Karin's Espresso Shortbread

I've had dreams about this cookie.  I woke up drooling and hungry.  I'm in a cooking club with some ultra hip foodie lovers.  We meet once a month with a specific theme, and we discuss food and we eat.  We've had some absolutely delicious, high quality, foods over these past few years.  For the first few years in December, we would meet to exchange cookies.  Karin made "Coffee-spice and Crystalized Ginger shortbread" from Epicurious.  She tweaked the recipe a bit, switched out the coffee and made it espresso, and developed a bold cookie. It's FULL of a strong coffee flavor, NOT sweet but SPICY, with great crumbly texture, and beautiful powdered sugar drizzle.  These cookies need to be enjoyed alone on a rainy day.  (These cookies are NOT for sharing!!)  Get a small plate, a cup of coffee, a book or a newspaper (put your phone down for a minute), and enjoy a break.  Think happy thoughts, eat spicy cookies, drink strong coffee, listen to the rain.  Everyone needs an indulgence from time to time.

Karin's Espresso Shortbread

adapted from Coffee-spice and Crystalized Ginger shortbread by Epicurious.com

Ingredients
2 cups flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 Tablespoons instant espresso
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup, two sticks butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes, chilled
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons water (maybe more)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
OPTIONAL: 6 tablespoons crystallized ginger

1.  Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2.  Add flour, brown sugar, espresso, ginger, cardamon and salt into a food processor for 5 seconds.  Scatter butter around the top of the dry ingredients and pulse until most clumps begin to form.  (this dough will be very crumbly...its OK, do not panic!)
3.  Pour crumbs onto a cutting board, and use clean dry hands to form the dough into a ball.   (The dough may still seem crumbly at this point, again, that's okay....short bread is supposed to be like that.)  Divide the dough into two equal parts, and put each part into a 9 inch diameter tart pans with a removable bottom.  Press dough firmly into each tart pan.
4.  Bake for 25 minutes, rotate pans and positions in the oven, and continue to bake for another 20 minutes or until the cookies are a dark golden brown, and have a SLIGHTLY soft center.  Remove from oven and cut each warm shortbread into 12 wedges.  Let cool completely.
5.  Make glaze by combining powdered sugar, water and vanilla.  Either use a off-set spatula to spread the glaze on top of the shortbread, or use a spoon or fork to drizzle the glaze over the top of the shortbread.  ("It looks like spiderwebs"-Jett, age 3).  Let glaze set until solid, about one hour.
OPTIONAL: chop the crystallized ginger and sprinkle on top of glazed shortbread, before the glaze has set.

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

I could probably do a blog entirely devoted to cookies.  They are my favorite thing to bake. These soft pumpkin cookies, a recipe from Cooks.com, are a perfect Fall treat.  They are classic and simple to make, I usually double the recipe, and use one whole can of pumpkin.  I also prefer Libby's canned pumpkin.  I've tried the others, it's not the same.  After making these Soft Pumpkin Cookies, I brought them to a tea and cookies party.  And, one of my friends, Louise, a champion baker, proclaimed.  "These cookies the best pumpkin cookie I've ever had!"  But, if that didn't validate them enough, I gave them to my kids.  Brutally honest cookie lovers.  My youngest son, DEVOURED these cookies, the oldest one said, "these are better than I thought they'd be", and my daughter looked at one and said, "I only eat cereal." 

Soft Pumpkin Cookies
from Cooks.com

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1/2 cup butter (one stick), at room temperature

1 cup canned pureed pumpkin

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line un-rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

2.  In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.  Gently combine with a whisk to aerate the flour mixture, and evenly distribute the spices throughout the dry ingredients.

3.  Add the butter and sugar to the bowl of an electric mixer, beat until mixture is fluffy.  Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla, and continue to beat until mixture is well combined.  Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.  Add flour mixture to butter-pumpkin mixture, one heaping cup at a time, beating well after each addition.

4.  Drop heaping tablespoons of cookie dough onto prepared baking sheets.  Bake one tray at a time, for 15-18 minutes.  Let cool on tray for two minutes then let completely cool on cookie racks.

5.  Make Glaze, and drizzle onto baked and cooled cookies.

Glaze

2 cups sifted powdered sugar

3 Tablespoons milk

1 Tablespoon melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all Glaze ingredients into a small bowl, mix until glaze is smooth.

Use a spoon to drizzle glaze over cookies.

Creamy Tomato Soup

Creamy Tomato Soup

Fall is about family, giving thanks, love, warmth and comfort food. This soup is full of flavor, and full of all the wonders of fall. I recommend eating this soup on a rainy day.

This soup does contain bacon, and chicken broth. Two tablespoons of olive oil, and vegetable broth can be easily substituted to make this soup vegan. The only "thing" about this soup is that it uses every pan in your kitchen, plus the blender!! So, be ready for some dishes, but it's totally worth it!!

Creamy Tomato Soup with Foccacia

• 4 pieces of thick cut bacon
• 1 small-medium onion, or 1/2 large onion, chopped fine
• 60 ounces canned diced tomatoes, drained
• 2 cups chicken broth (16 ounces, homemade is best)
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Garnishes: chopped cooked bacon, cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, sour cream, basil, or croutons.

1. In a large heavy saucepan over medium high heat, cook the bacon, careful not to burn the bacon.  When done, remove bacon from pan, and set aside to drain.  DO NOT POUR out bacon fat from pan.  Immediately add onion to bacon fat, and saute until onion is translucent and cooked, scraping up all the browned bits.
2. Add drained tomatoes to onions.  Saute until the tomatoes start to caramelize, and begin to break down.  Add in chicken broth, and season with salt, pepper and sugar.  Let simmer for about 20 minutes, until mixture is thick, and tomatoes have broken down further.  Turn off heat, and let soup cool slightly.  Use the simmer time to chop up the bacon that you cooked earlier.  
3. 1-2 cups at a time, puree soup in a blender.  The soup will be hot, therefore the steam from the soup will create pressure in the blender.  IF you have too much soup in the blender, the blender will explode open, and you will be covered in hot soup.  This is not fun, this is painful and dangerous.  SO, 1-2 cups of soup, in the blender.  Puree until smooth, and then strain into another large saucepan.
4. Return soup to a simmer, stir in basil and heavy cream.  Do not let soup boil.
5. Pour into soup bowls.  Serve with crusty bread, or grilled cheese sandwiches.  Garnish and serve!