Susie Cookies (Chocolate Chip Banana)

I was recently in a theatrical production and rehearsals were scheduled for every night. The music director brought these delicious cookies every rehearsal until opening weekend. They were wildly popular an entire batch would be gone within minutes.
Then she had to go out of town and she graciously shared this recipe with me, and I got the chance to make them myself and bring a batch to my cast during opening weekend. These banana cookies are moist and cake-like, with the added texture of oats, coconut, and (if eaten warm) gooey chocolate chips.

The recipe is pretty straightforward and you can play around with it so you can fine tune these cookies to your liking.

Susie Cookies (thanks to Sue Bardsley)
1 cup softened butter or margarine
¾ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 tsp. Soda
2 ¼ cup all purpose flour
3 medium or 2 large very ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
1 (1 ½) cup chocolate chips
~¾ cup coconut (I use unsweetened coconut)
nuts, if desired
1 to 1 ½ cups quick cook oatmeal

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

2. Beat well the butter and brown sugar. Add the eggs, soda, and vanilla.

3. Add the flour. Mix well, then add the smooshed bananas.



4. Stir in the chocolate chips, coconut, and nuts, if using. Then mix in the oatmeal. (The original recipe says: "I usually don’t measure, I add enough oatmeal so that when I pick up a spoonful of oatmeal and turn over the spoon, the dough doesn’t fall off!")

5. Drop the dough by the tablespoonful on the sheet pan. These cookies didn't spread much, but I would keep them an inch and a half apart.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, until barely brown.

In my case, the dough had a tendency to crawl up the beaters, so keep an eye on it.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Gianduia Mousse Cake

Happy New Year! What better way to start off the new year (and this blog) than with chocolate- and not just any chocolate, Nutella. Gianduia is just the fancy pants Italian word for Nutella, a hazelnut and chocolate paste.

For New Year's events this year, I was headed to a party with an Italian food theme. Instead of bringing a tiramisu, which I figured everyone and his brother would be bringing, I flipped through one of my holiday baking magazines looking for a recipe I could possibly give an Italian twist on. Instead I found an entire spread centered around this Italian-in-origin, sticky stuff.

This cake was delicious, rich, and a huge hit at the party.

Gianduia Mousse Cake (from Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Baking 2009)

You should probably prepare this a day in advance, because it takes a while to bake and at least 6 hours to chill.

Butter
1/2 cup finely crushed vanilla wafers
1/2 finely chopped hazelnuts (filberts)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Hazelnut Butter (recipe below)
8 oz. semisweet/bittersweet chocolate, chopped
8 oz. milk chocolate, chopped
1 cup Nutella
6 eggs
1/2 sugar
1 cup whipping cream
Unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 10-inch (I used 9" I think) springform pan. Double wrap the bottom and sides of pan with foil (or if you're paranoid like me, quadruple wrap.)

2. In a small bowl, combine crushed wafers, chopped hazelnuts, and melted butter. Press into the bottom of the pan.

3. Prepare Hazelnut Butter. In a large sauce pan, combine semisweet and milk chocolate. Set over low heat, stirring to avoid burning, until melted. Remove from heat and stir in Hazelnut Butter and Nutella.



4. In a big old bowl, beat the eggs at high speed until frothy. Gradually add sugar, beating on medium high speed (5-10 minutes) until the mixture is thick, pale and ribbons when you lift the beaters. Dump in your chocolate mixture and stir ever-so-gently to combine.

5. In a medium-small bowl, whip the cream until soft peaks form (they'll curl under themselves when you lift the beaters, rather than standing straight up.) Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. (Here's my folding tip. Plop a dollop of whatever foam you're folding in first, and just stir that in to lighten the mixture. Then add the majority of the foam (in this case whipped cream) and fold that in. Actually, the chocolate mixture was so thick that this didn't really work this time. If you can't fold, figure it out your own damn self.) Pour the batter onto the crust.

6. Place your pan in a bigger roasting pan, put that on the rack in your oven, and pour some hot water into the roasting pan (don't splash!) about halfway up the sides of your foil-wrapped pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Turn off the oven and let the cake sit in the oven for 45 minutes.

7. Remove the pan from the water, allow to cool for 2 hours at room temperature. Run a small, sharp knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Remove the foil (it'll probably have water in it, honestly. Hopefully your springform pan is water tight!) Cover and chill in the fridge for 6-24 hours.

Let stand at room temperature for half an hour before serving, apparently (I didn't do this, I didn't even chill it. Oops.) and remove the sides of the pan so you can cut it. Sprinkle the top with cocoa powder if it's ugly. The top of mine got kind of scorched, so I shaved off the dark spots and sprinkled cocoa powder on it. Problem solved.



Serves 12, but I was able to serve 16.

Hazelnut Butter

1 cup toasted hazelnuts
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Dump your hazelnuts in the food processor, process until pasty. Add the oil, and pulse until combined.

P.S. I personally could not find skinless hazelnuts. I had to buy them in bulk and remove the skins myself. So here's the trick. For every half cup of hazelnuts, boil 1 1/2 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of baking soda. So since you'll need 1 1/2 cups of hazelnuts, you'll need 4 1/2 cups of boiling water. Add your baking soda (6 tablespoons, that is) and your hazelnuts. Boil for 3 minutes, drain, and rinse. The water for some reason will be black, and then turn magenta. Rub the skins off with an old dishtowel. Toast in the oven at about 350 for 10-15 minutes. You'll want to get this done and out of the way before you do anything else.