Adventures in cookie-baking

More baking! On Saturday night, a few of us baked low-fat oatmeal cookies from my friend's massive Good Housekeeping cookbook, and last night, I baked Italian almond cookies with three of my friends from Italian and Art History class. Both batches turned out great.

We altered the recipe of the oatmeal cookies a bit, since they were oatmeal raisin and we didn't have raisins. We also added cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg to the recipe. We threw in a bag of peanut M&Ms, but there were so few of them and so many cookies that half of the cookies were M&M-less. Here's the recipe, with alterations:

Low-Fat Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• Nonstick cooking spray
• 1/2 cup(s) (1 stick) light corn-oil spread (56 to 60 percent fat)
• 3/4 cup(s) packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup(s) sugar
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoon(s) vanilla extract
• 2 cup(s) all-purpose flour
• 1 cup(s) quick-cooking oats
• 1 teaspoon(s) baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch of nutmeg
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray 2 large cookie sheets with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat corn-oil spread, brown sugar, and sugar until combined. Increase speed to high; beat until light and fluffy.
3. Add egg whites, egg, and vanilla extract; beat until smooth.
4. With spoon, stir in flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt until combined.
5. Drop dough by level tablespoons, about 2 inches apart, on cookie sheets. Place cookie sheets on 2 oven racks. Bake cookies 10 to 12 minutes until golden, rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower racks halfway through baking time. With pancake turner, remove cookies to wire racks to cool.
6. Repeat until all batter is used. Store cookies in tightly covered containers.

Photos are from my camera phone, not the best quality, but they still make the cookies look yummy! We made several small cookies, plus one big cookie-cake for my friend's housemates.




Even better, though, were the cookies we baked last night. We had originally wanted to bake tarallucci, sort of Italian sugar cookies, from a recipe taken from a bag of tarallucci from an Italian imports store. Unfortunately, though, since the recipe was in Italian, it called for a specific type of flour (farina 00) made in Italy, but not common here. We didn't want to try the recipe with all-purpose flour since it called for 200g - about 5 1/2 cups of flour!

Instead, we looked up Italian cookie recipes, and found this one for almond cookies. These cookies are made with no flour - just almonds! They were soft when they came out of the oven, but soon turned crispy, and would be great with a glass of milk or a cup of coffee. We actually halved the recipe, since we didn't have enough almonds, so the cookies pictured were our whole batch. It was the perfect amount and they were delicious! Here's the recipe with its original proportions, before we halved it:


Italian Almond Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups blanched whole almonds (about 12 ounces), plus 15 for garnishing
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation

Arrange racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat to 350°F. Lightly oil 2 large baking sheets, then line with parchment paper.

In food processor, combine 2 1/4 cups almonds and 1/3 cup sugar. Process until finely ground, scraping down sides once or twice. Set aside.

In electric mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat egg whites and salt at high speed until soft peaks form. Reduce speed to medium and gradually sprinkle in remaining 1/3 cup sugar. Return speed to high and beat mixture until stiff, shiny peaks form. Gently fold in ground almond mixture and almond and vanilla extracts.

Roll mixture into 1-inch balls, place 2 inches apart on baking sheets, and flatten slightly. Top each with an almond. Bake until cookies are golden, switching positions of pans halfway through, about 25 minutes. Cool on sheets 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Cookies keep, wrapped, several days, or frozen, several weeks. Recrisp in warm oven.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

And, to top it all off, this cookie recipe came with a written legend on epicurious.com!

Amaretti

According to legend, in the early 1700s, a Milanese bishop made a surprise visit to the town of Saronno in Lombardy. A young couple paid tribute to the bishop by welcoming him with their unique homemade cookies, made from crushed apricot kernels and almonds, egg whites, and sugar. The bishop so loved the cookies that he blessed the couple, and the recipe became a local favorite.

Today, bakeries throughout the region, and in Italian communities around the world, carry amaretti di Saronno, but it's worth the (small) effort to make them yourself. The recipe is simple, and fresh from the oven, they have a crisp-yet-tender texture that's beyond compare.

August: Osage County

Yesterday I went to see August: Osage County with the drama department. It won the Tony Award for Best Play last year, so I've been wanting to see it for a while, but hadn't gotten the
chance, so I was happy I could tag along on the group trip. The play was fantastic. It's a dark comedy, it's three acts and runs for 3 hours and 20 minutes, including two 10-minute intermissions. Wikipedia describes it as dealing with "such issues as drug abuse,alcoholism, suicide, death, family dysfunction, sexual harassment, pedophilia, aging, generational change, racism, incest, infidelity, and ultimately love."

So yeah, not exactly light stuff, but for such dark subject matter, it was surprisingly funny, and for such a long play, it moved very well. It didn't drag at all, and I became so into the characters that I wanted to keep watching their (albeit quite crappy) lives. The actors were fabulous, and the set was outstanding. It was a three-story, open-faced house, like a gigantic dollhouse, and the ground floor extended further than the rest of the house onto the front part of the stage. It was so intricate and detailed that we just wanted to walk around the stage exploring the set! If you get a chance, I would definitely recommend seeing this show - even if it takes up a good part of the day. Despite the dark subject matter, it's an interesting commentary on family life and society, and won't ruin your day, I promise.

At the Observatory

Tonight I went to the campus observatory with three friends, one of whom is minoring in Astronomy. I took an intro Astronomy class last spring semester, but never made it up to the observatory until tonight. They have open nights on Wednesdays from 9pm-11pm, and since it was a clear night and not too chilly, we decided to take a study break and go see some stars.

Just a little history for you: Astronomy is one of the oldest departments at Vassar. The first hired professor of Vassar College, Maria Mitchell, was already an accomplished astronomer when Vassar opened in 1861. She even has a comet named after her - in 1847 she discovered the "telescopic comet," a comet too distant to be seen with the naked eye. The old observatory, also called the Maria Mitchell observatory, was the first building completed on Vassar campus after Main Building, and was renovated to be equipped with classrooms after a new observatory was built. (Click on the link, the building is really pretty.) The first class I ever went to at Vassar was actually in that building! Needless to say, it was high time I made my way up to the new observatory to see some stars.

Unfortunately, tonight the 32-inch telescope was out of commission due to some technical issues, so we looked at stars through the 8-inch telescope. (That's the diameter of the lens...it's okay, I didn't know either.) The coolest thing we saw was Saturn and its rings. Yes, its rings! It was amazing. I googled an image of Saturn through a telescope, and this is pretty close to what we saw. You could actually see the band of light around the planet. It looked like one of those glow-in-the-dark planet shapes kids stick on their ceilings.


We also looked at a cluster of stars almost invisible to the naked eye, which was pretty cool too. We're planning to go back on another clear Wednesday night in hopes that we can look through the big 32-inch telescope. And we might even be able to look at the moon, depending on where it is in the sky.

Banana Bread for Breakfast

For Easter, I tried a whole wheat banana bread recipe I saw on NYTimes.com. It turned out really well - not too sweet, but very substantial and satisfying. I changed the recipe slightly, using two cups of whole wheat flour instead of one cup whole wheat and one cup all-purpose white flour. As a frosting, I used strained yogurt, which ends up tasting like a cream cheese frosting, that my mom has been making for years. I put fat-free yogurt in a cheesecloth for about a day to strain all of the liquid out, mixed it with maple syrup until it was sufficiently sweet, and then added two drops of red food coloring to make it pink, for Easter. It made the perfect breakfast on Easter morning!




Here's the recipe with my slight alterations:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1/2 cup raw brown (turbinado) sugar or packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup plain fat-free yogurt

1 cup mashed bananas (2 very ripe bananas)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with a rack in the middle. Spray a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan with pan spray, and line the bottom with parchment. Spray the parchment.

2. Sift together the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.

3. In a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the eggs and sugar until thick; they should "ribbon" when lifted with a spatula, five to eight minutes. Beat in the oil, the yogurt or buttermilk, bananas and vanilla.

4. At low speed, beat in the flour in three separate additions. Fold in the nuts.

5. Scrape into the loaf pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the bread is firm and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Yield: One 9 x 5-inch loaf (about 15 slices)

Advance preparation: The bread freezes well if wrapped air-tight. It will keep for several days, but put it in the refrigerator after three days.

Easter in Philadelphia

I went to Philadelphia with my parents for Easter weekend to visit family friends who live there. On Saturday, we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the Cézanne and Beyond exhibit. It featured many of Cézanne's major works, and works by other artists who were directly influenced by him, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Jasper Johns. Afterward we visited the American wing and the European wing to see the Impressionist works. Here are some of my favorite works that we saw:

A Woman and a Girl Driving, Mary Cassatt, 1881

The Large Bathers, Renoir, 1884-87

The Grands Boulevards, Renoir, 1875

Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, Degas, 1878-81

There were also flowers and trees in bloom on the street where our friends live...although it was chilly and a bit windy on Easter Sunday, the sun was out and the flowers were beautiful!

Postcards at the Met

Today I visited the exhibit "Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard" at the Met Museum. I love postcards in general, and have a box full of them that people have sent me over the years (about half are from Alexandra, who I've known since kindergarten). The exhibit was a display of about 9,000 postcards from American photographer Walker Evans' personal collection. The picture postcard, which the exhibit asserts is an expression of American realism, significantly influenced Evans' photography. It was fascinating to see postcards from the first few decades of the 20th century from all over America, some with messages to Evans scrawled on them. Most of them were produced before color printing, so they were colored in by hand, and the results are very vibrant, unrealistic colors that jump out, even after decades.

There were many amazing postcards of turn-of-the-century New York, and it was fun to see familiar landmarks and intersections as they were 100 years ago.

I thought this postcard was hilarious, so my friend Lael and I managed to sneak a picture of it on her phone before leaving the exhibit.

Many of the postcards were of small-town America - you can see how they influenced Evans' photography. Below is one of his photographs that he printed on postcard paper in the mid-1930s.

Spring is coming, it is, it is!

Even though it snowed yesterday, the sun was shining today, and spring is on its way...it has to be!

These are some pretty blue and purple flowers I saw around campus this past week - signs that spring, stubborn as it may be, is on the horizon. (I took these photos with my phone, so apologies if they aren't the best quality.)

Happy Pesach!

I may be only half-Jewish, but I can still celebrate Passover! I'm going to the Vassar Jewish Union's seder tonight with a friend, and I'm excited because I haven't been to a seder in years. I really hope they have matzoh ball soup! If you need a refresher on the Passover symbols present on the seder table, watch this great video someone sent me:

Kelli O'Hara master class

Sorry I haven't been writing much - there hasn't been much to write about! Spring hasn't quite decided whether or not it's ready to come out and play (high of 46 today with rain and snow showers...) but yesterday was a very exciting day. Kelli O'Hara, a fabulous Broadway performer and also a very great person, came to Vassar to do a performance and master class! She starred in Light in the Piazza and South Pacific, so you might know her from either of those shows, among others. She's a very sweet, open person and has a beautiful voice. And she's six months pregnant!

She began the event by performing for 40 minutes, about 6 of her favorite songs, including one from each of the shows I mentioned above, and one that her friends, two songwriters, had written just for her. It was a hilarious song about a country singer who wants to be an opera star (O'Hara herself grew up in Oklahoma and sang country music until she went to college and studied opera, after which she moved to New York and began doing musical theater). She explained to the audience why she chose each song and performed them all flawlessly - it was so surreal to see a professional Broadway performer on a stage in the music building that I've sung on many times myself.

After the performance, she conducted a master class in which she worked with several students from the music department on theater songs they had prepared. She worked to break them of habits like flailing their arms or making fists while singing, and emphasized the importance of motivation in a song. She was very funny and kept the mood light and the audience entertained throughout. I couldn't stay for all of the students' songs, but I stayed for most. It was such a treat to see her live at Vassar!

This is South Pacific performing at the 2008 Tony Awards - O'Hara doesn't come in until about halfway through, but the whole clip is great!