sir thomas sharpe's dark chocolate + garden mint cookies

Rain

a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening, the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn't there?
he came to hear the
music.

~ by Charles Bukowski, from Selected Poems

September feels both aloof and intimate this year. The days are hot, damp...marvelously slow & yet bittersweet in their attempt to casually hold onto mid-July's warm embrace. A small fistful of russet-tinted leaves have fallen onto the still verdant earth. They remind me of overexuberant guests who always arrive too early for the party; yet you can't help but get swept up in their contagious, breathless excitement. September is my birthday month, but I can always sense autumn's approaching grey skies & deceptively soft chill. I have no quarrel with autumn, don't get me wrong, I'm only all too aware of what follows, and I will never be ready for it.

flourless maple walnut peanut butter cookies + a giveaway

"The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between
so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even
if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart." 
                                                                        
                                                            ~ from 'The White Oleander' by Janet Fitch

I'm still guilty of neglecting my blog, yet I can't come up with a valid excuse. My thoughts, which have been buried +  scattered across the months of January & February, are slowly thawing. I'm trying to process the fact that it's actually warm enough to gently *pry* open my bedroom window at night. After a lengthy absence, it's hard to know where to (re)start. My writing voice is filled with an assortment of plump little winterling birds, each one longing to fly out and test the warm ambiance (at last!) of  March. I can't release them all at once so I'll start with the quiet ones and gradually work my way up to the brash confidence of squeaky wheels.

Today I'm sharing a sweetly simple recipe for maple walnut peanut butter cookies. Simple because unlike most cookies, you won't have to suffer the agony of chilling dough. They are also flourless. I'd label them gluten free but, being relatively unfamiliar with the gf world, I'll err on the side of caution. I enjoy peanut butter much too much, a jar of the good stuff will only last about a week in my cupboard. As soon as I arrived home with my beloved maple madness peanut butter, I whipped up these tender little gems. Feel free to omit the walnuts & chocolate, if you prefer. While both additions gave the cookies a pleasant nubby texture, I think they almost masked the peanut butter's maple flavour.

Hiddles Darling holiday cookies

I inherited my mother's delicate hummingbird bones and gregarious knees {as a teenager, my knees were more talkative than I was in the early mornings}. Even though I prefer the calm serenity of yoga,  every other year or so I take up running for a handful of months.

When the mercury plummets, I resort to using as archaic treadmill that dwells in my damp, stone-walled basement/dungeon. For some idiosyncratic reason I don't like the jarring feel of running shoes on vinyl, instead I wear yoga socks with sticky, grippy dots (aka, Spiderman socks!). The socks, apparently, are not as Spidey as I had hopped...at least not when they're up against rogue cats. Last week, Niles, in the midst of a phantom mouse chase, decided to take a short cut across a moving treadmill. In an effort to avoid a collision, I performed an inventive, square dance-esqe sidestep; my loquacious left knee was not amused. What began as a tickle, has morphed into a throbbing pain that radiates down my entire outer leg. I *loathe* being inactive. If I'm careful, I can eke out an errant yoga or pilates session, but even gentle movements sometimes ignite my knee's understandable ire.

What does this have to do with cookies (or Tom)? Not much, really. As I was soothing my knee in a hot bubble bath, I focused on a bottle of St. Ives oatmeal shower gel that was sitting on the ledge. The word 'Ives' is comforting; almost like ivy, which, for someone who loves all things verdant & green, is delectable. Ivy eventually led to eyes and eyes led, naturally, to Tom Hiddleston. Kind eyes and chewy cookies are capable of alleviating woes, ouches and fluttering knees.

Best *cinnamon* Chocolate Chip Cookies

The last several days have been a tousled mix of rough sand and jaunty stardust. My *attempt* at conjuring a verily belated birthday crêpe cake was an epic disaster (incriminating evidence is still stuck to the disenchanted stove) and, after what should have been a 10 minute excursion, I was overwhelmingly reminded why I avoid big supermarket chains in favour of my cosy local market. Also, Cookie Monster unfollowed me on Twitter. On the upside, I defied a beguiling fear of working with yeast; via challah bread + handsome buttery brioche cinnamon rolls (aka, Tom Hiddleston sticky buns), and I discovered a cosmic, new-to-me, coffee that's dark & smouldering without a bitter curtain call. Also, these cookies!!

Honey Marshmallow Crème Swirl Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

    September

Their summer romance
over, the lovers
still cling
to each other

the way the green
leaves cling 
to their trees 
in the strange heat

of September, as if
this time
there will be
no autumn.
                             ~ Linda Pastan, from "The Months"     

September drifts through the year like a distracted moth. It's a manic 30 days and I often find myself equally disoriented. It feels as though I'm trudging through an ethereal bayou; unfulfilled hopes are willingly tangled in summer's beckoning reeds as idealistic eyes catch the first willowy blush of leaves and the promise of a new chapter. My heart can't process which season, what ambiance, it wants to embrace.

This hungry fidgeting month, with its quiet longing for a place to land, still manages to put on a marvelous show year after year. September hides her sorrow behind a sweet honeycrisp breeze and smoldering sunsets. Her rain, though not as verdant and lush as June's, is soft and cosy and drips with moss covered sylvan aromas. I empathize with my mercurial birth month, we're so very much alike with our unquenchable ache for the intangible (and stubborn reticence to simply reach for errant helpful branches).

We're also, apparently, besotted with honey. September is National Honey month! I don't bake about it often but honey is an infinite source of comfort + pleasure. It's been a warm, edible blanket since early childhood days spent with Winni-the-Pooh (and my beloved Eeyore!).

Blueberry Coconut Macaroons

"Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into heavy wine."  

                                           ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumn Day (translated by Galway Kinnell)                    

September, my birth month. Growing up I unfairly wove September into the obscure first-day-of-school ambiance. It carried the scent of pencil shavings and new plastic binders - it felt awkward; an uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the scrapping of chairs on shiny linoleum floors. Now that I've outgrown itchy plaid uniform skirts and falling knee socks, I'm in love with September. It's mercurial and temperamental, but, when in a benevolent mood, September is a magnificent host of two seasons.

Almond Butter & Dark Chocolate Shard Cookies {Gluten-Free}

"We are drinking alfresco,
      watching swallows reflect
         the light as they swoop and

almost skim the narrow road
      before lifting
        above hedgerows

then looping back past fresh-
      mown fields, and I know
         that movement -

from Mozart
      or from a lifetime ago
        when I stretched my hand

from the car window
      and let it ride and sculpt the wind -
        know, and can't name it."

~ Theodore Deppe, opening lines to "An Early Evening Whiskey," from Orpheus on the Red Line

July is a famished will-o'-the-wisp. It passes discretely; an agile, purring cat that sips milk from the cereal bowl and slips out an open window while I'm engrossed in watching sugar cubes on my spoon succumb to ethereal coffee. That's always been my problem. I miss what's in front of me and spend too much time treading through fickle distractions. This year is different, however. Last winter was lupine...I'm determined to relish the fleeting summer and allow its warmth to rest on my still-too-pale shoulders for as long as possible.

I'm also slowly meandering further into the unfamiliar terrain of gluten-free baking. Don't worry, I'll still share stormfuls of flour-drenched recipes; gluten-free renditions will make a timid cameo appearance from time to time.

Orange & Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Cookies

'I just want you to know,' said the girl coldly, 'that whoever you are and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.' And then she added, with feeling, 'Idiot.' 

~ Neil Gaiman, Stardust

I have had a tiny (envious) rapport with these cookies. Like me, they're contrary, idiosyncratic and slightly wicked; yet beneath a poised nonchalance they are heartbreakly tender - longing only to be harbingers of unexpected pleasure and quicksilver pearls of laughter. Our similarities end with a sigh. Unlike me and my pale-skinny arms, struggling to haul background boards from room to room, these cookies are sexy and stacked (I'm *almost* jealous!).

My methods are fragile; blown glass in midwinter, intentions that begin their journey with the surety of an arrow shot from Robin Hood's bow, slip through abandoned branches and land soundlessly on dandelions. These cookies, however, are intrepid. Their aim always true, ever sure, never second guessing. Had I the same amount of reckless abandon...Perhaps...possibly...maybe...?

Cocoa-Cinnamon Peanut & Cookie Butter Cookies

I'm relieved at the arrival of an eleventh hour spring. At last, lilac bushes are surrendering their ample lavender and linen bouquets to the verdant, slightly overgrown, grass. It's as if the bare trees awoke abruptly at 2am and realized the show had already started; by morning the chlorophyll had pulsed its way through their roots and sinuous branches, casting a beloved tropical ambiance around my color-starved yard.

As I write, there's a tenuous purring contentment humming through my ribs - my still-too-pale fingertips twitch with some long forgotten alchemy from another lifetime, under a different sun. The provocative nature of nature is exhilarating. My lawn mower and pruning sheers can rust in wait a while longer, for now I'll allow wild and untamed things to grow with adventurous abandon. 

Rosemary, #Hiddles & Honey Chocolate-Dipped Cookies

April, please be candid. March has left me contrary and unreasonable. If you summon my phlegmatic, winter-weary ship to shelter under promises of cherry blossoms and endless sun, I'll turn at the last moment and head out to sea. Again. Hope is held, safely, just beyond reach. I would rather have milky, glaucous blue afternoons that yawn their way into apathetic evenings. I want to keep casting wistful sighs into the stratosphere, waiting for one or five to capture...something. Sweet April, come softly. Stretch yourself out with the measured laziness of an overfed cat and stay as long as you wish.

My untouched second cup of coffee has aged three hours but I'm still feeling the velvet *hum* and purring warmth of its predecessor. I'm also mindlessly enjoying a few enchanted cookie crumbs. Polishing off the final morsel from a batch of cookies is a heady mix of guilt and accomplishment.  

Dark Chocolate Ginger Molasses Crack Cookies

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn't,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn't do
crackle after the blazing dies.

~ by Naomi Shihab Nye

Triple Ginger Cookies

The time of harvest and the time of poems is passing.
Sorrel, fern and wild strawberries covered my notebook.
Pine cones and dried seeds of trees
mixed with shreds of sentences.

Not a single poem has yet matured.
The crossed-out words return with clamor.
Light glitters in patches on mowed fields.
This hour too will be more lovely in recollection. 

~ Anna Kamienska, in Astonishments, translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon

Homemade Oreos with White Chocolate-Coconut Cream

What, if anything, does being in one's mid-thirties actually entail? Are there rules to follow at the nexus of 25 and 45? Can I wear above-the-knee skirts & the lovingly-tattered Old Navy overalls that I've had since college? Is it okay to throw tantrums? (Hopefully, yes. I had one the other day...the background board kept falling over and smashing irreproachable homemade Oreo cookies.) Can I still giggle uncontrollably when someone burps in a quiet room (even if it's me)?

A lot of the time I feel as though I'm still 23, or 24. When I see someone who is "35"
advertising for life insurance, it's a bit of a shock to my youthful mind. Maybe it's because I don't have children, or because I always find the braying of goats to be an endless source of amusement...or because I was lucky enough to inherit my mom's ageless genes (as well as her wee 5 foot 3-inch stature). Whatever it is, even if it's simply denial, I don't think I will ever truly "feel" my proper age. Growing up I always felt older than my peers - maybe I've finally caught up, or I'm in the throws of regression...

Speaking of childhood and growing up, I was denied the sweet bliss of Oreo cookies, and Little Debbie snack cakes, and Ho Hos. My lunchtime 'desserts' came in the form of yogurt and fruit. This is my second post on homemade Oreos - I'm making up for lost time.   

Brown Sugar Toffee Cookies

"If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Point Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where wine stands in upward opening glasses,
and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking
one day all this will only be memory,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come-to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple
bones.
The still undanced cadence of vanishing."

~ Galway Kinnell, section 5 of "Little Sleep's Head Sprouting in the Moonlight," from Selected Poems

Dark Chocolate Chunk & Darjeeling Tea Cookies

"september is a month like any other and unlike any other. it seems in september everything awaited will arrive: in the calm air, in a particular scent, in the stillness of the quay. when september comes, i know i'm going to lose myself."

~ Reina Maria Rodriguez, from memory of water

For me personally, September is mercurial. It's my birthday month, it was my dad's birthday month (today would have been his birthday, actually) and it's also the month he died 18 years ago. I was 17, and reckless and carefree...& hopelessly naive. What makes this year surreal is the fact that it's taking me past the halfway point...my dad has been gone longer than the amount of time I knew him. That's a surreal concept - a prickly pill that the throat refuses to swallow. Later this month I'll traverse, hesitantly, into the murky mid-30's. *eep!* Where does the time go?

When I'm over-thinking, second guessing or making an all out fuss over the quality of my food photos (too exposed? too 'green?'), I think of my dad. More than likely he would say, in his low gravelly voice; "Ne t'inquiète pas, mon petit chou." Then he'd grumble something else in French and ask if I was finally finished taking photos already!  ; )

Bouchon Bakery chocolate chip cookies

I never get hot. I'm that annoying person who is hugging their legs whilst bundled up in a sweater as soon as someone turns on the AC. Hi. Thanks to the current heat wave, everything has changed. This charmingly behind-the-times farm house does not have central air. For the last three days the small of my back has never been completely dry and my thirty-something forehead is back to the perma-shine of teenage years. Baking and cooking are out of the question - I actually had fast food two days in a row (something I haven't done in since college!). Thankfully I'm stocked up on Tums, bottled water, whiskey sour essentials, and "House of Cards" videos.

I did manage to eek out a batch of cookies. And when I say eek, I mean e e e e...k. Moving around my kitchen with the oven on feels like walking through molasses. The cookie dough was only supposed to be refrigerated for 30 minutes - it ended up chilling for two days. I'm not sure what the cookies would have been like after only 30 minutes, but after 48 hours of marinating they achieved star status.

On a side note (in case you were wondering), my cats are fine. They rotate from cool spot to cool spot on the wood floor and sleep a bit longer after playing with the hopefully invisible mice. Niles is currently perched on "his" window throne with a light fan breeze blowing on him. I recently read that it's good to wet their paws with a cloth to help keep them cool. This is not happening again. Ever. My legs look like I skipped through a barbed wire meadow. :P

Lemon Shortbread

Sorry for the brief hiatus. As you can see my blog underwent a bit of a facelift. Isn't she lovely! My go-to designer is Ana from Blog Milk Shop. (She did my previous layout too!) Simple is beautiful. If your site is ever in need of something new, fresh, and clean - look no further than Ana. She's super-sweet and extremely patient. (I must have asked a gazillion questions. Maybe more.) ♥

Old Fashioned Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

If, according to Camelot, the month of May is lusty, it's definitely now the lazy month of June. Finally. The atmosphere is dewy, and humid, and languid. The various spaces around me are dripping with aromas of fresh-cut grass, fuchsia hydrangea - and, thanks to a delicate green rainfall, wet earth (one of my favourite scents in the entire universe). After a never ending winter and chilly spring, it's nice to finally feel a temperature that's aligned with the calender.

peanut butter + oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Every now and then we have our struggles with self-doubt and superfluous insecurities. Sometimes a sliver sized fragment of my own self-consciousness will splinter off and lodge itself into my blog. In dark times I'll compare my site with other food blogs and berate myself for not being as successful, especially when I discover a gorgeous newbie blog that already has a gazillion followers and resplendent acknowledgments in Saveur & Gourmet etc..

So when I was contacted by Martha's Circle last week, asking if I'd like to join, I was Beyond elated! Unfortunately, due a conflict with my current ad network (which I adore!), I had to turn down the offer. But it was just what my blog and I needed; irrefutable proof that one doesn't necessarily need an SLR camera, or the fancy bells and whistles of Photoshop, to get "noticed."

I hope you don't mind me sharing that bit of exciting news. I'm a chronic wallflower, but sometimes the warm glow of a spotlight feels soft and cosy. If une gamine dans la cuisine were a cat, she'd be purring like a lioness. :)

Now, lets talk cookies.

Raspberry Cornmeal Thumbprint Cookies

When I was in grade school I remember a rather bully-ish boy who liked to stick his index finger into everyone's peanut butter and jelly sandwich. For this reason the phrase "thumbprint cookie" is slightly off putting. I'm all for diving into food with both hands, but the idea of deliberately poking something seems offensive and unsanitary. Luckily as a child I didn't know that the jam-filled confections were called thumbprint cookies. To me they were tasty, jewel-toned medallions, filled with magical powers that would help me save Fantasia from The Nothing (hide me from food ravaging bullies).

If you didn't grow up loving The NeverEnding Story, please give it another chance. Maybe we can be friends again. (If you are too young to have heard about the movie, I don't want to know!) ;)
 
Even though I'm slightly uncomfortable with the title, these thumbprint cookies were splendid, and simple...and a bit magical; they certainly disappeared in the blink of an eye.