American Baking in The Loaf

Today marks the beginning of my Wednesday courses in Donostia's new favorite place to line up, The Loaf.

Today's course is on the FAMOUS chocolate chip cookies, the one thing in the whole world guaranteed to bring a smile to everyone's face, be they old or young, Basque or Spanish, human or canine.

It's sold out.

But there will be more to follow, so if you're interested I suggest checking out the wide variety of courses available over at the website.

Happy 4th of July! I'm doin' my best to represent over here in Basque Country (i.e. making and consuming mass quantities of cookies). USA!

peanut butter cookies : 4 ingredients

Life is too short for bad ______. Fill in the blank. A good motto, and a wise friend recently filled in the blank with a word near and dear to my heart (and digestive tract): cookies.

Time is also often too short to make cookies at home, which is one reason I ALWAYS have dough in the freezer. But these little cookies are some of the best of their kind, and they take about 5 minutes to come together and ten minutes to bake. 

Peanut butter cookies...a darling of the American pastry tradition. They come with chocolate, with a jelly thumbprint, with ice cream sandwiched between, you name it. But they're just as delicious in their plain, unadorned state.  So here's my standard peanut butter cookie recipe, which I found a good decade ago in Gourmet magazine.

Also, in honor of my Spanish-speaking, metric-measuring readers, I've translated and converted the recipe. See directly below the English recipe. Podeís encontrar la mantequilla de cacahuete en chinos, supermercados grandes, y tiendas latinas donde se suele llamar de maní en vez de cacahuete.

peanut butter cookies

• 1 cup peanut butter (creamy or chunky)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350°F. and grease baking sheets. Beat together peanut butter and sugar until combined well. Lightly beat egg and beat into peanut butter mixture with baking soda until combined well.

Roll level teaspoons of dough into balls and arrange about 1 inch apart on baking sheets. With tines of a fork flatten balls to about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, making a crosshatch pattern. Bake cookies in batches in middle of oven until puffed and pale golden, about 10 minutes.

cookies de mantequilla de cacahuete

• 260 g mantequilla de cacahuete
• 200 g azucar
• 1 huevo
• 1 cucharadita bicarbonato

Calentar el horno a 175°. Mezclar la mantequilla de cacahuete y azucar hasta que sea homogeneo. Añadir el huevo, batido, y el bicarbonato y mezclar.

Formar bolas de masa de 3cm mas o menos. Poner en una bandeja del horno con papel. Con el tenedor, aplastar las bolas, dar una vuelta de 90º y repetir, formando una almohadilla. Hornear durante 10 minutos, hasta que se doren un poco.

Happy Holidays from me & The Glutton Club

Good friends. Happy holidays. The best cookies in the world.

What a year.

How could 2012 be any better?

Mission Cookie : Bilbao

Well, it's that time again.

Time to put on my superlady cape and go save Bilbao.

From what? From their lack of brown sugar, from the complete absence of crunchy-chewy chocolate chip cookies, from the sheer fact that they have never tasted a shortcake in their life.

That's right, it's time for another American Baking class. Just like the ones I gave in Beasain and San Sebastián, I will be teaching these Basques a thing or two about really, really fattening and delicious desserts (some may say, my area of expertise).

How do you convince a Basque to take this class? Here's what garnered a sold-out crowd over at the Glutton Club website:

• How to transform saturated fats and pure sugar into delicious desserts.
• How to do it like an American (trying the dough in every step of the process). For quality control, not lack of self control. #ak.
• Learning the use of the term sugar high, very American, which means you have eaten a lot of sweets and are feeling the effects.
• Learn what is the source of the obesity epidimic in the United States.
• How to make the best cookies in the world.
• How to drive yourself crazy with recipes that aren't measured normally, but in  cups, tablespoons, teaspoons…

Tempting, no? Stay tuned in for future classes....

se llama 'cookie'

Today, Andoni and  I chatted on the radio show Hoy por Hoy with the folks at cadena SER in Donosti.

We talked about the amazing initiative that is BasqueStage (if you don't know it, you should...and you should tell all your cook friends). Then the talk turned to sweeter things....the chocolate chip cookie. I shared with them some fresh-baked American goodness...and they were freaking out. Yay America! I never said we didn't do some things right.

Hace mucho tiempo que se acabó la busqueda del 'cookie' perfecto.

Pero últimamente estas galletas de chocolate chip están pasando de moda. Y así debe ser...directo del horno, no hay nada mejor. Cuando yo leí el artículo ese del New York Times, flipé. Y después de flipar, hice las galletas.

Son las mejores. Punto y aparte. Y aquí tienes traducida la receta (incluso con conversiones métricos, hombre). Ahora te quedas sin excusa...salvo que YO no he visto azucar moreno aquí....y vainilla solo en Don Serapio. Buena suerte y disfruta! La cual, por cierto, se hace en etapas: primero, la masa cruda. Luego, yo suelo coger un poco mientras que están horneando. Luego, directo del horno. Y otro más despues de un rato cuando te vuelvan las ganas de galletas.

 Extra reading: hashtag on twitter #MegaGalletas  (everybody's doin it!)

the original mega cookie recipe, 101 cookbooks.

y un buen blog, el comedista, en castellano.

Y disfrutad! Caliente y con leche fría, claro.

chocolate chip cookies

please email martikilpatrick at gmail dot com for the recipe.