cookies Archives - Splash of Sherri

levain bakery’s chocolate chip cookies (my version)

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Sherri

Levain Bakery in NYC makes one of my all-time favorite chocolate chip cookies. Today they are opening a location in Brooklyn, NY which happens to be my birthplace. Since It’s officially my birthday week, it seems bashert (Yiddish for meant to be) that I was already planning to share my version of their very famous chocolate chip cookie with you today – happy coincidence!

Why is it so famous? For one thing each cookie weighs a whopping 6 ounces, that’s a big cookie! It’s chock full of chocolate chips and walnuts more than any other CC cookie I’ve ever had. The center is soft and gooey like cookie dough, and the outside is just a bit crispy where the little knobs of nuts and chips are trying to escape.

I don’t usually like nuts in cookies, but these are a whole different ballgame. They add a nice texture and sweetness to the cookie if you lightly toast them in the oven (see recipe notes below). It transforms them from a light and almost waxy texture with a hint of bitterness to a sweeter, and crunchier tasting walnut. As for the chocolate chips, 3 1/2 cups of chocolate chips sounds like too many chips – said no one ever! That’s what makes them so ooey gooey good!

A couple things to know about this recipe before you start out. When you take them out of the oven they will seem just a little underdone in the middle. That’s okay, it’s what you want so you’ll get that cookie dough middle, they’ll set up a little when they cool. As long as they are nice and golden, you’re golden too! Some recipes call for cold butter, but I don’t think that’s what they use. I take the butter out 1 to 2 hours before I’m going to bake them just so they come to room temperature. After the directions I have included a few tips for success about storage, toasting walnuts, and about cake flour.

I’m really excited they are opening another location and wish them mazel (luck)! What I’m even more excited about is to being able share and celebrate this recipe with all of you – especially my Midwestern friends! Enjoy!

ingredients
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour* (I prefer King Arthur)
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks) plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter softened*
¾ cup light brown sugar packed lightly
½ cup granulated sugar
2 extra-large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks (chopped chocolate or another cup of chips)
2 cups lightly toasted walnuts**

directions
Preheat oven to 410 degrees and set rack in the top 1/3rd of the oven. Prepare two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl add both flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Use a whisk to mix and set aside.

Use either a stand mixer or hand mixer for this next step. If you don’t have either, you can whisk it by hand but will need to do it for at least 2 minutes. Into another bowl add the softened butter and sugars and mix until light and fluffy for about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well to combine.

Add the flour mixture in 3 additions on a low speed and mix until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts by hand making sure they are well distributed. Some recipes suggest turning the dough out onto a board and mixing by hand like Levain Bakery. This is a much smaller batch of cookies then they make and a spatula does the job.

DO NOT use a cookie scoop to portion the dough or shape them into a smooth ball. Using your hands or two tablespoons drop round mounds onto a scale to weigh out 5 or 6 ounces of dough. Then drop them onto the prepared cookie sheet. If making 6 ounce cookies, bake 4 on a pan and yield 9 cookies. If making 5 ounce cookies, bake 5 or 6 on a pan to yield 11 cookies.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown on top making sure to turn the pan ½ way through the baking. Don’t overbake, they will set up a little bit more as they cool. Let them rest on the cookie sheet about 15 minutes before serving.

To store the cookies, wrap each one individually with plastic wrap and then store in a sealed container. if you pop them in the microwave for 5 to 10 seconds the chips will melt slightly and come back to an almost baked taste.

recipe notes:
*Cake flour can be found by the regular flour. It’s usually on an upper shelf and sold in a box. I prefer King Arthur brand because it is unbleached, but can not find it in the stores right now. Swans Down is fine too in a pinch. If you can’t find cake flour, you can make your own very simply. For every cup of all-purpose flour, take out 2 tablespoons and replace with cornstarch. So for this recipe you would measure 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, take out 6 tablespoons of flour and replace with cornstarch.

**To toast walnuts preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place walnuts onto a rimmed cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Place in the oven for about 8 to 10 minutes or until they become fragrant and lightly toasted. Take them out of the oven and leave on the pan to cool. Roughly chop them before adding – you want big chunks of walnuts. I just break them in half.

If you don’t want to add walnuts you have to sub something in its place or you won’t have the girth of the cookie. You can add an additional 1 ½ cups chocolate chips for texture. In that case, I would choose 2 different types of chips, maybe 2 cups semisweet, and 2 cups chocolate chunks or Ghirardelli 60% chips. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes before baking.

Levain Bakery doesn’t add vanilla extract to their cookie. I added it to mine because I always add it to my CC.

My recipe is adapted from A bountiful Kitchen and Modern Honey Both really nice blogs. Thanks ladies for the head start!

Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich! You had me at Tahini!

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Sherri

Since my trip to Israel last summer, tahini has become one of my major food groups. Tahini is a paste of ground sesame seeds and can be eaten by itself, mixed into hummus and baba ghanoush, made into a sauce and drizzled over vegetables or incorporated into sweets. I have several jars in my pantry at all times and always ready to try it in something new.

Thumb Cookies with a Kiss – a Hershey’s Kiss that is!

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Sherri

This is a repost of one of my absolute favorite cookie recipes. It’s an oldie but a goodie and super easy to put together! So if you are scrambling around and wanting to bake something quick, this is it.

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, (remember this is an old post) I wanted to send a Kiss from me to you, in the form of what else? A cookie! Thumb cookies with a kiss – A Hershey’s Kiss that is. I don’t have a long story to tell you about these cookies; I wish I did. If you are an avid reader of my blog, you’ll know from prior posts I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. http://www.splashofsherri.com/2015/02/13/happy-valentines-day-how-do-you-tell-someone-you-love-them/ I do however celebrate cookies! Every year I use this week as an excuse to bake cookies nonstop and send them to people I love – as if I needed an excuse to do that!

These are a quickest cookies you will ever make; therefore, this will be the quickest post I will ever write so you can get right to it. They were one of my mom’s specialties, they melt in your mouth, are so easy to put together, very versatile and everyone loves them! You can fill them with a chocolate kiss (I prefer the dark chocolate but milk chocolate are great too) or or any kind of jam you like.

The batter is not like any other cookie I have seen and calls for a very unusual ingredient – hard-boiled egg yolks. Yes, you read that correctly – hard-boiled egg yolks! The first time I made them, I was skeptical but they turned out great. The cookie is similar to shortbread and what I found is the egg yolk gives the cookie body and a special richness. My mom would mash the egg yolks very finely with a fork. I used a microplane but a fork worked for my mom and will work for you too!

If you need a tip on how to cook the perfect hard-boiled egg click on this link from a post I wrote two years ago. You definitely want a beautiful bright yellow yolk for these! http://www.splashofsherri.com/2014/09/16/the-perfect-hard-boiled-egg/

So if you love someone, and that someone could be you, whip up these cookies and give yourself a kiss – you deserve it! Enjoy!

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 hard-boiled egg yolks only (I used extra large)
½ cup sugar
2 sticks plus 1 tablespoon of butter softened at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla*
Pinch of Kosher salt
50 Hershey Kisses (I used dark chocolate – for heart health!)
Optional: Jam (your favorite flavor)**

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Separate the eggs and set aside the whites of the eggs (you can save them to eat later). Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla. Grate in the egg yolks and blend well. Then add the flour and pinch of salt mixing till combined.

Roll small balls of dough about 1” (approximately 2 teaspoons) and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper about an inch apart. I used the smallest cookie scoop which holds 2 teaspoons so every cookie would come out the same size. Press down the center of the dough with the Hershey Kiss.

Bake on the center rack of the oven for 10 – 12 minutes turning the cookie sheet half way through the baking – don’t over bake them. This recipe makes 4 dozen cookies

*you can change the flavor of the cookie very easily by using a variety of different extracts. I have made them with almond extract and they taste amazing.

**If using jam, I like to use a Hershey’s Kiss to make the indentation but you can also use your thumb – hence the title – thumb cookie! Use about ½ to ¾ teaspoon of jam. Use any flavor you like. My favorite is raspberry or blackberry. Don’t overfill, they will run out of the center.

Couldn’t we all use some World Peace Cookies this Valentine’s Day?

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Sherri

Couldn’t we all use some World Peace Cookies this Valentine’s Day?

Every year I time things perfectly for Valentine’s Day. I make my famous sugar cookie dough, plan when I’ll be baking, spend the day baking and decorating the cookies and organize all of the packaging material ahead of time. Then I rush excitedly to the post office with more than a dozen boxes in tow all strapped to a luggage cart. Most of them for family and friends and usually a few extra for orders I get every year.

This year, things just didn’t come together for me. I didn’t have a plan. I never made the dough. The few orders I usually get fell though for various reasons. I had no packing material and on Friday night I tried to convince myself that it’s okay to skip a year. Then the guilt set in (Jewish mother’s guilt that is!). My boys are in college, how could I not send them cookies? So while watching a late night movie, I turned to my husband and said “okay, I’ll just make my mother’s thumb cookies and get them in the mail tomorrow.” They are the easiest cookie and they have a Hershey Kiss on top! What says I love you more than that? From a cookie perspective that is!

Now it’s Saturday. I wake up early and get caught up in a rerun of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (may her memory be a blessing). I laugh hysterically at the zaniness of the show (it was the Chuckles the Clown episode and if you have never seen it, you must). At 9:30am I decide I had better start baking knowing the post office closes at 2. As I head down the steps I’m now thinking if I end up with extra, I’ll put a few in a package for my niece and nephew; I always send them cookies too. But, are the thumb cookies enough? Amanda really loves chocolate… maybe I should make chocolate cookies also. I don’t know why I’m thinking this, but I am. I run upstairs and try to find a recipe I have for an easy cut out cookie. At this point, I still think I have time to make the batter, refrigerate the dough, roll them out, frost and decorate, pack them up, then pop them in the mail – all by 2pm. In the meantime, I put a pot of eggs on the stove to boil which are needed to make the thumb cookies.

Finally I start the cookies. I measure and sift the dry ingredients then I notice the recipe says must refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Somehow, I missed that part or maybe I thought by some magic I could still get all of this done. Most people might just scrap the whole thing, but not me! I grab Dorie Greenspan’s book Dorie’s Cookies and attempt to make her World Peace Cookies. It looks really easy, it’s a slice and bake and I can easily alter the ingredients I have already measured so it’s a perfect fit. I know what you are thinking, and yes, of course I know slice and bake cookies also need to be refrigerated! The recipe says it only needs a couple of hours in the freezer so I keep going.

The flour and cocoa needed for the 1st recipe was almost double that of Dories. I just had to add more cocoa powder to compensate for the world peace cookies. I cream the butter and then add the dry ingredients to the wet and think wow, this is so dry and crumbly – which she mentions in her recipe it might be. I look over the recipe again and now realize, I didn’t double the butter, or the sugar, or the vanilla!

New plan… I put everything away and Sunday I happily baked cookies, decorated cookies and packaged them to mail first thing Monday morning. If the cookies make it by today, what a surprise! If they make it by Wednesday then that will be perfect, I think you guys know where I stand on greeting card holidays! So here they are, some of the most delicious chocolate cookies I have ever tasted (and pretty indestructible if you don’t mind me saying!). They are a little soft with a nice chew, terrific texture and full of chocolate chips throughout! World peace cookies for everyone… and Happy Valentine’s Day if you celebrate. For me, this is just another excuse to enjoy something chocolate! Enjoy!

Recipe is adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s book Dorie’s Cookies which is a fantastic book for anyone who likes to bake

Ingredients
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s cocoa powder)
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used Trader Joe’s semisweet chocolate chunks – already chopped)

Makes about 32 cookies

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together and set aside.

I used a hand mixer and a large bowl to cream the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until soft, creamy and homogeneous, about 3 minutes. You can also use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Beat in the salt and vanilla. Turn off the mixer; add all the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to start blending. Mix on low and beat until the dough forms big, moist curds. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix to incorporate. The original recipe claims the dough is unpredictable. Sometimes it’s crumbly; sometimes it comes together and cleans the sides of the bowl. Lucky for me!

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and gather it together, kneading it if necessary to bring it together. Divide it in half and shape the dough into logs that are 1 ½ inches in diameter. Don’t worry about the length – get the diameter right and the length with follow. Mine came out to about 9” long. Wrap them tight in wax paper or plastic wrap and freeze them for at least 2 hours, or refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

When you are ready to bake, place a rack in the center of your oven and preheat to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Working with one log at a time, and using a long, sharp knife, slice the dough into ½ inch thick rounds. I found it was much too difficult straight from the fridge so I left mine out for about 15 minutes. When I sliced them, they tended to crumble; Dorie says to just push them back together onto each cookie. It worked like a charm!

Bake the cookies for 12 minutes – don’t open the oven. When the timer rings, they won’t look done, nor will they be firm. That’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are just warm, at which point you can munch on them or let them reach room temperature. They are amazingly delicious as is. The texture is just perfect, a little chewy and densely chocolate! I decided to frost a few of the ones that did not come out as nicely and sprinkled them with Valentine decorations. World Peace out!

Ode to my Mother-in-law Joan, and her Snickerdoodles

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Sherri

This post is an Ode to my Mother-in-law Joan, and her Snickerdoodles. First, the Snickerdoodle… Where did it originate? Who thought of the name? Why do so many people love it? One theory about it’s origin lies in New England. It is possible it is just a nonsense made up word. Need I remind you of the whoopie pie? Another theory could be, it is of German origin, from the word Schneckennudel (“snail noodles”). I’m sure there is some in-depth research done on this topic, but I’m satisfied with the ones I have found! Plus, who can argue with Schneckennudel? Why so many people love it – is easy! It’s a cookie that is crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, with a delicious hit of cinnamon in every bite and a little tang from the cream of tartar.

For me, it originated in Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania in the 90’s. It was the first time I had ever heard of one, seen one, or tasted one. I was well into my 20’s and I’m pretty sure it was Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law Joan was the person who introduced me to this soft, fluffy, cinnamon laced cookie. She baked them almost every time we visited. There they sat in a tin, along side the other tins filled with cookies I had never tasted before: gingersnaps, spritz cookies, rum balls and chocolate gobs. Opening each tin was like unwrapping a birthday present and finding a surprise inside. After all of this, you probably think the snickerdoodle is my favorite cookie – but you would be wrong. I like them just fine but they are far from my favorite cookie. On the other hand, my boys and husband absolutely love them.

Over the years I have attempted to make them but they never came out as good as my mother-in-laws. Once they seemed so different my boy’s coined the term “Sherri-doodle” cookies! After a while, I gave up trying to make them. This past summer, my mother-in-law Joan passed away. I think in many ways her passing is the reason I have had such difficulty writing my blog. For me, food is so personal and has a strong connection to people and events in my life. Just thinking about writing seemed trivial and just sad. Plus, I loved her phone calls after I posted and knew I would miss that. It was the one thing we had most in common. We both love to read cookbooks, try new recipes, share our love of baking with others, and had a mutual admiration for the other when it came to the culinary arts.

I have always anticipated sharing some of her recipes with my readers. I guess it’s true what they say, don’t put off till tomorrow, what you can do today. The past couple of weeks I faced my baker’s block and today I am facing my writer’s block. I attempted the Snickerdoodle once more. This time, using my mother-in-law Joan’s recipe, they were delicious. The recipe comes from a community cookbook entitled Tried & True Recipes, The Best from Beth Israel Center’s Sisterhood and submitted by Judy Weiss. So here’s to you Joan, the first in many tributes to your fantastic baking and cooking – of course with a Splash of Sherri! I just couldn’t bring myself to use Crisco as the original recipe calls for. Crisco is something we didn’t agree on!

1 cup butter softened (or Crisco)*
1 – 1/2 cups sugar
2 extra-large eggs (bring to room temperature)
2 – 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tarter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside. In a bowl sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt and set aside. Cream butter and sugar, then add the eggs. Add the flour to the butter mixture, mix and then chill the dough. (I was a little impatient here and didn’t chill the dough). They came out great, but will chill the dough the next time to see if there is a difference.

Roll into balls the size of small walnuts. I used a cookie scoop that was 2 1/2 teaspoons. Roll the ball in mixture of 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Place on a cookie sheet 2 inches apart for 8 to 10 minutes. Joan’s notes say to bake 10 minutes for soft cookies, 12 -15 for crisp cookies. With the small scoop, I ended up with 80 2 1/2″ cookies! The cookies will puff when they bake and then flatten to a crinkled top.

*Some recipes call for 1/2 butter and 1/2 Crisco.