Cashew Curry Cookie Do-Over

As I write this, for possibly the first time ever, my Instagram feed on this blog has no pictures of food. At all. Instead, it's flooded with images from my trip to Wyoming last week. I have a lot to share about the mountains and the geysers and the huckleberries but I'm still working my way through approximately 1000 pictures, so this week it's all about cookies!

These just might be the heaviest cookies ever created.

If I were to hand you one but you are allergic to tree nuts, you could use it as a paperweight.

You could play hockey with one.

You could go skeet shooting.

You could do anything else requiring a small, dense disk-shaped object.

But if you can eat them, then do. The unassuming tan and beige color scheme masks their exotic nature, and I promise you they are goooooooood.

Their origin, however, was not so amazing. San Francisco is a great food town (duh) with a lot of restaurants and bakeries and tea shops and bars in my own neighborhood but infinitely more outside of it. So sometimes I trek over to another neighborhood for a long-anticipated meal at some buzzy place or other. On one of these occasions I found myself walking at 7 am on a Saturday all the way down to the Mission, passing tents with still sleeping occupants under the freeway and encountering only a muttering gentleman who seemed very surprised to have company that early, to breakfast at a much lauded bakery, to try everything on their menu except the item they are most famous for (because I have weird food dislikes).  But I found other items on the menu that, upon seeing them, seemed to me to be the most strange or brilliant idea ever and so I ordered them. And then I ate them. And they were so, so BORING. 

The most underwhelming was a cookie, appearing of the peanut butter variety, but claiming to in fact contain cashew butter instead, with a healthy flavor enhancement of curry. But all it tasted like was a plain peanut butter cookie. It didn't even really smell or taste anything like curry. Great idea, no execution. I resolved on the spot to try to do better in my own kitchen. Months later, I finally got around to it.  These cookies smell like curry, taste like curry without being overpowered by it, and the cashew is subtle but unmistakably there. I'd say I NAILED IT.

If it sounds like I'm really encouraging you to never visit this bakery, I should add that I have since been back, and they sell many delicious items, most especially a chocolate sour dough bread that is just plain dangerous to be around. And I no longer have to haul myself all the way to another neighborhood to get it, since from the looks of it they finally started construction on the second outpost scheduled to open Spring 2015!*

*Sure, it's almost Labor Day but at least maybe this means I'll have chocolate bread within walking distance by Christmas!

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Curried Cashew Cookies

Inspired by Craftsman and Wolves and adapted from Martha. Makes about 1 dozen cookies.

For the cookies

3/4 cup cashew butter (store bought or homemade, see below recipe)
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup cashews, for garnish

Cashew Butter

8 oz raw cashews (1 3/4 cup)
1 tsp canola oil
pinch sea salt

1. Make cashew butter. Heat oven to 300 degrees. On a baking sheet, stir together cashews, oil, and salt, and then roast 25 minutes until very fragrant, stirring a few times. Let cool, then puree in a food processor. This should make about 3/4 cup.
2. In a mixing bowl, stir together flour and salt and set aside. In the bowl of a mixer on medium speed, combine cashew butter, butter, both sugars, and curry powder until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix until incorporated.  
3. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour. 
4. When you are ready to bake, heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Roll 1/4 cup scoops of dough into large balls, place them on the cookie sheet 1 inch apart and then press flat. Garnish with cashews.  
5. Bake 30 minutes or until cookies harden and begin to split around the edges , rotating sheets halfway.

Plum & Thyme Syrup

When you fail too many times at trying new recipes, make a cocktail instead!

I have so many ideas of foods or dishes I want to try my hand at making. I've been cooking and baking long enough that I can usually translate my simpler ideas to actual food with minimal tweaking on the first or second try. They aren't always exactly what I intended, but they are usually at least edible.  Lately though, it seems like I've attempted one too many projects that just didn't come together. A few things I knew would need more than one try, others were so simple it was confounding that I couldn't make them work. In any case, I'm tired of throwing food away, so it's the perfect opportunity to shift focus to a drink recipe.

You might say it's thyme.

In fact, it's plum thyme for a gin cocktail!

Sorry.

Sometimes I make puns.

This syrup is a great example of trying something simple that came together on the first try. I made the syrup and served it in cocktails for a book club brunch I hosted a few weeks ago. I don't think I have a future in mixology or anything but the reviews were pretty good!

The syrup is delicious mixed with just some sparkling water or club soda, and you can even add some lemon juice to that combo for a less traditional lemonade. But if you really want to up your game, add a little gin or vodka!

It can make you forget all about those unrealized dreams attracting fruit flies in your trash.

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Plum & Thyme Syrup

makes about 2 cups. Adapted from the Kitchn.

1 1/2 lbs red plums (or any kind you like)
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 sprigs of fresh thyme

1. Cut plums into wedges and chop into large chunks. Add to a large saucepan with the water and sugar over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the fruit has begun to break down.
2. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl or a glass measuring cup, then discard the fruit or reserve for another purpose (see note). Return the syrup to the pot and bring back to a boil. Add in the thyme sprigs, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the syrup begins to thicken and is slightly reduced. Take off of the heat and remove the thyme sprigs. Let cool then store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Notes

• The leftover fruit is excellent on pancakes or waffles, or on top of ice cream or yogurt.

Plum, Thyme, and Gin Cocktail

2 ounces plum & thyme syrup (or adjust to preference)
2 ounces gin (or adjust to preference)
club soda
4 frozen plum wedges (optional)
2 sprigs of thyme

1. In a glass, mix together syrup and gin, and fill glass with ice and plum wedges, if using. Stir the ice around to mix the syrup and gin together. Top with club soda and garnish with the thyme.

Strawberry Macaron & Matcha Ice Cream Sandwiches

Sometimes you want your ice cream sandwiches so thick, you can barely eat them. Other times, you really want an ice cream sandwich, but a magical one that will allow your skinny jeans to fit. And once in a while, you want the former but get the latter because you ate too much of your ice cream two days ago.

Guess which kind these are?

Sometimes, my work will order ice cream sandwiches to the office from this place. And while I do have a soft spot* for your basic run of the mill ice cream sandwiches of a vaguely chocolate, cakey wafer sandwiching what is supposed to be ice cream but is more like a suggestion of dairy, they can't hold a candle to these ice cream sandwiches. Three inches of creamy ice cream is held between two giant, soft cookies. If you get them in the shop the cookies are warm, but when we get them in the office they are frozen solid. It's a brick half the size of my face and impossible to eat delicately. They are always awesome, but they also always trigger a food coma around 2 pm that makes me want to bring back naptime in the worst way. 

*and a very vivid, horrifying memory of how far I would go to eat one as a child, a memory I just cannot share but trust me it's all kinds of mortifying/hilarious/disturbing to me now.

In an attempt to get my ice cream sandwich fix in a closer proximity to various napping apparatus, I decided to make some at home. I still had about a pint of matcha ice cream in the depths of my freezer leftover from these, which I thought would go very well with strawberry. I briefly flirted with the idea of whoopie pies but decided on meringue instead, since I was pretty sure it wouldn't freeze as hard as cookies and I wanted to give myself a culinary challenge and attempt macarons.  

Ha. I will continue to say "attempt" because I didn't quite end up with macarons, but I did get some pretty delicious, chewy, almond-meringue cookies flecked with strawberries. They went spectacularly with what was left of the matcha ice cream, which apparently, I had only not been eating because I forgot about it. Once I remembered it was there, I almost finished it before I got around to making these (and after making the meringue cookies, I was definitely not making ice cream). Because of that, these aren't showstoppers, but I actually really liked the ratio of ice cream to cookie. It was just enough to satisfy but not enough to trigger any digestion-related narcolepsy.

By far the most fun part of these was the strawberry. Turns out, pretty much all macaron recipes are exactly the same, with the flavor variations coming from the fillings, not the cookie itself. Which means all color variations come from food dye. Sometimes I worry that I'm still ridding my body of all the blue and red food dye I put in my flag cake last 4th of July, so I really wasn't jazzed about the idea of busting out red food coloring for these. Instead, I went with a more natural route.

I mean, look how brilliantly pink that stuff is! When I mixed it with the other cookie ingredients it faded to more of a blushy pink, but it was still so pretty, no food coloring needed. And it infused the cookies with a wonderful strawberry flavor without using any kind of extract or flavoring, which was exactly what I wanted.

OKAY FINE. You know what I did? One time I saw a half-eaten ice cream sandwich on the ground, miraculously still partially wrapped and only partially melted. I have no idea where it came from. All I remember is furtively looking around to see if anyone was watching and realizing I was completely alone on the sidewalk. So I grabbed my prize off the ground and ate it in two bites, tossed the wrapper on the ground and skipped home to eat dinner, knowing on some level that what I had just done was completely uncivilized but also thrilled at what I had gotten away with. 

I'm pretty sure that's going way too far for an ice cream sandwich, but maybe (hopefully?) this was just typical behavior of any 5 year-old presented with forbidden pre-dinner dessert and opportunity, but who knows? My mother always said that dessert is a privilege, not a right, so I'd like to think I was just exercising my privilege to eat the beautiful gift the universe had quite literally dropped in my path.

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Strawberry Macaron & Matcha Ice Cream Sandwiches

Makes 6 (or more), adapted from Molly Yeh

1 1/2 cups almond meal
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup powdered strawberry (see note)
4 egg whites
pinch salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
matcha ice cream (at least 6 good-sized scoops but a pint is better)

1. Prepare your ice cream. Spread at least 6 scoops of softened ice cream on a cookie sheet with a silpat or wax paper and freeze.
2. Sift, sift, and keep sifting together almond meal, powdered sugar and powdered strawberry into a large bowl. Discard any pieces of almond or strawberry that won't fit through the sifter (up to two tablespoons). Your brilliant strawberry powder should have mixed with almond and powdered sugar at this point to a faded, pale pink powder.
3. Using a stand mixed with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and salt on medium speed until the whites are foamy, then gradually add the granulated sugar. When all of the sugar is mixed in, increase the speed to medium high and beat the whites to stiff peaks. This should take about 5 minutes, and your egg whites should look stiff and shiny (see note). 
4. Gradually fold the almond-strawberry mixture into the egg whites with a rubber spatula and keep folding until the mixture is completely combined into a thick batter that flows off the spatula.
5. Spoon the batter into a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip (#12). Pipe the batter onto parchment lined baking sheets into 3 inch circles, starting at the outside edge and spiraling into the centers. It's helpful to trace circles with a flour-dipped cookie cutter or on the underside of the parchment with a pencil and then use them as a guide. 
6. Once you have piped the circles, pick up the baking sheets about an inch or so off the counter and drop them a few times to get the air bubbles out. Let sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes until films form on the tops and circles are dry to the touch. Let oven preheat to 300 degrees while you are waiting for the cookies to dry.
7. Bake cookies for about 30-45 minutes, or until they come easily off the parchment. Let cool completely.
8. To assemble cookies. Take your cookie sheet of frozen ice cream out of the freezer and cut out 3-inch circles using a round cookie or biscuit cutter. Working quickly, place a disk of ice cream between two meringue cookies, until all ice cream and cookie halves are used up. Transfer ice cream sandwiches back to the freezer to harden or enjoy immediately! Sandwiches can be stored for at least a couple of weeks in the freezer. The longer they keep, the softer the cookies will become. Delicious!

Notes:

• I have actually seen powdered strawberry on Amazon, because they have everything, but the easiest thing to do is just grind up some freeze dried strawberries in the food processor. I used one bag (1.2 oz) of Trader Joe's freeze dried strawberries to get 1/2 cup of powder.
• When beating the egg whites, try really hard not to worry so much about over-beating them that you under-beat them like someone else did (definitely not me). But you know, also try really hard not to over-beat them. They should take about 5 minutes and be really shiny. If you under-beat them you will still have delicious meringue-like cookies but the tops probably won't dry out before baking and baking time could be about an hour and you will be driven crazy trying to peel the cookies off the parchment paper (not that I know this from experience or anything. Just explaining for a friend.) You got this.
• You will have way more batter than 6 cookies worth (12 halves). Just pipe smaller cookies and eat them sans ice cream or use more ice cream and make more sandwiches.