This Cookie Stands Alone: Cornmeal Shortbread with Sweet Dried Cherries . . .

A coy little shortbread recipe has been beckoning to me for a while now, and I finally surrendered to its siren song. It's not just another run o' the mill shortbread, though. How does it differ? Well, it's characterized by a few ingredients that, while common, are each distinctive in their own right. Place them in combination and beautiful things start to happen. I'm talking about elements like exceptionally rich butter, the seeds of a fragrant vanilla bean, enough golden cornmeal to add an intriguing crunch, and  the tastiest dried cherries in the world.

When I gave in to the desire to make this shortbread, my first thought was to pair it with something cool and creamy--maybe homemade ice cream, panna cotta, or pudding. But occasionally, while in the midst of baking, it becomes crystal clear that a finished creation can, and perhaps even should, be allowed to stand on its own. This is one such recipe.

Good classic shortbread excels in showcasing a few basic components--butter, sugar, flour. But, used judiciously, additional items carefully chosen can raise a shortbread's profile in the finest way, and that's what we have here, most notably with the cherries. Now, though, let's talk specifically about the butter for a moment. Have you ever used premium butter in shortbread? The kind of butter that's a couple of percentage points higher in fat than regular butter? It's substantially more expensive than its lesser companions, but the difference it makes in a cookie like this is immediately apparent. In part because it contains less moisture than typical butters, it has not only a positive flavor impact but it also affects texture in certain baked goods, too. Fellow bakers, from the flavor standpoint alone shortbread is made for this stuff. Made for it. If you never use this kind of butter for anything else, at least try it once in shortbread.

I used Plugra, a domestically-made "European style" butter that, though obscenely expensive (in my neck of the woods it's over seven dollars a pound), is extravagantly buttery. Peel back the gold paper wrapping on a brick of this stuff and you'll see just what I mean. It feels especially slippery, and it smells . . . well . . . sort of clean and unadulterated. If butter can be lustrous, this is lustrous indeed. It's probably what the best homemade butter tasted like two hundred years ago, back when cows munched freely on untainted grass, and napped peacefully beneath big shady oak trees. So, if you've never tried any of the fancy high-fat butters on the market (and there are several brands to be found these days), you might want to consider saving your pennies and, just once, giving it a go.

About this recipe . . .

The sum and substance of this recipe is from pastry chef Karen DeMasco's gorgeous book, The Craft of Baking. The adaptations I made to it included doubling the recipe; adding in chopped, dried, Michigan cherries (of course from Michigan, where else?); pressing the dough thickly into two tart pans instead of chilling it, rolling it out, and cutting it with a cookie cutter; and, also, I didn't follow DeMasco's advice to stick the hull of the split vanilla bean in with the dough as it mixed (for some reason that concept didn't appeal to me at the time I was making this, though I have nothing against it in principle). And I reworded the instructions somewhat, as usual.

To gild the lily . . . or not . . .

I did follow DeMasco's suggestion to sprinkle the shortbread with demarara sugar (natural brown sugar produced from the "first crystallization" of sugar cane) prior to baking, but in the future I think I might do without a sugar topping altogether, or use coarse white sugar instead. I say this because the addition of the brown sugar flavor was truly unnecessary to this particular cookie.

Though I love the moist heaviness and unadulterated flavor of  demarara crystals in general, the sugar was superfluous here. It was gilding the lily. And, as I said before, this shortbread cookie stands perfectly well on its own. So there.

Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies with Sweet Dried Cherries


(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Have ready two ungreased tart pans with removable bottoms, each approximately 9 inches in size.

1 and 3/4 cup All Purpose flour, unbleached

1 cup yellow cornmeal, coarsely or finely ground, as you prefer
1 tsp. kosher salt (I think this makes a difference in this recipe, so do use kosher if you have it.)
1 cup plus 3 Tbsp. of unsalted butter (I used Plugra, a high quality, higher-fat butter; I recommend you try this or something similar, though I have no doubt this shortbread is good even with regular unsalted butter.)
1 cup confectioners' sugar, not sifted
1/2 cup of chopped sweet dried cherries
Seeds scraped from 1/2 of a whole vanilla bean 
4 Tbsp. demarara, or coarse white, sugar, if you like (I used the demarara, but as noted in the post, I think next time I'd prefer coarse white sugar instead.) 


In a medium size bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, and kosher salt.  

In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla seeds for just a minute or so on low speed. 

While the mixer is still on low, add in the flour mixture in two additions, then toss in the chopped cherries. Again mix just until the ingredients are combined. Don't over-mix or let the dough get too warm. (If the dough does seem warm and extremely soft, put it in the fridge for a few minutes to chill.) 

 
Divide the dough in half and, with your hands, press the dough smoothly and evenly into the tart pans. Using the tines of a dinner fork, divide the dough into slender wedges, like a pie, pressing the tines down to the bottom of the pan. 

Set the tart pans on top of a flat baking sheet, and place the sheet on the middle rack of your preheated 350 oven. Check the shortbread after 15 to 20 minutes; if it appears to be browning too quickly, cover it lightly with foil. Bake until the top is lightly golden, however long that takes, perhaps 10 more minutes. 

Let each shortbread cool in its pan for about five minutes, then remove it from the pan and put it on a cutting surface. With a thin sharp knife, slice it while still warm. If you wait until it's cool, it could crack apart when you attempt to slice it.

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Arrivederci to Winter: Orange Polenta Cake with Sweet Citrus Glaze . . .

Citrus zest in a cake. Olive oil in a cake. Cornmeal in a cake. An accordion in a cake. Okay, maybe not that last one, but all the others? Yes. Today's the day for an orange polenta cake, drizzled with a sweet citrus glaze. Is it Italian? Oh, you betcha. Does the olive oil make it taste strange? Only in the mysteriously delicious sense of the word.

Though pyramids of vibrant winter oranges are still ubiquitous in every grocery store around here, that will soon change. Do you realize we'll set our clocks forward by an hour in just about two weeks? I can hardly believe it, but I welcome spring's approach with open arms. Winter's bloom has faded. Bring on spring. Bring it on, I say!

I'd been wondering lately if the crocuses might already be nudging the soil aside beneath the snow, on the south side of my house. I investigated that possibility this afternoon, and I'm pleased to report that, sure enough, they've made their debut. In Michigan, crocuses are quite the vernal harbinger. They're hopeful little messengers of warmth to come. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite poems, one could say they're "looked for like mail." And I have been looking for them.

Now, about this cake . . .

The plan to whip up a bright, citrusy, polenta-and-olive-oil cake had been simmering on my mental back-burner for a while. Never having tried one before, I perused several recipe versions before settling on this one. It comes from the book Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen, by pastry chef Gina de Palma (Babbo being Mario Batali's famous restaurant in NYC). A slightly simplified, but almost identical, version of the recipe in the book also appears here, in Babbo's website.

This particular cake's lack of heaviness appealed to me. Some of the polenta cake formulas that I'd read through contained not only a generous portion of olive oil, but also butter. One that sticks in my mind (probably because it would also have stuck in my arteries) contained almost four cups of finely ground almonds in the batter in addition to olive oil, almost a pound of butter, and five eggs. Yikes. Alright, if that's what you're in the mood for, but I had no desire to bake a cake with such heft. Cakes like that emit a resounding thunk when placed on the table. No thunking allowed. All thunking is currently prohibited.

My adapted version of the recipe includes no lemon or lime zest in the batter--just orange zest-- and only orange and lemon juice in the glaze. Aside from those small changes, I did a little rewording of the directions here and there.

I want to mention that I used Meyer lemon juice in the glaze. A cross between a regular lemon and a mandarin orange, the Meyer's color is luminous, like a lemon that's blushing. Its juice is distinctly different, too--sweeter, with perhaps more character. Meyer lemons seem to pop up briefly at this time of year, at least in this neck of the woods, and they're not expensive.

Orange Polenta Cake with Sweet Citrus Glaze

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

1 and 1/2 cups, plus 1 Tbsp., unbleached All Purpose flour
3 oranges
3/4 cup instant or fine polenta (I just used regular Quaker brand cornmeal)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
4 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 lemon

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and place a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly grease or spray a 9" springform pan. Dust the pan with flour.

Grate all the the zest from the oranges. Set the zest aside for the cake batter, and set the fruit aside to use in the glaze.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, polenta, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed until they're pale yellow and have tripled in volume (about 3 to 4 minutes). Beat in the reserved orange zest.


Alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the olive oil to the egg mixture. Begin with one third of the dry ingredients, then add half the olive oil. Continue, ending with the dry ingredients. Beat each addition only until it's incorporated. Stop and scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.


Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees halfway through the baking time. The cake is done when it springs back when touched in the center, when the cakes pulls away from the sides of the pan, and when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (Note from Jane -- My cake took at least 35 to 40 minutes to bake. I recommend you cover the top of your cake lightly with foil as soon as it gets golden on top, just in case you need to leave it in the oven much longer!)

Cool the cake in the pan on a rack, for 12 to 15 minutes, then carefully remove the sides of the pan. Let the cake finish cooling completely on a rack.

While the cake is cooling, prepare the glaze. Sift 2 cups of confectioners' sugar into a large bowl. Squeeze at least 2 Tbsp. of juice from the orange, and at least 1 Tbsp. of juice from the lemon into a small bowl. Make sure no seeds remain in the juice; strain it if necessary. Add the juices to the large bowl and mix into the sugar with a spoon or a whisk until completely smooth.


If the glaze is too thick, add more of the juices or a few drops of water. Too thin? Add in a bit more of the sugar.


Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake and allow it to set until it's completely dry. (The sugariness is more subdued, and the citrus flavors are more at the forefront, when the glaze is dry.)


If you want to do so, carefully remove the cake from the bottom of the springform pan and transfer it to a serving plate. Store any leftover cake well covered.


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