the cookie spectacular ✨
plus: dinner tonight and an interview with ben mims
Monday, December 9, 2024
Good afternoon!
How many times have I watched this video of otters eating oysters? All of them.
The joy of old cookbooks [Ruth Reichl/La Briffe]
It’s cookie week and I’m thrilled because I would probably choose a cookie over any slice of cake, pudding, or ice cream and yes, I just admitted that out loud, like I’m cheating on my own recipes. I like that cookies seem made for sharing, no serving plates or utensils needed. I like that they keep; most buttery cookies are excellent for at least a week or two, and some get better with age (just like us). And I love how delightfully succinct they are; the best ones have all of the flavor impact of a giant dessert in one or two bites. Below, 10 of my all-time favorite cookies on Smitten Kitchen, not an easy collection to whittle down. Plus, a few cozy ideas for dinners this week. And, even more cookie joy: We’ve got an interview today with Ben Mims. His new cookbook, Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World, came out in October and couldn’t be more fitting for right now.
Cheers!
Deb
shop my favorites
Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more than you see when I cook? The Shop page has links to some of my favorite, most heavily used, and long-running kitchen items, the ones I use the most. Including…
… The Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser, which is back in stock. This 11-inch, 4-quart braiser is a lower profile enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. It works as well as a deep sauté pan as it does a soup pot, roasting pan, or even casserole dish that perfectly fits a pasta bake. Not a week has gone by in the decade I’ve had mine when I don’t use it at least three times.We’re running a special while supplies last that if you enter the the code “SMITTEN” with your braiser purchase, you’ll also receive a magnetic trivet as a gift. We are also doing a limited run of a stunning dark green color that will be available in mid-December, just in time for the holidays. I’ll let you know the moment it’s available to order.
Your braiser purchase contains three new recipes (two savory, one sweet) by me that work perfectly in your new pot. If you’re looking for even more ideas, I created a category on the site to highlight some of my favorite dishes I make in mine.
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Wondering what you might cook from Smitten Kitchen Keepers for your holiday tables and New Year’s parties? I thought you’d never ask! Try the endive salad with apple matchsticks, carrot tarte tatin, fettucine with white ragu, and raclette tartiflette. To finish, I recommend the thick molasses spice cookies, the family-style crème brûlée, and/or the white Russian slush punch. Were you looking for a list of all the recipes in each of my cookbooks? I’ve added these in a separate page and hope it makes it easier for you to find everything you want to cook. Note: All three books remain steeply on sale right now on Amazon: Smitten Kitchen Keepers for $12.83, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook for $14.92, and Smitten Kitchen Every Day for $18.29.
“One of the winning elements of ‘The Recipe’ is that it’s not prescriptive — rather than settling on one universal ‘perfect’ recipe, the chefs explain their personal preferences, then give listeners the information they need to make their own adjustments. By breaking their recipes down ingredient-by-ingredient, digging into what each one is doing, they make the science of cooking approachable and fun.” — New York Times, 7 Podcasts to Inspire a New Hobby
The latest full episode of my podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is all about Chicken Noodle Soup! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more. Two weeks ago, we ran ran an excerpt of the new special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation. You can listen to it here.
brown butter brown sugar shortbread
These brown butter, brown sugar shortbread with a whiff of vanilla bean paste and sea salt are the very best cookies I've ever made or eaten. Sixteen years ago, I shared a version of them ("shorties") that didn't work for everyone and promised you I'd get them perfect one day. I did not know it would take so long, but can promise you they're worth every second of the wait. Make them immediately, please.
unfussy sugar cookies
The easiest and most rewarding sparkly sugar cookies I've ever made. I tried to do away with the peskiness: We start with cold butter, chill the dough quickly, only roll it once, don't flour our counters, and if you'd like to make the ones you see here, you can do so without cookie cutters, food coloring, or piping bags! This triumphant combination of techniques might turn you, too, into the kind of baker who willingly makes decorated cookies because it's so doable and they taste fantastic, too.
checkerboard cookies
A cookie that apologizes in advance to the other cookies in your tin; they’re terrible at sharing the spotlight. Checkerboard cookies as fuss-free (cold butter, clean counters) and delicious (chocolate that actually tastes like it) as I could possibly make them. Plus, two other patterns -- spirals! marbled! -- I couldn't resist.
bakery-style butter cookies
These are my favorite kind of bakery cookies — filled with jam, dipped in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles — are so easy to make, and so delicious when homemade, that you'll never want to buy them again. This recipe was first published in my second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day, and the photos still make me smile.
chocolate peanut butter cup cookies
Chocolate peanut butter cup cookies, my way: the chocolate is really intense, the peanut butter a little salty, and they're here to make our weekend baking dreams come true.
seven-layer cookies
One of my favorite December baking projects, this airtight, no-fail recipe for the old-school Italian-American bakery standard makes cookies that are, for once, as delicious as they look. [Video below!]
unfussy rugelach
Rugelach are blissful flaky pastry-like cookies wound with jam, nuts, and chocolate if you wish (which of course we do) and a whiff of cinnamon sugar and they're my absolute favorite. But, I always found them tedious to make and so I simplified the process. Less fussiness = more rugelach in our lives = lucky us.
spicy gingerbread cookies
This is my go-to gingerbread cookie for cut-out shapes, gingerbread men, and even gingerbread houses -- it always bakes up perfectly, tastes impeccably like December, and makes your kitchen smell amazing.
intensely chocolate sables
A deceptively-simple looking cookie with the actual flavor impact of a bubbling cauldron of melted chocolate. We take afternoon chocolate cravings very seriously around here.
pecan sandies
My favorite pecan cookies are:
1. Bite-sized and require no cookie cutters.
2. Can be dipped in chocolate, you don’t even need to ask.
3. Unforgettable due to pecans toasted so deeply that they take on a maple-y flavor.
Who’s in?
Dinner Tonight
lentil soup with sausage, chard and garlic
I do not make the rules, but as far as I am concerned it is etched in tablet that nothing tastes better than a hearty, cozy soup between doses of cookie-tasting. This lentil, sausage, and swiss chard soup from the late, wonderful Gina DePalma via Adam Roberts is a forever favorite -- cozy and filling but never boring due to a perfect finish of sizzling garlic oil. You'll be so glad you made it.
baked potatoes with wild mushroom ragu
A heartier, vegetable-centric, and slightly fancied-up baked potato that doesn't forget the essentials (butter, cheese) -- phew.
rigatoni alla vodka
Penne alla vodka was the first meal I ever cooked for my husband, but I make it so differently these days -- more flavorful, quicker, and because kids make you totally square (sure, Deb), less vodka. This updated recipe uses my favorite pasta shape and is a cinch; we should definitely make it for dinner tonight.
AN INTERVIEW WITH BEN MIMS
My shelves are full of wonderful cookbooks I don’t get to talk about enough, so I’ve added this section so you can get to know the cool people behind them. Today we're chatting with Ben Mims. His new cookbook, Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World, came out in October.
1. What inspired your cookbook?
What inspired the book was really three different things I love all coming together at the right moment. Professionally, I've always loved coming up with new cookies each year for the big holiday stories at magazines I worked for because they offered opportunities to have a frivolous time playing with colors, flavors, textures, shapes, etc. of cookies. At the same time, I've always given more attention and thought to the history and stories that inspire foods and traditions, so I wanted to combine those two loves and really inspect every detail of cookies: why they exist, how they evolved, and what they meant to the cultures from which they came. And lastly, I'm a huge geography nerd, so getting to write about my love of cookies and history while charting their course across the globe and putting all those pieces together—reading about the agriculture of certain climates and the isolation of certain cultures that lead to distinct cookie styles—was really fun.
2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?
It wasn't one particular cookie that I felt most triumphant about, but a whole group of them. In the first chapter of the book, I have an essay about "wedding cookies," those crumbly, nutty, powdered sugar-covered cookies pretty much everyone on earth loves. Charting where those came from was a tedious, mind-numbing task that almost broke me. It all started with the "ghorabieh" cookie, which has numerous slightly-similar spellings all across the Levant and Middle Eastern cultures. Many of the names described one type of cookie, while the same names in a different culture described another type. Squaring them with each other, accumulating all the spellings and varieties, and then creating some sort of taxonomy that didn't make your head spin reading about it... it was a lot. But after about two weeks, it finally all clicked into place, and I have never felt more relieved in my life.
3. What recipe is so low-effort, high-reward that it's worth cooking for dinner tonight, even if we're tired and don't want to cook?
Oh, that's easy: the ANZAC biscuits from Australia and New Zealand. And I say this because I just made them again recently, and they are so simple. You just mix everything in a bowl with a spoon, shape them roughly, and bake. They're full of oats and butter and some golden syrup, and they smell heavenly. Even though "biscuits" is the term Brits, Aussies, and New Zealanders (as well as several other cultures around the world) use to describe their cookies, these ANZAC biscuits also really do smell like American-style biscuits and are the rare cookie that I'd say is wonderful to eat while it's still warm. They keep really well, freeze well, and only need a few minutes in a toaster oven to bring them back to life. They're a perfect breakfast bar/cookie for kids or anyone who needs to eat on the go.
4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?
The one thing I hope people understand about the book in time is that it really is a first of its kind. And I don't say that with ego or trying to build it up to more than it is. There are literally thousands of other cookie books out there that will give you new and exciting flavors and colors; that is not my book. Crumbs is about understanding cookies that have existed over centuries and millennia and how humanity's movements across the globe shaped them. I collected information from not just other cookbooks, but history books, agriculture reports, fiction novels, trade papers, and scholarly journals, to figure out why these cookies exist and came about in their particular time and place in the world. No other book has ever approached cookies like this before. I knew that if I was going to write a book about cookies, my strength is not in just dreaming up fun new flavors; it's in offering the world a new perspective on cookies that people may take for granted or have never thought could hold such rich histories and traditions to uncover.
Thank you, Ben! You can order Crumbs right here.
seven-layer cookies
See you next week!
