The Best of Nik Snacks

Last week marked my 1st blog anniversary (blogoversary? blogaversary? blogiversary? I foresee this word being added to Webster in 2012).



Rather than celebrate with flourish and fanfare (we'll leave that for next year), I'll lay out my blog goals for 2009 and post my 12 favorite posts from 2008.

Resolutions Goals

1. I want to post once a week. I'm much too busy and a little too lazy to keep up and post every other day. The once-a-week post will be chockful of things, so the content nor the photos will diminish in quality.

2. I want to focus more on local food. Now that I've gotten involved in my local Slow Food chapter, I've really changed the way I look at food, where it comes from, and what I do with it before it gets to my table. I've moved away from Winston-Salem twice and I always seem to come back. There's something about this area that keeps me here. I don't know what it is, but I think it's something about the food.


3. I want to review cookbooks. I have oodles of cookbooks. I only consult a select few because I don't see the need to have cookbooks that overlap genres, recipes, or trends...just because it's got a celebrity chef endorsement or James Beard Foundation seal of approval. I've got to LOVE a book before I buy it. I've got to feel that I can't live without it.

4. I want to write a cookbook. I have hundreds of original recipes that are begging to be published in a laminated, glossy (or matte...) covered and bound booklet with my face on the cover (or in the back... that's acceptable, too). I started this blog as a creative outlet and I see my potential in every ASCII-character, graphic, and comment. I know I can do it.

5. I want to expand my knowledge and repertoire to include alternative foods and ingredients. I'm totally into gluten-free and vegan food right now. I've been incorporating natural and organic foodstuffs in my recipes for the past year. I want to ramp it up and really become an expert in that area: cooking & baking.

The Best of Nik Snacks 2008

Scalloping Gourmet

Fry, The Beloved Crunchy

Is It Chili In Cincinati?

Double Dutch Crunch

A Smoke And A Drink

Ice Cream, You Scream

Biscuit, Baker, Memory Stick Maker

The Whistlestop Cafe Has Nothing On Me

Flavor of Repast: A Meal In Wilmington N.C.

We Pump Our Fists, Not Our Gas

Thanksgiving

Time To Make The Doughnuts

Wanna See My Cookies?

It's cold now. Winter Solstice has come and gone. The days are getting a little big longer (yes, by only about 1 minute, but so what??), oil and gas rates are a little higher, but my electric blanket will keep me warm only for so long. I need something more to satisfy my soul (and my soles...I have cold feet!)

Everyone went crazy when the NYT published a recipe for chocolate chip cookies back in July of last year. They were popping up all over blogs, referenced in food articles, the photos plastered all over. The accompanying article spoke of cookie synthesis. The perfect cookie. This one one time that my food radar didn't beep. It was July. I'm not cutting on an oven. Are you crazy?

I'm really not a fan of sweets. I'd rather skip dessert and languish on a sumptuous appetizer or hearty salad. I'm in a cookie mood now that I've had boxes of them delivered to my house.

Mine! Mine! They're ALL mine!

The NYT recipe was adapted from Jacques Torres, father of all things chocolate. I have yet to try this recipe. I'm sure it's perfect, ethereal and everything a cookie should want to be when it grows up. The only chocolate chip cookie I've ever made has been good ol' Mrs. Wakefield's Toll House cookies. This time I made them using suggestions from the article:

1--more salt

2--couverture chocolate disks

2--refrigerate the dough

Salt is our friend (sometimes) and it makes cookies taste better.

I do not like chocolate (I think it's all the inferior Hershey's we've been eating all these years). I'd rather eat calf liver (and I don't like that either!). I'f I have to use cocoa, cacao or chocolate in recipes, I make sure it's the best I can find. I found some Valrhona chocolate at a specialty store here in town (ON SALE!!!) and picked some up. It's pretty sexy, this chocolate...those French people know what they're doing...

Actually, I didn't mean to refrigerate the dough. I was lazy and didn't feel like making more than one batch the night I made the batter. But the difference was amazing.

There goes that nog again...

Nikki's Chocolate Chip cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tbsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups Valrhona Manjari Dark Couverture

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually stir in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips . Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets. BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes then remove to wire racks to cool completely. Makes 40 cookies

Organica Deluxe Ginger Cookies

Once again, Foodbuzz has been good to me.

As a participant of the Featured Publisher Tastemaker Program, I got to sample some cookies from Organica Deluxe.

This company is right up my alley. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina (a mere 90 miles from me) Organica Deluxe qualifies as a local producer! Not only that, but they taut products from sustainable manufacturers, organic farmers, and community artisans from around the world. An uber-ecofriendly gift shop, not only do they have these cookies I'm about to tell you about, but they are chock-full of luxury items that make great gift items for the green guy (or girl) in your life.

So when the pretty blue box was dropped off lovingly by my UPS guy, I was ecstatic, beside myself with joy to receive something in the mail. I ripped into that sucker to find 3 things:

1--organic ginger cookies! yay
2--the box, the wrapping paper, and the packing peanuts were all at least 75% post-consumer recycled (yay, again!) and the peanuts are biodegradable!
3--my package of cookies was open! (NOooo)

I snapped this pic to show proof and to let someone know I wasn't bluffing, just to get more cookies. I'm sure the cookies were fine, but it reminded me of how we had to let our parents inspect our candy after trick-or-treating because someone may have put a needle in a Snickers, or something crazy like that.

So, one week later, I get a NEW box! with NEW cookies! The last box only had 2...the new one had 4! Yay!

Back to the cookies: made with organic flour, organic butter, organic sugar, organic ginger...and the softest morsels I've put in my mouth in a long while. Do you remember ginger molasses cookies from Starbucks (now they're just plain molasses)? Well, that's what these tasted like, but better. Much better.

They're going fast...


And even faster with a bit o' egg nog on the side.

I'm not an eggnog fan at all, but my boss gave me 3 gallons on Christmas Eve...I HAD to do something with it! Let's just say I'm now friends with Southern Comfort, Spiced Rum, and a dude named Jack Daniels. We're all getting along really well...