cookies

hello people!! i write to you this week with a very exciting post: my first ever bakery crawl!

what’s a bakery crawl you may ask? well for those of you familiar with its drunken cousin, the pub crawl, a bakery crawl functions similarly as an extended time spent hopping around to different bakeries.

on my very first bakery crawl, i visited 10 bakeries. in 1 day. so you better be hungry, because you’re about to watch a whole lot of sweets!

video time! foodstuffs bakery crawl: manhattan

arcade bakery (tribeca) 220 church st, new york, ny 10013, open 8am-4pm mon-fri
- what i bought: seeded laminated baguette, and lemon sugar brioche
maman (tribeca) 211 w broadway, new york, ny 10013, open 7am-6pm mon-fri and 8am-6pm sat, sun
- what i bought: chocolate pistachio croissant
dominique ansel bakery (soho) 189 spring st, new york, ny 10012, open 8am-7pm mon-sat and 9am-7pm sun
- what i bought: dka (dominique’s kouign amann)
mah-ze-dahr (west village) 28 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10011, open 7am-6pm mon-fri and 8am-6pm sat, sun
- what i bought: sadly mah-ze-dahr was closed for a private event but i have tasted their chocolate chip cookie and ice cream before, both delicious!
aux merveilleux de fred (meatpacking) 37 8th ave, new york, ny 10014, open 8am-7:30pm everyday
- what i bought: “the incredible” a speculoos meringue, covered in whipped cream and white chocolate shavings, and “the wonderful” a meringue with chocolate whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings
momofuku milk bar (chelsea) 220 8th ave, new york, ny 10011, open 8am-11pm mon-thurs and 8am-12am fri-sun
- what i bought: b’day cake truffles
sullivan street bakery (chelsea) 236 9th ave, new york, ny 10011, open 7am-4pm mon-fri and 8am-4pm sat, sun
- what i bought: garlic stretchy
breads bakery (union square) 18 east 16th st, new york, ny 10003, open 6:30am-9pm mon-sat and 7:30am-8pm sun
- what i bought: reverse chocolate chip cookie
zucker bakery (east village) 433 east 9th st, new york, ny 10009, open 8am-6pm mon-fri and 9am-7pm sat, sun
- what i bought: yin-yang black and white cookie
supermoon bakehouse (lower east side) 120 rivington st, new york, ny 10002, open 8am-5pm everyday
- what i bought: eggnog cruffin

breads bakery

breads bakery

supermoon bakehouse

aux merveilleux de fred

maman

aux merveilleux de fred

dominique ansel bakery

and in this week’s other stuff:

my jacket from the video

a stellar west village restaurant you need to try, duck fat tots and all

christmas spiriting!!

that’s all friends! have a happy weekend!

In our second week of Bakedby2Kates, we decided on a recipe that would be easy to multiply and deliver yummy results. Unlike the rich marshmallow-oozing brownies of the week prior that left my stomach in need of deflating rehabilitation, these snickerdoodles were the perfect dessert to enjoy without over-indulgence (OK, I did have two…

…or three).

Before I begin delving into the recipe details, let me make an announcement. If you consider yourself a baker or are aspiring to that position of self-identity and enjoy the art of transforming bland grocery store products into the Mona Lisa’s of your everyday sweets: this recipe is for you. If you’re looking for a quick cookie recipe and have not ever heard of Cream of Tartar, I would just steer clear. While the recipe is clean and easy to follow, I am the first to say it is not the quickest cookie baking experience. Yet, the final product of these coffee-infused delights is unforgettable: a sweet and energizing three-bite cookie that takes snickerdoodles to a cinnamon-sugar covered next level.

Although Kate and I didn’t have baking paper to line the cookie sheets and we failed to purchase cornstarch (you can tell our brains were awake at the grocery store), the cookies turned out great! The original recipe yields 30-40 cookies but given our love for sharing alongside the fact that we like big cookies, we doubled the prescription and made 60 cookies. Kate and I looked to the internet to help save us from the cornstarch absence. This website has a great write-up on how you can replace flour at a 3:1 ratio for every tablespoon of cornstarch you’re missing, http://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/constarch-substitutes-00420000013001/. In terms of time, eight minutes seemed to do the trick for each batch. Like the last recipe I followed and posted on here, I cannot be more adamant about the need to follow the recipe! When it calls for both instant and ground coffee, that means they are not interchangeable. Buy both.

While I am not the biggest coffee fiend (unlike Miss Kate Sanford), these cookies were delicious! In general, we feed college students who in general, drink a lot of coffee. These were a huge hit across campus so please scroll your eyes down to the delicious recipe. It could be your next project!

Adapted from the TopWithCinnamon Blog:

Cappuccino Swirl Snickerdoodles
makes 30-40 cookies

10 tbsp (5 oz / 140g) butter
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp (7 oz / 195g) sugar
2 tbsp corn syrup / golden syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 tbsp ricotta
3 tbsp cornstarch *see link for substitutions if necessary
1 3/4 cups (8 oz / 225g) flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp very hot water
3/4 tsp ground coffee

1/2 cup (2 oz / 55g) sugar
3 tbsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in a medium-large sauce pan over a medium heat. Keep cooking the butter, swirling the pan often, until the butter foams up, smells nutty and you can see beige solids in the bottom of the pan. Take it off the heat straight away and stir in the sugar.
Next, stir in the corn syrup and vanilla extract. Leave this mixture to cool whilst you preheat your oven to 340 degrees F (175 degrees F) and line a cookie tray with baking paper.

To the cooled butter mixture, add the egg and egg yolk. Beat them in well, then beat in the ricotta and cornstarch. Add the flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt, then stir together until it just forms a dough. Remove half the dough to a medium bowl.

In a small bowl, dissolve the instant coffee in the very hot water. Add this and the ground coffee to the cookie dough in the bowl, and stir it in until the majority of the dough has turned a beige colour.

In a shallow bowl, combine the 1/4 cup (2 oz / 55g) of sugar and the cinnamon.

Take a slightly heaped teaspoon of the vanilla dough, and a slightly heaped teaspoon of the coffee dough, stick them together and roll into a ball. Roll this in the cinnamon-sugar mixture, then place on the lined cookie tray. Repeat, placing cookie dough balls about 1 1/2” away from each other on the tray, until the tray is full. Flatten the cookie dough so it’s about 1/2″ thick, and bake for 7-9 minutes, when the cookies should be set on top, but still a a little soft in the centre. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. Repeat this whole step until all the dough has been used up.