I thought I would start the week off with something warm and yummy -- something about snowy grey days always makes me want to reach for something sweet.

These are the Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies .  Got an extra just-a-little-too-ripe banana that you don't know what to do with?  Like chocolate and toasted walnuts?  This recipe is for you!

Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies
(makes about 3 dozen)

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (1 large)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chococolate in 1/4" chunks
1/2 cup coarsely chopped, toasted walnuts

Preheat oven to 375F.  Blend flours, salt and baking soda in a bowl with a wisk.

Beat butter and sugar together on medium speed until pale and fluffy.  Reduce speed.  Add egg and vanilla and mix until combined.  Add in banana.  Add in flour mixture and mix until just combined.  Add in oats, chocolate chunks and walnuts.

Drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment (Silpats work nicely as well) with about 2" spacing -- I used a little over a tablespoon of cookie dough.  Bake cookies, rotating half-way through.  Cookies should be golden brown and just set -- should take around 12-13 minutes.  Let cool on sheets on wire racks for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks -- this is necessary because cookies will be structurally unstable until they have cooled a little bit.

The finished cookies should still be a bit on the soft and chewy side, even after being cooled. 

I made the mistake of adding about twice as much vanilla as I was supposed to and I had to supplement a little of the butter with margarine after finding out that John had used the butter I thought I had for clarified butter for the lobster tails he made the night before (I am absolutely not complaining -- any man who makes me lobster and knows how to clarify butter gets a complete and total pass on not reminding me to get more).  Even with those little issues, the cookies were quite good.  Both John and I thought that a little more banana flavor might have been nice - next time I might increase from one banana to 1-1/2 bananas or use a larger banana.  As far as I can tell, the extra vanilla didn't have much of an impact.

You might be wondering if toasting walnuts is worth it.  I'd say yes -- especially since all it entails is chopping the walnuts and then putting them in your toaster oven for 10 minutes.  The toasted flavor was lovely.  I actually wished that I'd added more walnuts than called for in the recipe.

This cookie got a big thumbs up from both John and Z* and I would definitely make it again. So we're 2 for 2 as far as Martha's recipes are concerned.  Maybe the only bad thing about this recipe is that 3 dozen cookies don't last too long around my house...

*For anyone thinking "quelle horreur! she's letting her baby have nuts!"  The answer is: definitely.  We've let her have peanut products and walnuts and pecans without any problems.  It happened by accident the first time, but when nothing bad happened, I saw no reason to maintain the ban, especially since nuts contain so many good oils. 

I have long since given up on trying to figure out what to get my husband for Valentine's Day.  This year, I decided that instead of trying to find something sentimental that he would tuck into a drawer, I would just get him something completely perishable that I knew he would enjoy:  cookies.

But instead of my usual chocolate chip cookies, I let him pick out of a new book I picked up.  I don't buy many cook books, because I don't cook much.  But I do bake cookies, so I couldn't resist Martha Stewart's Cookies when I found it at Costco:



One of the nice things about this book is that the front pages contain glossy pictures of all the cookies, grouped by type so that you don't have to page through the book to find something you like -- ideal for the cookie monster in your life who doesn't have a lot of interest in digging into cook books.  What did he pick?

Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies.  Which pretty much puts all my favorite sweets in one place!  Whenever I try a new recipe, I always worry about how it will turn out.  These turned out  fabulously.  Normally John gobbles through any cookies I make as fast as he can, but these, he told me, were so good that he was actually trying to eat them slowly so that he could savor them.  He estimated them to be in my top 5 batches of cookies ever made.  So I figured that that was worth pictures and sharing on the blog.

The base for this recipe is pretty close to my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe.  It's the extras that make it a winner.

Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies
Makes about 5 dozen

1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs*
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt
2 cups white chocolate chunks**
1-3/4 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1-3/4 cups coarsely chopped walnuts

It is a rare occasion indeed when I get to baking twice in two weeks. Honestly, though, I just couldn't handle that my holiday cookies hadn't turned out exactly the way I had envisioned them.  Not enough lemony flavor and not sandwich cookie enough.  When I have a problem to solve and I think I know the solution, my brain just doesn't let me leave it alone.  I just have to know whether my solution works.  In this case, it leaves my husband with the happy accident of getting more Christmas cookies.

I'd like to introduce you to one of my prized possesions.

This old mixer was on Christmas cookie duty when I was a child.  It is certainly nearing 30 years old and it still runs like a champ.  When my Dad decided to help my mom "upgrade" one Christmas to a newer model (Kitchen Aid stand mixers being one of the few things with a motor that you can get a woman for Christmas without getting into trouble) I jumped at the chance to bring this old treasure into my house.  Generally, it's my brother who inherits my mother's cooking tools -- he's the one who really learned to cook -- but my closet baker couldn't let the mixer head to Houston.  It may lack the beauty of a new mixer, but what it lacks up in beauty, it makes up for with character and good memories.  I can remember so many batches of Christmas sugar cookies and gingerbread helped along by this mixer.  It always makes me happy to bring it up onto the counter.

Every year John and I have a holiday party.  It's our one big "do" of the year and one of it's central features (other than yummy catered Polish food) is the cookie exchange.  Most of the time my cookie making adventures stay close to the chocolate chip cookie genre, this being the cookie that makes John happiest.  But at Christmas, I always look for a new recipe to try.  Something pretty, something I haven't tried before.  This year I indulged myself in almost every cooking magazine I could find that featured holiday cookies (this will certainly be a good investment for the future) and settled on the Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies featured in the December 2008 Gourmet magazine.  The old mixer was only too happy to help me out for this project.

As a part of the cookie making process, I learned a couple of things:

• I actually do own a lemon zester
• Zesting lemons is more challenging than I thought it would be -- at least to do without bleeding.
  
• One lemon does not generate that much zest
• Fresh lemon zest smells absolutely enchanting.
• The warming tray of an espresso machine is an excellent place to put butter that needs help softening.
  
• Sanding sugar is a lot of fun to play with
• Cookies just taste better when made with my 30 year old KitchenAid mixer
  

This recipe is actually pretty easy.  Their time estimates are definitely on target and I finished making a batch in one afternoon nap interval.

Sanding is a little time consuming if you want to get good coverage, but it's lots of fun, especially done to the beat of 80's pop music.  I wish I had found some blue and purple sugars to play with.   While this recipe isn't young toddler friendly, I do think it could be child friendly in general -- what kid wouldn't enjoy rolling dough balls around in brightly colored sugar?

The finished cookies are "glued" together with a lemony cream center.  Pretty, are they not?

I am mostly pleased with the results of this cookie project.  In fact, it's very likely that I will make another batch of these.   Given the range of sanding sugar colors, they could be used for almost any holiday.  I would make a few changes for "next time" though.

• When the recipe says "scant teaspoon" they really mean it.  In order to be bite sized, my cookie balls needed to be much smaller than they were.  Also, I would flatten them a little more before putting them in the oven to make them a little flatter on completion.  They didn't change shape all that much with baking.
• I think I would let the dough sit for a while and let the lemon oil in the zest have more change to work through the dough.  I would also add more zest, since I would have liked the cookie part to be more lemony. 
  
• Ditto for the buttercream center.  More zest for sure.  Maybe more lemon juice. 
  

That said, when they were sampled by the husband, he felt that there was a lemony quality to them.  So if you make this recipe, you might want to go with the recommended amounts for your first batch and adjust to taste later on.

Now I just have one last thing to figure out...

... what does a girl do with left over zested lemons?