Pantry Collective

John’s new job is giving me a lot of opportunities to bake things I wouldn’t normally make for just the two of us. Last night we attended the first BBQ of the season with a bunch of his coworkers. It’s been gorgeous in Chicago - over 80 degrees some days - so of course on the day of the first BBQ of the season it was freezing. Beautifully sunny but COLD. Thanks, Mother Nature! Oh well, at least there was a bonfire (in the city! Yes!).

Anyway, I was tasked with bringing dessert since my baked goods have been quite popular at the office. I made Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip, and Pecan cookies for his first day, Nanaimo Bars for an Oscar Party, Coconut Banana Bread that I brought to the weekly happy hour… I’ve been busy cooking, but not posting, apparently. Anyway, I was actually asked for a repeat of the Nanaimo Bars but I decided to make these amazing little oatmeal cream pie cookies instead. I found the cream part of the Nanaimo bars to be too sweet, but now that I’ve made this recipe, I think I might try them again with this buttercream instead of the filling the recipe originally called for. LOTS of butter but hey, that’s what desserts are all about! Right? Right!

The cookies are uncomplicated. Oats, a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a touch of salt. The buttercream is amazing. Not too sweet, amazingly silky and buttery and delicious. I’ve never made buttercream frosting before, and have long considered it to be something I didn’t really love, but this - this isn’t the overly sweet, slightly gritty stuff of supermarket sheet cakes. This is heavenly. It’s thick and glossy and, well, full of butter. But you don’t need much to sandwich the cookies together, and hey, if you make them for a party, you’ll probably only eat one anyway. And you will be revered for making decadent, crowd-pleasing desserts. Which is always nice.

:)

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I have to be honest. I made this cake in December. I apparently came and wrote up the recipe right away, saved the draft, and waited for the photos. Four months later, here they are - lost to the archives and rediscovered this morning when I had a free moment and a touch of motivation to post something, anything.

The cake itself I remember as being delightfully firm and moist, a simple tower of chocolate with a light powdered sugar dusting on top. I used dark chocolate cocoa powder and the cake was so dark it was almost black. It wasn’t overly sweet or overpowered by too many competing flavors - if you like chocolate cake, this is CHOCOLATE CAKE. And nothing more. The coffee doesn’t add a coffee flavor so much as a deepening of the chocolate flavor. It’s a nice anytime cake, which, let’s face it, are the best kind. Cake anytime? Yes please.

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Around Thanksgiving, when cranberries were readily available and inexpensive, I bought an extra bag and froze it so I’d have some around once they were gone for another year. For some reason supermarkets think we don’t want to eat cranberries any time of the year except late fall. While it’s true that they happen to be in season then, it’s not like seasonality has ever concerned the grocery store before (see: tomatoes RIGHT NOW).

These muffins are delightful. Have I ever made muffins from scratch before? Nope. Were these super easy? Yep. Tart cranberries, fresh orange zest, and yummy toasted walnuts, with a crunchy muffin top thanks to the sugar sprinkles. You could make blueberry muffins with the same recipe, although I would use lemon zest in that case. I might increase the amount of fruit, too - 1 1/2 cups is fine, but I think they could have handled two cups and would have been all the more full of cranberry flavor.

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I know that’s a strange name, but these cookies are so full of butter (and therefore amazingly good) we could only make them once per year in my house growing up. I guess since Christmas and Thanksgiving were already full of bad-for-you treats, Valentine’s Day got these cookies. The original recipe, from a set of recipe cards from 1984, calls them “Chocolate Nut Logs”, but for whatever reason we stopped making them with nuts long ago. To make them seem more appropriate for Valentine’s Day my mom would sometimes shape the cookies into hearts. Now that I live in Chicago I’m rarely home for Valentine’s Day and I miss these cookies like crazy, so I convinced my mom to make them with me over the Christmas holiday.

They’re amazing straight from the refrigerator - something about them works best when they’re nice and cold, although you can certainly eat them at room temperature.

For about 4 dozen small cookies or 1 1/2 dozen large cookies

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 pkgs (12 oz) semi-sweet mini chocolate chips
1 tbsp shortening
(2 cups finely chopped nuts, optional - not used in the cookies we made this time)

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and egg until light and fluffy.
2. Mix flour and salt. Add to first mixture. Using hands (or a wooden spoon and a lot of muscle) mix until well blended.
3. Stir in 1/2 bag of mini chocolate chips.
4. Use 1 level tablespoonful of the mixture for each cookie (for small cookies). Ours are probably closer to 2 tablespoonfuls each. Shape into logs, rounds, hearts, whatever. Arrange on ungreased baking sheets.
5. Bake at 350˚ for 12-15 minutes or until the bottoms of the cookies are just turning golden brown. Remove from oven and let sit on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer cookies to wire rack.
6. Melt remaining chocolate with the shortening (we do this in short bursts in the microwave, stirring frequently).
7. When cookies are cool enough to handle, dip into chocolate. If using nuts, sprinkle or coat with nuts at this time. Let stand on wax paper until cool, then pop them in the fridge to firm up. We leave them in the fridge and eat them cold.

My mom and I were talking one day and she mentioned that she had made this blueberry cake. I was in a blueberry mood - I’ve been eating lovely fresh blueberries on my morning cereal for weeks now, and just that day I had barely managed not to purchase a humongous bushel of them at Costco. (I would have bought them if I had known about this cake! But alas, I didn’t think I’d get through them before they went bad.) Upon hearing that the cake was chock full of blueberries and not too sweet, I knew I had to have it for myself. Unfortunately, since Mom is is Connecticut, I couldn’t swipe a slice of hers - I had to make it for myself, even though I regularly swear off making baked treats since John and I don’t need to consume entire cakes ourselves.

How could I resist this cake, though? CHOCK FULL OF BLUEBERRIES. That really says it all. Right now, blueberries are plentiful and cheap and ripe and delicious. The cake really is not too sweet, although you can certainly up the sugar if you like. It would be a yummy (if somewhat decadent) breakfast. I topped our slices with a little yogurt sweetened with confectioner’s sugar and a touch of vanilla extract.

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