Pantry-Pull Chocolate Chip Cookies

Not to be a downer, and I’d argue you can’t be a downer with chocolate chip cookies in hand, but, well…

What the hell, right? I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but here in California it’s pretty concerning at the moment. Cases are going up, people are still talking about somehow going back to school or back to work in September, idiots walk casually around sans mask, and I feel like the groundhog ready to go back inside the burrow for 6 more weeks. I just don’t see how we avoid another lockdown if this keeps up.

I’ve been a major pessimist about all of this and I don’t think we’ll see anything like “normal until 2022. I’m not going to turn into a prepper or anything and start hoarding canned goods, but I did keep this stunner of a cookie in my back pocket for the inevitable day we all might need it. Unfortunately, that day might be soon.

I’m calling it a stunner because it is, built off a really beautiful chocolate chip cookie from Claire Ptak, of Violet Baker in London (and royal wedding cake fame). The secret to her cookie is that she uses egg yolks instead of the usual whole eggs, and the result is really rich and somehow both hefty and delicate. These baked up exactly how I always want my chocolate chip cookies to look. I was hooked.

The problem I encountered, however, since I made these back in March and April, was a shortage of standard ingredients. I still can’t believe that we as a nation decided to get through a pandemic with sourdough, but we did, and the resulting run on flour made life difficult for us regular bakers who may have been unprepared for the national raid on the baking aisle. So I had to improvise. Butter was augmented with peanut butter, all purpose flour was replaced with buckwheat and then whole wheat when I found some, and I rediscovered my stash of coconut sugar (though I’m calling for regular sugar here since I discovered you can buy sugar like this online).

The resulting cookie was not just adequate. It was truly delicious, so much so that I don’t really want to bake the original version even when I have the right ingredients! The peanut butter added a subtle background to the chocolate and was complemented really nicely by the nutty flour. I was glad that I’d only made a half recipe, and these are rich enough that I’d only double this if you have a lot of people to feed.

So, I really hope we don’t all have to relive what we went through in March and April, but I think there’s a very real chance some of us might, so paraphrasing my philosophy from the start, things are terrible. Eat the cookie!

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Pantry Pull Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe is adapted from Claire Ptak’s egg yolk chocolate chip cookies in The Violet Bakery Cookbook. Her cookies are fantastic as is, but I really love the flavors my substitute ingredients have added here.

Makes 8-10 cookies

• 5 tbs unsalted butter, softened

• 3 tbs peanut butter (any kind you have on hand)

• 1/2 cup plus 1 tbs light brown sugar

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• 1 tbs water

• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract (real, fake, use what you have!)

• 2 egg yolks

• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbs all purpose flour

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (or buckwheat flour is very nice here)

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• scant 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 3/4 cup large, dark chocolate pieces (such as Valrhona feves)

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer add the butter, peanut butter, sugars and water and mix until completely combined but not yet fluffy.

2. Add the vanilla and egg yolks and mix until fully combined. In a small bowl, combine the flours, salt and baking soda and whisk together, then add to the mixer bowl. Mix on low speed until almost fully combined, then add in the chocolate and mix for about a minute, until all the ingredients are well combined and the chocolate pieces just start to break up a bit.

3. Divide the dough into 8-10 equal portions, form into balls and place on a parchment lined baking sheet that will fit in your freezer. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze until firm, at least 1 hour (overnight is great!).

4. When ready to bake, arrange the dough balls on parchment lined pans, spaced well apart. Let sit at room temperature while your oven heats to 350 degrees (if your oven takes longer than 10 minutes to reach 350, preheat your oven before taking the dough from the freezer). Bake cookies, 15-18 minutes, until golden brown around the sides but still a bit underdone in the centers. Start checking at 15 minutes (especially if you formed smaller cookies) as these can go from perfect to torched around the edges pretty quick. Let cool, then enjoy!

Notes:

• Have fun with the mix-ins here! Sub your favorite alternate nut butter or tahini for the peanut butter, use whatever chocolate pieces you have, play around with different flours! I really love the nuttiness of buckwheat with the peanut butter.

• The original recipe calls for 3 egg yolks, and I halved it, but I’ve got 2 egg yolks here plus a tablespoon of water for a couple reasons: replacing part of the butter with peanut butter removes some of the moisture from the recipe, and since whole wheat and buckwheat flours require a little more water content than AP, the extra bit of yolk and added water are there to make sure we don’t get a dry cookie.

Baked Cinnamon Swirl French Toast

I hope you embraced my out-of-season cozy attack earlier this week, because today I have an excellent way to use up any leftover cinnamon swirl bread, should you have any (this is a great excuse to make the full, double-loaf recipe).

If you’ve got, say, half a loaf left out, and getting stale and unloved, I HIGHLY suggest repurposing it into a baked french toast. The tops get golden and crisp and the custardy inside bakes up plush and pillowy. The cinnamon swirl comes back to life and the dried fruit plumps up into jammy pockets.

You can of course slice it up and make a delicious stove-top french toast with it too, but here’s why I recommend the baked approach:

• It’s summer! If you want to stand over a hot stove and fry up each slice individually, be my guest, but I think an oven is a better option. Even if it heats up the kitchen, you can leave the room and cool yourself off while your french toast bakes up.

• It’s gloriously lazy! Just arrange the slices in a baking dish the night before, pour on the custard mixture, and let soak overnight. In the morning, wake up, make some coffee, heat the oven, pop in your dish, and go about your morning as you want. You can fry up some bacon in the meantime or even go back to bed until it’s done.

• It’s pretty! You didn’t spend all that time crafting a beautifully swirled loaf for nothing! Show it off a bit!

• It’s got wow factor for your family or imaginary guests. I miss entertaining my friends so much right now! It’s been a small consolation testing my way through party-friendly recipes in the meantime. When I’m allowed to throw a brunch again, this will definitely be on the menu.

Whatever reason speaks to you, I really think you can’t go wrong here. Just add maple syrup and a shower of powdered sugar and enjoy your morning!

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Baked Cinnamon Swirl French Toast

This recipe works well with the cinnamon swirl bread from my last post, which retains a nice chew when baked (you will want to scrape off the glaze, if you took that step, as it won’t bake up well in the oven). Feel free to sub with your favorite french toast bread, but know you might need to adjust the liquid amounts accordingly. As written, this recipe feeds 4-6, depending on whether it’s the main even or part of a larger breakfast spread, but this recipe can also be easily doubled to feed more.

• 1/2 loaf cinnamon swirl bread, or 6 slices, 1/2-3/4 inch thick.

• 1 tbs butter, for greasing the pan

• 3 eggs

• 1 1/4 cup milk

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)

• good pinch kosher salt

1. Generously butter a small baking dish and shingle the bread slices in the pan. I like to keep them whole if possible to really show off the cinnamon swirl but arrange as you like, or as needed to fit the pan. You want the slices to have as much contact with the bottom of the pan as possible to ensure all the liquid can be soaked up. Tuck any leftover butter pieces in between the slices of bread.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients and pour over the bread. Press down to fully coat the slices and make sure you have even coverage. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. If you are making this morning of, give the bread at least an hour to really soak up the custard mixture.

3. When ready to bake, heat oven to 350 degrees. Remove the plastic, and bake for 1 hour until puffed and golden brown (you will probably need to tent with foil about halfway through). Let sit for 10 minutes, then serve as desired. I like a generous snowfall of powdered sugar and maple syrup!

Iced Cinnamon Swirl Bread with Dried Fruit - A Recipe Review

I apologize for bringing out, mid-July, perhaps one of the least summery recipes I could present. I get that cinnamon swirled carbs don’t exactly evoke hot, sunny beaches or warm, grassy days and that you’d probably be much more eager for something frozen or BBQ-ready. However, it’s two weeks ‘til Fogust, I don’t own a BBQ, and I’m in more of a cozy mood these days, so here’s a cozy loaf all snuggled in on itself, swirled with cinnamon and dried fruit and dripping with a sugary glaze whose only purpose is to bring the sweetness just to the edge of too much.

I promise, a thick slice of this makes an excellent breakfast with a mug of coffee or tea, or as a welcome 3 pm snack. Let’s all adopt the British afternoon tea break, because here’s a perfect excuse.

Finding the perfect recipe to evoke the store-bought iced cinnamon swirl bread we all know (and love or hate) was not that easy. Ultimately, I realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to fully replicate the artificial flavors and plasticky glaze, nor do I want to, so I went in search of a homier, butter-filled option. I started where I’d been before, with Martha Stewart’s recipe for cinnamon swirl bread from her Baking Handbook. That recipe was one of the first baking projects I ever made over a decade ago after bringing home my brand new Kitchen Aid mixer. I remember it being a huge success and loving the filling. Then I never made it again.

So, when I went back to it as a starting place for a homemade iced cinnamon bread, I was a little surprised that it didn’t live up to my memory. My baking has come a long way since 2009 and maybe it’s just harder to impress myself, or maybe, as I frequently run into with Martha’s recipes, there is a wide margin for user error and you really have to know where the trouble spots are. I can never tell if this is due to poor recipe testing/writing or due to her team trying to market recipes as fool proof and easy when they still require some amount of skill or experience. In any case, I got far luckier in 2009 than 2019, and my first round of loaves last year came out burned on top and rather chewy, not the plush, springy successes I remembered.

After a brief detour to a different recipe, I decided there was still more to like than hate about this one, not least because the filling tastes like the middle of a cinnamon toaster strudel. I liked that it had the richness of eggs and that everything is added at once to the mixer. So I kept trying, and I’ll still recommend this recipe, but there are some notes I’d add in the margins if I were the type to write in my cookbooks.

• This recipe is written in a way that assumes all ovens and all mixers are the same, so the time cues aren’t going to help. When kneading the dough, you might need to go beyond 5 minutes to get the dough to the right consistency. You want it very smooth, and it may still stick to the sides of the bowl a bit, even though the original recipe says it will “pull away from the sides”.

• Tent your loaves!!! There’s sugar in this dough, and sugar is sensitive to the heat of the oven. I have never made this where the tops didn’t burn black without tenting. Trust me, you need some foil if you don’t want, bitter, chewy crust.

• Really work to get a good seal on the bottom of your loaves. If not, at least one loaf is likely to have the filling burst out somewhere. In any case, baked these on top of a baking sheet. I still have charred cinnamon sugar filling on the bottom of my oven.

• These loaves are pretty massive, so depending on your oven, 45 minutes might not be enough to get them fully baked through. Test the dough for doneness with a thermometer to be sure. You want to see the internal temperature reach 200 degrees, but make sure you are testing the dough and not the molten sugar inside.

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Iced Cinnamon Swirl Bread with Dried Fruit

Adapted from Martha Stewart. This recipe works with any kind of dried fruit you like, but I really love it with dried cherries. This recipe makes enough for two pretty large loaves, but is easily cut in half if you don’t need a supply.

For the bread:

• 1/4 oz instant yeast

• 2 cups milk

• 2 lbs 2 oz all purpose flour, plus a little more for your counter

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened and cut into cubes

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 2 eggs

• 2 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 1 cup dried fruit of your choice

• 1 tbs cinnamon

For the filling:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 2 tbs cinnamon

• 1 egg, beaten

For the glaze (optional):

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

• 1-2 tbs milk or water, depending on how thick you want your glaze

• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the yeast, milk, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and salt. Turn mixer to lowest setting and mix until fully combined, about 3 minutes. Then, raise the speed to medium-low and mix to knead the dough until fully smooth, about 3-5 minutes. The dough will be very slack and may still stick a bit to the sides of the bowl.

2. Dust your counter or work surface with a bit of flour and turn the dough out, patting into a round about 9 inches across. Sprinkle the cinnamon and dried fruit over the dough and then gently knead everything together until the cinnamon and fruit are incorporated throughout. Gather the dough and place in an oiled bowl (you can use the mixing bowl) and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise about 1 hour, or until doubled in volume.

3. Turn the dough back onto the floured surface and pat into a round again. Then, fold the dough. Bring the top third down, then the bottom third up, then fold the right side over, then the left. Press down to seal the seam, then return to the bowl seam side down. Let rise another 40 minutes, until doubled in size again.

4. Once dough has risen, you are ready to fill. In a small bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, and two tablespoons of water. Divide the dough in half. One at a time, roll and fill the dough. Dust more flour on the counter and roll half of the dough into a rectangle, about 12x10 inches. Brush the dough with the beaten egg, then sprinkle on half the filling mixture. Fold the long sides of the rectangle in about 1 inch, then take one edge of the short side and roll, forming the dough into a log. Repeat with the remaining half of dough, reserving some of the beaten egg if you want to do an egg wash before baking.

5. Butter or grease two loaf pans and place the rolled dough halves seam side down into the pans. Cover loosely and set aside to rise for a final time, until the dough sits just above the rim of the loaf pan, about 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

6. Brush tops of loaves with beaten egg, or if you plan to ice them, you can skip the egg wash. Place the loaf pans on a parchment lined baking sheet to catch any drips and bake the loaves about 45 minutes, rotating halfway through. You may need to cover with foil about halfway through if the tops of the loaves appear to be browning too quickly or burning (the sugar in the dough makes this pretty likely). Remove loaves from oven and let cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

7. If icing the loaves, let cool completely. Then, stir together powdered sugar, milk or water, and vanilla extract into a smooth glaze. Spoon the glaze over the top of the loaves and let set, or slice into thick pieces and enjoy immediately.

Notes:

• Bread will last a week at room temperature, or wrap loaves in foil and freeze. You can also slice and freeze individual slices, well-wrapped.

• The recipe above calls for incorporating cinnamon and the dried fruit into the dough, but an alternative method is to skip the cinnamon in the dough, and add the dried fruit with the filling, so the pieces of fruit sit in the spiral. This will save you from having to do Step 2 before the initial rise, but I do like having the cinnamon and fruit interspersed throughout the dough.