A do over

Did you carve a pumpkin? We meant to, but the Rouge Vif d'Etampes we bought at the farmers' market over a month ago is still sitting on the stoop. Amazingly, it's also still perfectly firm. So now that Halloween has come and gone and Sally has taken her costume off, I think we'll eat it instead.

I'm thinking I'll cut it into slices, roast it, puree it, and then make another batch of pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I made some the other day, but I gave most of them away, so I think we'll have a do over. I first discovered pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies at my friend Abbie's house sometime in junior high, and I've been a big fan ever since. They're much more moist than plain old chocolate chip cookies, with full cookie flavor but a texture that's almost like a cross between cookies and gingerbread. Last year I discovered that oats make an excellent addition, and I've been making the recipe below ever since.

Happy pumpkin season, everyone.

OATMEAL-PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES

This recipe is adapted slightly from Abbie's original. Any variety of winter squash or pumpkin puree will work fine; I often use butternut. Be sure to use dark chocolate chips—the cookies are sweet enough as is.

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 and 1/3 cups old-fashioned oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 sticks butter, softened

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup pureed pumpkin or squash

1 large egg

1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups dark chocolate chips

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.

In another mixing bowl, cream the butter with the sugars and honey until light and fluffy. Add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla, and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and the chocolate chips and stir until just combined; do not over mix. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Scoop the dough using two spoons into balls; drop the balls onto two un-greased cookie sheets. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until just barely cooked through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Yields 24 cookies.

The good with the bad

I have very, very good news to report. Not only did I recently come into a large inheritance of chocolate chip cookie dough, but even better, I learned to make ice cream with it. There. Now you have it, the news of the day.

In case you can't tell from the picture, the cookie dough I've inherited came in industrial tubs, rescued from a dumpster behind an upscale grocery store in Truro. If that sounds kind of gross, well, it is and it isn't.

They do this every year—chuck out whatever's left in the store come Labor Day—and the fishmonger has learned to dumpster dive before anything starts to melt or de-refrigerate in an unsanitary way. This year, he saved an unopened box of Dove bars, not to mention the cookie dough: a whole case. Until just recently, however, they were safely tucked away in the freezer of his store. Then came cleaning day, and he willed it all to me.

Unfortunately, it seems the good always comes with the bad, and in this case it was accompanied by a trip to the dentist. I have a cavity. This really shouldn't come as a surprise, given the way I feel about sweets, but I'd never had one before. I feel sort of like I did after I got my first speeding ticket, like I wish I could just rewind a few minutes, and wipe the record clean. Not to mention avoid the trip back, for the terrific filling event. Mouths and drills should not go together in my opinion.

As I wallow in this discovery, I have decided it is best to comfort myself in the way I am familiar with. Namely, by eating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and drinking a cup of black coffee. Surely (?), this will bring back the glory days for my teeth.

The ice cream, I should say, didn't come without a bit of trial and error. The first recipe I tried was from Ben & Jerry's, and the base had far too much heavy cream in my opinion, and not nearly enough egg, and simply refused to freeze. It was very stubborn, that recipe. But it didn't matter too much, as all I really needed once I had the instructions for adding the cookie dough (you have to freeze it in chunks first, and then throw it in at the very last minute, according to the ice cream gurus) was a good recipe for vanilla. I learned that from Alice Waters ages ago.

Basically, you just make a nice, thick, eggy custard, let it cool down in the fridge for a bit, and then whip it into a creamy, delightful freeze. It's actually a lot like making the pastry cream for the apple tart I showed you the other day, only you go on to put the whole mess in an ice cream machine. Provided you have that, it's really no fuss at all.

So here's the recipe. I have to go upstairs and brush my teeth.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH ICE CREAM

adapted from Alice Waters, the Art of Simple Food

This recipe uses a lot of eggs, but I have found that for truly excellent ice cream that is the key. Don't worry about wasting the whites: simply save them for a fritatta the next morning. If you whisk one whole egg into 6 egg whites and bake it with some veggies and cheese, no one will know the difference.

If you have unhomogenized milk, use it instead of half and half. Don't shake it up: just pour the creamy part off the top. This will result in a fat content that is almost the same as the half and half you'll find in the store.

Also, Waters calls for a vanilla bean, but I just stir in extract at the end. You can tweak this recipe to make anything—mint, etc.—that's the beauty of it. And the best part is, if you're making homemade cookie dough, you will likely have enough to make a batch of cookies, too. Which means ice cream sandwiches, in my book.

ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups cookie dough
6 eggs
1 and 1/2 cups half and half or unhomogenized whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
vanilla extract
1 and 1/2 cups heavy cream

Cut cookie dough into chunks, pile into a bowl, cover, and put it in the the freezer to harden up.

Separate eggs, saving whites for another project. Whisk yolks just enough to break them up, and set aside. Pour half and half or milk into a heavy bottomed pot along with sugar and salt. Warm over medium heat until steaming and very close to boiling, but don't let it actually begin to roll. Whisk a little of the hot milk into the egg yolks to temper them (in order to warm them up, so they won't cook immediately when they hit the pot and get chunky and not thicken properly), then whisk the egg mixture back into the milk in the pot.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. This can take anywhere from 2 minutes to maybe 10, depending on how hot you let the milk get initially. Just be patient, and if it seems like nothing is happening, gently turn up the heat. When it coats the back of a spoon and has the consistency of custard, remove from heat, stir in heavy cream and a bit of vanilla to taste (maybe a teaspoon or two) and pour into a metal bowl. Chill thoroughly.

Pour the custard into an ice cream maker, leaving room for the cookie dough. (Depending on how much your machine holds, you may want to adjust the ratios of custard to dough.) When the cream is thick and stiff, add the frozen cookie dough chunks. Allow the machine to churn for just a minute or two longer, then transfer the ice cream to the freezer and let it harden a bit more before serving.

Mexican wedding ball cookies

You can call them whatever you want. polvorones, butterballs, sandies, Russian tea cookies, even. We call them Mexican wedding ball cookies, but it isn't about the name.

It's about the texture. It's about the way butter and confectioner's sugar melt together under the weight of your fingers, clumping into thick, sticky crumbs. It's about the way the solid looking ball crumbles against the roof of your mouth, spilling sweet and buttery all at once over your tongue. It's the hint of cinnamon, sprinkled not once but twice.

The cookies remind me of the scraps left on the plate after a large pile of French toast is gone. We always doused our French toast with confectioner's sugar, rather than maple syrup, as kids, and it would form lumps with the butter. When the toast was gone I would scrape my fork across the plate, catching each lingering lump between the prongs, and sweeping it up into one final bite—deliciously, terribly, impossibly sweet.

Mexican wedding ball cookies are like that. To tell the truth, they're hardly more than confectioner's sugar and butter, first beaten then rolled, then baked and rolled again. There's a bit of flour, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a dash of vanilla, and a pinch of salt, but beyond that, they're mainly just butter and sugar. The only catch is to leave time to chill; rolled out warm, they'll never make it off your palms.

MEXICAN WEDDING BALL COOKIES

Makes about 2 dozen

Cream 1 cup butter (room temperature) and 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 2 cups flour. Form into two balls, wrap in plastic, and chill for 1 to 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350. Roll dough into bite sized balls. In a wide, shallow bowl, mix 1 cup confectioner's sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Roll balls in sugar mixture and place on cookie sheet. Bake 15 minutes; remove from oven, let slightly, and roll in sugar mixture again. Let cool and eat, or package up for gifts.

A trade

In theory, and of course in appearance, these cookies are very good. They stack, they are crisp—they tie nicely with a bow. With a cookie cutter on top and left in a friend's mailbox as a surprise, they would be the perfect gift.

I say would because, well, they simply don't taste very good. I made them from a recipe in Cooking Light, which I have to admit I sometimes forget is focused on cutting out the fat. (This cannot ever, I feel I can now say, be a good thing for a cookie.) But they usually do a pretty good job, and I got so sucked in by the idea, the thin, towering stack of crispy vanilla wafers, that I convinced myself they'd be good.

The illusion dissolved last night. I should have known when I didn't lick the bowl; even the batter didn't taste good. I went through the steps anyways, rolling and cutting and rolling again. I baked and cooled them carefully, knowing, I think, all the while that there was no way they'd ever be saved.

The trouble is, I'm still very much in love with the idea. So I figured I'd propose a trade. I'll give you my grandmother's sugar cookie recipe, which—and I know I'm biased, but I think you'll find I'm also entirely correct—really is the best sugar cookie recipe in the world. It is simple, elegant, and easy, and produces cookies so scrumptious they are equally good with or without frosting.

So here you are. If you have any thin, crisp cookies to offer up in exchange, I hope you're willing to share. (I'm thinking in the gingersnap, vanilla-spice vein, but really I'm up for whatever.) Happy cookie baking and gifting.

MRS. CARY'S SUGAR COOKIES

Makes 2 to 3 dozen

(depending how thin you like them, and what size cookie cutters you choose)

Cream 1 stick butter with 1 cup sugar. Add 2 eggs, well beaten, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 teaspoons baking powder, and 2 cups flour. Add dry ingredients to wet, and mix until just combined. Form into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for an hour or several if possible. Roll out (you will need plenty of flour, as the dough starts out very stick), cut into holiday shapes, and bake 8 to 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

If you choose to frost them, I recommend doing with with this basic icing. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a small, heavy bottomed pan, add a dash of cream, and pour in powdered sugar, stirring every few seconds or so, until it reaches the desired consistency. As it cools, you may need to add more cream and stir periodically or it will begin to harden as the butter re-solidifies. Add food coloring and sprinkles if you please; peppermint extract also makes a lovely addition.