Valentine's day Archives - Splash of Sherri

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!

Happy Valentine’s Day! How do You Tell Someone You Love Them?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Sherri

In the spirit of the week, Happy Valentine’s Day! How do you tell someone you love them?

I’m not a huge fan of this holiday although you’d never know it by the amount of baking and candy coming in and out of here the past few days! My mother called it “a card store” holiday. She always said if you love someone, tell them or show them now, don’t wait for a card company to tell you to do it. Of course she was was right, and I’m glad she taught me that. The last words I said to her were I love you. I have held that that in my heart everyday for the past 21 years.

That’s the funny thing about love, you carry it with you even when the person lives far away, doesn’t call, forgets your birthday, or is no longer with us. So in light of this, how can you not be captivated by a holiday that is all about love? How do you tell them you love them?

If you have someone you are in love with, infatuated with, smitten with, enchanted by, fascinated by, or bewitched by, don’t wait until tomorrow to tell them. Do it now – never wait – pick up the phone and say I love you. My 10 year old niece Amanda knows this. On Monday she put a little bag of candy in her mother’s purse with a note on it. She does things like this all the time. When she comes here for a visit, she leaves little love notes and drawings on post-it notes all over my house which I find for weeks after – pure love. On Tuesday, I received a package in the mail from my niece Brette and her husband Adam. It was a box of ruggalach from a new place in NYC I wanted them to try. I had no idea I would be trying them too! I was so surprised. I’ll be writing more about this in an upcoming post. Last week I sent a cozy blanket to my sister-in-law Cathy, “just because” It’s something she did for me in the fall which I have been meaning to share with you – see the photo below.

SONY DSC — This is the box I received from my sister-in-law Cathy. She sent it sometime last September. It was such a surprise! I loved every bit of it down to the notes written on scraps of paper! How cute are the baby spoons and toothpicks?

Most holidays I send baked goods to family as friends. Valentine’s Day, I send cookies to people that aren’t expecting them and it’s quite a surprise. I’ll usually pick someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. Tomorrow I’ll go into the post office and bring Janet a bag of cookies too. I’m always mailing out cookies and this year, I think I’ll bring some to her. So follow my lead. Bring someone candy on the 10th of February, call me and order a special box of goodies for your college student – for no reason, send someone flowers on March 14th, apologize to someone if you’ve upset them, write a love note just because, send someone a cozy blanket, leave chocolate kisses on a loved one’s pillow, bring a friend or co-worker a cup of coffee with a note on the cup, give beautiful strawberries without chocolate on them, write a poem – it doesn’t have to rhyme, send someone something in the mail by surprise, and most important… tell them you love them every single day – don’t wait until tomorrow!

On this day, Friday, February 13th (yikes! it’s Friday the 13th!) I am heading into my kitchen to get ready for the farmer’s market. Tomorrow, you can find me at 400 West Rich Street Farmer’s Market sharing the love with… Red velvet caramel popcorn, caramel apples all decked out for that special someone (could be yourself, in fact why not you?), valentine candy, and maybe even a special valentine granola mix! Time to get to work!

But before I go… Here is a challenge for you. How do YOU tell someone you love them? Share your answers with me and I’ll post them. Then, show me how much you love me, by sharing my website with a friend or family member. Ask them to subscribe to my blog and like me on Facebook. Happy Valentine’s day! Try it and see what happens, I might surprise you with a little love from Splash of Sherri’s… Kitchen!