C is for Cookie, the sweet of the season
C is for Cookie, the sweet of the season
New books and new recipes from two fave bakers: Jessie Sheehan and Zoë François
Bonjour! Bonjour!
I know that last week I declared it the opening of apple season — pear, grape and squash season, too. This week, I’m ready to make another sweeping pronouncement: Fall 2024 will be all about cookies! You couldn’t hear it, but I gave a little cheer as I tapped out that sentence. There are a clutch of cookie books and baking books with great cookie recipes this season — I’m working my way up to a roundup for you — but today, I’ve got two recipes from two terrific books by two authors I admire, Zoë François and Jessie Sheehan.
While I’m not finished making lists (is anyone ever?), I want you to know about the cookie books I’ll soon be writing about and giving you recipes from.
Today, it’s Zoë Bakes Cookies — I’ve got the recipe for Zoë’s Poppy Seed Cookies for you — and Cheeziest Biscotti from Jessie’s Salty, Cheesy, Herby Snackable Bakes.
On deck are recipes from two new cookie books that I’m loving: Edd Kimber’s Small Batch Cookies and the encyclopedic Crumbs by Ben Mims.
And from the department of shameless promotion, I commend to you my own book, Dorie’s Cookies, which Good Housekeeping just named one of the 10 Best Baking Books of 2024. The other nine are swell, too.
But First, A Little Paris
With cookies on my mind, I seem to be seeing them everywhere here in Paris, a town not previously winning any blue ribbons in that department. I saw my first everything-on-top-of-the-cookie cookie here a few years ago, when two of the city’s top pastry chefs, François Perret of The Ritz and Céderic Grolet, were baking chubby cookies and finishing them with nuts and caramel.
Now there are shops that do only that, often baking them in wooden molds and topping them à la minute, meaning on the spot. There are xxl cookies, Levain-style, just about everywhere. And there are the elegant cookies from Jean Hwang Carrant’s Cookie Love (did you make the recipe for Chocolate Chili-Pepper Cookies: SSEB? — I love them!) and Pâtisserie Rayonnance.
In their own class, there are the cookies from Mokonuts — there’s a recipe for Moko’s Rye-Cranberry Chocolate-Chunk Cookies in Baking with Dorie.
And this weekend I discovered a cookie from LB Le Chocolat that was very like a thick, freshly baked World Peace Cookie topped with caramel, chocolate and pecans.
And Now, On to Cookies and Cookie Books and Recipes
This season, I’ve had the chance to see a bunch of books before their publication (including today’s treasures) — they’re sent to me in PDF form, which is terrific, especially when I’m in Paris. And it’s funny, without fail, when I get the “real” book, I’m surprised. Everything about it feels different when I can turn a page, hear the paper rustle, rub my fingers over an image, linger over a paragraph and go back and forth between recipes and stories. I do my reading on a screen for work and often for pleasure, too — I carry my Kindle with me at all times — but reading a book holds a certain joy for me.
It’s a little off today’s topic (although not by much), but now I’m wondering, how do you prefer to read?
And when you’re in the kitchen, do you prefer a book, a printout or a screen?
Jessie Bakes Everything Savory
Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes! Just for the fun of it I’d tell you to try to say the title of Jessie Sheehan’s new book three times fast, but I’d rather you start baking from it. It is such an appealing book! Jessie is one of the most imaginative bakers around — she’s got a gift for transforming everyday ingredients into something special, for creating wonderful textures and for crafting recipes that are as much fun to make as they are to share. I loved Jessie’s book, Snackable Bakes (remember this recipe for Salty-Snack Chocolate Fudge with Pretzels and Crushed Potato Chips?), and I’m just as crazy about this one.
I’m crazy about the muffins and scones, the “brunchables, lunchables, and even dinnerables” (think savory cobblers and galettes and pies and even a savory granola), the cornbread, the breads you knead and the breads you need but don’t knead, and the Cheeziest Biscotti (recipe below), a brilliant recipe that I’ve been baking regularly and serving with drinks to my friends here in Paris. When you read that Parisians are tag-teaming their beloved gougères with savory biscotti, you’ll know how it started. Merci, Jessie.
Zoë Bakes Cookies
It was love at first sight. Zoë and her mother walked into the pop-up cookie shop that Joshua and I had set up — it’s got to be 13 years ago — and as soon as I saw her smile, I loved her. As wiry and spry as she is, there’s so much about Zoë that’s outsized — her smile, for sure, the sparkle in her eyes, her warmth, her kindness, her generosity and her talent. She has a remarkable talent for flavor and texture and composition, for creating recipes that spark enthusiasm — I dare you not to want to jump into the kitchen as soon as you get her books — and for teaching. She’s a brilliant teacher. And she teaches us so much in this new book (which landed on the New York Times Bestseller List the week it was published).
I think of this book as a three-books-in-one. It’s a thorough handbook to cookie-baking: Don’t skip the Cookie Academy, no matter how much you know about baking, I bet you’ll learn a new thing or three. It’s a memoir of sorts: The sections are arranged by chapters in Zoë’s life, including her childhood on a Vermont commune. And, of course, it’s a recipe book.
There were so many cookies I might have chosen for you, but I chose the Poppy Seed Cookies from the chapter, “Jewish Favorites/Bubbe Berkowitz’s Cookies.” It was the poppy seeds that drew me in. My own grandmother made poppy seed cookies — very different from Bubbe’s — but they became a touchstone of my childhood. Not that I liked them immediately — it took a long while. (Here’s a story about my relationship with poppy seeds that I wrote for The New York Times, I’ve opened the paywall for you.) I’m thinking it’ll take you only a bite to love Zoë’s.
And if you want more Zoë — here’s a recipe for her Devil’s Food Cake from the archives.
I’ve got more cookies for you this month, more Paris, too. Let me know what you’re up to — I always love to hear from you.
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CHEEZIEST BISCOTTI
Adapted from Jessie Sheehan’s Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes!
Get the book at Amazon or Bookshop.org
Here’s what Jessie has to say about her savory biscotti:
I am a sucker for a baked good that tastes like — and is named after— a grocery-store snack, so it should come as no surprise that these cheeziest (aka Cheez-it) biscotti are up there on my list of fave “sav-ookies” (aka savory cookies). These are crazy easy to assemble but like all biscotti, they do need to be baked twice and be brought to room temperature in between each bake. Less than ideal, I know. But here’s a time-saving pro tip: To speed things up after the first bake, freeze the logs for 15 minutes rather than leaving them on the counter, for 30. Oh, and instead of serving buttered toast “soldiers” with your eggs, try one of these cheezy soldierlike cookies, instead.
POPPY SEED COOKIES
A.k.a Mohn kishel
Adapted from Zoë François’ Zoë Bakes Cookies
Get the book at Amazon or Bookshop.org
This recipe is nut free and dairy free
Here’s what Zoë has to say about her Bubbe and this recipe:
When I asked my Bubbe Berkowitz for family cookie recipes, she wrote them down and sent them on to me. Originally, these recipes had been passed down from her great-grandmother to her grandmother to her mother without ever being written on paper. None of those women, who baked love into these cookies for over a century, could read or write. They baked entirely by feel and taught the next generation to do the same. My grandmother wrote this recipe out for me (and now I’m crying just thinking about the significance of that gesture), and thank god she did, because otherwise it— along with all the other recipes— would be lost forever.
This is the recipe that has been in my family the longest, and this cookie is so Jewish! The Ashkenazi Jews used a lot of poppy seeds in their baking. Its cake- meets-shortbread texture is speckled with seeds and it’s considered a simple peasant cookie. I think they are absolutely delicious. My grandmother’s recipe didn’t include lemon zest, but when I told my mom I was adding it (almost as if to ask permission to change the family recipe), she insisted that her grandmother did add lemon, so I went for it! I think Sheindel, Zelda (Jean), and Sarah would all approve and be tickled that you are baking their recipe.
I answered "screen" in the survey but actually prefer all three! Nothing will replace a physical book but if I am using a recipe from an online source such as the New York Times or Epicurious, I'll either use my phone or print out the recipe. Have to say, Around My French Table is a book that I read as a novel--those wonderful stories would have been lost if all I had were the recipes! Visiting Paris in a couple weeks, I'll be sure to keep an eye out on the very rare chance I spy you on the boulevards!!
Always a physical book. There is a decade-old splatter of cheesecake batter from a mixer mishap stuck on a page of one of my cookbooks. It's completely petrified, and almost feels like a bit of relief sculpture when I run my fingers through it. 😂 I'm attached to it. Love the way a real book feels, and the memories it holds. 🌸🌸