Bake Around the World, From Home by Elizabeth Alsobrooks

 My New Year's Resolution is to collect and try as many foreign recipes as possible. I started with cookies! Aren't you glad?

I have great sympathy for those of you in lockdown states, but just because you have to stay home doesn’t mean you can’t travel around the world. Years, many years ago I owned a bakery, so baking is my favorite kitchen activity. The last few months I have been baking around the world, from home.

Every holiday season I, like many of you, bake cookies and share them with my neighbors and friends. I have forever made those fun to decorate frosted sugar cookies, but since I retired and followed the sun, I haven’t participated in a cookie making exchange. One of the goodies I missed the most were the pizzelles one of my girlfriends always loved to make at my house because at the time she didn’t have a gas stove. She still used the home-made cookie press her grandfather made and the family brought to the US from Italy. It even bore a family crest. She made both anise and chocolate varieties, one cookie at a time. Stacks and delicious stacks of them!

So, I purchased an electric press (I now have a glass top electric stove) that actually makes 2 cookies at a time. I made both chocolate and anise, some tipped in additional chocolate with chopped pistachio nuts (my hub’s favorites). They were a big hit with friends, the neighbors and my neighborhood watch group. So good, my husband whined that I was giving some away. Here is the link to the recipes I used.

For New Years’, I made French Madeleines. I dipped some in chocolate because my husband actually loves chocolate more than any female I’ve ever met. He’s a self-proclaimed chocoholic. Fine by me! You do need a special pan for this if you want the lovely shell design on one side, but you can find them easily.   Here’s the recipe I used.

Classic French Madeleines Recipe - Baker by Nature

For my husband’s birthday, which is today, actually, I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting.  I wanted to make a Bundt cake for speed and flavor and couldn’t readily find my recipe, so went online to search. The one with best reviews called for a chocolate cake mix and a brownie mix. Really? A mix? scoffed this snobby bakery elitist! Did you know there are recipes for ‘homemade’ box cakes and brownies? Seriously: Homemade Chocolate Cake Mix Recipe | Food Network Kitchen | Food Network

http:/iambaker.net/homemade-brownie-mix/

I also made some Oreshki--Russian Walnut cookies for him to take to work in his lunchbox. This was no mean feat as I had quite a problem finding a walnut cookie press that actually makes ½ a walnut shaped shell cookie, which when stuffed with caramel or some other yummy ingredient is pressed together to make a ‘walnut’ shaped cookie. They are quite popular in Russian, Ukraine and Poland, but I had never had one or personally known anyone to make them. My friend from Czechoslovakia knew what they were but had never had or made them. If you have a gas stovetop, you can easily find an Oreshki press online, but it is much more difficult to find an electric press. Why? They have European plugs. I finally found one on Ebay, and they assured me it had a US plug. Actually, it came with an adapter attached, but it had been wired to adapt to the US outlets. It worked great and I even got one that made 24 nut shells (12 cookies) at once. Russian Walnut Cookies - Momsdish

I made a chocolate variety (I have established why) as well as the traditional sugar cookie type, and honestly think the original tasted best, but hubs liked them both (of course).  The electric press is not as deep as the manual ones for gas stovetop use, so the nuts are not as round an oval as an actual walnut. My husband said they would make great cookies for Easter as they look like eggs--which means he really likes them. He suggested that I could also dip them in . . . you guessed it, chocolate. LOL! Here are the recipes I used for the cookies. Just so you know, you can purchase the Le Leche already made rather than trying to cook unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk (the idea of which was very frightening to me, as I thought they might blow up!).

I don’t JUST bake, or course, and recently ran across a recipe for Machi so that I can use green tea ice cream (found that recipe too!) and make Japanese machi balls! LOVE them! I’ll probably make some in June if not before, as it’s the hottest month of the year here in the desert of AZ. Maybe I’ll share some of my favorite Asian recipes with you sometime!

So, what’s next? How about sending me some delicious cookie recipes from other countries? 

Who doesn’t love a cup of coffee or tea with a cookie while they read?