Butterscotch, cooked sugar with butter,  is always a winner in my book.  There’s just something about sweet, toasty, butteriness that makes it irresistible. In the recipe here, I’ve paired it with crunchy roasted peanuts in a blondie version of a brownie.  And the combination is, well, wow! The cookies are very moist, not too sweet, and–let me warn you–it’s hard to stop eating them.

Peanuts, not really a nut but a legume, are highly nutritious. It wasn’t until George Washington Carver proselytized and popularized peanuts that they became totally accepted by all segments of the American public.  More about peanuts and peanut butter at the end of the recipe.

Peanut Butterscotch Chews

The batter is made quickly in a saucepan. Be sure not to overbake. The cookies must be moist and chewy.

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (stir flour, dip in dry measure to overflowing and sweep off excess; 5 ounces by weight)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

½  cup dry roasted peanuts (2 ½ ounces), chopped medium-fine

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick; 2 ounces) unsalted butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar (7 ounces), light or dark

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Adjust an oven rack to the center position, and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and set aside. Sift the flour with the cinnamon, soda, and salt 3 times; set aside.

Measure the peanuts and then chop with a large chef’s knife until medium fine; set aside.

Melt the butter in a heavy 2- to 3-quart saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the brown sugar and stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 1 minute, until the sugar smells toasty. The sugar and butter will be thick and pasty looking.

Add the heavy cream and raise the heat to medium. Stir occasionally as the mixture comes to the boil. As soon as the boil is reached (the surface is covered with thick bubbles), boil for exactly 1 minute, stirring once or twice.

Remove the pan from the heat and cool the butterscotch until it feels warm, about 10 minutes.

Beat in the egg with the wooden spoon until smooth, then beat in the vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients only until incorporated, then stir in the peanuts. 

Spread the batter evenly in the pan.

Bake about 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with a few wet crumbs sticking to it. Do not overbake. These cookies should be very moist.

Set the pan on a wire rack to cool. The sides of the baked “cake” will be higher than the center.  In about 5 minutes, tamp down the sides of the “cake” with your fingertips to level it with the center. Cool completely and cut into squares.

Store airtight.  These keep well for a few days at room temperature.

Makes 16 cookies.

About Peanut Butter

Back in 1902, soon after George Washington Carver began his historic work on peanuts, Mrs. Rorer, a prolific cookbook author and renowned cooking teacher in the late nineteenth century, printed this method for making peanut butter.

Roast the nuts, shell and blow off the brown skins. When making it in large quantities, it will pay to have a bellows for this purpose, or put the peanuts on a coarse towel, cover them with another towel, rub them gently, then blow off the skins. If you use salt dust them lightly with it and grind at once. Pack the butter into glass jars or tumblers, cover them and keep in a cool place. This may be used plain or diluted with water.

Mrs. Rorer’s peanut butter would separate over time, the oil rising to the top, making it necessary to stir it back into the thick paste underneath. It would be 21 years, 1923, before J. L. Rosefield found a way to keep peanut butter from separating. The process was used commercially by Peter Pan® peanut butter. Ten years later, Mr. Rosefield would market his own brand of peanut butter and call it Skippy®.

Mrs. Rorer didn’t use her peanut butter in cookies. In fact, according to Jean Anderson in The American Century Cookbook (Clarkson Potter 1997), the first recipe to use peanut butter in a cookie didn’t appear until 1915.

This is a pile of dry ingredients for Chocolate Doughnuts passed through a sifter.  It makes an attractive, well-aerated conical mound that will combine easily with the wet ingredients to give you a smooth dough.

It’s rare these days to read recipes that actually require you to sift flour. To be sure, flour gets compacted in bags during shipping, but the prevailing wisdom is that it’s best to thoroughly whisk your measured flour with other dry ingredients instead of sifting them together because sifting doesn’t do as good a job of thoroughly combining them.  This idea is wronghead.

And here’s why.  In order to whisk your dry ingredients together well you have to do it for about 30 seconds.  Some writers even tell you to use the low speed of a hand-held mixer. In that amount of time I can sift my ingredients 3 times and aerate it thoroughly.  Here are some recipes posted previously where, for the best results, I always sift the dry ingredients: Angel Food Cake, Chocolate Doughnuts, Pound Cake, and Spanish Buns.

Sifters have been around for centuries, and though their form has changed over time, they still perform the same functions: Aeration and mixing.

Here’s a photo of my three sifters.

The one on the left is a triple sifter, meaning it has three mesh screens.  It does an excellent job.  The middle sifter has a crank handle attached to an arch-shaped thin metal rod.  I put the dry ingredients in, turn the handle, and it does all the mixing and aerating.  The third sifter holds enough flour for about 1 cup, and I can sift directly into my measuring cups with it.  Some recipes say to do that.

If you don’t own a sifter, please buy one.  They’re not very expensive and they last for years and years.   I’ve used the ones in the photo for over 40 years!

Just why this heavenly, light-textured and spiced sweet cake baked in a sheet pan has this name was clarified by food historian, William Woys Weaver. He says it was called “Spanish” because its concept was derived from a cake made in Latin America. And “buns” because it was cut into squares for serving, not because it was baked as individual buns. Today the recipe is attributed to the Pennsylvannia Dutch.

According to cookbook author Miss Eliza Leslie, the cake was eaten with afternoon tea. I’ve pretty much followed Miss Leslie’s recipe,with the exception that I use dry yeast, an electric mixer, and I’ve updated her method of preparing the batter.

Miss Leslie, whose classic 1851 volume, Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, contains this recipe says “These buns were first introduced by Mrs. Goodfellow; and in her school were always excellently made, nothing being spared that was good, and the use of soda and other alkalis being unknown in the establishment.” I introduced my adaptation of Spanish Buns in Baking in America.  And I found an online version of my adaptation here.

Spanish buns are flavored with spices and rose water, a distillate of rose petals commonly in use in the nineteenth century.  Vanilla didn’t become widely used as a flavoring until late that century.  The batter for Spanish Buns is beaten long and hard to develop the wheat’s gluten.  Miss Leslie used a hickory rod for almost all her batters.  I use a KitchenAid mixer with the flat beater.  Lacking such a mixer, use a sturdy wooden spoon and be prepared for a work out.  For greatest accuracy, I also recommend you weight the flour.

Sometimes the baked cake sinks a bit in the center.  Not to worry.  That’s just the nature of the beast.  Good as Spanish Buns are with afternoon tea or coffee, I also like them at breakfast served with yogurt and fruit.

Spanish Buns

3 cups (12 ounces) sifted unbleached all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons (1/4-ounce package) quick-rise or active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup warm (105-115 degrees) whole milk

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into tablespoon-size pieces

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 whole freshly grated nutmeg (2 teaspoons)

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground mace

1 tablespoon rose water or 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Confectioners’ sugar, if desired

Put 2 cups (8 ounces) of the flour, the yeast, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer.

Add the warm milk and stir to moisten with a rubber spatula. Put the bowl on the mixer stand and attach the flat beater. Beat on medium low speed for 1 minute. Cut the very soft buffer into tablespoon-size pieces.

With the machine running on medium-low, add the butter pieces one at a time, beating until incorporated after each, about 15 to 30 seconds. Then beat for 2 minutes on medium speed.  The batter will climb up the beater and be very elastic.

With the machine on medium speed, gradually add the sugar, beating it in well. Then add the eggs one at a time, beating about 30 seconds after each. The batter will be smooth and creamy, with a texture like whipped cream.

Add the nutmeg,  cinnamon, mace, and the rose water (or vanilla) and beat them in on low speed. Add the remaining 1 cup flour (4 ounces), beat it in on low, then beat on medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes.  The batter is very wet and sticky.

Butter a 13 x 9 x 2-inch metal baking pan well.  Scrape the batter into the pan, and spread level. The pan will be about 1/3 full.

Cover tightly with lightly oiled plastic wrap (oiled side down) or an overturned pan of the same size.

Set the pan in a warm place (80 to 85 degrees) until the batter has doubled in volume and almost reaches the rim of the pan, 1 to 2 hours. The batter should be very light and airy with bubbles on top. Uncover the pan and set it aside while you preheat the oven.

Adjust an oven rack to the lower third position, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 30 minutes, until the top is a rich brown color, it springs back when gently pressed, and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven and set it on a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Cut into squares with a sharp serrated knife, dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired, and serve.

Spanish Buns are best when very fresh.  Store leftovers tightly covered at room temperature and reheat briefly (about 5 minutes) in a preheated 325-degree oven to refresh.

Makes one 13 x 9 inch cake, 12 to 15 servings.

These are very chocolaty doughnuts, and the recipe comes from my book, Baking in America. I received an email from two avid bakers who had baked several yeast breads from the book with great success and then moved on to this recipe.  They said that in their hands the dough became quite firm even before they had added all of the dry ingredients.  Well, the baking wizard needed to get to the bottom of this.

I went back to my original notes and manuscript and found no errors.  So there was only one thing to do: Make the doughnuts again.  The dough turned out exactly as I had described and the doughnuts were light-textured and scrumptious.  I am guessing the problem my baker friends had was because they used too much flour; so I have modified the measurements by providing weights.  You will hear this plea from me often: For greatest accuracy, please weigh your ingredients.

When all of the dry ingredients are stirred into the dough, you will find that the dough is quite wet and  you may think it is not firm enough to work with, but it will be. Chilling the dough makes it firm and exceedingly manageable.

You will need a doughnut cutter about 3 to 3 1/2-inches in diameter with a 3/4-inch hole. Or you can cut the doughnuts with a 3 1/2-inch round cutter and a 1-inch cutter for the holes.  These are cutters I use.

Be sure to use fresh vegetable oil for the deep frying. Peanut oil is my first choice because it has a higher smoking point than most oils.  Grapeseed and safflower oils are good, too.  I don’t use canola oil because it is highly refined.  You will also need a deep fry/candy thermometer or digital probe thermometer to monitor the temperature of the oil.

Chocolate Doughnuts

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (spooned into the cups and leveled; 9 ounces by weight)

2 cups cake flour (spooned into the cups and leveled; 7 ounces by weight)

1/2 cup non-alkalized unsweetened cocoa (I use Hershey’s)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 large eggs

2 large egg yolks

1 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup buttermilk

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 quarts oil for deep frying

Chocolate Glaze

2 ounces (4 squares) unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 ounces (2 squares) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup whole milk

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar (6 ounces), plus more if needed

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Sift both flours, cocoa, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon together three times; set aside.

Here the dry ingredients are in the sifter ready for a third pass through the sifter’s mesh.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla until very smooth.

Add the flour mixture gradually to the cocoa mixture, stirring each addition in very gently with a rubber spatula only until the ingredients are well combined. The dough will be quite soft and wet.

It is important not to beat the batter or the doughnuts will be tough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least1 hour or as long as overnight.

Lightly dust your work surface with flour and scrape the chilled dough onto the flour. Sprinkle with additional flour and gently roll or pat the dough to a 1/2-inch thickness. Check frequently to be sure the dough isn’t sticking to your surface.

With a floured doughnut cutter or two floured round cutters of different sizes, cut out doughnuts and holes; reserve the holes if you wish.

Gently gather the scraps together (including holes if you wish), flour lightly, and repeat the patting and cutting of the dough. You should have 15 to 18 large doughnuts and holes.

Line a large baking sheet with silicone baking pan liner or cooking parchment, and place the doughnuts about 1-inch apart on the pan.

Put the doughnut holes, if using, among the doughnuts. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel, and let the doughnuts rest at room temperature while the oil heats up. If you’re not going to cook the doughnuts within the hour, refrigerate them for up to 3 hours. Bring them to room temperature before frying.

Pour the oil into a heavy 5- to 7-quart pot. A cast-iron Dutch oven or enameled cast-iron pan is ideal. Attach a candy thermometer or digital probe thermometer to the side of the pan and heat the oil to 375 degrees over medium-high heat. This may take 30 to 40 minutes.

Place a large cooling rack over a large baking sheet with a rim and set aside. When the oil is ready, carefully lift one of the doughnuts off its pan and slip it into the hot oil. Cook 4 or 5 doughnuts at  a time, for a total of about 2 minutes, turn them over every 30 seconds or so (wooden chopsticks work well), until the doughnut are puffed, cooked through, and a deep brown color.

Remove them from the fat with a slotted spatula, allowing the excess oil to drain back into the pot. Place the doughnuts on the rack to drain further.

Be sure the temperature of the oil does not drop below 365 degrees during frying, or the doughnuts will absorb too much oil. Return the temperature of the oil to 375 degrees before continuing with the cooking. Fry the doughnut holes last. You can serve the doughnuts warm or wait until they’ve reached room temperature.

Here’s a size comparison between a raw and cooked doughnut.

To make the glaze, melt the chocolates with the butter in a small heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Whisk the mixture until smooth, and stir in the milk and salt. Remove the pan from heat and whisk in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. The glaze should be pourable but not runny. Adjust the consistency with more confectioners’ sugar, if necessary. Dip each doughnut into the glaze to coat one side, invert the doughnut, and set it on a wire rack with its glazed side up. Let stand until the glaze has set.

When you open  a doughnut and look at its texture, you’ll see it is airy and light.

These are best when very fresh. Make them when you know they’ll all be eaten within a few hours.

Makes 15 to 18 large doughnuts.

Photo courtesy of Dorothy Patent

Rancho La Puerta, in Tecate, Mexico, about 40 miles east of San Diego, is recognized as one of the world’s best spas.  The photo shows the dining hall in the background with people eating outside on this sunny, warm day.  Lush, colorful  vegetation greets us on every walking path.

I’ve just returned from spending a week there, teaching cooking classes, eating healthy meals, and generally resting up.  The six-acre organic garden located just outside the cooking school provides the vegetables for the classes.  When the students arrive, we all take a walk in the garden, guided by Salvador, the most passionate gardener I’ve ever met.

Sometimes I’ll change a recipe on the spot if Salvador shows me a vegetable that is plentiful and at its peak.  I had intended to make a celery root soup, but the roots were way too small, so Salvador suggested I use salsify instead.  The flavor of these two roots is entirely different, so we just adjusted the seasonings.

Most of the classes are hands-on, which is why they’re so popular.  The kitchen island easily accommodates 16 cooks, and the gas cook top has about a dozen burners, a large grill and large griddle.  Three ovens handle any baking needs.

For one class, featuring Greek Greens Pie, I demonstrated how to make the pastry with a food processor.  I used water with a tad of cider vinegar as the liquid, and I was amazed to find that practically no one in the class had heard of using vinegar in pie dough as a tenderizer.  Acids inhibit gluten activation, and in an all-butter crust, where butter itself has a water content of about 18 per-cent, it’s important to minimize its effect on gluten.

One student told me it was worth the price of the class just to learn this tidbit.  Lesson for me: don’t assume something I’ve known for decades is common knowledge today.

I also taught classes in gluten-free cooking and baking.  About 20 people who came to the ranch that week had a sensitivity to gluten.  Gluten-free cooking is easy so long as one uses gluten-free grains such as quinoa, millet, and buckwheat, for example.  We made a perfectly delicious tabbouleh substituting quinoa for bulgur.  And two of the students put together a terrific yeasted rosemary focaccia using a gluten-free flour blend.

In the baking class I made gluten-free blueberry muffins, lemon squares, chewy chocolate chip cookies, cream puffs, and a show-stopping chocolate almond torte with chocolate ganache.  Ground nuts are an excellent substitute for flour, and many torte recipes are naturally gluten-free.  One of the students claimed she never baked, but wanted to learn.  After watching me, she said she’d lost her fear, and would make the cream puffs when she got home. I say brava!

What I love about my classes is the camaraderie and excitement the cooks have.  It’s kind of a miracle when groups of people, most of whom don’t know each other, gather together to cook.  In two hours of shared work, they produce a menus of seven or eight dishes, and we all sit down and eat together, commenting on the food, and enjoying each other’s company.  It’s as though we’ve become a family.  And in a way, we have.  

I’m at Rancho La Puerta this week to teach cooking, and one of my classes will be on gluten-free baking.  One of the many things I’ve discovered in my brief exploration of this fascinating subject is the amazing latitude I have in the flour and starch mixtures I use. There are so many gluten-free flours available, where does one begin?

I began with a ready-made all-purpose gluten-free baking flour by Bob’s Red Mill.  It’s got sweet sorghum, fava bean, and garbanzo flours combined with tapioca and potato starch.  I’ve tried it in muffins, crackers, and cookies, and it works like a charm.

I don’t know yet how well it’ll work in cakes and pastries.  If any of you have, please let me know.

A word about measuring.  For greatest accuracy, I strongly advise bakers, especially gluten-free bakers, to weigh flours and starches.  Starches, in particular, like to stick to utensils and can be hard to measure with precision.  And the flours vary tremendously in density and clumpiness.  If you must measure, spoon the flour into dry measuring cups to overflowing and level off with a straightedge.  The baking flour mix in this recipe will measure just fine this way.  It’s when you are making your own mixes that measuring, instead of weighing can give you problems.

In the meantime, here’s a terrific gluten-free blueberry muffin recipe that I’ll bet will please just about anybody.  The muffins are light and tender from butter, sour cream, oil, and eggs.

The muffins freeze well and reheat perfectly in a 325-degree oven for 10 minutes.

Gluten-free Blueberry Muffins

1 cup granulated sugar

2 ½ cups (12 ½ ounces) Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose baking flour

¾ teaspoon xanthan gum

2 ½  teaspoons baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt (or 3/4 teaspoon table salt)

1 ½ cups (7 ½ ounces) fresh blueberries

2 large eggs, at room temperature

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

¼ cup vegetable oil

½ cup full-fat sour cream

½ cup whole milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling on muffin tops

Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Spray a standard size muffin tin, preferably non-stick, with nonstick spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together thoroughly the sugar, flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, and salt.  Add the berries and toss to coat.

In a medium bowl, add the eggs, butter, oil, sour cream, milk, and vanilla.

Whisk to combine and add the lemon zest.

Add to dry ingredients and fold in gently until batter is thoroughly moistened and smooth.  Let stand 5 minutes.

Divide among muffin cups, filling them almost to the top. Sprinkle with the turbinado sugar.

Bake 17 to 19 minutes until golden and muffins feel firm to the touch, rotating pan halfway through baking.

Cool in pan 5 minutes, then prop the muffins on their sides in the cups to cool further. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 12 large muffins. These are great warm with butter.

In the summer, I cook up all sorts of greens and freeze them to use in the winter.  After a quick cleaning, I plunge the greens into a large pot of boiling water for a few minutes to set their color and to cook them.  After draining I swish them around in a large bowl of cold water to stop the cooking. Then, by handfuls, I squeeze the dickens out of them to remove as much water as I can.

I pack them airtight and stash them in my freezer.  I’ll repeat this process many times as different greens make their appearance throughout the summer, and near winter’s end, when I want something green to remind me spring is approaching, I’ll make a Greek Greens Pie.

Versions of this pie differ all over Greece depending on what greens are available and who’s doing the cooking.  And even my pies change from year to year depending on the greens I’m able to get.

You’ll need about 12 ounces of cooked and squeezed greens to make this pie.  When you go to the market to buy greens, you’ll need about 4 pounds of fresh greens to give you this amount.  I only use the leaves and add the tough stems to our compost pile.

For this recipe, I chose black kale (cavolo nero), mustard greens, chard, and spinach. Think of what greens you like to eat, then mix and match.  Mustard greens add a nice sharpness to contrast with the mild spinach and chard.  And black kale has a deep, rich flavor that I welcome any time.

Phyllo is the typical pastry for this pie, but I also like the greens baked in an old-fashioned  flaky American pie dough.  Serve the pie as a main dish with a side salad.  Right now, Romaine, cucumber, celery, and cherry tomatoes, are a good combination.

Greek Greens Pie

Make the pastry first.  You can make it a day or so ahead, if you wish.  And if you are strapped for time, feel free to use refrigerated pie crusts.  You can also blanch the greens a day ahead, squeeze out excess liquid, and refrigerate for a day or two.

Pastry

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ cup cake flour

½ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold vegetable shortening (preferably Earth Balance, available refrigerated)

6 tablespoons ice water

1 ½ teaspoons cider vinegar

Greens

1 bunch black kale (cavolo nero) or other kale

1 bunch mustard greens

1 bunch chard

1 bunch spinach

Cooking and Baking

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if needed

¼ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes, optional

1 large leek, washed well, sliced thin

1 cup sliced scallions

¾ cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese (about 2 ½ ounces)

1 cup crumbled Feta cheese (4 ounces)

½ cup chopped fresh dill

½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

Salt to taste

1 large egg + 1 egg white, lightly beaten

1 large egg yolk + 1 teaspoon water, lightly beaten

For the pastry, measure both flours by spooning into dry measuring cups to overflowing and leveling off (10 ounces total by weight). If making with a food processor, put the flours and salt into the work bowl fitted with the metal blade.  Pulse a few times to combine.  Cut both cold fats into ½-inch cubes and add to the work bowl. Pulse 4 times for 1 full second each.  Combine the ice water and cider vinegar in a 1-cup measure with pouring spout.  Start pulsing very rapidly (fractions of a second each) as you gradually add the liquid through the feed tube.  Pulse about 30 times until dough forms large clumps but does not actually gather into a ball.  Remove dough from processor and place on lightly floured surface.  Squeeze lumps together gently into 1 mass.  For photos, please see Classic Apple Pie.

If making the dough by hand, combine the flours and salt in a large bowl.  Add both fats and cut them into the flour with a pastry blender until the texture of coarse crumbs. Combine the ice water and cider vinegar in a 1-cup measure with pouring spout.  Slowly, while tossing with a fork, add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix until dough gathers into a ball.

Divide the dough in two, one piece slightly larger than the other, form each into a disk, enclose in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days.

For the greens, bring a large pot of unsalted water to the boil. Remove stems from the greens and wash greens well.  Cut greens into largish pieces and keep each type separate.  Add the kale to the pot, cover, and cook 2 minutes.  Add the chard, cover and cook 2 minutes.  Add the mustard greens and spinach, cover and cook 4 minutes.  Drain well and transfer greens to large bowl of cold water.  When cool, drain, and squeeze as much water as you can from the greens.  You should have 12 to 13 ounces of blanched greens.  Chop them finely with a large chef’s knife.

To cook, heat ¼ cup olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the red pepper flakes, if using, and the leek and scallions.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add the chopped greens, and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.  If vegetables seem dry and want to stick to the pan, add small amounts of water as needed.  Take the pan off the heat and cool completely.  Add the cheeses, dill, and parsley.  Taste carefully for salt and add if needed.  Stir in the eggs.

Adjust an oven rack to the lowest position, set a heavy baking sheet on it, and preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

To assemble the pie, roll the larger piece of dough on a lightly floured surface to a 13-inch circle and fit into a 9-inch ovenproof glass pie plate.  Trim excess pastry so it hangs over the edge of the pie plate by ½-inch.  Roll second piece of dough to a 12-inch circle.  Fill pastry shell with the greens, packing it down gently.

Brush edge of pastry with ice water and cover with top crust.  Trim top to match the bottom crust and press to seal.  Fold edge to make a rounded rim, flatten slightly, and score with the back of a knife.  Or just leave the edge plain.  Brush with the egg yolk and water, and make 4 slits in the top of pie.

Bake 20 minutes at 450 degrees.  Reduce the temperature to 400 degrees and bake 40 to 50 minutes more, until crust is nicely browned and pie is cooked through.

Cool 10 to 15 minutes and cut into 8 wedges.  Accompany with a side salad.

Makes 8 servings.

In my Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie post, I made the comment that, good as these cookies are, they left a powdery feeling in my mouth.  I decided to see if baking the dough until the cookies were crunchy—the original Toll-House method—would correct this problem.

After shaping the cookie dough into balls, I flattened them to a thickness of between ¼ and ½ inch.  A 2-ounce ball of dough, when flattened, will measure a bit more than 3 inches in diameter.  I spaced the flattened dough 1- to 2-inches apart on a cookie sheet and baked them at 375 degrees for 13 to 15 minutes, until they were browned all the way through.  When cool, the cookies were deliciously crunchy.

That did the trick.  No one would ever know these cookies are gluten-free.  I am happy to make these anytime.  No apologies necessary.

Most food processor owners don’t know how versatile their machines really are.  Making cakes is something the food processor does extremely well and extremely fast.  In the 1980s, Abby Mandel developed a technique by thinking out of the box.  And an entirely new method of  making cakes was born.

Instead of creaming the butter and sugar with the metal blade and then adding in eggs, the traditional mixer method, she turned everything topsy turvy and processed the eggs and sugar first, then added the butter.  Any other liquid was added next, and finally the flour was blended in with a few very quick pulses.  This method has stood the test of time, and I often use it to great satisfaction.

In my book Food Processor Cooking Quick and Easy, I have several cake recipes, and one of my favorites is Kentucky Chocolate Cake.  It’s a moist chocolate cake baked in a sheet pan and frosted with an ultra creamy and smooth chocolate icing.  I make both the cake and the icing with the food processor.  Here’s how.

Food Processor Kentucky Chocolate Cake

Cake

2 cups sifted cake flour (7 ounces)

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped or broken into coarse pieces

½ cup boiling water

½ cup ice water

½ cup buttermilk

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into 6 pieces

Chocolate Frosting

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

2/3 cup sugar

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into pieces

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs

Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Coat a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan with cooking spray and dust lightly all over with all-purpose flour.  Knock out excess flour.

For the flour, sift more than you need onto a square of waxed paper and spoon lightly into dry measuring cup.  Two cups should weigh 7 ounces.  Put the flour into a medium bowl, add the baking soda and salt, and whisk together thoroughly, about 30 seconds, to combine well and to aerate.

Insert metal blade into the work bowl and add the broken up chocolate.

Pulse 3 times for about 1 second each, then process continuously until chocolate is finely chopped, about 1 minute.

With the machine running, pour boiling water through the feed tube and process 30 seconds.  Scrape work bowl and process a few seconds more.  Mixture should be smooth and chocolate completely dissolved.  If necessary, process a few seconds longer.

With the machine on, add the ice water through the feed tube and process 5 seconds.  Add the buttermilk and process 5 seconds.  Transfer liquid to a 2-cup measure with a pouring spout (scrape it thoroughly out of the work bowl) and let cool completely.

Do not wash the work bowl.  Put the sugar, eggs, and vanilla into the work bowl.

Process for 1 full minute.  Scrape the bowl and add the butter pieces.

Process until smooth, another 1 minute.  Add the chocolate liquid and process 10 seconds.  The batter will be very thin.

Scrape the work bowl well and add dry ingredients on top.

Now here’s the important part.  Pulse 4 times in all, very rapidly, a fraction of a second each, only as long as it takes to say on/off, to incorporate the flour.  There will probably be a few specks of flour sitting on top of the batter and on the sides of the work bowl.  The point is not to over-activate the gluten or the cake will be tough.  So go easy. 

If all the flour has not been incorporated, use the plastic scraper to stir it into the batter.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.  It will level itself.  Let stand on your counter top 5 to 10 minutes to give the flour particles time to absorb the liquid.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed and the edges of the cake pull away slightly from the sides of the pan.  Do not overbake.  Cool the cake in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Run a small sharp knife around the sides of the cake to release, and cover with a wire cooling rack.  Invert the two and lift off the cake pan.  Cover the cake with another wire rack and invert again to cool right side up.

For the frosting, put the chocolate into a small metal bowl and set the bowl into 1-inch of water in a medium-size skillet over medium heat.  Stir occasionally with a rubber spatula as the chocolate melts.  (Be sure no droplets of water accidentally get into the chocolate or it will seize and not melt properly). When the chocolate is completely melted and smooth, remove the bowl from the heat and set the chocolate aside to cool until tepid. 

In a clean work bowl with a clean metal blade, add the sugar, butter, vanilla, and 1 egg and process for 2 minutes, stopping machine 2 or 3 times to scrape the work bowl.  Add the remaining egg and process 30 seconds.  Add the melted chocolate.

Process 30 seconds.  Scrape the work bowl and process a few seconds more.  The frosting should be very smooth and creamy and the sugar should be completely dissolved; taste to make sugar.  Process a few seconds more if necessary. The frosting may be too soft to spread at this point.

Let stand a few minutes for frosting to set and process a few seconds more.  Use the frosting as soon as it is of spreading consistency.

Cover the cake with a serving platter and invert.  Remove wire rack.  Cake is now bottom side up and has lines on it left by the wire cooling rack.  Tear 4 strips of waxed paper about 3 inches wide and about 15 inches long and slide them under the edges of the cake to keep the platter clean as you frost the sides of the cake.  Scrape all of the frosting onto the cake.

Use an offset metal spatula to spread the frosting on the top and sides of the cake, making a thicker layer on top.

Carefully remove waxed paper strips.  Let stand until frosting is set before serving.

I always give my wife the first piece because she loves the corner of the cake with it’s extra frosting.

Makes 12 to 16 servings.

I am very new to gluten-free baking, and it’s not because I’ve developed a sensitivity or intolerance to gluten.  I am a baker, and I have been asked to teach a class on gluten-free baking at Rancho La Puerta next month (April, 2012).  So in the past few weeks I’ve plunged head first into this bewildering and enormous area of possibility.  And a whole new world has opened up for the baking wizard.

But where would I begin?  My first source of information came from Gluten-Free Baking Classics by Annalise G. Roberts (Revised and Expanded Second edition, Surrey Books, Chicago, 2008).  In this book, I found a basic gluten-free brown rice flour mix that works in most baked goods except for breads (the author provides two different formulas for those).

Venturing on, I discovered web sites devoted to gluten-free cooking and baking (glutenfreegirl is excellent) that called for flours made from almonds, hazelnuts, amaranth, millet, garbanzos, fava beans, tapioca, sorghum, white rice, quinoa, buckwheat, corn, and teff, and starches produced from tapioca, potato, arrowroot and corn.  And these were just a start. Because gluten-free flours and starches lack, well, gluten, xanthan or guar gums must be added to certain recipes to help the baked goods set properly and give them the expected texture.

I bought all of these products, turned my kitchen into a baking laboratory, and began experimenting with various blends.  I also found Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Mix, made with garbanzo bean flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, white sorghum flour, and fava bean flour.  Would that work just as well as the blends suggested by the many gluten-free web sites?

The answer to that question is it depends.  Many of these flours have physical and chemical properties and taste profiles that we are only just beginning to figure out.  Gluten-free baking is really in its infancy, and it will take a lot of fiddling and finagling by dedicated bakers to come up with recipes that aren’t just gluten-free versions of gluten-containing recipes, but recipes that are unique because they’re gluten-free.  This is what gluten-free baking should be about.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about gluten-free flours and starches is that they’re all of different densities, which means that for best results you’ll need to weigh them!  The excalmation point means that perhaps the gluten-free movement will  finally rid us of cumbersome cups and that all kitchens will be equipped with a scale.  I can only hope.  If you don’t have a scale, put your measuring cups for dry ingredients on a sheet of waxed paper and spoon the flour or starch into them to overflowing, then sweep off excess.  Starches, in particular, compact readily and are dense, and they like to stick to cups and spoons, so fluff them up with a fork before measuring.

Here is one recipe from my Rancho La Puerta gluten-free baking class, Chocolate Chip Cookies. These are huge (I like my cookies big) and they’re easy to mix up, easy to bake, and they taste great.  Note that my recipe uses only ½ teaspoon baking soda.  This amount is just right.  Too many chocolate chip cookie recipes use too much baking soda, causing the cookies to spread out and become thin instead of staying on the thickish side and having a nice chew. 

Be sure to mix the dough a day or so before baking and refrigerate it.  The sugars take time to dissolve completely and the caramel flavor from the brown sugar needs time to develop.  The brown rice flour mix formula is from Gluten-Free Baking Classics.  Even the Land O’Lakes web site uses it in many of their recipes.

Gluten-free Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups brown rice flour (250 gm)

2/3 cup potato starch (120 gm)

1/3 cup tapioca flour (40 gm)

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar (break up any lumps)

½ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

12 ounces (2 cups) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Whisk together to combine thoroughly the brown rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour.  Measure 2 ¼ cups plus 2 tablespoons of this mixture (12 ¾ ounces) and transfer it to another bowl.  Whisk in the xanthan gum, salt, and baking soda.  You’ll have a few tablespoons of leftover mix.  Save it to flour foods you’ll be frying or for a sauce you’ll thicken.

2. Melt the butter and transfer it to the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add both sugars, attach the flat beater, and beat on medium low speed until smooth and the butter is incorporated into the sugars, about 1 minute.  You shouldn’t see any butter floating around by itself.  Add the eggs and vanilla and beat on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute.

3. While beating on low, gradually add the flour mixture and beat until thoroughly combined.  Scrape the bowl and beater and stir in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon.  Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight or for up to 3 days.

Here’s the chilled dough showing scooped out spots.

4. To bake, adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  You’ll need a large, 14 x 17-inch cookie sheet. Have four sheets of cooking parchment cut to fit the pan ready. Or use silicone baking pan liners or aluminum foil. Divide the dough into 24 portions, 2 ounces each.

Roll each into a ball.  The ball of dough will measure about 1 3/4-inches in diameter.  When baked, the cookies will be about 3 ¼ -inches in diameter.

Place 6 cookies on each sheet of parchment, spacing them well apart, and flattening them slightly.

5. Slide one parchment sheet onto the cookie sheet and place in the oven.  Bake until cookies are pale golden brown and still puffy, and edges have begun to set and look browner than the rest of the cookie but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes.  Rotate the pan halfway through baking.

Cool cookies on the cookie sheet 5 minutes, then transfer them with a wide metal spatula onto wire cooling racks to cool completely.  Store airtight.  If you can’t wait, please try these cookies warm.  They’re fantastic that way.

Makes 24 large cookies.