40 Years in The Dessert is where we talk about pies, cookies, and other sweet treats.
My sweet tooth isn’t that big. My dessert is usually just more of what we had for dinner, and a few weeks ago, I tried my first Skittle ever. Literally, one Skittle. My teeth sunk into it, and I thought, “right, got it, sugar”. If someone told me I was never allowed to eat chocolate, ever again, I would not care. If you told me I could never eat pickles again, I would cry and not get out of bed for two weeks. Anyway.
But sometimes I bake, and here’s why: people LOVE it. People love cookies, pies, cake, cookies. They are endlessly impressed by anything sweet you make yourself at home. And even though I never want any cake (not to sound falsely virtuous – don’t worry, I love bread and mayonnaise and potato chips and chicken skin, and I don’t mind ice cream), everyone else always does. And I’m way too much of a whore for affection, attention, and recognition to ignore how easy baking is. Flour, eggs, sugar, butter – truly a recipe to make people love you, and not in any bullshit way. They will really love you, I promise.
Admittedly, baking can get complicated. And the zillions of recipes online can prove problematic when you’re looking for a recipe that works, so it’s good to have sources. The last few things I’ve baked have come straight from Smitten Kitchen, which is such a good cooking blog and if it’s not bookmarked on your browser, you should do that now. I’ve made her gorgeous peach pie twice now; it’s not that hard and PEOPLE ARE SO IMPRESSED BY IT. Ugh! Baking! It’s extremely effective and emotionally satisfying. “How To Win Friends And Influence People? Baking.” – Andrew Carnegie.
Anyway, apart from good sources, another thing that comes into handy with baking, is instinct. Sure I don’t love sugar, but I do have a basic understanding of rules of deliciousness. And that is how the Ice Cream Sandwiches of this past weekend came about. I love cooking Shabbos dinners, but will rarely provide dessert. I’ll tell someone to bring fruit and be done with it. Sorry, guests!
But my beloved, his big sister, and her… step-mother-in-law, oddly, were coming to dinner! And it’s Shabbos – a day of rest, and treats! So I thought: dessert! I used the Smitten Kitchen chocolate chip cookie recipe for the first time, although I halved it (what’s a girl to do with 20 cookies?), used only brown sugar instead of white and brown, and omitted the nuts (on account of not owning any and wanting to keep it simple).
Future cookies.
I creamed the butter and sugar with a fork, pretty roughly, but it didn’t matter in the end. I pressed the dough balls lightly with a fork, halfway through baking, to make sure the cookie was on the flatter side. I purchased a pint of Starbucks coffee ice cream (my local MET only had the lesser Ben & Jerry’s flavours, and I thought the cookies and coffee would be a good combo), and let it get a touch soft before putting a scoop of it between two (completely cooled, need I say) chocolate chip cookies. I pressed the cookies together, letting the scoop flatten and spread, and presented it to my guests on a plate. They were very impressed, and I felt very loved. Step-mother-in-law was a no-show, FYI.
“You’re not having one?”, asked big-sister-of-boyfriend. Whenever people ask that, I always want to say something hilarious like “oh, I don’t really eat”, or “oh, I’m trying to reduce (such a funny old word for diets, right?)”, but instead, I just said the truth: “eh, I don’t love sweets”. And I had little bowl with a scoop of the ice cream, and I poured very cold milk over the scoop, and ate that with a spoon. I learned to eat ice cream with milk from my little sister Freda, who, I think, saw Cameron Diaz do it in that movie In Her Shoes, although I think she poured the milk straight into the carton of ice cream.
Next time, I think I’ll put the ice cream in the cookies, and then put the sandwiches back in the freezer to harden a little. They can probably hang out in the freezer for a while, in an airtight container. I would have made a spare and wrapped it up for my roommate for when she gets back from London, but I don’t think she likes coffee, and all the cookies got eaten anyway.
(There is no photo of the actual ice cream sandwiches because they were made on Shabbos, and I don’t take photos on Shabbos. But if you close your eyes, there it is.)
This is a kosher for Pesach cake.
Bury The Fork 