the real cookie monster

Tom Brown is a lawyer back home in East Texas. And a runner, a bear-hugger, and father to a perpetually dirty kid who made fun of me every day in the third grade. But most importantly, Tom Brown is the creator of the (eponymous) greatest cookies ever.

And for the past decade or so, he has generously bestowed these oh-so-mouth-watering cookies upon our family, which has the good fortune of his friendship and, by extension, his cookie-receiving circle. In fact, I’m so darn special I got a batch of ‘em sent to me while at art school in Paris — a gift even more delicious considering the lack of peanut butter in grocery aisles of the “culinary capital of the world.”

At their gooey hearts, these are simply peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies. But if you have a handful of similar recipes, even a drawerful, I demand you toss them aside like the rubbish they are. Because even though no one can make a Tom Brown cookie quite as well as Tom Brown, any copies are more than worth the effort.

Tom Brown Cookies

2 eggs
2 sticks melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 bag chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix together the first seven ingredients, then add the flour. Stir in the peanut butter and chocolate chips, and bake for 7-9 minutes.

sweetmilk

Happy birthday, dear wee dad!

The odd, yet enticing, photo above stands as a tantalizing preview of the chocolate dulce-de-leche bars you will receive in a scant two days. Take this as an early birthday card.

Yes, father, I have crafted my very own dulce de leche. You should have seen it… simmering and frothing in a sweet, milky puddle in my Calphalon pan which was a wedding present from your own wallet (though somehow I doubt you remember). It was a rich, fragrant, swirling whirlpool of goodness -- more delicate, more fragile, more dairy than its petty American counterpart.

Sigh.

I think it’s pretty obvious by now who should be getting the fattest inheritance.

Dulce de Leche

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
A splash of vanilla

Scald milk in a heavy pan by stirring occasionally over low heat until steam breathes gently from its surface. Add the sugar, soda and vanilla, slowly, and stir till it dissolves. Cook over medium heat for an hour, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Be sure to remove it from heat the instant it thickens into a gorgeous, tawny syrup.

not quite there

I like pie.

I’m a custard pie fiend. A brown sugar pie master. And the forerunner of maple pie in the Randall-Boone culinary lineage. But fruit pies… thou hast thrown the gauntlet down.

A clump of strawberries and rhubarb, already chopped, has been tucked in my freezer door since the Great Jam Day of ’08, especially reserved for my first attempt at crafting a wholly-from-scratch, kick-butt fruit pie. And for once, my fierce independence in the kitchen (i.e., my refusal to stick to a recipe) served me wrongly.

The one recipe I followed, from the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens, produced a crust that was passable but flavorless. Thus, I will not reveal that recipe here but vow to continue a dedicated search for the perfect homemade crust, because I simply cannot believe that Marie Callender has upstaged me so easily.

My method for the filling was pulled from a bunch of different recipes, and while the flavor was lovely and rich, the texture was two steps away from gluey. So the recipe I’m providing now is much improved from what I originally followed, and it should produce lovely, rich, juicy results.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Filling

3 cups chopped strawberry and rhubarb
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Stir it all together and, what the heck, just pour it in the boxed M.C. crust from the supermarket.

melon goodness

Watermelon itself is sweet, cool, summery, and totally cliché; watermelon pudding is sweet, cool, summery, and totally bizarre. I don’t know about you, but I’m the type to consistently choose unusual over normal. When I spotted the recipe for Sicilian watermelon pudding in the August issue of Saveur, I knew it was a dessert destined for my mouth.

Beware: the recipe sounds très simple, but it will ruin your entire kitchen. I mean, fat, pink, sticky globs everywhere. You can fix this problem by cleaning as you cook, but that just sucks all the joy out of creating a big, beautiful mess. Don’t even try this without a large, fine sieve and a lot of time. As with most pudding, you’ll be hunched over a big pot, forced to watch and stir til it boils, for about 40-45 minutes.

But I’m giving you the pessimism before optimism. Truth be told, once the pudding has attained a lovely coolness in the refrigerator and is topped by a quivering dollop of whipped cream, it bursts in your mouth with its gorgeous, forceful watermelon flavor. The texture is certainly odd at first, but the taste is unbeatable.

Gelo di Melone

6 cups watermelon, seeded and in chunks
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Whipped cream, for garnish

Purée watermelon in a blender until liquefied, and set aside. Whisk together sugar and cornstarch in a big pot or saucepan. While whisking, drizzle in liquid fruit. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping bottom with a spoon. (Easier method: stir very regularly, occasionally cover pot with top to speed boiling.)

Boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching, for five minutes or until it thickens slightly. Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla. Using a rubber spatula, push and scrape the pudding through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-6 hours.

To serve, spoon pudding in small bowls and top with a hearty amount of whipped cream.

guffaw-scrawls

Oftentimes the greatest recipes are the simplest. And there’s nothing like a warm snickerdoodle to convince you of that. That soft, pillowy texture, that creamy, buttery taste and all dusted with crystals of cinnamon and sugar… bet your mouth is watering right now.

These are my husband’s favorite cookies, and the recipe happens to be the very first cookie concoction I ever tried. Of course, chocolate chip is the classic starter for a preteen baker, but after my eyes locked on the word “snickerdoodle” in the cookbook index, there was no going back. Little did I know the recipe produced, oh, about six dozen cookies. My sugar-lovin’ dad was delighted, but I was hot and sweaty by the time I’d shoveled all the cookies off the pan.

So here is your fair warning: you’ll have cookies coming out your fridge, pantry, freezer and ears with this recipe. Totally worth it.


Snickerdoodles

3 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 sticks butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

Stir together the first three ingredients and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs, milk and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture and beat til combined. Chill the dough for about an hour (or 20 minutes or so in the freezer). Roll dough into one-inch balls, roll around in a bunch of cinnamon and sugar, then place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.

cobblin' genius

I trust that I’ve already convinced you of my die-hard love for Texas peaches. Now, allow me to convince you of the utter necessity of falling in love with my Nanny’s recipe for cobbler. Sure, there are hundreds, even thousands maybe, of sweet little grandmas championing their cobbler methods above all else, but to them I say, “Prepare to meet your doom.”

Those classic, crusty strips criss-crossing fruit in a Pyrex dish? My Nanny tosses her hair at them. (She might stick out her tongue, too; she was a pre-kindergarten teacher after all…) Instead, she has concocted an easy-as-pie, even-more-delicious way to fix cobbler that results in pools of buttery juice, mountains of caramelized dough and valleys of sugar-soaked fruit — and all that after about five minutes of kitchen time.

And on an occasional summer afternoon, after Daddy Tom (her husband, my grandfather) wanders out toward the four stalwart peach trees bordering the driveway in their front yard and comes back with a couple jewels in hand, she’ll whip up one of these babies with fresh peaches from their very own land, and nothing tastes sweeter.

Believe me, you don’t know how darn lucky you are that I’m sharing her recipe with you.

Nanny’s Cobbler

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter or oleo
1 cup flour
Pinch salt
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup milk
3 cups fruit (peaches!!)

Melt butter in 1 1/2-quart dish for oven. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and 1 cup sugar. Stir in milk. Pour into middle of melted butter. Place fruit in the middle of the dough. Pour 1 cup sugar on top of the fruit. DO. NOT. STIR.

Stick the whole thing into a 325-degreee oven for 50 minutes to an hour. In my immortal Nanny’s words, you’ll get a “crazy crust great tasting cobbler.”

Sidenote: Every time Nanny invites us up for dinner we hope and pray cobbler will be waiting in the wings. It usually is, and it tends to be even better with a hunk of vanilla ice cream on top.