Dorie Greenspan's Jammers (slightly reimagined)

I have a weak spot for jam. And butter. And anything Dorie Greenspan. So when I first heard about Dorie's pop-up cookie bar and her delectable jammers, I knew that I'd either have to fly out to New York myself (unrealistic, but would be phenomenal) or attempt to make them as best as I could (not as awesome, but still great.) So, after many attempts at starting, many excuses for pausing, and a few deleted drafts, I introduce you to Dorie Inspired Jammers. Sorry it's late, but believe me, they are worth the wait. And thank you to Jen for opening up your place and snapping pictures and N for baking with me. Baking with friends is more fun, isn't it?

And before you think I am crazy for even thinking of flying all the way out to NY to get a taste of these, you should hear Dorie gush about them. "This is the cookie that came to me in a dream. These are the jammers. A sable - french butter short bread - with jam and streusal on top... Break it open... show the inside! I love the way the jam gets a shine and gets a little firm." And mmm. mmm. mmm. Boy, is she right. These things are BEAUTIFUL and DELICIOUS. Granted, I made a few changes and modifications, but I really hope that Dorie would approve anyways. :)

I call them Dorie inspired jammers for a number of reasons. First, we took the sable base, and we tweaked it to add almonds since N really, really loves almonds. We also used different jam (blenheim apricot and rose strawberry) in part because they are local and I like to support my local community, but more so because as I've mentioned before, this apricot jam is the most delicious jam I have ever had in my life. Since I couldn't find Dories streusal recipe anywhere, we took this one, and made it slightly different and added almonds of course. And lastly, since we didn't have ring mold or a whoppie pie pan, we used my mini loaf pan, which worked wonderfully by baking a lovely crispy edge for the cookie. (I've also found that if you don't have any of these, these cookies taste just as great baked on a flat cookie sheet, though the base will be much thinner.)

And the result? Exceptionally perfect, baked jam atop a wonderfully almond crumbly cookie that melts in your mouth with an innovative stresual topping. And what's really great about these cookies is that they are so versatile! You can put virtually anything on them like jam or nutella, and you can also do infinite things with the base as well, add coconut, lemon or lime zest, or wherever your mind might take you! I cannot stress enough how wonderful these cookies are, and I encourage you to make them, right now! Sadly, mine are already gone (even the second batch of batter), so if you make some, please holler!

And Dorie: If you ever come across this post, please know, I am a huge, huge fan. I love how you are so masterful at your craft, but you still choose to make it so accessible to even the lowliest of us cooks. Thank you for your fabulous personality, work and love. :)

Dorie Inspired Jammers by J and N

* In order to make these, they are best if you can use a pan with sides so that the cookie is forced to retain shape rather than flatten. Dorie used ring molds. L+D used a whoppie pie pan. I used a mini loaf pan. And I imagine you can use a number of other pans with the same outcome (albeit different shapes and sizes) - muffin pan, cupcake pan, souffle cups, individual-sized tart tins, etc. If you don't have any of these, you can also just use a regular old cookie sheet. Even though the base of the jammers will flatten and the sides won't crisp up, they are still delicious this way too!

Sable Cookies (Via NYTimes)

• 1 stick and 6 tablespoons butter, softened at room temp.
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt or salt
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup ground almonds (I measured 1/2 cup toasted almonds the grounded it in a food processor)
• 2 cups all purpose flour

Jam: use whatever jar of jam you prefer!

Streusal Topping (L+D Dorie's Jammers w/ a few changes)

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1/4 slice almonds
• 4 tablespoons butter (cubed)

Working in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until it is smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars and salt and continue to beat until smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy, about 1 minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 egg yolks, vanilla extract, almond extract and ground almonds, again beating until well blended.

Turn off the mixer, pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the mixer and pulse the mixer about 5 times at low speed for 1 or 2 seconds each time. Take a peek; if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, stir for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. If you still have some flour on the bottom of the bowl, stop mixing and use a rubber spatula to work the rest of it into the dough. (The dough will not come together in a ball -- and it shouldn't. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you're aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy dough. When pinched, it should feel a little like Play-Doh.)

Scrape the dough onto a work surface, gather it into a ball. Form the dough into a flattened disk. Wrap the disk well and chill them for at least 2 hours. The dough may be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.

When ready to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease whatever pan you are using to make your jammer. Line your pan with parchment paper or grease really well. If you are using a loaf, muffin, or something similar pan, take bits of the chilled dough and press it into the base of whatever pan you are using. Try to make sure that you are putting about the same amount of dough into each individual pan so that the cookies will all bake evenly. As you are doing this, also make sure to build the sides of your cookie higher than the middle so that the jam has somewhere to go and won't get all over your lovely pan. If you are using a cookie sheet, ring molds, etc. Roll out your dough so that it is about 1/2 inch tall. Then cut whatever shapes you'd like your cookies to be. Create an indentation in the middle of your cookies so that the edges are slightly higher than th middle of the cookie. (As a reference, I used about 3/4 of a batch of dough for 8 mini-loaf sized cookies. According to Dorie's recipe, half a batch of dough should make about 20 small-ish cookies.

Streusal Topping

While the dough is being cooled, make your stresual topping! Pour flour, brown sugar, suga, salt and cinnamon into a small bowl and mix with a fork. Add in the almonds and butter. Using a pastry cutter, two knives or a fork, blend in the butter with the dry mixture to form a stresual topping. The mixture will be crumbly and will still have bits of butter in tact.

Assembly

Once your cookies are rolle/pressed out, spoon your choice of jam into the center of the cookie. Spread it out so that the jam reaches toyour raised edges; this amount really depends on the size of your cookie. For my mini-loaf pan, I used about 1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons for each cookie. Then sprinkle however much streusal topping you'd like over the top. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are lightly brown. Rotate the baking sheet at the halfway point. Let the cookies rest 1 or 2 minutes before carefully lifting them onto a cooling rack with a wide metal spatula.

Sunday Brunch: Salmon Quiche

I really enjoy cooking for my friends and family, but with work and life in general, I haven't had very much time to do anything remotely fun in the kitchen. So, I was very happy to make a simple brunch for Jen recently. Inspired by a recent post on Tartlette blog, I decided to make salmon quiche, with a few modifications.

Rainbow swiss chard is so pretty, right? I love the color that it adds to any dish, but more importantly, I like that it packs a lot of nutrients. In fact, it is second (only to spinach) in the running for healthiest vegetable. Up until this adventure, I hadn't ever cooked it, but after a little bit of testing, I now know that it is a bitter, bitter plant that tastes strongly of chlorophyll. And even though I am a lover of all things fatty, I have to admit, swiss chard is rather delicious!

This quiche is so simple! The hint of dijon in the crust combined with the simple filling of onion, swiss chard and salmon was irresistible.

Quiche Crust:

• 4 Tablespoons butter (room temp)
• 1.5 Teaspoons Dijon
• 1 egg yolk
• 1.5 cups loosely packed flour
• 1/4 cup of milk or water

Mix butter and dijon in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add in egg yolk and mix until combined. Once combined, add flour to mixture. Since the dough is rather dry, add water or milk in a slow, slow stream until the dough starts to better clump together. (You may not need the entire 1/4 cup.)

Plop dough onto a lightly floured area and roll into a ball. Wrap ball in plastic and refrigerate for an hour or until cold.

Remove dough from fridge and roll out dough until it is about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch thick. Press rolled out dough into desired tart or pie pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or until bottom of the dough is golden brown and cooked through.

Quiche Filling:

• 4-5 leaves swiss chard, chopped
• 1/2 medium sized onion
• 1/2 lb. salmon, cut into small squares or pieces
• 3 eggs
• Salt and Pepper
• 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.

Saute onions until translucent and then add in the swiss chard. Continue to saute until wilted. Once everything is cooked down, take it out of the pan and place into the base of the quiche crust. Layer the salmon on top of the swiss chard and onions.

Whip your three eggs until fluffy, then season your eggs with salt and pepper. Carefully pour (seriously, really carefully - my eggs overflowed onto my clean kitchen counter, sadness) over your quiche filling. Squeeze lemon over the quiche.

Put your quiche into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes or until the center is cooked through.

masse's

Since it's the holiday season, I wanted to put up a picture of something festive! Of course, I immediately thought of Masse's.

D's sister, brother-in-law, and nephew all have birthdays around the same time, so when we went to visit, I brought this cake.

Isn't it beautiful? I went up to their counter, bright and early and picked out prettiest one there. I was so excited, I even forgot to ask what kind of cake it was! What a mistake. It was tart, not too sweet, with wonderful textures. The fruits and chocolate were a perfect complement!

I'll have to put up pictures of Jen and Peter's wedding cake. Masse's is so amazing.

Masse's Pastries

1469 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
(510) 649-1004

rice crispy treats

I can never get the spelling quite right... In any case, this is another part in the bridal shower series. I made the easier dessert ever--rice crispy treats! They're so, so simple, but so satisfying. I used Smitten Kitchen's salted brown butter crispy treats, and oh my goodness, did the salt and browned butter make all the difference.

The most basic rice crispy treats only use rice crispy cereal (I used Trader Joe's new rice cereal!), marshmallows, and butter. Some people even omit the butter, but I wouldn't--especially when you brown it, it gives the treats a wonderful nutty flavor. Even the proportions are up to the cook: if you like yours more gooey, then more marshmallows, more crunchy, then more cereal, more taste, then more butter.

Yes. This is DEFINITELY my kind of "baking."

Lastly, the touch of salt that Deb adds in her recipe really heightens the flavor of the treat. However, if you aren't a fan of sweet savory combinations, omitting the salt is fine.

Pictures of the treats and the whole table spread! Courtesy of N, Connie and Tammy:

time to eat...

So I've decided that I am done with my Taiwan-ness. If you want to see more of my fattyness or experience...moral of the story: go to Taiwan. It's impossible to live vicariously through me because you get absolutely no satisfaction from it.

Onto other things...Jen's bridal shower. Yes as m mentioned, I made fruit tarts.

I used the same exact recipe as last time so you can refer here if you want the recipe. The only difference is that I made mini fruit tarts...its a bridal shower after all, so I used a mini muffin tin to make the crusts. Actually this was SOOOOO time consuming, because first of all, I have two 12 cup mini muffin tins (they're from Jen) and I needed to make at least 30, so yeah...and second of all...my oven was NOT usable! I baked in different places...thanks tammaymay and jwoo. I bought lots of fruits: kiwis, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries. I had trouble figuring out how to cut the kiwis and strawberries to make it pretty...

They're pretty ugly actually...but no matter. It was successful, as was the bridal shower.

Super cute stands for the desserts...maybe m will talk more of this...but it's cute right? (Oh I had a lot of fruit leftover, hence the mound of fruits)

EDIT by m: Sorry guys, just had to post another picture of these amazing tarts. :] Courtesy of Connie!

it's about time...

Okay, so part of the reason for the severe lack of posts, aside from the usual commencement of school, busy work schedules, etc, is that our friends, Jen and Peter are getting married. Really, really soon. It's insane! But so, so fun. We threw a bridal shower for Jen last weekend, and it was so much fun.


I'm going to do this in installments, especially because I didn't make all the food, and I'm sure N wants to add something since she made her famous fruit tarts (!). First off, the drink.


Hege lent us her HUGE jar, and while it was pretty, I didn't realize how ginormous it would be. I had bought only 2 cans of raspberry lemonade frozen concentrate and as I mixed the water into the jar, I was painfully aware that it wouldn't even be enough to fill up to the sprout. I panicked, called Jess and Megan, who bought me two 2-liter bottles of Sierra Mist, and the contents rose to a barely acceptable level. Crisis averted.



Panic aside, the drink was refreshingly delicious. It was a good amount of tart, sweet, and fizz, and the added lemon slices added just a touch of charm. What's more, there's really no need for a recipe; everything can be made to taste.

I also made Smitten Kitchen's Salted Brown Butter Rice Crispy Treats, so that's next up...unless N beats me with her mini fruit tarts!

happiness in the form of cakes

i first heard pchung was going to propose to jen on wednesday and i was super super excited and super super happy and every positive feeling you can possibly feel. in my happy state i decided i just had to bake something for them. dude serious dilemma. but i finally settled on double chocolate cake from smitten kitchen. i've wanted to bake a cake for a long long time, but was always way too lazy. but since this was super super special, i had to do it.

i spent three days on this cake because i didn't have 5 + hours to spare in a single day. friday afternoon i did the raspberry filling. my bad at not documenting each step but again i was lazy. it was really easy. food processors=easier life. straining out the seeds was kinda a hassle but it was fine. i fridged it until i needed it which wasn't until two days later. i would suggest not making this first. when i took it out of the fridge to spread on the cake, it became solidified in a almost gelly consistency. i had to bring it to room temperature and mix it like crazy but it turned out fine. make this the day of, it'll probably be better.

the next day i made the cake. it was easy, except my pans were different sizes and i had SO MUCH batter that i used three cake pans. and it finished baking in like 40 minutes. good thing i checked cause it smelled done. its good to make this the day before since you need to wait for it to cool down.

sunday morning, i made the frosting and halved the recipe. it was surprisingly easy. i cooled it in an ice bath and assembled the cake. i had to shave off the volcano like dome to make t it looked really really ugly so i decorated it was raspberries. the frosting got hard so the raspberries wouldn't stick so i used a dab of icing as glue.

yay! i actually didn't get to see it eaten but i did eat the scrapes and it tasted pretty good. :) it wasn't as hard as i expected! its very do-able and a good recipe!
happily engaged :) and no, not cause of the cake (stolen picture from jen)

okayy, so there was another cake i made for melody and jr's birthday! i was super excited for their birthday too cause they're super cool and awesome! i decided to bake cranberry vanilla coffeecake since i found fresh cranberries! it was cranberry season! i love surprises :)

the ugliness because i ran out of powdered sugar. it looks diseased...

ahh, much better!

the recipe calls for vanilla bean which is i did not have because i am cheap. so i added vanilla extract to the cranberry mixture and the cake itself. i'm sure it would taste much more delicious with the vanilla sugar. a very do-able recipe!

recipe courtesy of epicurious

- n

a cote

There's quite a selection of casual fine dining in the Berkeley/Bay Area, and with the Alice Waters organic sustainable New American cuisine movement and all, everyone's trying to be green, upscale, but still California casual, food-forward, innovative, but modeling home cooking... I could wax on and on, but let me just say that it makes for an interesting fusion of confused restaurants.

Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to appreciate casual fine dining. I mean, we're from a small suburb in southern California, where casual fine dining meant Applebee's. I kid. Not really.

In any case, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite restaurants near Berkeley. If you take a stroll (or drive or bus ride) down College Ave, you'll inevitably come across restaurant after restaurant after restaurant--but tucked discreetly in the Rockridge district, you'll see a sign that looks like this:


This is a picture of the menu, but the logo is what I was referring to. When you walk it, it's dim, but not dark; there are candles lighting the couple of tables to your right and the bar area to your left. A hostess or host will greet you and you'll be led past the kitchen to the back area, where there are more tables lit with candles. Then you'll notice that it's actually a patio, you can smell the air from the outside, and the last bits of sunlight trickling in. (Please excuse my tendency to be verbose--I just wanted to detail the ambience.)

A Cote (means next to in French) is a small plates restaurant, tapas if you will, specializing in French-Mediterranean fare. Tapas are meant to be enjoyed communally, so I would go with 4 to 6 people and try everything--it's all good.

My favorite dish is the mussel dish (the menu reads: with Pernod from the wood oven). How rustic does that sound! The plate is huge (my poor cholesterol levels were dying here, but I couldn't resist, it's so delicious) and filled with mussels. At the bottom is a light, creamy broth with beautiful crusty bread to sop it all up. Mmm, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it!

We went for my friend Jen's birthday, and she ordered a fromage (meaning cheese in French) plate that came with candied walnuts, toasted almonds, walnut levain bread, sliced apples and poached figs. I don't remember which cheese she ordered (am not a big fan), but it was creamy and mild. It went so well with the nutty flavors of the bread and the sweetness of the fruits.

The last time I went, I didn't take pictures, but we had ordered all of the desserts--I really wish I had taken pictures because they were so, so amazing. I can't even pick out one that stood out, because they were just all so good.

In other words, you can't go wrong with this restaurant. The service is wonderful, the food is delicious--what more could you ask for?

5478 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618-1552
website