Macarons Framboise - Ladurée's Recipe

Well I'm back folks!

Not really, but bear with me I'll be back in the groove of things as soon as I'm settled. I really have been busy, juggling some major changes around here. You see, among other things, I'm buying a new house and dealing with all the madness that goes along with that process. It's been a hectic couple of months but hopefully, if everything goes well, I'll be baking future macarons in a brand new oven soon.

No, who am I kidding. The next several weeks will be spent packing and moving an entire household. Maybe replacing a few door knobs too, since our builder decided to go with a design that I can only describe as suitable for your Grandma's cottage--on Mars. Anyway, breaking in my bright and sunny new kitchen with a little baking will happen, I just need to get settled in.

Pink Peppermint Tea Cookies

In the kitchen baking once again. This time I've been bitten by the cookie bug. Or rather, I bit into a store bought peppermint tea cookie and thought I could do better. So I have! Besides, a batch of cookies are quite over due. I'm sure folks are starting to ponder their Christmas goodie-boxes and these are a festive play on those powdered tea cookie gems. 

Besides, I have a gnome demanding cookies of me. And no, I won't explain that. 

Cardamom Shortbread Cookies

Quick post today to break up the parade of ice creams. Last week, Mother Humble came through the door and thrust a half eaten cookie at me, insisting I try it.  She had been at the Bastille Café in Seattle earlier that day, enjoying some yummy french treats, including this rather ordinary looking cookie.

For whatever reason, my general ban on food--particularly half eaten sort--fished out of purses wasn't being rigorously enforced and I scarfed the cookie down.

While it was no science cookie (making a new batch soon!), I had to agree with her, it was quite good.  Sandy, buttery, laced with cardamom and worth reproducing.

Oatmeal Ice Cream Sandwiches

Hungry photographer + delicious ice cream sandwiches = 25 photos of half eaten sandwiches.
Just like this one.

I'm back! Hope everyone had a nice new years and holiday season. Mine was extended by Mother Humble's fashionably late arrival for a post-new years Christmas but now everyone is back in their respective homes/countries and things are settling back into the normal Humble routine.

Routine being my destroying plenty of perfectly good ingredients during mommy-brained addled cooking attempts.

Just last week we had an epic cheesecake failure, which I will not go into detail about. Those of you who follow my occasional ramblings on Facebook know what I'm talking about and no, as I learned the next morning it did not taste good.

Not everything is turning out badly, thankfully. I made these ice cream sandwiches today and oh my goodness they are wonderful. Just sinfully good. Of course, this may be the pregnancy talking, since my feelings towards certain foods lately can be irrationally exuberant.

White Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today's post is going up a little later than normal. Mr. Humble took today day off and is at home… which throws a wrench into my normal baking/blogging routine.

Like when he drags me off to hunt down produce all morning because being at home on a workday makes him "fidgety".

He does try to be helpful though, like staging this glass of milk for me.

You spilled some there, buddy…

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

More cookies today!

I've been craving peanut butter lately so earlier this week I whipped up a batch of these cookies cute little sandwich cookies.

Since I baked these cookies late in the evening, when the lighting is terrible for food photography, I boxed them up and tossed them into the freezer. I will often freeze things this way, since not only does it preserve the food until I'm ready to photograph, it usually deters would-be-snackers who pass through the kitchen.

Key word here is usually.

As it turns out, freezing these cookies is no deterrent. When a half dozen sandwiches went missing, I questioned the usual suspects and learned that they're quite good straight from the freezer. I tried them and discovered they're indeed terrific frozen and everyone I give them to agrees.

Crisp, frosty peanut butter wafers, a cool silky smooth filling, it almost makes peanut butter... refreshing?!

I know it makes no sense, you'll just have to try them to understand.

Lemon Snickerdoodles

Happy Monday, folks!

Back in the kitchen today baking cookies. After all the cake, frosting and fondant I was working with last week, simple cookies sound wonderful. In fact, perhaps I'll make a theme of it this week. Nothing but cookies.

I can do that and recharge my exhausted baking batteries.

So this recipe is an adaptation of one of the first cookies I ever baked. A basic Snickerdoodle recipe from my ancient, tattered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Mother Humble taught me how to make cookies with this recipe, demonstrating that how you make and bake cookies makes all the difference in the end result. She taught me to use high quality ingredients, how to properly cream butter and how to aim for slightly under-baking chewy cookies to give them the best texture when fully cool.

When my own batch of the ubiquitous Better Homes and Garden's recipe took a place for best in show for baking at the state fair when I was seven or eight, it cementing into my child-brain that good technique and quality ingredients are key to baking well.

Today we're taking that same old recipe, and putting a citrus twist on it. These lemon snickerdoodles are fragrant with lemon, soft and chewy, yet pack a big sugar crunch.

Simple and delicious.

Onesie Sugar Cookie Cut-Outs

Completely swamped today so you'll have to forgive me if the post seems a little hurried.

I'm wrapping up various non-blogging related projects as well as handling all the baking for a baby shower. Ack!

You see, my sister has a way of volunteering to provide desserts for various social events. Of course, you know who really ends up doing the desserts?

That's right.

Today, I'm elbow deep in fondant for a baby shower cake and I've only just begun tackling my sister's wishlist. Hopefully she'll come visit and help me clean up (HINT).

So earlier this week, I was turning out batch after batch of sugar cookie dough. Burning through pounds of butter. It was a good time to experiment, as the test batches of dough were used to produced cookies for Mr. Humble's lab and this baby shower.

Science Cookie Cutter Set Giveaway!

Happy Monday, everyone!

We're giving away a set of cookie cutters today!

You may remember this set from the last science cookie roundup. They're made by scientist Sherry of sciencecookiecutters.com and she has kindly offered to give away a set to one of the blog's readers.

Interested in baking up your own nerdy cookies?

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Cookies!

Quick post today, as the little Humble and I are getting ready to go hunt for cars again.

Today I whipped up a big batch of cookies. Chocolate cookies. Serious chocolate cookies. A baking friend of mine gave me this cookie recipe a few months ago. They're absolutely wonderful and luckily, I have permission to share.

They're basically two pounds of chocolate bound together with a bit of butter and flour. Cooked just right, they're moist and fudgy like brownies, laden with bits of chocolate.

How can that be anything but great! Right?



On a quick blog-related note. Once again, I might be deviating a little from my normal blogging schedule this month. On Wednesdays--and possibly Friday's--I'll be setting aside my baking pans and doing some volunteer work. It has been too nice in Seattle to stay in the kitchen all week baking. So, I'm going to get out and be useful to others while the weather is nice. I do hope no one minds too much.

Alright, so let's get down to the chocolate...

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Cookies!
yields 5-6 dozen cookies
1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cups extra dark, unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I'm using 53% cacao)
2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups white chocolate morsels
2/3 cup milk chocolate (or semi-sweet) morsels

Pre-heat your oven to 350°F.

In a double-boiler, melt the pound of bittersweet chocolate. Set it aside to cool, stirring occasionally.



Sift together the flour, baking soda, cocoa and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

In your mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the cooled chocolate to the mixture and blend. Be sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure the mixture is uniform.

Add half the flour mixture and combine on low speed, then add the remaining flour and mix until the batter comes together.

Now add the chocolate morsels--feel free to add a couple handfuls of nuts too, if that's your style--and stir them in by hand.

Line a baking sheet with parchment, or silicone baking sheets, and drop spoonfuls of the cookie batter onto the sheet. Give the cookies plenty of room to spread.

Bake the cookies for approximately 10 minutes until puffy and the edges start to crisp. Be careful not to over bake. These cookies should be moist and chewy.

Allow the cookies to cool and firm up on the baking sheet for a few minutes before attempting to move them to a wire rack.



The cookies are best enjoyed slightly warm from the oven. If you're not able to gobble up five dozen cookies fresh from the oven, allow them to cool completely and store in a air tight container for up to a week.

Science Cookie Roundup #5

Science cookie roundup time!

This month is a particularly good roundup. I had a ton of submissions, representing science themes from a wide variety of disciplines. Also a wide variety of baked goods. I have cookies, cakes, and even the first science themed cake pop!

So our first post comes from Jackie of Food-ology. You may remember her from last months pie contest, she submitted the yummy savory pie (er pudding!).

Love everything she submitted. I'm sure everyone will agree the mouse cake is fantastic. Though... is that needle-less syringe IACUC compliant?

"To explain the photos... I was in a Cancer Biology program so I've got a mouse cake with a (cupcake) tumor. (Yes, that's a real syringe. But it's OK- there was no needle- and it was sterile!)"

"I also have two cakes I made for two graduate students' qualifying exams: a cake with the life cycle of dictyostelium, since he was the first person in our lab to work on dicty, and a cake depicting the other student's thesis project on cell-cell adhesion."

"Finally, I have bio/ med related cupcakes I made for the the Stanford Association for Multi-disciplinary Medicine and Science (SAMMS) club. The chocolate decorations include: beakers, benzene rings, mice, graphs, radiation symbols, medicine logo, microarrays."

"FYI: I have the SAMMS decorations, demonstrating the chocolate technique, also on my blog here: http://food-ology.blogspot.com/2009/02/so-ive-been-commissioned-to-make-cake.html The final product is here."

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Cindy submitted our first batch of science themed cake pops! So happy to see the cake pop take a nerdy turn.

"I love to make cake pops; so for the final exam in Organic II class, I made these methane pops for my student (thankfully they understood the molecule!)"

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Jennifer, a Chicago biology teacher sent in her gel electrophoresis cookies!

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Penny sent in these sweet Emoticon cookies. I wish I had a chance to see the whole tray. Funny that only sad or rather nonplussed emotes are left uneaten. No one wants a sad cookie?

"Saw these emoticon cookies at the Literature.Culture.Media Research Slam at UC-Santa Barbara yesterday. I didn't catch the whole tray, only what was left toward the end of our session. Apparently the presenter (Zach Horton, a student at UCSB) brought a wide array of emoticon cookies."

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Emily, who also submitted a pie to last months contest (the chocolate cream pie several of you are very fond of) also sent me some mice cookies with her pie submission.

"I attached some lab rat cookies I made a few months ago - thanks for this idea! I loved it and my friend (who indeed works in a lab with rats) appreciated the cookie gesture."

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Catherine, a PhD student and a baker, sent me some fantastic cakes!

I study neurotransmission in C elegans, so I made this C elegans cake with GFP labeled nervous system for my lab picnic:

I've also had the opportunity to bake a couple of cakes for my friends' thesis defenses. My friend and lab mate Andy is in the neuroscience department:

My friend Stacey just defended her PhD in biomedical engineering. She makes nanoparticles that can be used in vaccines - she fills the nanoparticles with antigens and decorates the outsides with Toll-like receptor ligands. That way the immune system will easily recognize the nanoparticles and make antibodies against the antigens inside! Awesome!

I made a vanilla funfetti cake (baked in a bowl) and decorated the outside with colored chocolate squiggles (ligands).

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Julie, Helie, and Melody sent me all these cookies. They went on a science cookie baking spree to give away to their teachers.

My favorite have to be the calculus cookies.

Math: Here we did e, phi, an matrix (which at first glance appears to be the identity matrix), and a graphical representation of a Riemann Sum.

Chemistry: The ideal gas law, complete with the value of R for (L*atm)/(mol * K) and an atom. Our Chemistry teacher also happens to be a music teacher, so we included the music notes.

Calculus: (top to bottom) The integration rule for 1/x dx, the First Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and the Mean Value Theorem

Biology: Our Biology teacher loves to emphasize the role of form and function in biology, so we, of course, had to include that on a cookie. The yellow/white is our attempt at a petri dish with some bacteria. The last one is a karyotype (male).

Animal Cell: This is our greatest success yet--the cookie _is_ actually the size of that paper plate. We have the nucleus, surrounded by the blue endoplasmic reticulum. There are also yellow mitochondria, the green/blue Golgi body, and light blue free ribosomes! The green/pink blob is our representation of phagocytosis.

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http://mostlyfoodstuffs.blogspot.com/2010/03/baby-shower-cookies-aka-sugar-cookies.html

Science cookies are invading baby showers now!

Deena made these beauties and did just a fantastic job on the icing.

"There comes a time in life when it seems like almost everyone you know is having babies. At first, it kind of floors you every time you hear the news, and you struggle to come up with a gift commensurate to the occasion. In years past, I crafted ornate homemade cards, cooked obscene amounts of food, and stitched patchwork quilts and a stuffed pink satin armadillo. But as more and more friends began to have babies, I realized that keeping up with that sort of gifting protocol could quickly become a second job. I started turning to the gift registry, pairing a cotton onesie with a heartfelt card and calling it a day. For the most part, this seems appropriate. But every now and then, I hear about the pregnancy of a friend who is so dear that the registry just doesn't cut it. I start looking around for a more personal way to share the love. And recently, I hit upon these baby shower cookies."That's when sperm cookies are called for. Oh yes, that's right. Try to eat those in front of others with a straight face."

To read more about them, see her blog at Mostlyfoodstuffs.blogspot.com



Yes that is a sperm cookie. Try to eat that around others and maintain a straight face.

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I'm a sucker for anthropology cookies so I was pretty happy to see this set from Lauren, a lecturer and research assocaite at UC Santa Cruz, in my mail box. Homid fossil cookies!

"I am a biological anthropologist who wishes she were a baker. I dabble in cakes and cookies, the occasional pie, but certainly nothing as lovely or fancy as those items that you spotlight on your website. Nevertheless, the nerd in me just couldn't help not trying out some science themed cookies of my own. So I enlisted the help of a like-minded (i.e. nerdy baker) archaeology grad student in my department and we spent the day attempting to make some contributions for the science cookie #5 round-up.

I must confess that we found the royal icing to be a bit of a royal pain. We couldn't really figure out the stiffness so we either made too stiff or too runny for the job required. Hopefully next time that will go smoother. We also had an issue with our icing dyes. I purchased some gel colors from Sur la Table thinking that they must be superior to the old liquid drops from Safeway because, well, they cost more. And were at Sur La Table. But the dye gets all over your hands when you open it, and then all over everything else, and took a lot of washing (and lemons and vinegar to remove). Do share your secret for how you color your icing and if it is these gel colors, how do you open them and add color without looking like you have been tie dyed? Rubber gloves, perhaps?

(I just unscrew the tops and use a clean toothpick to move a drop of gel from the bottle to the icing. I learned quickly that squeeze bottles are unpredictable and gel color is dangerous. )

"These photos represent homologous chromosomes that have just crossed over during Meiosis 1."

"I have attached some photos of our first attempt. The first photo is a profile of the cranium of the newly described Australopithecus sediba (which I actually think is much more Homo-like, but that doesn't alter the cookie. But since you are a biological anthropologist, I thought some context may be important)."

(I may need to get out my calipers to double check this cookie... just kidding)

"Then there's a Darwin fish..."

"...and a skeleton representation of a javelina"

"And the last picture is where my cookie partner Cristie got really nerdy. She is a zooarchaeologist who specializes in fish bones. So there's a bony fish. And an otolith, which I learned is a bony sensory organ in a fish's inner ear that helps with balance. I'm sure that is the first otolith cookie to have been emailed in, right?"

Yup! That is most certainly my first otolith cookie. Great set!

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Ruth sent me some really realistic mice cookies. I need to ask her how she gave the mice such a realistic furry texture.

"There are lots of really fat ob/ob mice, who have a genetic mutation that
means they can't produce leptin, so they never feel full and they never
stop eating ."

There are also the blue mice (I think maybe they're actually rats, I'm not
sure), who've been given the food colourant FD&C blue No. 1, which has
helped them recover faster after a spinal injury, also with a picture of
the mice from the proper research.
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/bluerats/)

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Definitely RA of http://definitelyra.wordpress.com/ sent me these sparkly binary cookies!

"On Tuesday, JG’s AP computer science class took their exam, and it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to make for them. The test is on Java, technically, but I don’t know enough about it to make a witty joke, and I sure as heck did not want to write out lines of code. So, I opted to go basic and made ones and zeros, hoping they would get the joke.

One problem: I aimed to make 3 dozen cookies and ended up with over 50, and there was no way I could outline and flood that many cookies after work in time for the next school day. Instead, I decided to experiment by covering them with sparkly sanding sugar."

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Rebecca sent me these beautiful science themed cookies for her son's 2nd birthday

"... I found myself quite taken by the design of the Ishihara color blindness tests I remember doing as a kid (I was particularly inspired by #12, found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishihara_color_test. I was thinking of doing the invitations with this design, but MY GOD, all those dots."

"So, I thought, let's do cookies and EAT THEM instead."

"I freehanded all the 2s, then did the dots around them in the contrasting color. Used your instructions and everything. My first time with this method of frosting cookies. Learned a lot. THANKS for the help!"

Isn't that just the cutest little boy?!


I think I got everyone in this month's round-up. If I missed you, email me at notsohumblepieblog@gmail.com. If you would like to be in the next round up, shoot me an email with your baked goodies.