MangiaMore: THREE ingredient cookies

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They may not look pretty, but they sure are easy. These three ingredient cookies (yup, you read that right—3 ingredients!!) have that chewy satisfaction that any great chocolate chip cookie has, but has half the hassle. There’s none of that meticulous measuring, none of that creaming butter and sugar, none of that refrigerating for hours and hours; there’s just three ingredients: chocolate chips, graham crackers and sweetened condensed milk.

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The culmination of these three delicious things is pure perfection, not pretty, but pretty delicious. Crunch up 16 graham crackers (use a food processor for extreme ease), mix a can of sweetened condensed milk with your bag of chocolate chips till chips are covered, and finally stir in those graham crumbs. It can’t get much easier.

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I mixed semi-sweet, milk and white chocolate chips, since I am not always wild on straight up chocolate. And since I was doing a double batch (because little effort was involved), I added dried cranberries to half of my second batch. They are a different kind of sweet and a tartness that emphasized the chocolate and the sticky condensed milk. These cookies are super-soft and pliable, but the outside has a little crunch. They remind me of all the best parts of cookies—gooey cookie dough and that candied texture.

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What’s your favorite minimal-effort cookie recipe? Care to share? Follow the food on instagram, twitter, and facebook!

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MangiaMore: COCONUT layer cake

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Coconut cake means Easter (or maybe it’s the other way around). But somehow, coconut cake frequently makes an appearance after our family’s fresh Easter dinner. I always associate this kind of cake with Easter, white patented leather shoes for Easter mass, fragrant lilies and warmer weather.

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There’s no way around it; cake is sweet and coconut cake can be super sweet. It’s that too good batter, dense with flaked coconut and sometimes pudding mix, and the creamy butter cream frosting, made with all that butter and powdered sugar, and a liberal coating of sweet flaked coconut.

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This year, we opted for Melissa Clark’s recipe for Coconut Layer Cake adapted from a Telepan favorite. My mother and I stalk cooking.nytimes.com and read Wednesday’s edition of the Food Section, and this recipe immediately grabbed our attention. Clark implies that this version of the classic coconut cake is less cloying and less sweet in her piece “A Sugar Rush, Not Crush,” making it even more desirable for our Easter treat.

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Even though the cake ended up tasting less shockingly sweet, this coconut cake was super rich with butter and eggs. It was moist and dense, but fluffy and almost savory at the same time. Unlike the recipe, we mixed sweetened and unsweetened coconut flakes into the batter, which added texture and life. The rum and orange juice added a mature flare, while the smooth and light cream cheese frosting continued in that vein. Toasted sweetened coconut added more complexity with nutty caramel tones and a crunchy crust. 

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The coconut Easter cake turned out to be a beautiful confection—gorgeous to look at and lovely to taste.

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MangiaMore: HAMANTASCHEN

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As I usually do when I want to feel envious, I visited My Name is Yeh. When I saw her beautiful Halva and Jam Hamantaschen post, I immediately wanted to make my own (I know, I just made jelly-filled cookies, but it’s Purim!). She links to funfetti hamantaschen on Lil Miss Cakes and I knew I wanted a smattering of sprinkles in mine. Despite disapproval,  I was still excited to use the basic dough.

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My desire intensified as I decided what flavor hamantaschen to bake. I took an informal survey— raspberry, chocolate, blackberry, strawberry (raspberry and apricot were the winners), but I was dying to try the more traditional flavor, poppy seed. After I rejected recipes with eggs and liqueurs, a conversation with one of my besties resulted in the perfect poppy seed filling recipe from Bon Appétit.

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Per usual, I was intimidated, but eager to try a new recipe (or two) and use ingredients I had yet to work with.  Like, honey. Sure, I put it in Greek yogurt, but I hadn’t put it in cookie dough. Unlike many other hamantaschen recipes I saw, this one used honey instead of sugar. And poppy seeds—I don’t think I’ve even made lemon poppy seed muffins without a mix, so it was invigorating to use the real thing.

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Making these cookies was no easy task. Whipping up the dough and the poppy seed filling was a breeze; rolling and forming the cookies proved to be difficult. My dough was sticky and  impossible to roll even after 3+ hours in the fridgy, so I threw it in the freezer. Even then, it was still tricky. Then, creating the triangle shape was a challenge. Maybe, I took the easy (read: lazy) way  and didn’t pinch the corners for a 3D hamantaschen.  I was close…ish.

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They still turned out tasty. The dough isn’t sweet, but the glob of saccharine jelly or adult poppy seed filling (my fave), makes the cookie complete and utterly addictive. Maybe next year I will be defiant and make those funfetti hamantaschen.

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