A perfectly perfect cookie

Years and years ago, when I was baking at full throttle, I had grand cookie ambitions around Christmas time. I would find pictures of elaborately decorated cookies on the cover of Gourmet magazine, and I would make them. All twelve varieties, each more complicated than the next. And then I would make a batch of puff pastry just for fun.

I'd be lying if I said I don't have the energy to do that anymore. I don't have the desire. I'm not nearly as enamored of trying a million different recipes, but thank God I was once a compulsive recipe tester, because now, thanks to my 16 hour baking marathons, I know definitively what works and what doesn't.

Case in point: Animal Crackers from Nancy Silverton, my pastry idol. I've been making this recipe forever, and I make it whenever cookies are called for at school, or any other event. Even though nothing in the world is perfect, these are. A perfectly balanced, tender sugar cookie, forgiving, easily re-rolled, just lovely and perfect. I sometimes want to hug this recipe. It comforts me like a family member who knows me, and never - not ever - acknowledges my flaws.

Animal Crackers

from "Desserts by Nancy Silverton"

8 oz. unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. cream

1 Tbs. real vanilla extract

4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

(Note: I add a big pinch of salt to the recipe. Don't tell Nancy)

To decorate cookie tops:

2 egg yolks

crystallized sugar

Using the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until it whitens and hold soft peaks, 3 - 5 minutes. Beat in the sugar until well-blended. Whisk together the eggs, cream and vanilla and beat in, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Sift together the flour and baking powder, and add to the butter in three batches, mixing briefly after each addition. After the last addition of flour, beat until just combined. Make sure any flour on the bottom of the bowl is fully incorporated.

Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least two hours, and as long as several days.

Preheat oven to 325. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/8" thickness. Cut dough with your favorite cookie cutter, using as much of the surface area as you can - this will leave less dough for re-rolling. Place on paper-lined or non-stick cookie sheets. If you have enough sheets, place one empty sheet under your cookie sheet. This keeps the bottom from browning too quickly.

Whisk the egg yolks together, and lightly brush the tops of the cookies, then sprinkle the top with crystallized sugar. This gives them a delightful crunch. If you're going to decorate them with frosting, you can omit this part.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the sheets from front to back to ensure even baking. Bake for about 7 - 8 minutes more, checking to make sure they don't brown too much. They should just turn light gold.

Cookies only a mother could love

Several weeks ago, I attended an organized cookie decorating event for fifteen 7 year-olds. This may sound harsh, but being with fifteen 7 year-olds is not my idea of a good time. I once taught a gingerbread house class to a bunch of 8 to 10 year-olds and the fact that I had kids after that experience is a small miracle.

I stayed the hell away from all of them and hid at my cookie rolling station for most of the night. I put my head down and rolled dough while other parents told their children how beautiful their cookies looked.

This brought up the whole self-esteem issue, and the real reason why I retreated. I think kids know when their cookies, and drawings and clay figurines, are ugly. And so, when an adult says, "That is so beautiful!" the kid is thinking, what the fuck? It's ugly and misshapen and not at all pleasing to the eye, so why are you telling me it's fabulous? Confusion ensues, children learn not to trust themselves, and also never learn how to deal with the disappointment of not being perfect all the time.

So when my daughter proudly showed me her work of art cookies, I did what I always do when something she does is frankly ugly: I told her that I liked the color she picked, which I did. She chose twinkly blue sugar (as well as 27 other colors). The rest of the cookie was a wretched mess, an overfrosted blob. In fact, the picture above looks like it was created by Picasso compared to what my offspring produced.

As for the cookies, they were delicious - Nancy Silverton's butter cookie recipe, which I must share. It's in her first dessert book from 1986. This is the kind of dough you become infatuated with, like when you were 13 and you thought Leif Garrett was hot, hot, hot. Decorate them any way you want. I like Nancy's idea of an egg glaze and crystallized sugar - very safe.

Nancy calls them Animal Crackers and that's fine with me.

Animal Crackers

8 oz unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. cream

1 Tbs. vanilla extract (use the real stuff, not imitation)

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

pinch salt

For basic decoration:

2 egg yolks

crystallized sugar (you can get this at King Arthur's Flour website)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sift the flour and baking powder together and set aside. In an electric mixer, cream the butter until it holds soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar until it's completely incorporated. Whisk together the eggs, cream, and vanilla and add them to the butter mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and then continue beating until combined.

Add the flour mixture in about three additions to avoid the flour flying all over the place. You can even add it by hand if you want with the spatula. Beat until completely combined, but no more.

Form two disks, and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Roll out the dough one disk at a time, keeping the other one refrigerated. It should be about 1/4 inch thick. Use whatever cutters you want, but if Nancy had her way, they'd be animal cutters. For added crunch, beat the egg yolks in a small bowl, then brush the tops with the yolks. Sprinkle the top with crystallized sugar.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, rotating the pans in the middle of the bake. The cookies should not color too much. They're done when they've lost their sheen and are completely dry. The bottoms of the cookie will be lightly browned. Cool on a rack and then eat more than one,

Stalking Nancy

If ever there was a good time to talk about Nancy Silverton, it's now. My last handful of posts have been about disgusting food, unfulfilled food pilgrimages, and being called a "motherfucker" in cooking school.  

It's time for a post about good food. Even though I claim not to be a foodie, I do love good bread and good olive oil and good cheese and good ham, and desserts that aren't too sweet or too fancy or too much, and all those things mean I love Nancy Silverton. She is my sister in palate. Hers was the first dessert cookbook I ever opened. I cooked and baked my way through it, which is no small feat because Nancy Silverton is a bitch for the details. Her recipe for starter, which is the fermented flour and water first step in bread making, is 9 pages long. 

Among countless other things, Nancy started LaBrea Bakery in Los Angeles. LaBrea Bakery is why you're not eating Wonder Bread anymore. It set the wheels of the whole 'good bread' movement in motion.  

The first time I had one of her desserts, I loved it so dearly, so completely, so unconditionally, I ordered a second one after licking the first plate clean. When there's a promise of getting more of Nancy's warm, sugared donuts with vanilla ice cream and huckleberries, any self-consciousness I may have about looking like a gluttonous pig completely evaporates.   

On another visit, I begged the waiter to ask Nancy to come out. She was very accommodating (and perhaps a touch apprehensive because apparently, I can sometimes look like a stalker, or so I've been told). She talked about how she slept in three separate shifts everyday so she could be at the bakery for each of the three bakes. I was so enthralled, so starry-eyed, so rapt, they probably made a notation in the margin of the reservation book about me: FRIGHTENING AND UNSTABLE!!!!! KEEP THIS WOMAN AWAY FROM NANCY!!!!!!

At subsequents visits, I would peer into the open kitchen, hoping to get a glimpse of her. What is she doing now? Is she making caramel? Saucing a plate? I wanted to yell, "Hi Nancy! It's me! Remember me?" I would spend the entire meal with one eye on my dinner companion and the other on the kitchen, Marty Feldman-style, while eating Nancy's focaccia, which, by the way, is spectacular, with just the right amount of rosemary.  

But I assure you, I'm not a crazy stalker. Just a fan of a great tart crust (hers is the best I've ever had) and the best gazpacho recipe ever (she's multi-talented, which you have to love  -  I do). So if you're in LA anytime soon, she has a new venture, Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza. Could you tell her Wendy says "hi"?