Hedonia

Best Martha moment

These fabulous Bloody Finger Cookies over at BLOGHUNGRY reminded me of my favorite Martha moment ever. Back on her old show, pre-incarceration, she did a whole Halloween episode where she made similar severed extremity confections, laid out on a loamy grave plot of ground Oreos, a big punchbowl full of "blood" and so forth. Toward the end of the episode they trot out the neighborhood (or more likely staff's) tots in predictable costumes: Ghost, witch, mummy. Martha tries plying the kids with these gruesome goodies, and they're just not having anything to do with it. Exasperated, Martha pours a cup of punch and hands it to the little girl, saying in her snippiest voice, "Here, witch, have some blood." I love evil Martha.

Happy Halloween, my groovy ghoulie friends.

(Photo: BLOGHUNGRY)

Related: SFist rounds me up with other food bloggers. Oh, and I like the other Martha, too.

City Bakery

When one trusted source refers you to a place when you're visiting New York, you put it on the list. When two do it, you make it an imperative. When it happens to be two blocks from your office, you go twice. Such was the case for City Bakery.

I was made aware of City Bakery by newfound friend (by way of David, with whom I just dined at Tía Pol) Thomas Locke Hobbes. A Bay Area native but longtime New York resident (and now transplant back to his hometown), Thomas advised that City Bakery produced the best chocolate chip cookies. Ever. And then the always engaging and informative Shuna commented that I simply must go there for the pretzel croissant. As far as I know they are not in cahoots with each other, or the bakery.

So. Pretzel croissant, eh?

Ho yeah. Explosively flaky on the surface and fluffy soft on the inside. Big time buttery yet never greasy or dense. And just salty enough to highlight the sweetness of the dough. This is a very dangerous thing indeed.

Rosette (Anginetti)

Besides the obligatory pizzelle and cannoli, no Easter is complete without rosette, shown here with the pizzelle and the traditional Peeps, a little-known Italian delicacy. These knot-shaped cookies are lightly sweet, somewhat bready in texture and iced with a simple glaze. A drop of food coloring makes for pretty pastel colors to enhance the Easter flavor.

This year, my aunt found an alternative recipe in, of all places, Entertaining with the Sopranos. Previously, she was using a recipe that called for ricotta, which makes for a moister cookie, with occasional clumps of ricotta in the cookie itself. The new recipe, called anginetti in the cookbook, is dried and breadier, which is evidently closer to the original cookie that my great-grandmother used to make. I'll include both recipes (after the jump).

Which one is better? The jury's still out. I think I'll have to make a few batches of each before I decide.

Pizzelle and cannoli abruzzesi

Everyone loves cannoli, don't they? The traditional cannolo siciliano is comprised of a crispy, fried tube filled with a sweetened ricotta filling, often with chocolate chips or candied citrus rind. In my family, we make the tubes from pizzelle -- crisp, wafer-thin cookies that you make on a waffle-like iron. (These are becoming increasingly available, and you can order one from Sur La Table.) In fact, while pizzelle (pron. peet-ZEHL in our dialectic) are popular all over Italy, they are believed to have originated in Salle, the town in Abruzzo where one branch of my family originated.

Pizzelle are normally flat, sometimes eaten with a dusting of powdered sugar; you can even find them in most grocery stores these days. However, they are pliable fresh off the iron, and can be molded into tubes, cones or cups before cooling and setting. They set within seconds, and it's a short window between skin-blistering volcanic heat and crumbling cookie. You will burn your fingertips a little, but you will live, and it's worth it. Recipe and, yes, pics after the jump.

Eat me: Macarons de St.-Émilions

Our friend Kathleen is a major cookie monster. Knowing she was coming over, and since we were just up in Pacific Heights eating at the Elite Café (notes to follow!), we made a detour down to Boulangerie Bay Bread for what are hands-down my favorite cookies, Macarons de St.-Émilions. Not to be confused with macaroons, macarons are chewy, almond-paste based cookies infused with flavors (and, evidently, coloring), sandwiched around a creamy filling. The flavors are vibrant and true, but perhaps the most surprising element is the brilliant, almost psychedelic colors of the cookies once you bite through the much more muted outside. See, for example, the kelly green interior of the pistachio macarons in the picture above (click to enlarge). But what flavors: The coffee macaron is like chewing on a perfect cappuccino; the caramel is nutty and almost burnt tasting (in a good way); and the lavender is a taste of southern France, very floral yet not perfume-y. A buck fifty a pop, and worth every penny.

Boulangerie Bay Bread
2325 Pine St (at Fillmore)