IF YOU’VE EVER OVERWHIPPED heavy cream, you’ve had the beginnings of butter on your hands. It is surprisingly easy to make at home. If you see rich, fresh heavy cream at the farmers’ market, buy some to make butter.
Put a strainer over a bowl and line it with cheesecloth. Whip the heavy cream in a stand mixer at high speed until the buttermilk separates from the butterfat, approximately 10 minutes. Pour the contents of the bowl into the strainer and drain. Discard the buttermilk. Return the butterfat to the bowl and, using the paddle attachment, mix on medium speed until the butterfat starts to stick together, adding 1 teaspoon of sea salt or more to taste as you mix. Homemade sweet-cream butter has a short shelf life. Use it within 3 or 4 days. It is particularly good in the Shortbread #2.
GOAT BUTTER
I am not a fan of goat cheese, but I love goat butter, which has a mild, delicate tang. Although it is similar to cow’s milk in fat and protein content, goat’s milk is often easier for some people to digest. Goat butters typically come salted, and their salt content varies. I use the St. Helen’s Farm brand, which is slightly saltier than Meyenberg, though both work fine in recipes such as Goat Butter Shortbread.
MALTED MILK POWDER
Made from ground barley and dehydrated milk, malted milk powder gives cookies an incomparable toasty flavor. I use it as the base of inspiration for the lovely Malted Milk Spritz. I always have at least one dessert on my menu that features malt.
OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS
Heavy cream has approximately 36 percent butterfat, which allows it to round out sharp flavors and give sauces a velvety texture. I can’t imagine hot fudge or caramel sauce without heavy cream. To a lesser extent, I also use whole milk, cream cheese, and sour cream in some cookies, custards, and frostings. When buying dairy products, go local when possible and always, always make sure the products are fresh. Low- and no-fat products are not options, because they just don’t provide the same texture.
EGGS
I use extra-large eggs for all of my recipes. Like butter, it is important to have eggs at room temperature when adding them to dough. If your eggs are straight out of the fridge, put them in a bowl and fill it with warm water. They’ll be ready to go in a couple of minutes. When faced with extra egg whites (after making lemon curd, for example), I never, ever throw them away. If you have leftover egg whites, save them for egg white cookies or keep them handy for brushing the outside of cookie dough to help sugar adhere, which I do extensively when making biscotti and rugelach. When I make egg white cookies, I leave the egg whites out at room temperature for as long as possible—even overnight if the kitchen is cool enough. Older egg whites whip better for lighter meringues than do fresh egg whites. Extra egg yolks can be used to make many of the shortbread recipes. Egg whites keep for about 1 week in the refrigerator.
FLOUR, OATS, GRAHAM
When it comes to “the drys”—the flours and other starchy ingredients that are the most often the last things folded into cookie batter, I stick with the tried and true. All of these ingredients can be found at an average grocery store.
CAKE FLOUR
When I want a cookie to have a delicate crumb, I combine cake flour with all-purpose flour. Made from soft wheat, the finely milled flour is much lower in protein than any other. Some brands contain cornstarch and others do not, but all will work in my recipes. To avoid lumps, I sift it with a fine-mesh sieve after measuring.
GRAHAM CRACKER CRUMBS
Graham gives cookies a wholesome, grounded quality that pairs especially well with brown butter. I buy graham crackers in crumb form, but not all grocery stores sell graham cracker crumbs. So in recipes with graham, I give amounts for whole graham crackers and then provide a quantity for cup measurements once the crackers have been pulverized in a food processor. If you have a box of graham cracker crumbs handy, knock yourself out and use them instead.
OATS
Old-fashioned rolled oats are a cookie-pantry mainstay. If you ever come across unhulled oats—like the ones produced by Three Sisters Garden in Kankakee, Illinois—give them a try. They are so nutty and flavorful. I toast oats briefly on a sheet pan in a 350°F oven before mixing them into cookies. Sometimes I also grind them into a coarse meal. This can be done in a spice grinder or food processor.
UNBLEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR
I reach for good-old “AP” nearly every time I make cookies. Made from a blend of hard and soft wheat, it has a medium level of protein, making it more tender than bread flour and tougher than cake flour. I use unbleached flour; there is no need for bleached flour in cookies.
WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR
The way I use whole wheat flour is less about giving dough structure and more about giving it flavor. I add it when I want a nutty or toasty accent, and I don’t use very much of it. Because it is milled with the germ and bran, whole wheat flour has a short shelf life. Buy it in small quantities and store it in the freezer to prevent it from turning rancid.
I always have a plastic canister of Folgers Instant Coffee Crystals in my kitchen. It is not glamorous, but it works well as an all-purpose instant coffee in baking. Because it is made by freeze-drying coffee, it comes in large granules and is very different from other instant-coffee or instant-espresso brands. If using a different instant coffee in its place, your results may differ from mine. Every once in a while, I will also add coffee extract to batter. It is black, as thick as molasses, and, used in small increments, can give desserts a dose of coffee flavor. Look for it online through specialty pastry sites.
Classics such as snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies get their signature texture from the help of common leavening agents—baking powder and baking soda. They are what helps the dough to puff and fall when baking, and they also encourage cookies to brown.
BAKING POWDER
Unlike baking soda, baking powder does not need acid to react; it has it built in. I use double-acting baking powder, which has powdered acids and cornstarch. My pantry is stocked with a commercial-size tin of Clabber Girl; we burn through it. At home, it’s better to buy the smaller tins of baking powder and replace opened containers every six months to ensure you are using a product that has not lost its leavening power.
BAKING SODA
Sodium bicarbonate—baking soda—is a base. When it reacts with acid, it creates a gas that helps cookies puff up. The acid can come from natural cocoa powder, brown sugar, buttermilk, molasses, or other acidic ingredients. I recommend buying smaller boxes and replacing them at least once a year. It’s handy that baking soda boxes come with a place to write down when you bought it. If the same box of baking soda has been hanging out for a couple of years in your fridge absorbing odors, do your cookies a solid and buy a fresh box.
CREAM OF TARTAR
A powdered form of acid, cream of tartar helps activate baking soda as soon as batter is mixed. Together they form a rudimentary kind of baking powder, a key combination for Snickerdoodles. Cream of tartar often has lumps, so I sift it with a fine-mesh sieve after measuring it but before adding it to the bowl with the dry ingredients.
MARSHMALLOWS
Hot Chocolate is a marshmallow-making factory. The scraps we generate from portioning marshmallows are stored in the freezer for future projects, like Jill’s Spiced Double-Chocolate Cookies. Anyone who comes up with a new way to use marshmallow scraps gets a gold star in my book. Obviously, having too many marshmallow scraps is probably a problem unique to a restaurant with a name like Hot Chocolate. You can make them yourself, too—. If making marshmallows is not in the cards, purchased marshmallows will do fine. If you purchase large marshmallows, take a pair of scissors and cut them into quarters before using them in drop cookies. For the Blondie Butterscotch S’Mores slice them in half beforehand.
The shelf over the central worktable in the Hot Chocolate kitchen always has a few canisters of nonstick cooking spray handy. I use it not only to keep dough from sticking to pans but also to adhere parchment paper to an inverted sheet pan or plastic wrap to a baking pan. Use a neutral-flavored spray. Old-school PAM is fine, but avoid sprays that contain flour or smell like fake butter.
NUTS AND SEEDS
When baking a lot of cookies, it is far easier to buy nuts that are already salted and toasted—as long as the source is reputable and the nuts are fresh. I also prefer the flavor. Nuts are high in oil, which is what makes them flavorful and what makes them go rancid quickly. For this reason, I buy them in small quantities from companies such as Blain’s Farm & Fleet (see Sources) and use them right away.
Some nuts, like Brazil nuts, are hard to find toasted. Or maybe you happen to have a bag of untoasted nuts in the freezer. To toast nuts, preheat the oven to 325°F and bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or just until the nuts release their oils and are delicately fragrant and not dark. A toasted almond should be lightly tan in the center. You are only trying to bring out the natural oils—not toast them fully because they will be baked in cookies. If you are not using them right away, store nuts—toasted or untoasted—in an airtight container in the freezer for up to six months.
When buying seeds, such as pepitas, chia, flax, or sesame, buy them in small quantities from the bulk bins at the grocery store and keep them in the refrigerator. Like nuts, they go rancid quickly.
SALT
Desserts are chronically underseasoned. Mine are not because I give salt a key role in each one I create. It’s about balance. Salt helps ensure that a cookie doesn’t fill your mouth with sweetness alone. The salts I use have a coarse texture, so if you need to sift flour and cocoa powder together for a recipe, add the salt after sifting so the crystals don’t get left behind in the sieve.
KOSHER SALT
Savory chefs use kosher salt as their everyday salt, and so do I. It has larger crystals than iodized salt and fine sea salts, and it is a reliable, affordable, and widely available salt.
SEA SALT FLAKES
I frequently use kosher salt and sea salt flakes together. Kosher salt gives the cookies a necessary balance while the sea salt flakes give them a lovely, mildly salty texture. The kind that I use in cookies is the light, flaky kind. Do not use fine sea salt in its place; it can make the cookies too salty. Here are a few options:
• Murray River salt; I strongly encourage you to bake with this salt. There is something phenomenal about this light-as-air pink salt from an Australian river basin. In cookies, its delicacy balances more assertive kosher salt. Murray River is available at specialty stores, grocery stores such as Whole Foods, online, and through folks like my good friend Rodrick of Rare Tea Cellar (see Sources). It is such a light salt that I often measure it by heaping teaspoons.
• Maldon salt is a widely available English sea salt and a favorite for many chefs and home cooks. It is also great in cookies. If you can’t find Murray River, Maldon is a good substitute. It is slightly denser than Murray River, so you may want to add less of it.
• Cyprus salt, also called Cyprus flake or Cypriot salt, is large, assertive, and crunchy. I like to use its huge pyramid-shaped granules for giving cookies—especially chocolate chip—a “kiss” of salt (a pinch to the top) before baking.
SMOKED SEA SALT
I love smoked sea salt almost as much as I love smoked almonds (and that is saying something). When I use smoked salt, I am echoing a flavor already in the dough, as is the case with the Smoky Bacon Candy Bar Cookies. It is easier and easier to find smoked salts at well-stocked stores. Look for salts that have been cold-smoked over hardwoods.
SPICES
I use spices when they are appropriate. They don’t go with everything. Like nuts, freshness is important with ground spices, which quickly lose their flavor. I recommend buying spices in small increments.
SWEETENERS
Like salt, sugar and other sweeteners draw out flavors. And like salt, there are so many lovely new sweeteners on the market. Playing around with them can really up your baking game. Read this section to understand what I mean when I call for “cane sugar” or “granulated sugar” (I differentiate between the two). On the liquid sweetener side of things, I keep honey, sorghum, golden syrup, and corn syrup on hand for baking, making jam, and mother sauces.
BROWN SUGAR
Most brown sugars are granulated sugar with added molasses. Light brown sugar has less molasses than dark brown sugar, but both have similar textures. I use dark brown sugar when I want to emphasize a deep caramel flavor in a cookie. Because of the molasses, both sugars have enough acidity to activate baking soda—something that granulated sugar cannot do alone. When measuring brown sugar, be sure to pack it into the measuring cup.
CANE SUGAR
Most sugar is cane sugar. For the purposes of this book, however, cane sugar means the unbleached, light beige sugar that is less processed than granulated sugar but similar in granule size. Evaporated cane sugar (also called organic sugar) has a slightly larger granule size, but it is interchangeable with cane sugar. I prefer cane sugar to granulated sugar in drop cookies when a less refined texture is preferable. Look for it in the bulk bins at grocery stores or in the baking aisle. Cane sugar tends to clump up. To unclump it, pulse it a few times in a food processor.
CONFECTIONERS’ SUGAR
Hello, all-purpose powdered sugar. In the industry, we call it 10X. I use it to create shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth, make light-as-air frostings, coat the outsides of rolled cookies, and dust rugelach and kolachkes before serving them. To measure confectioners’ sugar, scoop it straight from the container and level it off with the container lid or a plastic bench scraper. When I use it to coat cookies before baking (like I do for the Brownie Krinkles, I pour a generous amount into the bowl to ensure that the cookies get thoroughly coated. To make a neat, gridlike design on shortbread cookies, I place them underneath a wire cooling rack and then dust them with sugar. Confectioners’ sugar contains a very small amount of cornstarch to prevent caking, but I still sift it after measuring but before using it to get rid of any clumps.
DEMERARA AND TURBINADO SUGARS
I rarely mix demerara and turbinado (close cousins in the sugar world) into cookie dough because they don’t dissolve easily during the creaming process. The raw sugars’ large, beige granules are much more useful as a crunchy, sweet coating for cookies, such as Smoked Chocolate Sablés. Sugar in the Raw is, essentially, the same stuff. You can use all three interchangeably in this book.
GRANULATED SUGAR
When I say granulated sugar, I am referring to the common, white refined table sugar that you probably already have on hand. In essence, it is the same as cane sugar, but it goes through additional refining processes, giving it finer crystals that allow it to dissolve into liquid faster. Like most pastry chefs, I use it extensively. Its neutral flavor profile is also great for making infused sugars.
MUSCOVADO SUGAR
Muscovado sugar is like special-occasion brown sugar. I use it often in the drop cookie chapter to play up caramel and toffee flavors. Unlike brown sugar, muscovado sugar is processed in a way that allows it to retain its natural molasses content, thus sidestepping the need to add molasses for color and flavor. It has a moist, wet-sand texture. Like brown sugar, muscovado sugar is either light or brown, and in most places, muscovado sugar is interchangeable with brown sugar. However, dark muscovado sugar has a more pronounced flavor than dark brown sugar, so I use light muscovado sugar more often. Two brands to look for are India Tree and Billington’s.
SMOKED SUGAR
This novelty—old bourbon barrels used to cold-smoke demerara sugar—is something that my friend Rodrick of Rare Tea Cellar (see Sources) got me hooked on. The results are spectacular: the coarse sugar takes on this unforgettable smoky, vanilla flavor that pairs especially well with chocolate cookies.
LIQUID SWEETENERS
CORN SYRUP
Made from corn starch, corn syrup is hygroscopic; it attracts moisture and keeps sugar from crystallizing when it cooks. This comes in handy when making Caramel Sauce. For the recipes in this book, I use light corn syrup.
GOLDEN SYRUP
A honey-hued syrup made from cane sugar, this British import tastes somewhat like a cross between honey and corn syrup, but with a subtle caramel nuance. Look for the Lyle’s brand. Golden syrup and corn syrup are interchangeable in Hot Fudge.
HONEY
I love honey every which way. Flavors come from the bees’ choice of blossom, and they are diverse enough that I stock my kitchen with several kinds. Usually, the lighter the honey, the lighter the flavor. When I want a neutral, all-purpose honey, I pick clover honey. If I want a boost of honey flavor, I go for orange blossom honey. And when I want something herbaceous and floral—just the thing with super-ripe pears or cheese—I select wildflower honey. If your honey becomes crystallized, warm it by placing the jar in a pan of simmering water to bring it back to a syrup consistency.
MAPLE SYRUP
I love pairing maple syrup with anything that has pecans—pecans toasting smells almost exactly like maple syrup. But I am not fancy about maple syrup. Generally, I find that the light flavor of Grade A syrups gets lost in cookies. Go Grade B or even imitation—Aunt Jemima reliably imparts maple flavor on cookies.
SORGHUM SYRUP
When making cookies, I can get a lot of molasses flavor from brown and muscovado sugars, so I don’t often make cookies with molasses. When the need arises, I use sorghum instead. Extracted from sorghum cane, sorghum syrup is lighter in color and taste than molasses, with a gentle, more rounded sweetness. If you like golden syrup, you will probably like sorghum syrup, too.
In my recipe-writing shorthand, pure vanilla extract becomes VEX. It is written in almost every one of my recipes, and we use it so often at Hot Chocolate that I keep a half-gallon mason jar of it on hand at all times. I use the dark bourbon kind, never the clear kind. The large jar also allows me to store vanilla beans in the extract to intensify its flavor.
Vanilla beans are the pods from a special variety of orchid. To remove the seeds from a vanilla bean pod, split the pod in half down the length of the bean and scrape out the seeds with the flat, blunt edge of a knife or with a small spoon. The pods can be reused. Look for pods that are plump (even though they are dried). Brittle pods are hard to cut in half. After cooking a custard with a vanilla bean, let it dry completely and then store it in sugar for a light vanilla sugar. Or grind the whole pod in sugar for a more intense vanilla sugar (see more on sugar infusions).
