Baking With Anna Olson
It’s been a little while since I baked something from the cookbook. Something new, anyway. I am always looking for a little cookie or something to nibble on in the evenings, so I decided to make these blueberry oat cookies. I always tend to cut sliced cookies thicker than the recommended ¼-inch, I think because otherwise I feel like they are too thin and don’t really count as a snack. To be honest, I was not a fan of these cookies.
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This recipe was fun and simple to make. Pulse all the ingredients except the raspberry jam together, press half of it in the pan and layer the raspberry jam and the rest of the crumble mixture on top. It smelled nice and fruity while baking. Although I was very careful to gently press the crumble top layer, it ended up a bit too compact for my liking.
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Flour is once more abundant in my home. Well, not abundant but many pounds more than I had a few weeks ago. As such I have ramped up my baking once more and I was excited to try these raspberry, lemon and white chocolate rugelach. I had never heard of these Jewish delicacies, but I am very glad to have discovered them. These were truly one of the best cookies I have ever made. I say cookie, but truly they are more in between a cookie and a pastry. A cootry? A paskie? That sounds better.
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As the weeks of quarantine are prolonged, my supply of flour is decreasing at an alarming rate. I have only a few more recipes’ worth of flour as there is a nation-wide shortage and I have been unable to get my hands on some, so I have to choose my last few bakes carefully. Of course I was looking for a little cookie or hand-held dessert to eat with tea in the evenings. And so came these chocolate-dipped madeleine cookies.
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For the last dessert that I would make before gradually going back to work, I made these creamy lemon squares by popular, or should I say repeated but polite, requests. My boyfriend simply loves anything lemon so I wanted to make this for him before I left. However, my sister makes amazing lemon squares and he often talks about them and compares other (non-lemon) desserts to it, so the bar was set high! Due to this I almost expected to be defeated and not do The Lemon Square justice. Fortunately, as usual with Anna Olson’s recipes I need not worry.
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The next quarantine baked goods that I decided to try was these cute lime and coconut medallions. These cookies are essentially shortbread, as they are tender and a little crumbly. When I formed the logs the mixture seemed quite dry and I was doubtful that it would bake properly and hold its shape, but I needn’t worry. Once in the oven the butter melted and held everything together.
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Since these langues de chat cookies are based on the same batter as the Tuile Cookies, I made these in the same day and this was quite time efficient. I simply prepared the batter, used half to make the tuile cookies and the other to make these adorable langues de chat, this way I got more variety of cookies with the same amount of work.
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During these difficult times, I have found myself baking more and more. Bread, pavlovas, croissants, and so on. One thing that is always necessary in our household is some cookies or baked goods to go along with tea in the evening. As we had the last banana mini loaf recently and thus the last sweet thing in the house, I thought it would be a great time to go Back to Baking since it had been a while. The ingredients that I had on hand allowed me to make tuile cookies.
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There is one recipe in the book that I looked at and perused many times over the past two years. However, I could never bring myself to do it. Even though the title of the recipe sounds delicious, as soon as I came across one ingredient in the recipe, I couldn’t do it. That ingredient is… mayonnaise. I strongly dislike mayo, except in tuna sandwiches and crab salad, where it belongs, and could not fathom doing a dessert with mayonnaise! It was against my core beliefs. Mayo, in a brownie? Why?
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During the holidays I made another recipe to go with the banana walnut bread: cinnamon pinwheel cookies. Although the recipe seemed simple enough and did not require uncommon ingredients, it was a complete disaster. Now I’m not sure if it’s because I have never done cookies with a filling that need to be rolled like that before, but it was a big fiasco.
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Valerie 