Cinnamon Blueberry Tea Cake

If we are Twitter pals, you may recall that a couple weeks ago I tweeted a smattering of frantic SOS-like questions pertaining to the exact whereabouts of a particular lemon and blueberry loaf that I was so sure I had seen and read, then forgotten, then remembered, and ultimately misplaced. I still haven’t found it. It is somewhere, out in the blog-osphere, taunting me. One day I will find it.

The reason for the panic was that I had been talking food (what else?) with my dear friend, Janna, who is a real delight and understands that all cannot be right with the world when one is on the hunt for a recipe. See, I had promised to forward it to her, but then I’d forgotten where I had seen it, and I was trying to appear organized, resourceful and master of my baking domain. Instead, I failed and flailed, but being the excellent friend that she is, Janna sent me a recipe instead. Her mother’s cinnamon loaf recipe, to be exact.

I read it through. It seemed simple enough. It called for soured milk (nothing a spritz of lemon wouldn’t solve) but I happened to have buttermilk. The cinnamon and brown sugar promised an intoxicating aroma, and as Janna put it, “Your whole house will smell sweet. It just takes over!”. Sold.

But there I was, still with the lemon blueberry loaf on my mind, and then it hit me … blueberries and cinnamon. Oh yes. Oh. Yes.  So I whipped up the batter (shockingly runny!) and layered it with the cinnamon sugar, then deftly thwacked the heavy, dark berries into the surface. Into the oven it went. As if by magic, or the delicious psychic-ism of old friends, the phone rang. Who else but Janna?

“I’m making your mom’s cinnamon loaf. ”

“Oooooooh I bet your house smells like my childhood right now!”

“I added blueberries and used buttermilk.”

“Oh. Well, it will still be really good.”

An hour later, the phone call over, the cake emerged, golden, spiced and berries bubbling. I was glad I had baked it in a heart shaped dish — it made me smile. Cooled and cut, dusted with powdered sugar, it was fantastic; simple and homey. It was a far cry from lemon but somehow, thanks to the thoughtfulness of a friend and a dependable recipe, all was right with the world.

Cinnamon Blueberry Tea Cake

adapted from a family recipe  

preheat your oven to 350°

3 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon

1/4 C butter

1 C sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 C flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 C buttermilk

1 C blueberries (fresh or frozen. if frozen, do not thaw)

Grease and flour a standard loaf pan or 8×8 square pan, set aside.

Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl, set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla, mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions. Beat until pale, fluffy and well incorporated.

In a second bowl, combine all dry ingredients.

Pour approximately one 3rd of the dry mixture into the wet mixture, incorporate swiftly without over mixing. Add 1/2 the buttermilk, again, incorporating swiftly. Repeat, alternating with the remaining 2/3 of the dry ingredients and the second 1/2 of the buttermilk. The batter will be quite wet, similar to pancake batter.

Pour a thin layer of the batter into the prepared pan, sprinkle over some of cinnamon sugar mixture. Alternate, making layers until both the batter and the cinnamon sugar are used. Swirl the layers with a knife, chopstick, skewer, etc.

Drop the blueberries, in a single layer all over the surface. Push some of them down into the batter and let others remain on top.

Bake for 1 hour – 1 hour 15 mins. The cake will be done when a toothpick or skewer inserted in its center comes out clean.

Allow to cool 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack, then turn the cake out to cool completely. Once cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Balsamic Potato Salad

I’ve done a lot of whining about the weather on here lately. I apologize. If you are a fellow Vancouverite, you will surely empathize: it’s been wet and grey with only occasional sunny or warm days for months. The grey used to really get to me. It would seep in and make my whole outlook damp and drab. Over time, I started to see the upside to our temperate weather: cherry blossoms in March, misty and bracingly cool mornings, greenery all year round, the wonderful wet earth smell of the surrounding rainforests, the exquisite and diminutive beauty of moss. All these lovely elements are now dear to my heart and make me grateful that we do not live in an area that is often ravaged with wildfire, or parched and bleached by the heat of long and merciless summers.  However, when it is late June and the days remain cool, breezy and wet, one begins to long for sunshine.

Remember summers when you were a child? Through the spring the days would get long and hot, so much so that afternoons in school felt impossibly long. Finally, not a moment too soon, school would adjourn for the year and you could run full tilt into the summer, cartwheeling and cannon-balling into it, launching your whole sweet, happy child-self into months of sunshine and all the luxuries of summer: Summer camps, going to amusement parks and fairs, full days of swimming from mid morning when the fog burned off until nightfall. It always seemed like it would never, could never, end.

Summer memories, like so many of our memories are tied to people, places, smells and tastes. If you were so lucky, as I was, to have a family that gathered regularly when you were growing up, then you might have your own memory slideshow of summer picnics. Whether they were backyard, campsite, lakeside or city park picnics, they were no doubt special and likely drew the regular crowd and the same old (and old fashioned) foods. Growing up, my mother always made the potato salad for picnics and barbecues. It was a classic. Straightforward, dependable, unchanging, always the same minced dill pickle throughout and the same sunny yolked rounds of hard boiled egg on top. It may have been the only potato salad I had ever had until my sister in law joined our clan and introduced another very classic potato salad, but this time it included sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes! Who ever heard of such a thing? Needless to say, it’s delicious and has now been the go-to family picnic salad for many years.

Now that you’re anticipating a recipe for all my family’s epic potato salad recipes let me tell you why the recipe I will share with you here is not my mothers, nor my sister in law’s: mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is to blame. Now, I don’t dislike this creamy condiment, but there is something about the rich, salty, egginess of mayonnaise that just doesn’t jive with hot weather, outdoor dining. Call me crazy. So with all due respect to the mothers, grandmothers, sisters in law, etc. who have a delicious “family secret” potato salad, I share with you here, a potato salad for a new generation, one that, given time, just might someday illicit the same summer picnic nostalgia that the old fashioned mayo, egg and pickle version does in me.

Balsamic Potato Salad

serves 6

1 lb baby white potatoes (or 1 lb of large potatoes, cut into large bite-sized chunks)

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 handful each: green onion tops, fresh mint, flat leaf parsley – chopped

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary

1 small clove fresh garlic – minced

salt and fresh pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes in a large pot. While they cook, chop the herbs and garlic.

When the potatoes are very tender (poke them with a knife to check) drain them into a colander and immediately put the pot back on the hot burner. Turn off the stove. Pour the now drained potatoes back into the hot pot. Add the butter, herbs and garlic. Stir and agitate the potatoes, this will rub their skins off partially and allow the butter to soak in. Continue to stir and gently crush the potatoes. Add the balsamic vinegar and stir until it is fully absorbed. Season with salt and pepper to your liking. Serve hot, room temperature or cold.

Guest Post: this time I’m the guest!

I’m pleased to have a recipe featured today as a guest post on Ups and Downs of a Yoga Mom. Author Beth is off on vacation and needed a little help with her regular Meatless Monday post.  Check out my recipe here and join me in wishing Beth a great vacation!

Buttermilk Cake with Nectarine and Thyme

As much as I love to cook, I also love to bake. I am equal parts thrilled and terrified by how exact a science baking is, but I do enjoy the challenge of the chemistry, tradition and history. It has been thrilling to overcome some of that wariness and experiment with ingredients and common sense to come up with baking recipes. There is certainly a time and place for showy, richly iced and perfectly decorated celebration cakes. Personally I love to make them for birthdays and holidays; I even co-baked my own wedding cake, however, there is also a time and place for very simple, un-fussy baked goods, just a little something sweet to finish off a meal or to have with lunch or tea. This nectarine cake is just that kind of baked good.

Somehow I had never learned/realized that a nectarine is just a bald peach until very recently. I always put nectarines in a more sophisticated category, as if their smooth, deeply coloured skin and the word “nectar” in their name elevated them beyond the fuzzy, less showy peach. Funny how those associations can happen. In the end, it’s just a variety of peach, no better or worse, no more glamourous at all. Nectarines, however, do afford you the reduced effort of just a quick rinse, instead of a thorough rub to remove their fine fur, and I still think, a punchier flavour.

Speaking of flavour, I am a big fan of combining fruit and herbs. I became interested in this idea many years ago making Nigella Lawson’s Rosemary Remembrance Cake that employs a cooked apple, scented with rosemary. Such a gorgeous combination. I also have fond memories of my dad making a delicious peach lavender jam when I was growing up. So last weekend, when the fruit platter was filled with sunny nectarines and the big terra cotta pot of fresh thyme was blooming on the front stoop, I took a chance. A fresh zest of lemon and a thick, tangy pour of buttermilk helped round things out and with very little effort, this buttermilk cake with nectarine and thyme was happily baking away. The reward? A simple, moist, barely sweet cake with the freshness of summer stone fruit and the mild lemony complexity of thyme. All that’s missing is the cup of tea …

Buttermilk Cake with Nectarine and Thyme

preheat the oven to 350 degrees

1/2 cup + 1 tsp sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. almond extract

1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest, minced

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

pinch of salt

1 -1/4 cups buttermilk

2 ripe nectarines, pitted and sliced

pinch of fresh thyme leaves

Butter and flour a 8″x8″ baking dish. Set aside.

Cut the nectarines in half, twisting to release the pit. With the cut side down, slice each of the four halves into 8-10 slices. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until well incorporated. Add the 2 eggs and beat until pale and smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the vanilla, lemon zest and the almond extract.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the egg and butter mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the buttermilk (dry, wet, dry, wet, dry) mixing as little as possible.

The batter will puff almost immediately as the acidic buttermilk reacts with the leavening. Work quickly to transfer the batter into the prepared dish. Insert the nectarine slices into the batter so some of the fruit remains exposed. Sprinkle with thyme leaves and the remaining teaspoon of sugar.

Bake for 50-55 minutes until, puffed, golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Corn and Black Bean Salsa

Here on Feasts for All Seasons we’ve talked before about the transformational nature of food, how it can take you places, and how sometimes all it takes are the colours on a plate, the smell of a forgotten memory or the taste of something to send your mind and senses reeling. Sometimes that ability to move you is sought purely for comfort. A re-creation of a family recipe can take you back to childhood, to happiness, or innocence. If the first time you ate chocolate mousse it was spoon fed to you by the love of your life over whispered conversation and candlelight, it is unlikely that you will ever taste it again without recalling those memories. What a gift that is! Consider for a moment that not only do the things we eat nourish our bodies, they nourish our hearts. They take on meaning and resonance, they serve as markers in time that we can chart our lives and loves and memories by. But smells and tastes don’t always just take us to what we know. Sometimes they can take us to where we have never been.

I have never been south of Wyoming, well, except for Hawai’i. I’m not really a traveler at heart, I prefer the comfort and consistency of home and I have not ventured all that far afield. The beauty of living in a city like Vancouver is that so much of the world is available here, especially in culinary form. Despite my homebody nature, I have a bit of a longing to see Central and South America, meet the people and experience their cultures. Without a doubt, and I think you will agree, cultures are so often defined not just by their borders and languages, but by what their people eat. If we agree on that, and we extrapolate out from that idea, then how could cultures that make something as delicious, simple and fresh as salsa be anything but wonderful? I know, I know, salsa is a generic term that encompasses so many variations and permutations and the Latin world is not the only part of the globe that quickly tosses together ingredients and serves them with multiple dishes. The combinations are endless! But when you combine the sweet acidity of tomatoes with the heat of onion, the fresh floral herbaceous note of cilantro and the zing of a lime you just can’t go wrong. Maybe it’s the colours, or the bright freshness, maybe it’s both the familiarity and exoticness that is exciting, but whether it’s scooped up on a crisp chip or spooned over grilled fish, a good, fresh salsa can take me places. Perhaps one day I’ll take that flight and arrive somewhere warm and far, far away where the people are friendly, the food is bright and fresh and the beer is cold. Until that jet sets down and I step out into that balmy, distant fantasy, I’ll have to settle for what is within arm’s length and make the most of it.

Corn and Black Bean Salsa

8 small or 4 large very ripe tomatoes, chopped finely

1/2 a white onion, minced

3/4 cup corn kernels (fresh is ideal, but frozen will do)

3/4 cup cooked black beans (if using them from a can, rinse them well)

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1 jalapeño or other hot fresh pepper, minced

juice of 1 lime

zest of 1/2 a lime

pinch of salt

Just combine ingredients and serve!

Farro Risotto with Red Pepper and Scallions

Isn’t is astounding how a weekend can slip by so quickly? It seems so unfair, so unjust, that it can be that way. On Friday after work the weekend stretches out before you; endless possibilities, so many ideas and plans. Maybe Friday evening is dinner out, or a quiet night in so you can slowly un-clench from the week and begin to soak in the weekend. By Saturday morning, you’re ready for fun. You rush around, busy and energized: the farmers’ market, lunch with a friend, errands, and you need to get ready for Saturday night. You’re mid-weekend and you don’t even care that it’s half gone! Sunday morning arrives. It’s cozy and slow. Perhaps you sleep in, catch up on some laundry, maybe make, or go out for, a spectacular brunch, but it’s all done in slightly slow motion, like walking in sand. You begin to have to admit to yourself that tomorrow is Monday and it’s back to the usual routine. In an attempt to thwart off the impending week, you choose slow activities, you read, you clean, you take a leisurely stroll. You’re stalling, drawing each moment out so that the weekend can last just a minute or two longer.

The end of the weekend often means slower foods, too. You take time to pour over the farmers’ market finds from Saturday when you were buzzing with optimism. You choose the ingredients more carefully; you dice the peppers into perfect squares, you set the table and sit, it’s a proper meal after all, but all the time you’re just stalling. On a Saturday you could stand by the sink and shovel your dinner in, too hot, too soon, not tasting, because it’s only Saturday and you still have so much to do with your weekend. Not so, Sundays. On Sunday, dinner can be crafted. Suddenly, you’re a chef, an artisan, a scholar of the kitchen and you willingly give in to languishing about or puttering as a roast turns to butter in a low oven over many hours. Or you  stand, lazily stirring, stirring, stirring until a risotto is at its most beautiful, prepared to ooze effortlessly across your plate.

Then you sit. Your plate looks back at you, promising nourishment, if not a temporary distraction from what comes next. Monday stays at bay as you tuck in to Sunday dinner. Maybe you are eating alone, peaceful, serene, contemplative. Perhaps your home’s family is there, the tradition of a Sunday dinner already ingrained, or still developing as a comforting tradition. Or maybe your home is bustling with grandparents, aunts, uncles, kids, dogs, family friends. It may not even be your home, you may be a guest. Whatever your Sunday dinner, take your time. Pause to see the colours on your plate. Smell all the aromas available to you, notice the details. Look around at the people you love and take a snap shot in your mind’s eye of that moment. It will never be here again and no energetic Saturday, nor regimented Monday can change that. Take pause, absorb, be thankful for what you have and let the moment linger. These Sunday dinner moments, they are what life is about.

Farro Risotto with Red Pepper and Scallions

1 cup raw farro

6 cups hot chicken stock

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 bay leaf

1 white onion, finely chopped

1 red bell pepper, seeds removed, chopped small

3 scallions, chopped

1/4 cup whole milk

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

a squeeze of lemon

salt & pepper to taste

Bring 6 cups of chicken stock to a simmer in a saucepan. Once simmering, reduce the heat but keep the stock hot.

In another large, heavy bottomed saucepan or skillet, over medium heat, saute the onions and bay, until the onion is translucent but not browned, about 5 minutes.

Add the farro, stirring to coat it with the onions and oil. Add the red pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes.

Add the first cup of hot stock to the farro. The pan with the farro should be hot enough that the warm stock simmers almost immediately. Cook, stirring occasionally until all the stock is aborbed by the farro, before adding the next cup.

Continue until all the stock has been absorbed and the farro is tender. During cooking, the farro will emit a small amount of starch, thickening it, much like a rice risotto. Thicken it further by adding the parmesan cheese and milk, this will create a creamy sauce in and around the farro and peppers. Season to taste with salt and pepper (the cheese is salty so taste before you add any more ). Finish the dish by stirring in the scallions and squirting in a bit of lemon juice to brighten the flavours. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

Strawberry and rhubarb. Was there ever a more dynamic pairing? Fresh tasting, sweet-tart and synonymous with early summer, it is a favourite at our house. Now, you can cook these two food-friends into a crisp, or a crumble, a buckle or a betty. You can spike your lemonade or iced tea with them, or have them straight up, warm from the garden or cool from the fridge (maybe with a quick dip in something sweet for the rhubarb). Whichever way you  bring them together, it’s glorious.

Possibly one of the most delightful things about this little tart is that it’s really nothing more than a quick jam poured into a cookie crust. No complaints here! Nothing could be easier and if you’re really out of time or energy, buy the crust, pre-made! So before it’s too warm to even think of cranking up the oven and before the strawberries are beyond their current juicy, rubicund perfection whip up one of these simple tarts and sit back, lemonade in hand, while your family and guests ooh and ahh. Feel free to smile smugly, I know I did.

Strawberry and Rhubarb Tart

The two components of this tart, the crumb crust and the jammy filling, can both be made ahead of time and kept separately, refrigerated, for a day or so before bringing them together. I prefer the tart at room temperature, but cold from the fridge would be lovely as well. Vanilla bean ice cream or a cloud of whipped cream makes a delightful accompaniment. 

For the Crumb Crust:

Melt 6 tablespoons of butter. In a large bowl,  add the butter to 1 1/2 cups of crushed graham crackers (from about 2 dozen crackers). Stir well; the mixture will be like damp sand. Press the crumbs into the bottom and up the sides of a 9″ pie pan. Bake the crust until slightly darkened and crisped, at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

For the Fruit Filling:

4 cups strawberries; hulled and quartered

4 cups of rhubarb; chopped

zest of 1/2 a lemon

juice of 1 lemon

3/4 cup sugar

Combine all ingredients in a medium sized, heavy bottomed sauce pan. Cook, over medium heat until the fruit is broken down and has reached a jam-like consistency.* If Pour hot fruit into the warm or cooled crust. Any extra fruit can be kept for up to 2 weeks in a well sealed container in the fridge.

Allow the tart to cool completely before serving or refrigerating.

*You may notice a fine foam atop the fruit. This may be skimmed, but will not affect the flavour or texture of the end product.

Drunken Lemon Lime Marmalade

If you have read any of my previous blog posts you are probably well aware that I love citrus fruits, particularly lemon. Imagine my excitement then, when the May Bon Appetit arrived on my door step and I greedily/nerdily thumbed through only to find this recipe for tiny, gorgeous vanilla bean and lemon panna cotta with lemon marmalade. I admit, I have not yet gotten around to the panna cotta themselves (gelatin makes me nervous!) but I have made the marmalade. Delicious.

Now, after all that gushing, it may seem nuts to hear that I actually have a love/hate relationship with marmalade and it’s only in the last few years that I have considered it a go-to condiment. Because it has been so far off my radar, I never noticed commercially available lemon marmalades and I certainly never considered making one. Now that I have, I doubt I will ever buy it again. What is so exciting about a good basic recipe is that you can re-interpret it as many times and ways as you like and keep yourself quite busy with new ideas. Once I expanded on the original Bon Appetit recipe to make this Drunken version, my mind reeled at the other flavour combinations that I could try: grapefruit, lemon and orange, just lime, etc., etc.,  etc. Then came ideas for other add-ins like other fruits (lemon strawberry!) or herbs (basil! lavender!) even spices (orange with cinnamon and star anise!).

Variation on a theme is what got me to this delicious Drunken Lemon Lime Marmalade. I had lemons, I had limes. I always have gin. As we know, lemon and/or lime with gin is fantastic, though usually ice and tonic water join in on the fun. I didn’t want the gin to take over, but I wanted it to be present, so I cast it in place of the water. The cooking process obviously removes the alcohol but what we are left with is a citrus, sweet, herbal flavour that is as good on ice cream or yogurt as it is on toast. I haven’t tried it on fish yet, but I’m willing to guess that it could work with grilled salmon, maybe even chicken.  Give it a whirl, let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Drunken Lemon Lime Marmalade

adapted from a recipe for Lemon Marmalade in Bon Appetit Magazine, May 2011

6 lemons and 1 lime — rind removed

1 1/4 cups of sugar

3/4 of a cup of juice, from the lemons and lime

1/2 cup of your favourite gin

Peel the lemons and the lime using a vegetable peeler or knife so that you are removing both the zest and the pith.  Once skinned, juice as many of the fruits as needed to get 1 1/4 cups. Set the juice aside. Boil the peel in water in a saucepan for 5 minutes. Drain and repeat 2 more times. After the 3rd boil, remove the peel, let it cool before handling it and then chop it up.

In the same saucepan you boiled the peel in, combine the sugar, reserved juice, and the 1/2 cup of gin. Cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the chopped peel back to the pot. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook until thickened and reduced, about 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly and pour into a sterile jar. Makes 1 pint plus enough to try on some buttered toast.

Islar Cookies

In East Vancouver there is a very small, independent bakery on the famed Commercial Drive called Elizabeth Bakery. It has been there as long as I can remember (at least 20 years) and although its store front is nothing fancy, easy to miss in fact, it faithfully produces many very delicious things, the greatest of all, in my opinion, being the Islar Cookie. The Elizabeth Bakery Islar Cookie is enormous; easily 6 inches across and so rich that it will turn the paper bag you buy it in transparent with butter in a matter of minutes.

But what makes the Islar Cookie so good?

Perhaps it’s the cookie itself: something between a sugar cookie and shortbread – not too sweet, meltingly tender and simple, simple, simple.

Or maybe it’s the generous dollop of apricot jam between the cookies that provides the sweet counterpart to the subtle cookie.

But more than likely it’s the chocolate, in concert with the cookie and the jam, that really sets the whole combination off. Only partially dipped, the dark chocolate adds a depth and interest of flavour, as well as stabilizing the cookies and preventing the sandwich from coming undone.

Now, I certainly make no claims to have successfully reproduced the exact Elizabeth Bakery Islar Cookie. The cookies seen here are a great substitute but they are not the same as the exceptional original. This version is good in a pinch and totally worth making at home, but the exact art and science of the original (as I know it) remains a mystery.

The 2nd Best Islar Cookies

makes 18-24 sandwich cookies depending on the exact thickness you make the cookies and how much dough you eat before you roll it out.

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Filling:

1/2 -3/4 cup your favourite apricot jam

For dipping:

1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips, melted

Prepare 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment on hand, lightly grease them.

In one bowl, stir together the salt, baking powder and flour. Set aside. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until well incorporated. Add the egg and continue to mix until smooth. Add the vanilla and almond extract. Add the flour mixture slowly, mixing well. The dough will be quite stiff.

Dump the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap loosely and form into a ball. Flatten the ball to make a thick disk of dough. Allow to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 325° while the dough chills.

Once 15 minutes has elapsed, roll the cookie dough out to a thickness of 1/8″. Cut out cookies with a 2″ cutter. Place cookies on prepared cookie sheets and “dock” with a skewer or fork.

Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes until golden at the edges. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before making the sandwiches.

To fill them, press a small blob (1/2-3/4 of a teaspoon or so) of jam between the bottoms of 2 cookies. Fill all the cookies before dipping them, one at a time, in the melted chocolate. To get the crescent of chocolate on just part of the cookie, I dipped it straight down into the chocolate (melted in a shallow bowl) and rocked the cookie back and forth along it’s side to get a curved coating along one edge, but you could dip as much or as little as you like.

Allow the chocolate to cool and harden before stacking or storing. These are even better the second day, provided you can keep your hands off of them and because they are  sturdy and crowd pleasing, they’d make a great dessert for a picnic or barbecue.  Enjoy!