Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

I recently bought a cookbook called "Small-Batch Baking" that has all sorts of baking recipes that yield between 2 and 4 servings. (It has very high ratings on Amazon.) So many of the recipes sound delicious. I'm eager to try out the muffins, especially.

Today, I decided to make up a batch of whole wheat banana bread before Jay headed out of town for work. For this, all I needed to do was buy bananas from the store. Although the recipe said 23-25 minutes, I think it took 28 or maybe even 30. I kept poking the toothpick in and thinking it was never going to finish baking! Then it finally poked through clean. I cut a hot piece off for Jay and he enjoyed it while sitting in the Admiral's Club waiting for his flight. :) I've already had two pieces. It's very good! Thanks to Amy for the petite loaf pans and I also got to use my cooling rack for the first time.

Another thing to note... yesterday, Amy and I were riding our bikes around town and we dropped by Anna's house to say hi. She's the one who created the Million Dollar Chicken Recipe. ...and wouldn't you know it, she was baking a cake at the time, too!

• Whole Wheat Banana Bread (Small-Batch Baking p. 329)

You know you fly too much when you tell passengers on multiple flights what a wonderful cookie recipe there is on page 126 of the in flight magazine. One time I was telling the woman next to me, and I opened to show her the beatiful full page photo of the cookies only to find that someone had ripped out the pages to take home!

The article has the top five winning recipes of a cookie contest for the staff of the American Way. When I saw the Chocolate Mint Marvels, I just knew I had to make them! My oven was disconnected due to getting new kitchen floors in, so I went to my friend Jennifer's house to bake these. We had so much fun making them!!

I packed them up the next morning and took two plates of cookies to the airport as Jay and I were flying to visit his family for Thanksgiving. We left one plate of cookies with the Admiral's Club staff. They have treated us entirely too well over the year! We enjoyed some complimentary champagne on our way out on our honeymoon and ever since have been greated as "the newlyweds!" when we walk in the door.

I must say I didn't expect to have to fend off as many people as I did from the remaining plate of cookies. From the TSA saying "Sorry ma'am, cookies can't go through. They'll have to stay with us." (WHAT! We can't joke about things, but they can?!?) to flight attendants and of course, other passengers wanting to get one of these cookies. It was sure fun to say, "You can make your own! The recipe is on page 126 of the American Way!"

I made these cookies again during the ice storm and shared them with some of our neighbors. There are four other recipes I still want to try. I googled the name of the cookies and found the recipe shared on a few other blogs.

¾ cup butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
2 cups chocolate chips
2 eggs
2 ½ cups flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
3 or 4 packages of Andes mints

Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter and brown sugar in saucepan over low heat. Add chocolate chips and stir to melt; put mixture into a bowl and let cool. Add eggs, and then mix in flour and baking soda. Chill dough for 1 hour. Roll into balls and place on baking sheet. Bake for 9 minutes. Remove cookies from oven and place an Andes mint on each one. As the candy melts, spread it across the top of the cookie with a butter knife. Makes 3 dozen.

Some tips: You only need 2 packages of Andes mints (unless you're planning to eat one extra mint per cookie made). If you start to run out of mints, you can snap them in half and they look just as good. If you can find the mints with the green part on the outside, they will look even better. However, I haven't been able to find them any place other than the Olive Garden! Also, the top looks best if you try to swirl the chocolate.

• Chocolate Mint Marvels (American Way, November 15, 2006, p. 126)

I got to spend an early July afternoon over at Amy's house and we made bread! It's the first time I've ever baked bread (unless banana nut bread counts and I'd say it doesn't). I've pigged out on this bread before when Amy has made it, and it's sooo delicious. This recipe is ridiculously simple, easy and quick. It's a winner. Amy says it makes good sandwich bread (but Jay and I ate it all before I could find something to put in between two pieces).

Focaccia

2 cups lukewarm water (85-95 degrees F)
2 tsp. active dry yeast
4 cups unbleached bread flour
2-3 tsp. salt
2-3 tsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp. kosher or sea salt

In a large bowl, sprinkle yeast over the water. Stir until dissolved. Stir in 2 cups flour and the salt, until smooth. With a strong wooden spoon, stir in the rest of the flour until incorporated. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in volume, 30-40 minutes or overnight in refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Oil one or two nonstick baking sheets and pour the dough onto the sheet, carefully scraping it from the sides of the bowl, being careful not to deflate it. Brush the dough with 2 tsp olive oil. Dip fingers into cold water or olive oil and insert them straight down into the dough. Make holes in the dough with your fingers as you gradually stretch it into a 1" thick oval. Brush with 1 tsp more olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and salt.

Place the pan into the oven and reduce the temperature to 450. Bake 15-20 minutes, until golden brown all over with a few darker brown spots. Cool on a rack.

Amy recommended these to me. We almost made them on our trip to Twinland, but we couldn't find crystallized ginger locally and we ran out of time. I decided to make them while visiting friends in Memphis over Christmas. During a trip to Wild Oats (which is now owned by Whole Foods), we looked for the ginger in the bulk food section, but they were out! I ended up finding bags of it elsewhere. I actually found organic crystallized ginger in two different places, but the price difference was astounding! Finding ground ginger was even more difficult because they were out of it in their popular spice brand bottle and in their spice bulk section. Eventually I found a bottle of it. I guess ginger is popular around the holidays!

We cooked these late on Christmas Day. The only odd thing about this recipe was that it said you could use a 1 Tbs cookie scoop to make the balls, a small ice cream scoop, or two tablespoons. Your tool of choice for this matter definitely impacts the yield! It said about 4 dozen cookies and we got 23. These cookies turned out perfect!

We cooked a lot over the visit. While staying there nearly a week, we only went out to eat once, and that was to Tejas de Brazil. Yum yum yum! I made multigrain pancakes and the apple topping, and the braised chicken with anchovies. I also purchased a finecooking.com account (and already had a cooksillustrated.com one) so now I don't have to have any of my magazines with me when wanting to cook something special.

One of the great things about visiting my friend in Memphis was learning some tips from her on food. She buys a lot of her food at Wild Oats from the bulk section and stores it in big containers in her pantry. Instead of pure cane sugar, she usually uses raw sugar, but she has containers for both. She made lots of cookies and fudge and separated them into colorful tissue papered tins to hand out to neighbors and friends. She also asked me for rosemary from my garden so she could grow her own. I'm glad I brought a lot of rosemary because we used it quite a bit in our cooking! Looking online, I learned that there are better ways to get a cutting to grow roots, and I also learned some tips for keeping rosemary healthy.

• Double Ginger Crackles (Fine Cooking, issue 75, p.45)

My last crackle cookies were so delicious, I was eager to make more. I was invited to two Superbowl parties, so I made a batch of cookies to split between the parties. I'm not a big chocolate fan myself, but these were pretty good cookies! I definitely liked the double ginger crackles the best. (The longest lasting cookies in the batch tasted fantastic!! But remember, I'm not a huge chocolate fan....) The neat part of these cookies is that there are melted chocolate chunks in them along with the chocolate and cocoa in the cookie itself. The orange zest in the cookies really added to the flavor of the cookies.

This was the first time I finally used my bigger Kitchen Aid, so it was fun to figure it out. (I got chocolate batter all over it!) I bought two silicone tray liners and those made it very easy to slip the silicone off the tray and onto the cooling racks. The cookie dough seemed a little greasy when trying to roll it into balls. Rolling just the top of the ball in sugar made it go faster than the last time I made crackle cookies, where I just rolled the whole ball in sugar.

(Although these cookies were really good, personally I'd rather have a brownie!)

• Double Chocolate Crackles (Fine Cooking 89, p. 71)