Kathleen McGivney

Thanksgiving dinner with a twist

Spiced pear and apple crumble with vanilla ice cream, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

As I mentioned in my last post, our original Thanksgiving plans to escape the country and its litany of Black Friday advertisements were thwarted by my sinuses, so we decided to stay home and make ourselves a little mini-feast. Since it was just the two of us, and one of us is a vegetarian, we didn't want to make a turkey, so instead I made chicken and Atom made something called Match, which is a meat alternative product that is meant to look, taste, and cook like meat. We also made vegan pumpkin bread, gougeres, roasted brussels sprouts, sweet potato & roasted garlic mash, and spiced pear and apple crumble.

I'll be posting a couple of the other recipes later this week. Photos of the whole dinner and the recipe for the spiced pear and apple crumble are after the jump.

TriState LUG's next meeting, cookies included

As you may have noticed if you follow the TriState LUG Twitter feed (and you should!), there is a fantastic TriState LUG meeting coming up next Tuesday, July 21 in Newark, NJ, with great sessions by Akiba Saeedi about Sametime 8.5 and Declan Sciolla-Lynch about XPages. As you may also have noticed via recent blog posts by Jim and Mitch, an attendance challenge was issued. Somehow I got roped into baking cookies if 25 attendees registered, while Mitch merely has to don a tie if 50 attendees registered. I know how much you guys complain about ties, but I think it's at least slightly more effort to bake a few dozen cookies than it is to throw on a tie! At the next meeting, this disparity will have to be reconciled (Jim and Mitch, watch out)!

In any case, we already have over 25 non-IBM, non-organizer attendees registered, so it looks like I will be baking cookies on the day of the event and bringing them there for your enjoyment. I am currently planning to make chocolate chip (sans bacon, sorry bacon lovers!) and ginger butterscotch. I have been informed that chocolate chip cookies are mandatory, but I am flexible on the second cookie variety, so if you are attending, you may indicate your preferences in the comments from the following choices: ginger butterscotch, peanut butter, oatmeal toffee, or blondies (technically not a cookie, but hey! I'm accommodating like that). If I get no comments or there is a tie, it'll default back to the ginger butterscotch cookies, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me. They are delicious.

Be sure to register for the event - we need a list of names for building security - and we'll see you there. Feel free to leave cookie preferences in the comments, though revenge tactics for an attendance challenge for Jim and Mitch for the next meeting are welcome as well!

That's right, I said bacon

Bacon chocolate chip cookies, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

The photo has been up for a while. There has been much discussion with friends about the unexpected deliciousness of this cookie. And now, it's time. It's time to discuss this cookie: the chocolate chip and bacon cookie.

That's right, I said bacon.

I got the idea to make a chocolate chip and bacon cookie after I had the bacon and chocolate bar from Vosges Haut Chocolat. I thought, why can't I do that... in a cookie?

So I searched online for a recipe, and heard tales of a restaurant that served a bacon cookie (with chocolate chips, pecans, and cherries, not just chocolate chips), but I only found one recipe, for a cookie that had bacon on top, not inside. So I decided to make my own.

I adapted it ever-so-slightly from, you guessed it, a Smitten Kitchen recipe (what can I say? Deb has amazing recipes). Essentially, I sub out really crispy crumbled bacon for nuts in a standard chocolate chip recipe. It's simple, and it tastes delicious!

Recipe and more photos after the jump.

Cookie or cake?

Pan cookie, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

When I started cooking and baking again, I sometimes found myself lacking the appropriate cookware for the task I was attempting. For example, the first time I made cookies in my current kitchen, I didn't have a cookie sheet, so I ended up baking cookies on a pizza stone and in cake pans (with delicious results, I might add). Now that I've taken on cooking and baking as a more serious hobby, I have a lot more cookware and bakeware and fabulous appliances to help me do the job (including my BFF, the red KitchenAid mixer). However, I still sometimes find myself needing to use not-quite-right items in a pinch.

Case in point: the other day I wanted to make a pumpkin-y treat, so I decided to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The recipe I had said it made 12 cookies, a measly amount in our house, especially when we are entertaining a houseful of guests, as we were that day. So I did what anyone who loves to feed people might do in that situation and doubled the recipe.

Fast forward to forming the dough into cookies on the cookie sheet. We weren't even halfway through the dough and we had already filled two cookie sheets with at least two dozen cookies - far more than what the recipe said. Since the recipe was noted to turn out cookies with a cakelike texture, I figured popping the rest of the dough into cake pans would do the trick - and I was right! We ended up with a little over two dozen regular cookies and two 8" round cake pan cookies. Our houseguests ended up devouring the pan cookies by cutting them into big chunks and eating them with vanilla ice cream, much like one might eat a slice of cake. Yum.

Lesson learned? Don't be afraid to use an alternate cooking vessel. The results might just be better than the original.

Recipe and another photo after the jump.

Peanut butter cookies

Peanut butter and butterscotch cookies, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

So, I love peanut butter. It's tasty, it's nutty, it's salty, it's a little sweet. It goes great on toast, because it gets all melty, and it's a fabulous ingredient in cookies. So, since I've been baking a lot, I decided I should incorporate one of my favorite ingredients!

I've found a few recipes lately at my new favorite foodie blog, Smitten Kitchen, and checked it out to see what kind of peanut butter cookies she might have on hand. I found a good one, and as soon as she mentioned that it was similar to the cookies at Billy's in Chelsea, I knew I had to make them, because I always pick up a cookie there for my husband after my hair appointments in the neighborhood.

I adapted the recipe slightly from this one. Instead of making bigger cookies that would flatten in the oven, we made ours smaller and deliberately tried to keep them small, round, and bite-sized. Also, we used butterscotch chips instead of chocolate chips. We kept the peanut butter chips in for obvious, peanut-buttery reasons.

I'd usually post a recipe after the jump, but we made so few changes from Deb's at Smitten Kitchen that I don't think it's necessary. So check out her recipe to get all the details. And yes, I will make these when friends come to visit. I'll make a lot, because they go reeeeeally quickly!

Gingerbread butterscotch cookies

Butterscotch & ginger cookies, originally uploaded by kmcgivney.

As part of my little experiment of returning to the kitchen and cooking at home, I baked some cookies for a friend's birthday recently. I had tried a similar cookie at a local bakery and thought I'd make them, since I really, really like gingerbread and the butterscotch flavor offsets the spiciness of the ginger and clove so well. I baked them a few minutes too long, because after years of not baking I forget that you should take cookies out of the oven when they look not-quite-done so that they stay chewy. They were a little crispier than I would have liked, but they were very tasty. Recipe after the jump.