Chocolate Chip with a Peppermint Twist

Let me first say, humbly, that this year's Cookie Parade has been a huge hit. I am just so touched that so many of our tour merchants, partners, and friends loved the gifts we offered last week, with such joyful passion. Several requests were made for more cookies, please, as in, encore! More than one suggestion was made to have our own cookie shop. Wouldn't that be nice??

All of this hoopla has actually made me quite introspective, and filled with joy, to think about how really, really happy people are to receive cookies. I would just love to share, that whether you ever make any of my recipes or not, just know that the offering the gift of homemade cookies is almost powerful enough to make people (especially doubters) believe that we do in fact live in a kind, loving, and benevolent Universe. I just love being an agent of that.

My sisters and I were on the phone to each other yesterday, comparing baking notes from our respective kitchens. Lisa finally got on board which is why that call wasn't made until Dec 20; she has finally come out under from the heaps of work in her office. We anxiously await the first taste of her signature spritz cookies. Suz and I never really wanted that job, I think the spritz cookies have always only been on Lisa's list.

Before I get to one recipe which has made a big splash on my own hit list this month, I appreciate your allowing me to reminisce about some of the most special cookies we grew up with. They came from across the street, from our neighbor Mary Mendes. She has since passed away, for many years now but, I know that we can all still remember her special paper plate of homemade cookies that we received every year as a family. The tag always said "from Mary Mendes", as if we might confuse which Mary made the best cookies on Cordova Street.

Mary was like the neighborhood grandma. She called all 5 of us, and all the other neighborhood children, her "little chickadees". Right up until the time she passed away, in her 90s, she would still recall how she took care of all of us at one time or another. Her husband died when she was 59, and she learned to drive their classic 1965 mustang with my mom as her instructor. The day she passed her driving test, my father made her a cocktail to celebrate and she giggled with excitement. She was an absolute darling, and this Christmas my thoughts keep returning to her memory.

The 'return' of my cookies seem to be having the same impact on my gift recipients, as her cookies had on my family. I am so touched that bakery owners and gourmet chefs and shopkeepers are thrilled beyond measure to receive my homemade cookies, when we all know LA's best products are right at their fingertips 7 days a week. Growing up, we made batch after batch of homemade cookies and, to receive those from "Mary Mendes" was still like receiving a bountiful treasure chest each Christmas. We especially loved that the cookies were usually the same varieties each year. What an incredible gift she offered ... it was like you could taste the love in every bite of her simple, beautifully crafted cookies.

I feel like her spirit nudged me this month to add some peppermint to my chocolate chip cookies. Her chocolate chip cookies (the BEST) always seemed to pick up the flavor of something peppermint on the plate. This year, I added a chopped peppermint bark bar from Trader Joe's, (which is made with both white and dark chocolate I believe) to the dough. It makes a fantastic cookie! If you can't find this bar, peppermint bark is seasonally available at many stores, including Cost Plus, Crate&Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, and maybe even grocery stores right now.

My chocolate chip cookie recipe is basically the original Toll House one, the first recipe I ever learned with my mom. I gently recommend using the best vanilla extract you can find, pure butter, and even cage-free or organic eggs to yield the absolute, most delicious cookies.

If those high-grade ingredients are not handy, adding a healthy dose of loving feelings while you mix and bake the dough, will suffice. I love listening to my favorite music while I bake. I do everything by hand without an electric mixer so I can focus on how yummy the dough looks. I really think, if you take the time to have all of your senses engaged - sight, sound, touch, smell, taste (the last two can kick in even before baking) - your cookies can't help but be spectacular.

Please, try it and let me know!

Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Peppermint Twist

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cup flour, sifted with 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp salt)
12 oz (2 cups) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 Trader Joe's Peppermint Bark Bar, chopped or, 1/2 cup chopped peppermint bark

Preheat oven to 375F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cream butter and sugars, blending well before adding eggs and vanilla, combine well. Add dry ingredients and combine well. Stir in chocolate chips and peppermint bark.

Drop by teaspoonful, two inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned on edges. Cool on wire racks, store in airtight container.

Yields 50-60 cookies.

Spicy Ginger Snaps

Welcome to post 2 of my promised Holiday baking series of recipes, and the lore that goes with.

These spicy ginger snaps have lots of stories associated with them, not the least of which is about them resonating with a beautiful Italian cousin of ours. Linda loves to eat them when we are all very full at the end of our mom's annual Christmas Open House, because "they're ginger, they settle your stomach, right?"

Yes, Linda, I have promised her. Especially if you eat 2 or 5 or 10 of them!

The original recipe is from the Dahlia Lounge in Seattle, Chef Tom Douglas's first success story in the Pacific Northwest. It was in Fine Cooking magazine, alongside a Pineapple Sorbet recipe. More on the pairing of sorbet with these in a minute ... for now let me just say, YES, for that concept. This recipe was clipped and has been resting in my Christmas cookie file for many years. Each December it is the first to come out. I love the freshly grated ginger in these (I use more than the original recipe), and have added fresh nutmeg because I love it and, nutmeg makes people happy.

Please know that of course, they are delicious the other 11 months of the year as well. They were on the esteemed menu in October of 2002 when my friend Jan and I were committed to "red food" during the LA Angels' run toward the World Series. We believed that if we lit red candles and ate red food each time we were together to watch a postseason game, the gods of baseball would be pleased and, favor the Angels. We ate these cookies alongside (red) Cabernet Sorbet (an incredibly delicious idea and pairing, by the way) during the American League Championship series. The Yankees went home. The Angels went on to play in their first World Series ever and, they won.

The ginger snaps' next claim-to-baseball-fame was in June 2005. It was Derek Lowe's birthday, he was pitching that night, and it was the first time we catered sushi for the LA Dodgers in their clubhouse. He asked us to please not serve him too much of the sushi because he either had, or would get, an upset stomach. I made him a plate of cookies that the guys put by his locker with a Happy Birthday note on a yellow post-it that they had handy. I wrote, "the ginger snaps will settle your stomach". (I learned that from my cousin Linda.) The plate of cookies got a mention in the LA Times the next morning. I still have the clipping!

Later on in life, they became the favorite of one of my beautiful Roman friends, Riccardo. Our friend Bruno was living in LA at the time, and was off to New York to spend New Year's with our friends from Rome, by way of Colorado for Christmas. Bruno and I had breakfast at Philippe's the Saturday before Christmas. (Little sidebar advice here: Take a Roman to Philippe's some time; it's tremendous fun!) I gave Bruno about 6 or 8 containers of homemade cookies to share with Francesca, Diego, and Riccardo in New York. He promised me they'd stay fresh in the Colorado cold. I learned later, that Riccardo's favorites were these ginger snaps when the cookies came out every morning with their espresso. When I visited them in Roma the following spring, I had every intention of baking them while I was there - I'd even brought my own nutmeg grater - but never got the chance to do that. But I was consoled to meet Diego for the first time, and be introduced to him accordingly:

"Remember those cookies in New York? This is THAT Diane!"

It gives me great joy and pleasure to share this recipe. My wish for you, is that they garner new, delicious fame each time they come out of your kitchen. Don't forget to mix in the love!

Riccardo's Favorite Spicy Ginger Snaps
12 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/2 cubes), softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
Cinnamon sugar, for dipping before baking

Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add the egg, molasses, ginger, combine well. Sift dry ingredients and add gradually, stirring until a smooth mixture results. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Using about 1 Tbsp dough, roll into balls; roll each ball in cinnamon sugar. Place about 2" apart on baking sheet and bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Cool completely and store in airtight container. Yields about 4 dozen cookies; recipe is easily doubled in direct proportion.

Ricotta Sugar Cookies: 1st of Best Cookie Recipes!

My sisters and I grew up baking Christmas cookies, and I am the first of us three to admit that the mindset of Holiday baking 'sets in' immediately after Thanksgiving dinner.

That is, right after we consult with our mom - or like this year, take over on her behalf - to decide on the menu for her annual Christmas party in early December. Suz just about had her clipboard handy this year to make sure my mom knew our take on her menu this year. The most important thing to note, is that our mom is to do none of the baking. We will handle that.

December's blog posts, which I will try to keep coming fast and often, will be dedicated to Christmas cookie recipes, and the stories that inspire them. I cannot promise that my sisters' recipes will get any days in the sun here, but hopefully those I do share from my own files, will be warmly, and deliciously, received.

The first one is for Ricotta Sugar Cookies, and this is one of my favorite stories ever.

In 2004, I volunteered to demonstrate Italian recipes on the Cooking Stage at the Feast of San Gennaro in Hollywood. The stage was managed by volunteers extraordinaire, Dolores and Johnny, two of the kindest, most fun, young&beautiful people I have ever met. I told Dolores, when we were planning the menus for each chef, that I wanted to make dessert, since the other chefs were all featuring savory recipes.

She gently suggested I make her mother's Ricotta Sugar Cookies, which simple, delicious recipe was shared in that year's cookbook. I was honored that she had offered something so special and I agreed to the idea in a heartbeat. I even made a double recipe. There were more than enough cookies for our audience that night, all of the volunteers and then some, and then the village after that. But everyone knows Italians don't know how to prepare small portions of anything.

What I didn't know, was that Dolores' mom had passed away several years before. When her father tasted the cookies that night, I believe with tears in his eyes, he said he was touched that they tasted so good, he had almost forgotten ...

Suddenly I knew that Dolly's cookie recipe is probably one of the most precious family heirlooms they had. It made me all the more humble to have prepared them, both for her and her father, and for so many others who all agreed they were so incredibly delicious.

Dolores and I reconnected a couple months ago. I told her that I make these cookies every Christmas, and I send a prayer of love and gratitude to her mom, and to her whole family, for such a precious (and I said incredibly delicious, didn't I??) gift each year. To prepare them each time, is still an honor and, a joy!

In December 2005, I brought a ton of Christmas cookies to the managers of the LA Dodgers' Clubhouse, because I wanted to stay connected with them after having been their caterer during the previous season. When one of them tasted this cookie, he looked at it with such wonder and said, "Oh my god, how did you make these?"

I just smiled. No-brainer, Mitch, come on.

With love.

In that same spirit of Holiday wonder, it gives me tremendous joy to share this recipe with you.

Dolly Tersigni's Ricotta Sugar Cookies

1/2 lb. butter, room temperature
2 c sugar
3 eggs
4 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 lb. ricotta cheese (I usually use SIENA or the Trader Joe's brand)
2 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Alternately add this mixture and ricotta to batter. Add vanilla. Drop 1 teaspoon of batter on greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 mins at 350.

Icing:
1 1-lb box granulated sugar (per original recipe; I use about 1 lb. powdered sugar)
2 tsp soft butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
milk as needed

Mix together and add milk until you obtain consistency to your liking.

(I tint the icing red and green, then drizzle it over the cookies. The cookies are also delicious and quite perfect just sprinkled with powdered sugar!)

Yields about 4-5 dozen cookies.