chocolate-espresso crinkles

      I have a hoarding problem.
      With recipes, that is.
      I use an app called Springpad to bookmark recipes: ones that use ingredients we often have; ones I find mildly intriguing; and most importantly, ones I feel are "classics", the kind that I think every cook should have in his or her repertoire. Even as a teenager who isn't even the main meal-maker in the house, I have recipes saved for rack of lamb, meatballs, lemon gnocchi, multiple tomato sauces, lasagna, cassoulet.
      When will I ever even use these? I don't know. When I am in charge of making something for the family, I often scramble for a new recipe rather than one I already have saved. I guess it's just an obsession I have, the need to be well-rounded and versatile in all things, and to not limit myself to the world of baked goods.

      These cookies were adapted from a recipe I had saved and come back to. I've never tried chocolate crinkles, only seen them on the Internet as I had with countless other foods. They're the kind of cookie you find arranged on a platter at the reception after a youth symphony concert, or the kind at a Christmas party. Wholly middle-class, wholly nostalgic, wholly suburbia. Yet they, I imagine, would be perfectly at home at a fancy tea party, among the petits fours. Or maybe they are the kind that are stealthily swiped from the kitchen counter, to be enjoyed with a mug of coffee. They are rustic, with their uneven, cracked shells, but sophisticated for the same reason.With a generous helping of coffee in each cookie, they are fudgy and rich, and satisfying on a deep level.
      I hope you enjoy these cookies. The people I baked these for certainly did!

whole-wheat salted chocolate chip cookies

     Urgency. Isn't that a feeling every high school student can relate to? Deadlines, requirements, forms. I didn't think I would have to deal with them until later, much later. I'm only a sophomore, after all. Yet...when I was younger, didn't I think that being in high school is the ultimate in maturity? But now I'm here, finally in high school, and I feel more of a child than ever.
     The real world tells me otherwise. All of my fellow classmates are in driver's ed or have already gotten their licenses. I can get a job or become an intern or do research in a lab. We can donate blood. It's overwhelming.
     But maybe it's just me. I've always pushed myself, held myself to a higher standard. If I don't do well at something, it's only my own fault. In a country like America, land of boundless opportunity, I only have myself to blame if I don't reach out and grab the opportunities within reach. Even when my classmates are still happy and generally carefree, I can't be like them. As I said when I was younger, "great minds don't think alike - that's what make them so great".

     So I spent winter break filling out applications for various programs. Volunteering at the Pacific Science Center; a summer program at Brown University. I'm only a sophomore, but nobody excelled by only doing what was required of them. More importantly, though, I'm applying to a program at the University of Washington, in which I would drop out of high school at the end of this year and enroll at UW as a freshman. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? But I'm still not sure if I want to do it. On one hand, I can escape the high-schooler immaturity and boring coursework I endure right now. I could learn about the things I love (science! art! literature! extremely niche topics!), digging into subject material as opposed to scraping the surface. On the other hand, though, do I really want to get an undergraduate degree at the university that's half an hour away? Don't I want to go somewhere, not spend four years (as opposed to the two that I would spend if I stayed in high school) where I've been almost my entire life? My dream school (oh, the foolhardiness of having a "dream school"! The dream is fragile, crushed on the whim of an admissions officer.) is MIT, not the school two of my cousins went/are attending and the school both of my parents have worked at at one time or another (the only reason we live in the US is because my dad was offered a job at UW). I've never even been to California, or the East Coast, or a foreign country (Canada, China, and the one time we had a layover in Tokyo don't count). Two more years in high school is so insignificant, compared to the vast timeline of our lives. Couldn't I endure it?
     I am still so, so, so on the fence. So I'm "just applying". Procrastinating, really - waiting as long as possible until I'm forced to make a decision. But if I'm rejected, there's my decision made for me! Ha. Which is why I've left my options open by applying to a number of programs.

    These cookies were made for two of the teachers who have written me recommendations for various things. I was drawn in by the promise of "whole-wheat". Not for the health factor, but for the complex, nutty, hearty flavor whole-wheat flour brings to food. Of course, some salt had to go on there, too. Salt and sugar are practically ubiquitous now; salted caramel has transformed from being a daring new flavor to being a mainstay in food circles. I made the dough in the morning and let it sit in the fridge as I rode my bike to go volunteer at the library, and then when I came back, scooped the dough and sprinkled some sea salt on top of each shaggy sphere. I baked them in two batches, as the recipe made much more than just 20 cookies for me. I waited more than 10 seconds for the cookies to cool, for once, letting them cool for several minutes on the sheet. I was rewarded with a gooey, rich mouthful of cookie, subtly enhanced by the small grains of salt. The whole-wheat wasn't as prominent as I expected - you could have fooled me into thinking they were made with all-purpose flour. Of course, none of that matters in the face of a soft, warm, chewy confection. There is literally no way to mess up a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie. Try it and you'll see!

pear-ginger crisp

     

     I don't actually love ginger.

     I adore the mature complexity of gingerbread and Speculoos cookies. I even enjoyed this fall's trend of pumpkin spice, a flavor combination many bemoaned by the season's end. But I just can't bring myself to enjoy ginger wholeheartedly. There have been too many times in my life where I've accidentally eaten a whole slice of the fresh root in my mom's cooking and gagged, shocked by the sharpness, a burning sensation lingering for the next several bites of dinner. Last year, when I made some candied ginger slices, I put it in a batch of crabapple jelly that neither I nor the rest of my family touched, and it was eventually tossed when I finally cleared out our ridiculously extensive collection of fruit preserves. I have a complicated relationship with such a ubiquitous aromatic.

     Ground ginger is something I've never really had experience with. We always use the fresh bulbs in our house. But I had my mom buy a small tin of it at the grocery store for a pumpkin brown butter Bundt cake I made for Thanksgiving, so there it was, in the drawer of pantry items I jealously guard. I wanted to make apple crisp, but we only had pears, and I'd seen plenty of recipes pairing ginger with pears, so I thought a pear-ginger crisp would be perfectly acceptable for breakfast on a weekday morning.

 
    And it was! The topping, made entirely of ground oats, was substantial and hearty, and the pears were transformed by the oven into silky, buttery sweetness. I only tossed a tiny amount of ginger with the pears, because I was afraid of overpowering my intolerant taste buds, and it was perfect for me. The ginger was in the background, but still present, lending a gentle heat to the otherwise one-dimensional sweetness of pears. If you choose to make this recipe, feel free to amp up the amount of ground ginger.

 
     I'm already thinking about other ways to incorporate ginger into my baking. At the forefront of my mind has been the combination of ginger and...chocolate. Chocolate cookies with crystallized and ground ginger? Chocolate-ginger brownies? Scones with ginger and chocolate chunks? All I know for sure is that this spice wants me to promote it from mere understudy, seemingly tossed carelessly into almost every dish my family makes, to the star of the show.

one-bowl (whole-wheat!) chocolate cake

     "Two thousand thirteen". That phrase still feels foreign on my tongue. Is it really another year? Though, if you think about it, the calendar year is an entirely artificial construct, intangible but also so real to us.
     I baked this cake for a New Year's Eve party I attended. A week or so ago, I was at my aunt's house and saw that she had bought a chocolate cake mix, so (naturally!) I offered to bake her a cake from scratch, so this happened. I couldn't take photos of the inside of the cake, since I was taking it to a party. Sorry!
    There's coffee in both the cake and the frosting. However, I'm not including a recipe for the mocha frosting, because it resulted out of my dumping a ton of cocoa powder into a recipe for coffee icing that had turned grainy and weird. It eventually turned out decently, but I didn't measure anything so can hardly write a recipe for it.

    The chocolate filigree on top is very simple to make. You melt some chocolate (I used chocolate chips, but chopped chocolate would be better for melting) and put it in a pastry bag or a freezer Ziploc bag. Snip off a tiny bit off a corner, and pipe designs onto a piece of parchment paper. Place in the freezer for several minutes to let harden. They look much more difficult than they really are! I had quite a few very impressed people ask me if I had bought them from the store.

     Oh yeah, and the cake's whole wheat too, and fairly healthy. You can hardly taste the health factor, since it's so rich and moist and dark. Even though you can't really taste the coffee in the cake, coffee deepens the flavor and makes it irresistible. Overall, the best chocolate cake I've ever made, not exaggerating at all.
     Anyways, let's all strive to make 2013 a year of happiness and health (tip: start by replacing your normal chocolate cake with this one). Cheers!