Lemon Poppy Seed Dolphins

Port Washington has an independent book store called The Dolphin Book Shop. According to a sign in an empty, prime location on Main Street, The Dolphin Book Shop is moving from its you hardly know its there current location to its new home smack in the center of town, on the water - a really great location.

While they're busy scraping the David Yurman logo off the window and readying our new beautiful book store, I've been busy developing what I think are "Mommy, can we go to the dolphin cookie store now?" cookies for their new location.

I assumed the shop would be actively seeking out a signature cookie for their new home.

Unless someone wants to come over and cut out these buggers or order me a custom dolphin die cut cookie cutter template, this is going no further than this post.

I did create a great variation of Grandma Rae's Möhn Kichel. It uses whole wheat pastry flour, (remember this was intended for venue where people read about things. And whole wheat flour was never mean to you, was it?) some organic lemon rind and lemon extract.

You can use a cookie cutter or a pizza cutter, crimped or not crimped.

Don't limit yourself to dolphins.  If you have a turtle shape, use it and call them Lemon Oil Spill Cookies.

So, rather than sweat the small stuff, my new dream is to write a cookbook:
365 Ways to Bake Möhn Kichel. 

Lemon Poppy Seed Dolphins

Lemon Poppy Seed Dolphins

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients: 

3 eggs, size large, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp. lemon zest (organic lemon preferred)

1 cup canola oil

1 tsp. lemon extract

¼ cup room temperature water

1 Tbsp. baking powder

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1.25 oz poppy seeds

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350º F., line 4 cookie sheets with parchment or Silpat.

In a bowl, whisk together the baking powder and flours and set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix the lemon zest into the cup of sugar and set aside.(The oils from the zest will flavor the sugar.)

In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid, fit with a paddle attachment (get a beater blade - you'll never stop beating it), beat the eggs, oil and lemon zested sugar until thick.  Add the lemon extract and mix. Add the water, mix, and then, the poppy seeds. Mix.

Add the dry ingredients and blend on low speed.  Finish mixing by hand.  You can flatten the dough on a lightly floured board and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you are ready to roll and cut.

On a flour coated surface, roll out between 1/8”-1/2” thick and cut, with a cookie cutter or pizza cutter(or a knife!)into squares or rectangles.

Place on parchment lined cookie sheets and “bake until golden brown”, about 10-15 minutes.

Yield varies depending on size of cookie. 

peace, love and smooth sailing,

jane 

Mother's Day Mandelbrodt (Mandelbread)

Happy Mother's Day!
(look at the ducks!)
peace, love and mandelbrodt.

My Grandma Rae made the best mandelbrodt.  It had no butter.  I don't think anything she baked had butter. She kept a kosher home, and by omitting butter, her desserts could be eaten any old time.

She used Mazola corn oil (and other horrible non-dairy fats like margarine and something called "Spry".)

This recipe uses oil and is much closer to hers than the richer biscotti recipes I've published here.  Corn oil isn't as healthful as, say, canola oil, but I love to bake with it.  It's sweet. In the absence of butterfat, The taste of the almonds are pronounced by the oil rather than 'softened' by the roundness of butterfat.

These are hard to stop eating.  They're simple and taste like their ingredients.

Grandma Rae's greatest pleasure was to feed the people who came to her home.  She was my best Grandma, and I miss her all the time (you can read more about her in my "möhn kichel" recipe, another oil-based and brilliant basic Jewish "tea cookie".) It's almost mother's day, and the photograph of my in my toque is a gift from my beautiful daughter.  She embroidered it for me.  It says, "Blue Heron Kitchen" and it sports a heron on its brim.  Thanks, sweetheart!

Mandelbrodt (Mandelbread)

Adapted from Arthur Schwartz by Blue Heron Kitchen, in honor and memory of my Grandma Rae

Ingredients:

4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. kosher salt

4 eggs, size large, at room temperature

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

¾ cup corn oil (or any tasteless vegetable oil)

½ tsp. pure almond extract

1 ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract

Zest from one large orange

2 cups coarsely chopped almonds (see almond trucs below)

Procedure:

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat and preheat oven to 350º F.

Almond truc: Valencia almonds are great to use.  Organic ones are even better.  The better and fresher the nut, the better the cookie.  Release the oil! Toast the nuts on a cookie sheet until you can just begin to smell them.  Be careful they don’t burn.  If they do, you’ll end up with mandelburndt.  Let them cool first and then chop them.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid or ‘other’ electric mixer, preferably fitted with a fabulous beater blade attachment, beat the eggs well, until light in color. 

Add the sugar, a little at a time, continuing to beat until the mixture is thick and creamy.  This will take a few minutes.

Add the oil (I use corn oil, because my Grandma Rae used Mazola corn oil for everything), extracts and orange zest to the eggs.  Beat briefly until blended.

Dump in the flour, all at once and mix on lowest speed until barely incorporated.  Add the almonds and mix until just blended.  Finish by hand.

Turn out onto floured flat surface and cut into four equal parts. 

With as little handling as possible (use flour and a large spatula to manage the dough), form into four loaves, approximately 12” x 2 ½” – 3” in width, depending upon how wide you prefer your cookies, two to a sheet, lengthwise.  Space them at least 4” apart.

Bake approximately 30-45 minutes, transferring sheets top to bottom, front to back, half way through the first bake, until golden.

Remove from oven and let cool on rack for a few minutes, leaving the oven on.

With a serrated knife, slice on diagonal, approximately ½” thick (or ¾” if you like your cookie thick) and return the cookies, slice sides down, to the sheets. 

Bake for 5 minutes, turn cookies over and bake 5 additional minutes.  Finished cookies should be golden brown.

Cool the cookies on racks.  When completely cooled, store in an airtight container.  These will taste even better the next day (if you can wait). 

Möhn Kichel

Möhn Kichel

Möhn or "Moon" are poppy seeds, and kichel are little cakes, crackers or cookies.  My Grandma Rae made these.  Often.  Grandma's cooking was, well, very basic.  She wasn't an adventurous or even fabulous cook, but she knew how to make a few things extraordinarily well.  These cookies were one of those things.  Grandma Rae was simple, loving, and if you didn't eat enough, she was simultaneously insulted and forlorn.  Kind of a cliché, but she was my cliché. Her fingers, gnarled by arthritis, were forever shoveling homemade (greasy) noodles, latkes and applesauce, chicken fricasee, the best matzo brei, Passover nutcake, sponge cake and other Eastern European Jewish delicacies into my little mouth. If it wasn't open, she'd pry it open. All the while, my Grandpa Julie would be sitting in 'his' armchair smoking his cigar (he called them "Smell-o-mile-o's"), oblivious to everything except whatever ball was being played with on the television set.  I grew up loving the Bronx, the smell of incinerators and the Jewish cooking smells of tenement buildings. My Grandma Rae died over 14 years ago, and I miss her all the time.  I can still hear her voice.  And now, for my confession:


I had dinner with a friend the other night, and I think I freaked him out.  I told him that I had, in my freezer, cookies, möhn kichel, that my Grandma Rae had baked, probably more than 25 years ago.  I've simply kept them.  And I take them with me wherever I move (and I move often).  I whisper, "Come on Grandma, we're moving to ______".  And I stick those cookies in my pocket book, and off we go!  


Now, you may think this is sick stuff.  And it may well be.  But, it's no different than keeping other stuff from dead people.  Kind of like her ashes. They just happen to be perishable and rather then being stored in say, a Folger's can, they need to be kept in the freezer. I'll write about my cinnamon sugar and my other Grandma - Bessie - another time. Maybe.


Here is her recipe for möhn kichel.  I use corn oil, because she did.  It says on the label that there's zero trans fat.  I believe them. Corn oil is so lovely and sweet. Her recipe calls for "a box" of poppy seeds, so I looked in the market at what McCormick considers a small container (no more boxes - now they have round plastic containers) of poppy seeds, and it's 1.25 oz.  You can buy one of those.


I buy my poppy seeds from Penzey's.  You can buy all kinds of great stuff from them, mail order(they have the absolute best storage jars at the absolute best price). They have stores too - one is in the Grand Central Terminal Market.  There's another on Rte. 110 in Huntington, LI. FREEZE those seeds after you've opened them.  Poppy seeds turn rancid very quickly.


These are very simple cookies.  Don't expect the moon.  They're peasant cookies ... and they are addictive.  I just had about 3 dozen for my dinner.


Happy Chanukah, y'all!


peace and love,
jane

Möhn Kichel

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

3 eggs, size large, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup corn oil

¼ cup tepid water

1 Tbsp. baking powder

4 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1.25 oz poppy seeds

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350º F., line 4 cookie sheets with parchment or Silpat

In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the eggs, oil and sugar until thick.  Add the water, mix, and then, the poppy seeds. Mix.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking powder and flour. 

Add dry to wet ingredients. Mix until incorporated.

On a flour coated surface, with a floured rolling pin, roll dough out between 1/8”-1/4” thick and cut, with a pizza cutter into squares or rectangles. (In the true Grandma Rae tradition, no two should be alike.)

Place on parchment lined cookie sheets and as Grandma Rae wrote: “bake until brown”, about 10-15 minutes.

Yield: abut 10-12 dozen 1”-2” squarish/rectanglish cookies

Store in tins. 

These will keep for weeks, or in my twisted case, for decades, in the freezer ;-)