Tis the Season to be Baking!

Here's a recipe for one of my favorite childhood cookies. These cookies bring back many memories...when I was really young, my mom would bake them and let me dip the cookie in chocolate and then nuts.  Even with that limited chore, I would make a mess! But it is so much fun for kids.

These cookies are not too large, so folks always have room for at least one! Starting in mid-December we serve Christmas cookies as our third course for breakfast at The Artist's Inn and Gallery.

Walnut Acorn Cookies

They will last for several weeks if stored in an air-tight container in a cool area. 

1 cup soft butter or margarine

3/4 brown sugar

2 3/4 cups sifted flour

1/2 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts

16. oz. package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream butter, add sugar and beat til fluffy.  Sift four with soda and blend into butter mixture.  Add vanilla and 3/4 cup of the nuts.  Shape cookies by pressing dough into a dessert spoon with fingertips.  Push dough from spoon with flat side down on ungreased sheet or silpat.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool.  Melt chocolate, cool slightly.  Dip large end of “acorn” cookie in chocolate and then in the chopped nuts.  Makes six dozen.

Just in time for Valentine's Day..

What would winter be like without chocolate?  Or spring, summer or fall?  We'll be serving these Ganache Filled Brown Sugar Bars at the inn all month. The recipe first appeared in the1995 edition of Food and Wine.  We hope you enjoy them here....or at home!

Ganache Filled Brown Sugar Bars

1/2 cup heavy cream1/2 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped1 3/4 cup flour

1/4 t salt2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature1 2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar2 eggs, room temperature1 1/2 t vanilla

1)      Boil the cream over medium heat.  In a food processor, finely grind the chocolate.  With the machine on, add the hot cream and process until smooth. Scrape the ganache into a bowl and let stand until firm, 30 minutes to an hour.

2)      Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350.  Lightly butter a 10 by 15 inch baking pan.  Line the pan with wax paper; butter and flour the paper.

3)      Whisk the flour with the salt.  In a large bowl using an electric mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar at medium speed for three minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Beat in the vanilla. At low speed beat in the flour in three additions; the batter will be fairly stiff.  Spread the batter in the pan.  Bake for 18 – 20 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

4)      Cover the baking pan with a large wire rack and invert.  Remove the pan and peel off the wax paper.  Invert the cake onto a large cutting board.  Using a serrated knife, halve the cake crosswise.  Spread the ganache evenly over one f the cake halves, leaving a ¼ inch border.  Top with the other cake half.  Cover and refrigerate until the ganache is set – at least two hours. 

5)      Cut into bars.

Chocolate for Dinner

We received a dinner invitation from friends who are local innkeepers at The Smithton Inn in Ephrata. The theme was chocolate. Well, I thought, I’ll just whip up a batch of double chocolate macadamia cookies. Would that be enough for dinner? I certainly could survive for one night on chocolate and wine, but I’m married to a salad lover.

So I thought back to a wonderful dinner I had at Carrs (a great restaurant in downtown Lancaster) – it was part of our Chocolate Tour. Tim had served a unique white chocolate dressing on the salad. I know what you’re thinking – my brain also struggled to marry the tastes, but it was delicious.

And so I set out looking for recipes on the internet. I found plenty, but several called for ingredients that I didn’t have – chocolate extract, walnut oil, raspberry vinegar......and so the search went on. I came upon Recipe Zaar’s Chocolate Balsamic Salad Dressing.


Recipe Zaar is one of my favorite sites and allows you to adjust the measurements from metric to US and increase the amounts.

Three ingredients meant that the one hour I had to dress, make a salad, greet guests at the inn, and drive to the party should be plenty of time.

I changed the salad to include the ingredients I had on hand: red leaf and romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, shaved asiago cheese, toasted almonds and vanilla poached pears. To be honest, I think greens with a little more bite would complement the dressing better, but I had to work with what was in my pantry.

It’s best to serve this dressing slightly warm – a lesson I learned on a cold night when it began to congeal! A slight reheat did the trick. You also shouldn’t refrigerate this dressing.

Everyone loved it, and the salad was a nice complement to the mole chicken and Cincinnati chili that were also on the menu. Oh, yes, I took the cookies too – just in case the other three desserts wouldn’t be enough – after all, you just can’t have too much chocolate for dinner.

So the next time you are looking for something unusual, try my newest salad and dressing combination. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the salad....we ate it!

Chocolate Balsamic Dressing (Serves 14)

1 1/3 cups Balsamic Vinegar
10 5/8 ounces sugar
3 squares dark chocolate

Melt over low heat and stir occasionally. Serve warm.

It’s Snowing – Time to Head to the Kitchen!

I don’t know why, but something about a big winter storm makes me want to cocoon where it’s safe and warm. Something deep inside tells me that I need not only to stay safe, but to produce nourishment to weather the coming storm. And so I always seem to end up in the kitchen.

It’s been a long tradition that my mom would make cookies or cake (preferably chocolate) on a snow day from school.
I grew up in a Cleveland suburb, and you would think that we had plenty of snow days – not so! But the few we had seemed better than a gift at Christmas.

Years later I worked in downtown Cleveland. There were times when the wind came off Lake Erie so strong that you had to grab onto the ropes on the sides of buildings so that you didn’t fall – especially on icy days. Of course, we were young and would never wear hats or boots – we had to look good!

During one blizzard, my good friend and roommate, Paula, and I managed to get home after a long bus ride. We both headed to the kitchen where, typical twenty-somethings, we had just enough provisions to make one chocolate cake. And we proceeded to eat the entire thing for dinner.

Of course, as I grew older I became much more sensible. I now pull up my hood when I feel any little chill. I now own all sorts of sensible boots. And, being sensible, I first make some kind of soup or stew....then I make something with chocolate.

Some traditions are destined for eternity.

Here’s a great recipe to keep you busy during the next storm. Our snow is just starting and they are predicting 12 – 18 inches. WOOHOO.

I think that half the fun of a big snow is the anticipation. You can almost smell the snow in the air....or maybe that’s chocolate.....

This is a recipe we submitted from The Artist's Inn for Cinnamon Mornings and Chocolate Dreams by Pamela Lanier. Printed in 2003, it is probably still available from Lanier Publishing.

Chocolate Melt-Away Cookies

The thinner you can roll the dough, the better these cookies will taste.

3/4 cup soft butter
2 1/3 cup unbleached flour
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 6 oz. package (1 cup) semisweet chocolate pieces – preferably Wilbur
Powdered sugar

In a large mixer bowl, beat butter. Add half of the flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and almond extract. Beat thoroughly. Beat in remaining flour. Divide dough in half. Cover, chill 1 hour or until firm. On a lightly floured surface roll half of the dough 1/8 inch thick. Keep remaining dough in fridge until ready to use. Cut into shapes with 1 ½ to 2” cookie cutter - stars, rounds, hearts. Place on ungreased cookie sheets (or use silpats). With small cookie cutter, cut out centers from half of the unbaked cookies. Bake in a 375 degree oven about 7 minutes or until edges are firm and bottoms are very light brown. Cool. Repeat with remaining dough. Melt chocolate pieces in a microwave at half power for about two minutes. Spread chocolate on bottom of each cookie. Top with cookie half that has the center cut out of it. The chocolate will show through. When cool, dust with powdered sugar. Makes about 40 cookies.

A visit to Wertz Candy Shop

It was snowing as I drove down the one-way street in downtown Lebanon, PA. I managed to parallel park the car (on the left side of the street no less), squish through a foot of slushy snow, plug the meter, and headed for Wertz Candy Shop. I opened the door and was instantly transported back to childhood. This closet-sized shop held treats of every kind, from the beautiful upscale almonds to sugar plums to caramel corn popping in the big stainless drum.
There’s everything you can imagine and more – in barrels at your feet, piled on top of counters, high on the shelves around the perimeter of the shop and beautifully displayed in old-fashioned glass cases. One can only imagine all the faces of the children that have peered through those glass cases in the last 70 years.

And then there’s the chocolate – there were the usual creams, nuts, truffles and turtles. But there are also blobs, molasses coconut strips and chocolate covered bacon with sea salt. You just never know what Bill will come up with. This family has fun with chocolate and was recently featured on “Dirty Jobs” with Mike Rowe.

It was quite a hopping place while I was there – people were buying all sorts of candy tucked into every corner of this shop – some people were from far-away places like Spokane and others were from town – like the Chief of Police. That’s when I suddenly remembered that parking meter which had probably expired….the Chief gave me a token, I put it in the meter for the next car and left Lebanon, munching happily on opera fudge.

Oh, you say you’ve never heard of opera fudge? Well, you can learn about that and so much more on our Chocolate Covered Romance Tour February 27 and 28 at The Artist's Inn. We’ll spend the day traveling around tasting chocolate with Lancaster County Tours. For details see www.artistinn.com/ChocolateCoveredRomance.htm.