until dough comes together. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Roll into ball by heaping teaspoonfuls and roll the balls in sugar and place on the greased baking sheets 2 inches apart. Bake 8 minutes.
3. Remove from oven and leave on the baking sheet several minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies will be very soft when removed from the oven but they will firm up.

Hello October!

Tomorrow is the start of October and that means it's pumpkin season. For the past few years, I have always celebrated with some of my favorite cookies. I look forward to this time all year. Technically, I could make these cookies any day of the year, but for some reason they taste so much better during October. Ideally, I would be able to look out my window and see the leaves changing and feel the brisk, crisp air blowing. Well, I live in Tucson. Today, the last day of September, it was a blistering 103 degrees and we don't have trees with real leaves that could ever change color. It doesn't feel or look like Fall outside, but inside it smells like pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I feel like making a hot cup of tea and bundling up in a big blanket. Too bad the AC is on full blast and at 8:30 at night, it is still 93 degrees outside. Regardless, I can still pretend like it's changing seasons and eat these yummy cookies.

I need to give credit to my good friend Ashley for these cookies. This recipe is from her and they have been one of my favorites. I made these last year and was cleaned out by my other med students. The frosting recipe is by Paula Dean and is by far the best cream cheese frosting I have ever had. I don't like frosting very much, but I could eat this stuff plain by the spoonful. These are so soft and just the right about of sweetness. These are one of the best parts of October.

Ashely's Pumpkin Cookies

• 1/2 c. shortening
• 1 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 c. canned pumpkin
• 2 1/2 c. flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the shortening and sugar. Add the egg and mix. Add the pumpkin and mix. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg). Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix. Dough will be thick.

Drop by teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the edges are slightly browned. Frost when cool.

Paula's Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 lb (16 oz.) cream cheese, softened
• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 c. confectioners sugar

Beat together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla. Slowly add the confectioners sugar on low speed and beat until incorporated. Increase speed to high and mix until light and fluffy.

Caffeine Cookies

Ever since I studied abroad in Tokyo two summers ago, I have had an addiction to matcha. Almost every day after class, I would stop by Cafe Veloce and get a matcha float. A perfect blend of iced matcha tea and a swirl of vanilla frozen yogurt. Japan summers are hot and humid and these were the perfect way to cool down. Not too bitter, not too sweet. Here's a photo of the famous Matcha Float:I saw a recipe for Matcha Shortbread cookies on Appetite for China and I knew I had to make them. They came out a wonderful texture with a strong green tea taste. In my opinion, they have a little of a bitter after taste, so if that bothers you, add less matcha powder and more sugar. They are a beautiful vibrant green. I also tried to add a little cross cross pattern with a toothpick, but I didn't indent them enough and the pattern didn't come out after baking. Also, if you have large grain sugar, or even white crystal sprinkles, it would look nice to put a little on top for a bit of shimmer. I'm really happy with this recipe and can't wait to make them again.
Matcha Cookies

Makes 2 dozen

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup powdered (confectioners') sugar
1 tablespoon green tea (matcha) powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon water
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chopped into small cubes
White sugar crystal sprinkles

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a food processor. Add vanilla, water, and butter. Pulse together until a dough forms. Roll the dough into a log onto a piece of wax or parchment paper. Wrap the paper around and shape the log until it is smooth (round or squarish, whichever your preference.) Chill for at least 30 minutes if you're planning on baking immediately, or freeze the dough until you're ready to bake.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

When chilled, slice the log into 1/3 inch thick pieces. Dip the top of each cookie in a bowl of white sugar crystals and use a toothpick to make a crisscross pattern. Place on ungreased baking sheets and bake until the edges are just brown, about 12 minutes. Let cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks.

The dough will keep in freezer for a few months, so you can slice off just a few cookies to bake at a time.