FOR THE LOVE OF COOKIES, PLEASE READ THIS

from The Insider December 2020

WHAT’S INSTEAD OF CHRISTMAS

By Tatsiana Paulouskaya

Don't commit the crime of buying soulless grocery pastry at Christmas. Even if you aren't a gastronomy aficionado like myself, a solid argument for this is: awkwardly-shaped homemade goodies are always bound to make your grandparents smile. And let's agree - the title of a sugar dealer is the fame worth-fighting for. So hopefully, by now, you are all stocked up on butter, sugar and spices. Now heat your oven, blast some festive music or put on a winter sports program and get ready to follow the instructions.

Section 1 - A Bit of Cookie-ing Advice

2020 is terrible. Allow the pastry to be terrific.

1. Distinguish between basic dough types: cookie dough, cake dough and sweet bun/bread dough. Rule of thumb for that: cookies are just loads of sugar and butter; cakes need soda or baking powder; buns and bread need yeast. Each of these has special preparation peculiarities!

2. It's counterintuitive, but you should always add a pinch of salt to your sweet things. Salt is known to enhance sweetness by creating the needed contrast.

3. If a recipe calls for whisked eggs yolks, always take eggs out of the fridge in advance. Or at least put them in a bowl of warm water, if you're running late. Warmedup eggs can rise to twice the size of cold ones. Any cake would be much airier then.

3* Don't try to soften butter in a microwave, please... And be careful with melting it there, too. The OG French bakers would probably kill you for both. If you really need to melt butter in a microwave, do it at discontinuous 10-second intervals. Then the butter will stay creamy, not turn into the oily liquid with some strange clumps... eh. 4. Let the cookie dough sit for 30 minutes between mixing and baking. What this does: flour and sugar hydrate, moisture becomes more evenly distributed, cookies will be crispy and chewy in places where they need to be, respectively.

5. Brown sugar and honey are superior to white sugar in terms of texturising cookies. But they are more expensive. Brown sugar is sweeter than white, so use less of it.

6. There is more to spices than cinnamon & vanilla: use ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper!

7. When making cakes and cakey things, DO NOT overmix on autopilot. I know it's fun to be bobbing the glistening batter around, but you should know: after you add flour, there is a big no-no as to unnecessary mixing. Mixing forms gluten, which is good for yeast-based things (and we are not talking Karens here), but it makes cakes stale.

Now you're all set for

Section 2 - The Triad of Easy Pastry Recipes

I'm gonna share with you three of my tried-and-tasted recipes for every type of dough! Cookie, cake and yeast-based. All can be eaten under the mistletoe. Call me to share how it turned out, will you! Note: English-speaking internet usually measures stuff in cups, and I find this cool - no annoying kitchen scales needed. I use a 200 or 250 ml cup for measuring dry and liquid ingredients.

Mix: 2/3 cup powdered sugar +1/2 cup cocoa + 1 cup of flour + a pinch of salt. Add: 2 eggs, then 100 grams butter, softened. Add: chocolate chips to taste, walnuts to taste. Add: mini marshmallows to taste - but not too much! so as not to leave a lot of gaping holes in the cookies after the marshmallows melt. You can mix those in or put them on top of formed cookies. Preheat the oven to 180 C, use a spoon to form cookies on a parchment sheet. Don’t take a lot of dough at one go and place cookies far apart - these buddies are gonna grow to the sides. Bake for around 20 minutes.

Sticky Cinnamon Buns

Toast 1 cup walnuts on a baking sheet at 180 C, tossing once, for 8 min. Peel and grate 4-5 medium carrots, squeeze to get rid of juice. Put grated carrots in a bowl, pour 1 cup buttermilk over them (to replace buttermilk, can use kefir, sour cream, yoghurt, milk with added lemon juice). Combine 2 and 1/2 cups flour, ~ 4 1/2 teaspoons of spices (I do ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg), 2 tsp baking powder, 1 and 1/2 tsp salt, and 3/4 tsp baking soda. In a pretty big bowl, whisk 4 eggs, <1 and 3/4 cups sugar and 2 tsp of vanilla extract on high speed (till pale and thick). Gradually add 1/2 cup sunflower or olive oil. To the egg mix, add 1/3 of dry ingredients. Then half of the carrots. Then another 1/3 of dry ingredients. Then the rest of the carrots. Then the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix SLOW. Add toasted walnuts (raisins?). Separate dough in two parts. Bake one part at 180 C for around 40 min in a pan or cake pan, then the second one. Prepare icing for the top, sides and the in-betweens of cake: 350 grams of cream cheese, 200 grams of butter (both room temp (!!)), 4 cups of powdered sugar + vanilla and salt. Don’t overmix those, it’s easy to mess up. Only assemble the cake and put the icing on when both cake parts have cooled.

Easy Carrot Cake

Slightly heat 3/4 cup buttermilk and 6 tablespoons sunflower/olive oil in a microwave, in three 10-second intervals. Whisk carefully 30 grams compressed yeast (or 10 grams dry yeast) with 1 egg and 1/4 cup sugar, add them to the buttermilk mix. Combine 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda. Add buttermilk & yeast mix in. Combine to form a rough ball. Put the ball on a floured surface and knead it, pushing away and pulling back, until the rough ball turns into a smooth ball. Put some oil on your hands if it’s sticky - don’t add more flour. Roll the dough into a rough square, then fold the square over itself to be back to the ball. Repeat 2 more times. Put the final ball in a bowl, add 1 tbsp of oil, cover the bowl with something and let it sit in the fridge for at least 6 hours. For the filling, mix 3/4 dark sugar & 2-3 tablespoons cinnamon. After the dough has rested, roll it into a big square and spread ~60 grams softened butter all over it. Put cinnamon sugar on top. Roll the square into a log, then cut the log in slices. Place the buns side by side in a lightly oiled oven-proof pan or foil container, cover with more foil on top. Leave to rise for an hour. Put the buns in a 180 C oven, with foil on top remaining. After 20 min, remove the foil cover and continue baking for another ~20 min.