summer squash salad with mint, feta, and black truffle salt

Yesterday we had an argument in the middle of the sidewalk, and we had squash salad. The squash salad made some degree of sense. The argument, however, was a chimera, a figment with no fangs. It came like a squall at sea sending the mooring lines whipping in the wind as the rain falls sideways and passed just as quickly. I felt silly gritting my teeth, sweating in the midday sun. I could feel eyes peering out of the coffee house, real or imagined. I turned and walked back to the car, dazed. We sat in the car while I wept a disoriented apology. My carefully lined eyes were mottled black and red. I sniffled and put on my sunglasses. We walked back across the street holding hands & had coffee. In the end, we all speak our very own native tongue. Miscommunication, some garbling of symbols and sounds, is inevitable. We can forgive ourselves and each other for that.

That evening he studied in the office adjacent to the kitchen while I shaved the squash on my mandoline. I pounded chicken breasts thin, roasted kale and dressed it with tahini, feta, miso, and lemon. I coated the chicken with black sesame seeds, stuffed it fat with the kale, browned it, and baked it. I mixed the squash salad gently with my hands. We sat down together and ate. Cooking supper is my love language. It's universal. No one misunderstands a squash salad.

Summer Squash Salad with Mint, Feta, & Black Truffle Salt

serves 2

Translucent ribbons of yellow summer squash, a handful of fresh mint, heady black truffle salt, thin slivers of shallot, and salty crumbles of feta tossed with a glug of olive oil and white balsamic, this simple salad's virtue lies in the quality of its ingredients. This salad was inspired by one I had (and helped make...squash slicer extrodinaire!) at Sunday Suppers with Nikole Herriott. The combination of squash and mint was inspired. This salad isn't an exact science, make it to suit your taste.

1 yellow squash (zucchini would work well too), sliced 1/8" thick 

1 small shallot, thinly sliced 

1-2 Tbsp fresh mint, roughly chopped

1/4 cup feta 

splash of white balsamic vinegar

glug of good extra virgin olive oil

black truffle salt to taste

Toss all the ingredients together in a bowl. Allow to sit for about 10 minutes covered in the fridge for the flavors to meld & serve.

heirloom tomato ginger muffins with pine nuts, olive oil, & orange blossom

 

After our sojourn to New York, Tennessee seems positively vast and serene, especially in the late August light. I've been so exhausted I've yet to even unpack. Brocade trousers are tangled with winklepickers and indignant silk shirts spilling out of the old Samsonite next to the bed as I've rummaged through them to retrieve necessities like medicine and toothpaste. Treasures I acquired are strewn on my dining room table. Books and magazines: Kinfolk, Diner, Meat Paper, and Lucky Peach, a biography of M.F.K. Fisher and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste. Tins of salt: black, pink, and truffle next to a crumpled, long since empty brown paper bag stamped "milkbar". There's also patina mottled flatware, a cow skull, The Birthday Party's Peel Sessions on vinyl, and a cheap pair of round, wire rimmed sunnies. Suffice to say, for now, the trip was a feast. It was grand, and I'm glad to be home.

I imagined my summer was going to be this over-exposed heat wave during which I would make gazpacho, read novels, write daring manuscripts, snap effortless, enigmatically flawed photos with a Brownie, and cook everything over an open fire. Float. I look at too many photographs. These real months did not turn out to be a languid roll of film full of light leaks and rippling water. I may have not seen the seaside or spent as many evenings on the porch as I'd imagined, but instead this summer was animated. We have a our new project afoot that I keep alluding to and between the two of us have been researching everything from holiday in Romania to how to make kombucha to the Chinese zodiac. I am, as it turns out, a water pig in love with a fire tiger. Huh.




I'm excitable. That's evident. I say yes to everything. But often I get so ahead of myself that I actually feel behind, like I'm forever catching up, keeping up, tripping over my shoe-laces. I careen. Scramble. Forever late with wild hair & impudent eyeliner smeared along my lash line. Flour every where. I rather like to think I'm not behind in the first place. I like to look at the cliques of dirty cups that congregate on my counter and think it is just so. And no matter how frantic my internal or external reality, every day ends beneath a white sheet tucked neatly beneath his arm like a parcel. There's always that. And that is better than surf or grilled peaches or finally finishing Infinite Jest. Which is saying a lot. Because those are some of the best things on this green earth.

For now I leave you with these seemingly eccentric yet comforting muffins. These tomato muffins & I are kindred spirits. Inspired by Russell's (of Chasing Delicious) tomato cake, I decided to do some sweet tomato baking myself because I always have more than I can eat due to my frantic, greedy hoarding.

Tomato Ginger Muffins with Pine Nuts, Olive Oil, and Orange Blossom Water

yields 12 muffins

Heirloom brandywines fresh off the vine, toasted pine nuts, fresh ginger, cinnamon, olive oil, orange blossom water, and buttermilk are married in these muffins by the powers vested in Michael Ruhlman's quick bread ratio. With nothing more than his ratio, inspiration, and a flavor brainstorm I was able to make these beautifully crowned and impossibly moist muffins. No recipe. And anyone else can find this creative baking freedom too. Ratios & a scale. They will change your baking life. If you're feeling inclined I bet these muffins would be good with a glaze of some sort, perhaps a citrus or ginger.


Ruhlman's Basic Quick Bread/Muffin Ratio (by weight):

2 parts flour
2 parts liquid
1 part eggs
1 part fat (for this recipe I used 1/2 part fat)

1 tsp baking powder per cup of flour
1 tsp salt per 2 cups flour (I just do it to taste)
1 part sugar (if making a sweet bread/muffin... I use sugar to taste)

Ingredients

Dry:
1 cup (120 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup (120 g) whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup cane sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Wet:
1-2 large eggs (120 g)
1/2 cup (120 mL) tomato purée
1/2 cup (120 mL) buttermilk
1 tsp orange blossom water
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, finely minced
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup (60 mL) extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

Cooking Directions

Heat oven to 350° F.

Toast pine nuts in a dry pan over medium high heat, stirring/tossing often until browned & fragrant.

In a mixing bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients.

Gently mix the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring until only just combined. Add in the pine nuts and stir until just distributed evenly. You don't want to over stir because this will make your muffins tough.

Pour or scoop batter into a well oiled or lined muffin tin filling 3/4 of the way full. I use a non-stick spray whether I use liners or not.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen & a cake tester (or toothpick or skewer) comes out clean.

Let cool on a rack. Enjoy!

fig, balsamic, and rosemary hand pies

Late summer is a lens flare lucid dream. An imperious, two-volume Oxford English Dictionary now keeps company with the fearful symmetry of a cheap ceramic tyger on the bookshelf in the newly cleaned out study. Kombucha ferments in a sea-foam green bowl tucked away behind the cupboard doors of the midcentury buffet. We leave in six days for New York, where I will have the opportunity to participate in the Sunday Suppers workshop with Nikole Herriot, wander markets, eat at momofuku má pêche, and gorge myself on treats from momofuku milkbar. Unreal. Wild cherry tomatoes roll around lens caps on the kitchen counter. Rowland S. Howard plays Shut Me Down, and I bake.

I wish I could relate the innards, the real guts, of the conversations that have been percolating around here lately. You see, I keep the company of a poet with blue eyes and exceptionally long eyelashes. He's part fiend, part hierophant, and we bicker over things like whether or not the ancient wisdom of the Mayans and the potential apocalypse should be considered in planning a purely hypothetical jaunt to the British Isles. He imparts tales of Aleister Crowley's one time residence above the oldest cheese monger in London, Paxton & Whitfield, much to my delight, and I regale him with my Transylvanian daydreams. Together we plot underground masquerades.

We lay awake late at night talking about immortality, the virtues of death, and whether we, as a society, will soon be growing human hearts like fat tomatoes. He, with animate eyebrows, tells me stories about a 92-year-old Okinawan fisherman diving into the sea like a young man and of the oldest woman alive, 115, singing. The bright side, a good attitude, he tells me, will keep you in vigor. It's a fact.

We've sat on stoops and porches and talked with friends. I caught a firefly. I may have disabled it on accident. His mother sent us chocolate filled butter cookies. I ate too many. We sip. And plan. It rains hard. He smokes. We're the parents of some water kefir grains now. We're honing ideas. An exciting project is afoot. Handmade artifacts and a supper happening. I look forward to being able to say more as details become concrete in the coming weeks and months.

We spend a lot of time talking about sustenance: physical, spiritual, and intellectual. Poetry is as practical as a loaf of bread. Sometimes good work is difficult and slow like baking from scratch. It takes time to produce art, and it takes time to savor it, digest it. We require the sustenance of a fig and the sustenance of whalebone, owls, and Gladstone bags. Particles & waves. Heart geometry. Artists are as vital to a community as its farmers and cooks. A life without art isn't worth living.

I'm inspired by everything around me, ideas, objects, people. Etchings, vintage smut, country estates, marmoreal slabs and corsetry, gourds and sorbets, sweetbreads, marrow, and parasols. My mind feels prismatic lately, and the late summer light refracts shades of fruit stall, of sticky fig, white peach, and the paper bag brown peel of Golden Gem apples. My eyes are big, bigger than my appetite and bigger than the hours in a day. I have such plans. It's an exciting time to be anything at all and so...and so I buy too much fruit. So much fruit. Butter, flour, vinegar, fig, herb, yolk, honey, cane. I write, these days, in pie.

Balsamic, Fig, and Rosemary Hand Pies

yields about 18-22 4" hand pies

I've been very keen to share the recipe for this fig pie all week. The filling is a satisfying balance of sweet, tart, and herbaceous. I've varied this recipe at times by adding a small dollop of goat cheese to the pies. They're very good either way, and I can't help but wonder if these could be made savory-sweet with the addition of not only goat cheese but some proscuitto, bacon, or pancetta as well? If I find out, I'll be sure to let you know. If you try it, do let me know.

Ingredients

1 recipe of Buttery Pastry Shell (or the pie dough of your choosing)

2 cups of figs, cut into 1/2" size pieces
2 Tbsp sugar
1/8th cup good balsamic vinegar
1/8th cup honey (raw sourwood)
2 tsp finely chopped rosemary
pinch of kosher salt
2 Tbsp cornstarch
goat cheese (optional)
1 egg, whisked
sugar for dusting (turbinado, sanding, or regular sugar work for this)

Cooking Directions

First prepare your dough which should then be divided in two, shaped into flat discs, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and chilled. Allow it at least one hour to chill in the fridge. If I'm feeling impatient sometimes I pop it in the freezer to speed up the process.

Mix figs, sugar, balsamic, honey, rosemary, and salt in a medium bowl and let macerate for about 15 minutes (it can sit longer, even over night, to no ill effect).

Heat oven to 425° F.

Carefully pour off about 2 Tbsp of the liquid from the figs and mix with the 2 Tbsp cornstarch. Stir this back into the figs to thicken.

Roll out half your dough to about 1/8th inch thickness on a lightly floured work surface. Rotate the dough and flour as needed to keep from sticking. Using the cutter of your choice (I have used both 4" and 2" biscuit cutters to make tiny pies and tinier pies, but you could do shapes or whatever you like.) cut the dough out. If making double crust hand pies cut an even number, if making half moon hand pies then you needn't worry about it. Lay cut out dough onto a parchment lines baking sheet and place in the fridge to chill for about 5-10 minutes. Again, sometimes I just put them in the freezer for a couple of minutes.

Fill a small bowl with cold water and set to the side. Whisk your egg in the bowl to use as a wash.  Remove dough and fill with a scant table spoon of filling for half moon pies and a heaping tablespoon of filling for double crust pies. If making 2 inch pies use about a teaspoon of filling. If you wish, use a little less filling and top with a small dollop of goat cheese.

To seal the pies dip your finger in the cool water and run your finger around the rim of pie. Either fold over or top with second crust and press carefully but firmly to seal all around. Seal with the tines of a fork if desired.

Once pies are filled place them back into the fridge or freezer to chill for 10 or 3 minutes respectively. Remove from fridge and cut vent holes in the tops of the pies. Brush with the egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Chill once more before baking.

When ready to bake place the pies on a parchment lined baking sheet on the middle rack and bake for 5 minutes at 425° F. Reduce heat to 350° F, rotate pan and bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown, rotating the pan every five minutes if you have an uneven oven like mine to promote uniform browning. Place pies on racks to cool.

Repeat with the rest of the dough and filling.

*This could easily be made into a full sized pie or galette. If doing that, I would just halve or maybe quarter the figs depending on their size and adjust the baking times accordingly.

 angry figgy pie is angry D:

our daily bread: honey whole wheat

The grey outside the casement windows is soporific. Thunder rolls, crashing in operatic waves, from one end of the sky to the other. Cracks of lightening etch themselves neatly into the rain, striking near. My limbs are heavy, mouth sour. I've just awoken from an afternoon nap and can hear the kettle whistle downstairs. He must be brewing maté. I blink and stretch out my limbs, pointing my toes. I'm not, as a general rule, the napping sort. In fact, I usually have a hard time sleeping at all. A thrum of lists, ideas, worries, and plans keeps me awake at all hours often leading me to, in exasperation, get up and write them down. My mind is difficult to quiet, and it seems to be forever tapping its foot. Naps, as such, make me anxious. I have a fluttering rabbit heart.

But this afternoon I was exhausted, the kind you feel in your marrow. I spent all morning and early afternoon at the market with a meager three hours of sleep, handing out, along with pie samples & recipe booklets, information on Slow Food's Chattanooga chapter. Slow Food is an international grassroots organization that was founded to counter fast food, and in essence it's about reclaiming the way people used to eat: "good, clean, and fair" food that is delicious, communal, and sustainable. What does pie have to do with Slow Food? The pies, made from scratch with local produce, serve as a catalyst to get people excited about the bounty of our region from apples to figs to peaches to peppers, and Slow Food will be having pie baking class on the 25th of August at Crabtree Farms. These tiny pies were a teaser. If you'd like more information, you can visit Slow Food Chattanooga.

Yesterday was spent on my feet baking nearly one hundred miniature two inch pies late into the night for the market today. The way I saw it, the later they came out of the oven, the fresher they'd be. And they were. Washed with egg and dusted with sanding sugar, they came out sparkling and brown, perfect little medallions in four summer flavors: figs, balsamic, honey, and rosemary; yellow peach, jalapeño, lime, and mint; apple, cinnamon, thyme, and cheddar; and white peach, honey, rosewater, and basil. I promise to share the recipes for the fillings soon, in the upcoming week or so. But now is time for rest, quiet, and bread.

Bread is one of those dangerous things to write about, not unlike love. It's a proverbial metaphor rife with clichés, and innumerable people have gone on about the smell of fresh baked bread, how good it is for the soul, etc. But for good reason. Bread is an ancient food, seemingly braided into our DNA, and the baking of it is wild magic, like spinning straw to gold. The most basic breads, born of water and grain, are a miracle of biochemistry. The smell of fresh baked bread is a cliché comfort up there with babies' skin and puppy fur for a reason, and for a girl with a jittery rabbit heart such as myself, baking bread is a meditative panacea for my time travelling mind. It plants my feet. Slows me down. The rhythm of bread is circadian, cycling with us through our days for thousands of years.

I'm grateful for bread, for rain, for rest, and for having someone I love to break it with. He loves bread as much as I do, never complaining about a meal consisting entirely of it in some form or another. He pats me on the head for bread well done. There is no higher praise. Warm, home baked bread is what slow food is about. It's about reclaiming the spiritual and psychological territory that the unchecked commodification of food invaded. It's rather radical in its temperate way, a taking back of something we sometimes lose sight of. So here I share with you one of my favorite every day loaves of bread, Julia Child's honey wheat.

Honey Whole Wheat Loaves

adapted slightly from my much loved & highly recommended copy of Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan

yields two 1 3/4-pound loaves

This recipe has just enough honey to bring out the natural nutty sweetness of the wheat, and it's easy enough for a novice baker yet yields a bread that will have you feeling like you needn't ever buy it from the store again. If you mix this recipe up in the morning you can have fresh bread by lunch time. We usually eat one loaf fresh and freeze the other. With some local cheese (I used Sequatchie Cove's Coppinger) this makes an enviable grilled cheese. Just ask my jilted other half who did not get a grilled cheese because I cruelly made it in his absence.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cup warm water (105° F - 115° F)
1 Tbsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
3 1/2 to 3 2/3 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 Tbsp barley malt syrup or malt extract
1 Tbsp kosher salt

Cooking Directions

In the bowl of a standing mixer whisk to blend 1/2 cup of the water with the yeast and honey. Allow the mixture to rest until the yeast is creamy, about 5 minutes.

Combine 3 1/2 cups of bread flour and all of the whole wheat flour in a bowl, set aside.

Fit the mixer with the dough hook attachment. Add the remaining 1 1/4 cup water, oil, barley malt, and about half of the flour to the yeast, and mix on low speed, add the rest of the flour mix, and increase the speed to medium mixing until the dough comes together, stopping to scrape down the hook and bowl as needed. If it doesn't come together add up to 2 Tbsp more white flour. Add the salt and continue to beat at medium speed for 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. The dough will still be sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and shape into a ball. Place it in a large lightly oiled bowl. Rotate the dough to coat lightly in oil. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rest at rom temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

Oil or butter two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pans.

Deflate the dough by lightly punching it and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide in half. Roll each half into a 9" by 12" rectangle, with the short side facing you. Fold the top of the dough 2/3's of the way down then fold again so that the top meets the bottom edge. Seal the seam by pinching. It takes me a bit of vigorous pinching to seal it. Turn each roll so that the seam is centered, facing up. Tuck the ends of the roll in just so that the loaf will fit in the pan. Pinch to seal these seams.

Turn the rolls over, plump and shape with your hands, and place seam side down in the loaf pans. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature until doubled in size again, about 1 hour. While they rise center a rack in the oven and heat to 375° F.

When risen (a finger should leave an impression when the dough is poked) bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown and an instant read thermometer inserted into the bottom of the loaf reads 200° F. Remove from pans and let cool on racks.

Once cooled the bread can be wrapped and stored at room temperature or tightly wrapped in plastic and frozen for up to a month. To thaw let sit, still wrapped, at room temperature.

thai iced tea & vegan ginger ice-cream sandwiches

Vegan Ginger Ice Cream Sandwich

My world has been humming these past few weeks. My mother and aunt aided me in introducing light and order to areas (for instance, the kitchen cabinets) of my home that were previously akin to the chaotic blackness of mythical pre-creation. In keeping with the making of a house a home, we've been fortunate enough to share our dinner table with various friends and family the past four nights in a row, which is something I take immense pleasure in. This Saturday we had a full house, fitting eleven adults, a toddler, and a baby around the dining room table for hot bowls of pho bo, lemongrass pork banh mi, and a large kale salad followed by the ice cream sandwiches pictured here. Preparing food for people whose company I enjoy is one of the chief pleasures in my life, right up there with travel and sex. My lust for life is, admittedly, literal and figurative. Something to do with Venus in Leo, something to do with the stars. I'm just so pleased to be a human being these days. I like to chop onions and weep, even. It's all so terribly interesting.

Wallace Stevens' poem above is not, as you may have gathered, about ice-cream per se; it's ostensibly about a wake, about death. But it isn't really about death either, rather, I think it's about life belonging to the living and choosing reality over appearance. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream, that is to say, the sensual realm of the living reigns supreme over mute death. Life is the province of cigars and wenches and concupiscent curds. And to "let be be finale of seem" is the triumph of what is over what appears to be, the triumph of perfect imperfection over false perfection, the triumph of flowers wrapped in newspapers, bawdiness, and ice cream. It is, I think, an affirmation of the animate tempo and curious textures of daily life.

I give you another great author, Walter Pater's, definition of success in life, as his words are far finer than my own:

"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contributions to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening."

This is our proverbial day in the sun. We're now deep in the season of swimming holes, insects, peaches, thunder, and the ice cream truck that rolls up and down the streets daily, announced by its calliope playing "Do Your Ears Hang Low?". Be here now. Make love & ice cream.

Oh, and I made Star Wars ice cream sandwiches in the likeness Darth Vader, Yoda, and Boba Fett. Because I could, and I have a long standing love affair with Star Wars. Epic? In space? Yes. Seriously. I know what the stripes on Han Solo's pants are called.

So, whether you enjoy dairy or abstain, I bid you whip in kitchen cups these concupiscent curds...

Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream

yields 1 quart

This custard based Thai iced tea ice cream is exactly what I'd hoped, a creamy marriage of spiced tea and sweet milk, not too weak and not too strong. Whether you sandwich it between two rich, chocolate wafers or two soft condensed milk cookies or simply eat it with a spoon, it's fantastic. It's the logical conclusion of Thai iced tea.

Ingredients

2 cups (480 mL) whole milk
1 cup (240 mL) heavy cream
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
5 Thai tea bags (of 1/2 cup loose leaf Thai tea)
5 egg yolks

Cooking Directions

In a sauce pan heat milk, cream, and condensed milk until steaming, almost boiling with little bubbles forming around the rim. Do not let it come to a boil. Add the tea and let steep for five minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove tea bags or strain out tea leaves using a cheese cloth lined sieve, a "tea sock", or a coffee filter. Return milk mixture to pot if you strained it. Return mixture to heat.

Whisk egg yolks in a heat proof bowl, and when milk mixture is hot slowly add a bit at a time to your egg yolks, whisking constantly to temper them. I usually add about a cup. Once tempered, whisk the egg yolk mixture back into the hot milk. Cook this over medium heat, stirring constantly for about five minutes, or until it reaches 170° F and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow it to boil.

Remove custard from heat and strain immediately into a bowl. Chill thoroughly, 2-3 hours minimum and preferably over night. If need be it can be chilled quickly in a metal bowl in the freezer, stirring every 20 minutes or so until cool.

Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. I churn mine for 20 minutes. When the mixture looks like the consistency of whipped mashed potatoes, remove it into your desired container and place it in the freezer with plastic wrap pressed to the surface of the ice cream to finish hardening.

If making ice cream sandwiches, line a baking pan or sheet with parchment paper and spread the ice cream evenly to desired thickness. I usually spread it about 1-1 1/2 inches thick. Press plastic wrap to the surface and chill until hard enough to cut into desired shapes, 2-3 hours minimum.

Remove from freezer when ready to cut and use desired cookie or biscuit cutters (can be run under warm water to make cutting easier if the ice cream is very firm) to cut the ice cream into the same shape as your cookies. Sandwich between two cookies, wrap in plastic wrap, and return immediately to the freezer to harden.

Vegan Ginger Ice Cream

adapted from Have Cake Will Travel

yields 1 pint

Studded with bits of candied ginger, this recipe will change your outlook on vegan ice cream completely. It's very creamy, not icy like they can be, though it does get quite hard when fully frozen, so it's best to sit it out for about ten minutes before serving. If you have long been searching for a creamy vegan ice cream recipe, please try this. It has a slightly tart flavor reminiscent of frozen yogurt or cheese cake and would make a great base for an infinite variety of flavors.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups (300g) plain, unsweetened cultured coconut milk (or other non-dairy yogurt)
3/4 cup (180 g) Tofutti cream cheese (or other vegan cream cheese)
1/2 cup (96 g) sugar
1/2 Tbsp ginger powder
1 T finely chopped candied ginger (optional)

Cooking Directions

In a blender or food processer combine the yogurt, cream cheese, sugar, and ginger powder until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. Stir in the chopped ginger if using and freeze in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions.

For ice cream sandwiches spread freshly churned ice cream on a parchment lined baking or sheet pan, cover with plastic wrap pressed to the surface, and freeze until firm enough to cut into desired shapes and sandwiched between cookies.

Remove from freezer 10-15 minutes before serving to allow to soften.

Chocolate Roll Out Cookies

from smitten kitchen

yields about 36 3" round cookies

Ingredients

2 2/3 cups (335 grams) all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 1/4 cup (75 grams) extra dark or Dutch-processed unsweetened cocoa powder (you can use regular to good effect)
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks or 285 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon table salt
2 large egg yolks
1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Cooking Directions

Heat oven to 350°F degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift the flour and cocoa together and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and salt together until light and fluffy. Add the yolks and vanilla and mix until combined, scrape down sides and mix briefly again. Add the flour mixture a little at a time then mix until combined.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and divide into two equal pieces. If the dough is too soft to handle, wrap and chill it until firm enough to roll out (No more than 30 minutes or the dough will become crumbly). Roll each batch a 1/4-inch thick and cut into desired shapes and transfer them to the prepared baking sheet. Use a wooden skewer (or other pointy object like the tip of a thermometer) to poke the cookies with holes. For my round cookies I did 14 holes. Sprinkle with sugar if desired.

Bake the cookies for 16 to 18 minutes, or until they stay firm when tapped in the center. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining cookie dough, rerolling scraps as needed.

Vegan Chocolate Cookies (variation)

Follow the instructions above omitting the egg yolks and substituting Earth Balance sticks for the butter.

Condensed Milk Cookies

yields about 36 3 inch cookies

These roll out cookies have a cake-like texture and a mild sweetness. In addition to ice cream sandwiches, these cookies would also be delicious served with tea or cut into festive shapes and decorated for the holidays. It's a great dough to have on hand as it can be made ahead and freezes beautifully.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus up to an additional 1/2 cup
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling (optional)
1 (14 oz) can condensed milk
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Cooking Directions

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter & sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until fluffy. Mix in eggs, vanilla, and condensed milk.

When combined add dry ingredients about one cup at a time and mix until just combined. If mixture appears too wet add up to another 1/2 cup of flour until desired consistency. Remember that the dough will chill & harden in the refrigerator before rolling out.

Divide dough into two discs and wrap with plastic and refrigerate for at least half an hour and, if making ahead, up to three days. Dough can also be frozen at this point up to three months.

Heat oven to 350° F

Place dough on a floured work surface and roll out to 1/4-1/8 of an inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Using a wooden skewer or other object (like the tip of a thermometer) poke the cookies with holes. Sprinkle with sugar if desired.

Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes. Cool for at least 10 minutes on racks. If using for ice cream sandwiches, place in a large ziplock bag and freeze. Otherwise they can be stored in an air tight container.