Almond/Hazelnut Crescent Cookies

My Break-the-fast plans have changed. One of my friends, the woman who always brings dessert, isn’t able to come this year.

Guess what that means?

Yep. Dessert’s on me. 

Okay, my friend Barbara just offered her daughter-in-law’s services for some chocolate chip cookies. Everybody likes those so I said a quick yes.

I would love some homemade rugelach but don’t think I have time to make those this year, so I’m going to make a couple of plum tortes and also these fabulously rich and tender almond crescents (you can use hazelnuts), which melt in your mouth and are completely freezable (so I can actually do that today! Hurrah.

Almond/Hazelnut Crescents

1/2 pound unsalted butter

1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

2 large egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup finely ground almonds or hazelnuts

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar, approximately

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Beat the butter and 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium speed for one minute or until fluffy and well blended. Add the egg yolks, salt and vanilla extract and blend them in thoroughly. Add the flour and nuts and blend them in thoroughly. Wrap the dough and refrigerate it for at least one hour or until well chilled. Take off pieces of dough and shape them into 3-inch long cylinders, then into crescents with tapered ends. Place the crescents on ungreased cookie sheets about one-inch apart. Bake for about 25 minutes or until they are lightly browned. Let cool. Press the cookies into the remaining confectioner’s sugar or sift extra confectioner’s sugar on top of the cookies for serving.

Makes about 30 cookies

Oatmeal Cookies

I don’t understand the green food thing for St. Patrick’s Day. Someone emailed me (and several other women who bake for a biweekly Tea at Stamford Hospital, sponsored by our local Hadassah group) and suggested that we could, if we wish, bake something and color it green because the next Tea will be a St. Patrick themed event.

Nope.

When I bake with my grandchildren I let them use food coloring and we frequently have lavender or cerise blue or fuchsia butter cookies or layer cake. I have lots of little bottles with lots of colors that they can mix together.

But they’re kids.

Green bagels, green cake and so on is just not happening here. I don’t remember when that whole thing started.

Green Ireland is an amazing country, one of the most gorgeous I’ve ever been to. Emerald Isle is a good name for it, so true, so lovely. It rains a lot there and then it stops and the grass and the leaves, the bushes and plants and everything else is incredibly beautiful. To me the green in nature conjures up hopeful signs of life. But green, fake-colored food? Nope.

I’ll be making:

Oatmeal Cookies

10 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanila extract

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups quick oats

1 cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. In the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium speed, cream the butter and sugar together for a minute or so until creamy. Add the brown sugar and blend it in thoroughly. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract. Add the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and beat until the ingredients are well blended. Stir in the oats and raisins. Drop mounded tablespoons of the mixture onto the cookie sheet, leaving some space between each lump of dough. Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Repeat with remaining dough.

Makes about 4 dozen

Kichels

Fried is one of my favorite foods. Fried anything, but especially potatoes, onion rings, chicken wings and doughnuts.

So on Hanukkah, when “fried” is fashionable, I’m not going to be the person who makes the healthy alternative. We eat relatively healthy stuff almost all of the time. Hanukkah is a celebration of delicious little goodies cooked to a crisp in vegetable oil!

I won’t do it for the entire eight days, but at least on the first night of Hanukkah (December 1st this year) it will be fried, fried, fried. Potato latkes for sure, but I’m thinking also about “kichels”, a kind of cookie my Mom used to make.

Kichels are an old Jewish family favorite and most recipes for them tell you to bake the dough. But my mother fried them. They were ultra-thin, crispy, not too sweet and absolutely impossible to resist. Her recipe is amazingly simple and only calls for one cup of flour, but it’s enough for a family of 4-6 as a first night treat. Or whenever.

Kichels

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

• 2 large eggs, beaten

• 1/4 teaspoon white vinegar

• vegetable oil for deep fat frying

Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the beaten eggs and vinegar and mix thoroughly until a smooth dough has formed. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until the dough is very thin, almost like paper. Cut into squares or rectangles or odd shapes as small as 1-1/2-inches or up to 3-inches. Heat about 2-inches vegetable oil in a deep saute pan (or use a deep fryer) over medium-high heat until the oil reaches about 375 degrees (a bread crumb or tiny piece of dough will sizzle quickly). Drop the cut-outs, a few at a time into the oil (they will puff up) on both sides until they are crispy and faintly browned. Drain on paper towels. Sift confectioner’s sugar on top.

Makes 4-6 servings

Mom’s Butter Cookies

It wouldn't be a proper Break-the-Fast without these cookies. My mother made them so

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies and milk. It’s the snack we got when we came home from school. My mother, who started to work when I entered the 4th grade, somehow found the time to bake cookies three or four times a week.

There were no other snacks during the day. It’s not as if my parents were depriving us or trying to get us to eat less junk. It’s just the way it was for us, and as far as I knew, for everyone else. When I went to a friend’s house I also got cookies and milk, maybe not homemade cookies but Oreos or sugar wafers, sometimes Vienna Fingers (all three with a goodly amount of white icing).

Today is National Junk Food Day, which a lot of people use as an excuse to eat … a lot of junk. But do we really need to set aside a day to do what so many of us already do?

Btw, it’s not really a national holiday. That takes an act of Congress and, no matter what you think about our government, no one in his or her right mind would propose a national day on which we should eat (and have our children eat) junk.

First Lady Michelle Obama is actually trying to take a critical look at childhood obesity (the Let’s Move campaign). Maybe there’s a way to keep the kids, and ourselves, from getting fatter and fatter.

I say, let’s start by having only one snack a day. I say cookies and milk. How about Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies? Here’s an easy recipe:

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 cups quick cooking oats

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

12 tablespoons (1-1/2 sticks) butter

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1/4 cup apple juice, orange juice or water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet (or two). Combine the oats, flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside. Place the butter, white sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer (or a large bowl) and beat on medium speed for 2-3 minutes or until creamy and well blended (or use a hand mixer). Add the egg, juice and vanilla extract and blend them in thoroughly. Add the oat-flour mixture and blend it in thoroughly. Mix in the chocolate chips. Drop the dough (a mounded tablespoon worth)  onto the cookie sheet, leaving room for the cookies to spread. Bake for about 10 minutes or until set and lightly browned. Let cool slightly, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough. Makes about 4 dozen

For more about National Junk Food Day see: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/food/article/Healthy-ways-to-celebrate-Junk-Food-Day-577270.php

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