Change of Air Date: This segment will air Wednesday February 10th, all day on Channel 8 News Austin- Tune In!

Today Monday February 8th at 10AM, I will be on News 8 Austin sharing one my favorite Valentine’s Day entertaining treats. Tune in anytime to Channel 8 and you will probably catch a glimpse of the segment since it will air for 24 hours. I was lucky enough to be on News 8 Austin once before back in December 2008 and it was so much fun. They are such a great team over there. For those of you who live outside Austin here’s the yummy treat I’ll be demonstrating today.

Don’t forget to order your Valentine’s Day cookies now! The sweet holiday is this Sunday February 14th.

White Chocolate Lattice Hearts: (recipe below)

It’s really easy, fun and inexpensive to celebrate Valentine’s Day and make last minute festive gifts and delicious treats for friends and family. I bet you already have all the ingredients and supplies at home. This is great activity to do with your children.

Everything tastes better when you add chocolate and these white chocolate lattice hearts are not only simple and very cheap to make but they give a beautiful gourmet touch for Valentine’s Day. It’s so simple, takes only minutes to make.

If you have a heart shape cookie cutter, you can trace it with a permanent marker on wax paper (or you can just draw it) and then flip the paper over to avoid any marker mixing with your food. Next, you melt good quality white chocolate (or milk or dark works great too) in a microwave for 1 minute or until melted, stir it, and then pour it into a zip-lock bag, snip the corner and start to draw.

First, trace the outside of the heart then just go back and create the lattice. You can sprinkle red sugar to be festive or I love adding ginger, granulated espresso beans or kosher salt for a gourmet touch.  Also, you can infuse flavor into your chocolate by adding a few drops of pure extract, like orange, mint or raspberry.  If you want to make them into lollipops just insert a stick at the base, and then let them firm up in a fridge for about 15 minutes.  You can serve them facing either way up.

Lattice Hearts add a fancy touch to ice cream, or “covers” for hot drinks like, hot chocolate, coffee (turns it into turn a mocha) or if you’re feeling really festive, add it Kaluha and coffee. Also they make great gifts for loved ones or guests.  Package them in a food grade plastic bag with a red ribbon bow or you can put them on the top of cookies for a celebratory touch.  Because they are made of chocolate it is best to keep refrigerated until you are ready to serve them. The best part is that you can’t mess up; each heart will be unique, different and delicious!

Recipe: For 4 Large White Chocolate Lattice Hearts
Ingredients:
4 oz. Good quality white (dark or milk) chocolate
Garnish: red crystal sugar, granulated espresso beans, ginger or kosher salt
Directions:
1. Heat chocolate in a microwave safe bowl (approximately 1 minute)
2. Place a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Using a heart shape cookie cutter trace the hearts with a permanent marker or draw hearts free-style on wax paper. Flip the wax paper over.
3. Stir the melted chocolate and using a spatula pour the chocolate into a zip lock plastic bag. Push the chocolate down into the corner. Make a tiny snip in the corner with a scissor.
4. Begin to draw your hearts by tracing the outside of the heart first then fill in the center adding diagonal lines and then crossing them over to create the lattice.
5. Garnish as you like, gently sprinkling on your topping. You can add a stick here to create a lollipop.
6. Place hearts in the fridge to firm up (15 minutes). Keep them refrigerated until serving.
Enjoy!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sweetly,

Alexandra

Last week our blog, Talk Is Sweet, was named a “Top 10 Cookie Blog” by Anna Ginsberg of Cookiemadness.net (my favorite cookie blogger) and Blogs.com. We are thrilled to be included among an awesome list of cookie bloggers that I personally love, including BakingBlonde’s Weblog and Baking Bites. Check out the article and all the “Top 10 Cookie Blogs” at blogs.com. Thanks Anna & Blogs.com!

For a while now I have been wanting to create an indulgent banana bread, stuffed with Rich’s favorite two dessert items; Nutella and peanut butter. Well yesterday the bananas were turning brown and calling my name, so off I went into experiment mode. The outcome was delicious! I always add a secret ingredient to my banana bread, non-dairy coffee creamer, which makes the bread moist in the middle while still allowing the edges and top to crisp up. Since this recipe calls for oil instead of butter it’s a lot of fun to do with children because they can easily mix together all the ingredients and you don’t need to use any electrical equipment. When I was a school teacher I used to make a version of this banana bread with my 4 years old students and they loved it.  Follow the recipe below (it truly couldn’t be easier) and enjoy!

Richie B’s Fantasy Bread

Pre-heat oven to 350 F
Grease a 10″ x 3″ non-stick bread pan

Ingredients:
Dry Ingredients:
1. 1 1/2 cups of unbleached flour
2. 1/2 cup non-dairy creamer powder form
3. 1 cup sugar
4. 2 teaspoons baking powder
5. 1 teaspoon cinnamon
6. 1/4 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:
7.   1 cup riped bananas, mashed (approximately 2 to 3 bananas)
8.   2 eggs
9.   1/3 cup oil
10. 1/4 milk
11. 1 teaspoon vanilla
12. 3 tablespoons creamy or chunky peanut butter
13. 3 tablespoons Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread
14. 1/4 cup chocolate morsels

Directions:
1. Combine all the dry ingredients.
2. In a separate larger bowl, combine all the wet ingredients, except ingredients #12, 13 & 14.
3. Gently add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, folding in the flour combination and slowly combining.
4. Pour half the batter into the greased pan.
5. In a microwave safe bowl, combine the peanut butter, Nutella, and an additional drop of oil (to help smooth and liquefy the sticky peanut butter) and microwave until the mixture becomes a liquid (maybe 30 to 45 seconds).
6. Pour the peanut butter chocolate mixture on top of the batter already in the pan.
7. Pour the remaining batter on top.
8. Gently move a small knife through the batter in a forward and backward motion to “swirl” the chocolate peanut butter mixture through the batter.
9. Sprinkle the chocolate chip morsels on top.
10. Bake for approximately 45 minutes until the top crust is golden brown. Check that the inside is cooked by sticking a knife into the middle to see if it comes out clean.
11. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy!

Sweetly,
Alexandra

Even before I decided to start a cookie company, I was asking friends, family, foodies, basically anyone, “What’s your favorite cookie flavor?” I guess I was always destined to start a cookie company. I think you could tell a lot about a person by the type and flavor of cookie they like. For example, my mom likes doughy, comforting cakey vanilla based cookies with a chunk to bite into, which suites her personality perfectly. She has traditional taste and style, loves Jackie O, watching movies in bed, and knowing the weather days in advance. (Photo of my mom and daddy Alan).

My dad is chocolate; all the time, any time, in any form. For him a chocolate chunk cookie is ideal, if you offer him 4 or 5, it’s even better. My dad likes all American sports, American history, his grandchildren, and a good corn-beef sandwich on rye bread from Sarge’s Deli in Manhattan. A chocolate chip cookie fits him like Jackie Robinson’s hand in his glove. My husband is a peanut butter cookie lover, and again flavor of cookie to personality of man is a correct match. Rich likes the food he ate as a kid growing up in Philly, whether it’s Primo’s Italian hoagies, Jim’s cheesesteak, or the tuna from Gladwyne Village Lunch. He reminiscences about these spots with the affection of a 9th grade boy’s crush on a hot 11th grade girl. So what type of cookie am I? Well, it’s harder to say. Honestly, maybe now I’m too close to the fire or in my case the ‘oven’ to be subjective but I can say my palate is expanding. Depending on my mood, I crave different flavors. Perhaps that is my answer? I am a libra after all, so it’s logical that I’d like each cookie in their time and place, and give each an equal chance to be eaten….hmmm… this is getting deep. (Photo of me, Rich and Daddy Rick).

Ok, so on to the cookie of the day.  My dear friend Kris in NYC calls and emails me asking, “When are you going to add a Linzer Tart cookie to Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams collection?” As a mail-order cookie company, we take the condition of how our cookies arrive very seriously, and truthfully the thought of shipping a cookie with jelly made me nervous…and it still does (but we are working on it). Kris, in the meantime, here’s a “Giant Linzer Heart” from me to you - perfect for Valentine’s Day… and if you want to make it for Zack here’s how! Also read below for a couple of easy decadent  gourmet twists on this old-time favorite;

Giant Linzer Heart Recipe:

Spring Form Heart Shaped Pan (9″ wide and long at widest points)

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 1/2  cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup ground almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 oz raspberry jam
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar for decoration
* You will have extra dough, you can make some mini cookies too!

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F

1. In the meantime, prerare your spring-form pan by tracing the base onto parchment paper. Cut out the heart and line the base of the pan. Once the dough is chilled, gently pat the dough into the entire base of the pan, approximately 1/8 inch thick and cook the dough for approximately 15 minutes until edges are golden.

2. If you have two pans, even better because you can cook both layers at once. However, I don’t so here’s out it went for me. After the first pan cooked and chilled, I turned over the pan and using a cookie scooper I gently knocked the back of the pan to release the cookie onto a flat plate. Then I re-used the heart shaped parchment paper and I placed a smaller heart shaped pan in the middle of the big heart and added the dough around the outside. You could eaily use a heart shaped cookie cutter here too.

3. Cook the second pan for 15 minutes, and let it cool.

4. Spread the jam on the flat side of the larger cookie and add the cut-out cookie on top to make a sandwich.

5. Sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar and enjoy!

Gourmet Variations:

Dad’s Linzer Heart:

Substitute 1/2 cup flour for unsweetened cocoa powder.

Substitute jam for Nutella spread or any chocolate spread of your choice.

Rich’s Linzer Heart:

Substitute jam for 1 cup peanut butter combined with 1/4 cup sugar.

Happy Valentine’s Day to y’all!

Please email me what type of cookie you are…

Sweetly,

Alexandra

Here are a couple of pictures of me with Karina Kling, from News 8 Austin. Both Karina and Ed, who did the filming, are so lovely and made today really  fun and easy. Also please check out the video of 1 of the 5 segments that aired today. Please ignore the alarm sounding in the background. (Long story which involves me at 5 A.M trying to prove to an officer that I am not trespassing in my own lobby!)  The segments that aired on TV, luckily had the alarm edited out.

* This part was written before the show was taped…I am so excited that today (Wednesday December 24th) I am going to be on News 8 Austin! I love being part of the Austin community so I was thrilled when asked if I would share some easy last minute holiday ideas for entertaining and gift-giving. There are a total of 5 segments, each focusing on a different fun, easy, and inexpensive way to dress-up your holiday table and last minute gift ideas. The segments will run all day on Channel 8. Here are the topics and recipes I discussed today, all of which are great activities to do with your kids. Now that’s the way to get in the family holiday spirit!

1. The “ACD Quickie”: This is our version of a quick “White Chocolate Peppermint Bark”. I have shared this super fast recipe with step-by-step photos, in a previous Talk Is Sweet entry; click here for the recipe (and scroll down). Today, I showcased some additional types of bark; for the gourmand, add shaved almonds, dried cranberries & shredded coconut to white chocolate; for the kids, add mini marshmallows and green and red gummy bears.

2. Rum Egg Nog Pudding with White Chocolate Peppermint Tortilla Chips: Couldn’t be easier and truly makes a festive addition to your holiday feast. You may already have all the ingredients at home.

Rum Egg Nog Pudding:

Makes 2 Servings (1/2 cup each)

Ingredients:

7 oz. Vanilla Pudding

A little less than 1/4 cup Sugar

1 Teaspoon Salt

2 Teaspoons Cinnamon

1/4  cup Egg Nog

3 Teaspoons Rum

Directions:

Put all ingredients in a bowl and whisk…how easy is that! Let chill for 30 minutes and serve.

White Chocolate Peppermint Tortilla Chips…for an unexpected touch add as a garnish to your pudding.

Makes 10 chips

Ingredients:

10 flat and unbroken Tortillas Chips (I like “Tostitos  Restaurant Style” )

6 oz. White Chocolate

2.5 oz. Peppermint Stick

Directions:

Separate tortilla chips on a piece of parchment paper.

Melt chocolate in microwave (for approximately 1 min) or in a double boiler on the stove.

Crush peppermint stick, by placing it in a sealed zip lock bag and using a hammer or mallet.

Using a brush, paint the white chocolate on one side of the tortilla chips and then cover the chocolate in crushed peppermint stick. Place in the freezer for 10 minutes. You can then flip the tortilla chips over and paint the other side with white chocolate and freeze again for 10 min. Then store before use in an airtight bag or container. For kids, it is also fun to add green and red colored mini “M&M’s”, instead of peppermint.

3. Chocolate Cookies With Peppermint Bark: Everybody loves cookies, and the holidays are the perfect time to add a festive twist to your favorite cookies. Adding white chocolate peppermint bark, not only adds a seasonal touch but it so easy. The trick to getting the peppermint bark to stick and not melt into the cookies, is to sprinkle on some plain white chocolate chunks before the cookie bakes. Then after the cookie bakes, you can sprinkle the peppermint bark on top and the white chocolate works as an adhesive to help the peppermint bark stick. In the ACD ”White Chocolate Holiday”, we add bark to a chewy chocolate cookie, and on top of the bark, we sprinkle kosher salt, creating a satisfying mix of savory and sweet. Placing the cookies in a line on a narrow plate makes a great presentation.

Cookie Name Place Holders: At ACD, we always get requests to make cookie name place holders and peppermint bark cookies are perfect to seat your holiday guests. Just wrap each cookie individually with ribbon and add your guests name to an attached card. It’s a sweet and welcoming way to bring your friends and family to the table.

4. Dressing Up Your Stemware and Serving Pieces:

The holidays are all about friends and family being together, however, it seems I always invite more people to celebrate with us then I have of my “good glassware” or “good china”  to serve with. Here’s my favorite easy, inexpensive and fun solution to keeping your holiday table supplied. I buy inexpensive champagne glasses, martini glasses, and glass bowls and I add peppermint bark to the rim and bases using royal icing. It’s so simple! For the rims, put masking tape around the glass about 1/2 an inch from the top. Using a finger just spread the icing around so that it is thick enough to hold the bark. Then either roll the top of the glass in the bark or pick each piece individually and glue it on. For serving pieces, you can decorate the bases in the same manner. For kids, it is fun to use plastic champagne glasses and add green and white “M&M’s” to the royal ice and sprinkle with sparkly decorating sugar. Then fill with cranberry juice or pink lemonade for a festive “adult like” mocktail.

5. White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn:

Everybody loves to munch on popcorn at parties and with red and white bark it is festive too. When filled high and served in a clear bowl, it makes and impressive, delicious and inexpensive holiday table centerpiece.

Ingredients:

2 (3oz) Bags of Popcorn

6 oz. White Chocolate

2.5 oz. Peppermint Stick

3 Teaspoons Kosher Salt

Directions:

Pop the popcorn as directed on the bag.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave (1 min) or in a double boiler over the stove.

Place peppermint stick in a plastic bag and using a meat mallet or hammer, crush the peppermint into chunks.

In a large bowl toss all the ingredients together. You can store in a sealed plastic bag, and popcorn stays fresh for at least a week.

For A Great Hostess Gift: package the popcorn first in a food safe plastic bag. A great trick is to cut the bottom of a plastic cup and use it as a funnel to help keep the sides of the plastic bag from getting sticky. Seal the bag closed with tape, and then put the popcorn bag into a clear plastic container. Finally wrap a festive ribbon around the base and top, add a gift card and tie a bow in front. Your host will be glad you did!

ACD Wishes You a Delicious Holiday and Sweet New Year!

A personal note from Alexandra & ACD

From all of us at Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams, we want to truly thank you for your generosity, encouragement, participation and enthusiasm in making our first 5 months of business a success. We wish you and your family a peaceful, joyous and fabulous holiday season and New Year!

Sweetly,

Alexandra & The ACD Cookie Dream Team

* Please note that ACD and “Our Shop” will be closed from Thursday December 25th until Sunday January 4th. If you would like ACD cookies during that time, please contact us now so we make arrangements for you. Thank you!

CustomerService@AlexandrasCookieDreams.com
Phone: 512.482.8210
Fax: 512.482.8241

Thank you to everyone who played The ‘Insatiable’ Cookie Chase! Gael Greene, The “Insatiable Critic” & I are thrilled with the impressive number of participants and we hope you had some foodie fun!

And the winners of dozens of Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams cookies and a personalized autographed copy of Ms. Greene’s memoir, Insatiable: Tales From A Life of Delicious Excess are….

2nd Place: Ellen Rosen-Smith

1st Place: Carol Adams

Grand Prize Winner: Shelby Calvert

Congratulations to our winners!

Ellen, Carol and Selby: I have sent you an email (to the addresses you provided on your contest entry) detailing how to claim your gourmet prizes. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at Alexandra@AlexandrasCookieDreams.com

“CASTLE OF COOKIE DREAMS” AND THE “ACD QUICKIE“ - posted Monday December 8th, 2008

Today I had the awesome opportuntiy to appear on Good Morning Texas, and share my practical short cuts and tricks for  dressing-up holiday desserts and your holiday table. I a

m pre-writing this entry so I won’t be able to tell you about my tv experience yet, but I did want to share with you some helpful tips and recipes that appeared on today’s program. If you’re considering entering the gingerbread house contest launched today on Good Morning Texas or if you have ever thought about what goes into building this holiday emblem, I seriously suggest you read about Anne’s experience below. Also,  I have included a step-by-step recipe and photos for making the “ACD Quickie”, our easy version of White Chocolate Peppermint Bark, and our recipe for ”White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn” …so enjoy and get ready to feel the holiday spirit!

“Castle of Cookie Dreams” - written (and built) by Anne Schultz, ACD Dream Team

“When we were invited onto the Good Morning Texas show, of course we were thrilled. And when they asked us if we could bring a gingerbread house to kick off their contest, we were… a little lost. Gingerbread not being part of the normal ACD repertoire, neither of us were quite familiar with it, but we wouldn’t be the ACD Dream Team if we couldn’t accomplish feats of cookie dreaminess. And not just ordinary dreaminess, because our gingerbread creation had to stand out in viewers’ minds, searing the name Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams deep into their holiday shopping psyches… Yes… Eventually we settled on the idea of a “Castle of Cookie Dreams’” which looks great sketched on paper, but now how do you build a castle out of gingerbread? And with Alexandra going home for Thanksgiving, I had volunteered to build it in my home kitchen.

Here’s the first tip about building a gingerbread creation: take how much time you think it will take, and multiply that by four.

First off you need a pattern. The ‘Castle of Cookie Dreams’ being an original creation, I had to make the pattern myself, out of cardboard. Not so bad, except that designing a building is the kind of thing for which people spend years going to school. Use a T-square. Or better yet, get a degree in architecture.

Next is dough, which I hadn’t realized needs to chill overnight. I just used a standard gingerbread recipe I found online. But building a whole castle takes a LOT of dough, so there went day one.

Next was baking the stuff, which was mostly straightforward except for the stubborn idea of mine that castles need round turrets. After wasting half a batch of dough, I found that wrapping dough halfway around a wine bottle worked best (and then the halves could be combined into one tower). And there went day two.

Once everything was baked, I thought I was in the home stretch. Oh how wrong I was! Day three was the longest of them all. I even forgot to eat lunch (unless you count wayward scraps of gingerbread). Next tip: use Royal Icing for putting everything together. The stuff is amazing, and more amazing still that it’s considered edible. Not having a real icing pipe bag, I used a baggie with a corner cut off – it worked fine. And not having a double-boiler to melt chocolate for the peppermint bark roof, I made my own with a pot and a bowl – again it worked fine. You don’t need all that fancy equipment to build a gingerbread house! Ha! The only part which needed extra special consideration was the ‘floating’ ACD logo attached to a giant peppermint stick. I actually drilled holes in the peppermint stick and nailed the cookies to it… maybe better to not eat that piece.

Whew. Good luck to you should you choose to embark upon a gingerbread journey of your own! While it was alot of work, I think everyone should try it once in your life.”

“ACD Quickie” - White Chocolate Peppermint Bark:

Makes 2 Cups

Pre-heat oven to 400 Degrees

Ingredients:

2 White chocolate baking bars (4oz. each)

Peppermint stick or candy cane (2.5 oz.)

Directions:

1. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. Place two white chocolate baking bars side by side on the parchment paper.

3. Bake in the oven for 2 minutes.

4. Place peppermint stick(s) unwrapped in a plastic bag and using a hammer, meat mallet or the back of a lime juicer, break the stick into pieces.

5. Using a butter knife gently smooth the white chocolate.

6. Sprinkle the peppermint pieces on top of white chocolate and using the clean side of the butter knife, gently pat the peppermint into the white chocolate.

7. Transfer the white chocolate on the parchment paper into the freezer, and let it freeze minimum 20 minutes.

8. Using a large knife cut up the white chocolate into bark. You can store the bark in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Just let the bark come to room temperature before serving. Enjoy!

Some Ideas of How To Add “ACD Quickie” To Dress- Up” Your Holiday Desserts:

1. Chocolate Cookies: the trick to getting the peppermint bark to stick is to sprinkle on some plain white chocolate chunks before the cookie bakes. Then after the cookie bakes, you can sprinkle the peppermint bark on top and the white chocolate works as an adhesive to help the peppermint bark stick. At Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams, we always get requests to make cookie name place holders and peppermint bark cookies are perfect to seat your holiday guests.  Wrap each cookie individually with ribbon and add your guests name. It’s a sweet and a welcoming way to bring your friends and family to your holiday table. We use this trick in our “Chocolate Holiday Wonderland”.

2. White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn: Everybody loves to munch on popcorn at parties and with red and white bark it is festive too. When filled high and served in a clear bowl, it makes an impressive, delicious and inexpensive holiday table centerpiece. Or for a great hostess gift, package the popcorn in a clear container from a local crafts store and wrap a festive ribbon  around the base and top, and tie a bow in front. (Recipe below).

3. Decorative White Chocolate Peppermint Bark: I love to add candy to my holiday table! It’s an inexpensive way to add color and texture to your setting and give your guest something sweet to enjoy. For every few people put low clear finger bowl filled with the bark. It’s also fun to mix up the containers, adding a variety of  shape and height to your table.

4.Rimming Your Stem Glassware: Like the salt rim in a margarita glass, you can chop the bark up really fine and rim the top of a glass in the bark, using simple sugar to help make the bark stick, then fill the glass with egg nog, hot chocolate or rose’ champagne like I did today on Good Morning Texas.

5. Add Bark On Top: Delicious in vanilla or chocolate ice cream, ice cream sandwiches or pudding. Today on Good Morning Texas, I added bark to my semi-homemade “Egg Nog Pudding”. Email me for the recipe at Alexandra@alexandrasCookieDreams.com. Also fun to decorate the icing on cupcakes and for holiday parties, I suggest using red velvet cake with vanilla icing.

If peppermint flavor is not your thing…

There are plenty of other ingredients that will make a fabulous bark.I always think in terms of flavor and color. So it has to first taste delicious but also make a great impression on your holiday table, since with we eat with our eyes first. I would suggest adding, shaved almonds or pine nuts, shaved coconut, dried cranberries or cherries. The white chocolate creates an open canvas for you to work to decorate. Of course you can always add milk and dark chocolate too.

White Chooclate Peppermint Popcorn - as seen on Good Morning Texas

Makes approximately 14 cups of popcorn

Ingredients:

15 oz. bag micowavable popcorn (traditional, unsweetened)

4oz. White chocolate

4oz. Peppermint stick choppped

3 Teaspoons kosker salt

Directions:

1. Microwave popcorn following the directions on the bag.

2. Microwave the white chocolate for three minutes.

3. Toss popcorn with white chocolate, peppermint chunks, and salt.

4. Store in a sealed plastic bag, airtight tin or plastic container.  Stays fresh for at least one week. Enjoy!

Sweetly,

Alexandra

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I have caught up with you, and I have to say I really missed blogging! I’ve wanted to focus on The ‘Insatiable’ Cookie Chase, the FREE online food adventure that Gael Greene, Insatiable Critic, and myself are sponsoring and give you plenty of opportunities to win free gourmet gifts.  There is still time to win gourmet gifts for the holiday; Dozens of ACD cookies and  personalized autographed copies of Gael Greene’s book, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess! The contest ends Wednesday December 10th, winner selected December 11th. Click here to start playing now!

Please note: Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, all ACD gourmet cookie orders placed this week will be shipped on or after December 2nd, 2008. Thank you and have a great holiday!

Before I head home to NYC for my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving, I wanted to quickly update you on all the exciting news at Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams:

Chocolate Holiday Wonderland: New limited edition holiday cookie! When people ask me which is my favorite flavor of ACD cookie, I hate to play favorites, like a school teacher, I always say I love them all for different reasons. This is the truth, it just depends on my mood at that moment.  Well right now I am obsessed with the Chocolate Holiday Wonderland, and if you ask me why, it’s because I am feeling quite festive right now! The Chocolate Holiday Wonderland has chunks of creamy Ghiradelli white chocolate nestled in a fudgy, cripy Ghiradelli cocoa cookie, topped with chunks of cool peppermint bark. This cookie flavor is available in any of our holiday packages on “Our Shop” and on our Corporate/Large Order Forms, which you can download on our NEW Holiday Page.

15% Discount On All Cookie Packages: The ACD Cookie Scoop Subscribers next week will be receiving another 15% Off all* packages at ACD, so you can Pre-Order all your holiday gifts and save 15%. This week so many of you enjoyed this discount that we wanted to spread the holiday cheer and extend the discount an extra week. I wanted to let all of our ACD readers and eaters know about this! To receive the promotion code for your 15% simply sign up for The ACD Cookie Scoop on the upper right side of this page and on Monday November 24th, you will receive our latest edition of The Scoop with  your discount ’Promo Code’. What a better way to spend your Thanksgiving Break than actually relaxing. Rather than running around on the busiest holiday shopping day of the year, sit at home, cozied up, and order all your holiday gifts right here. *Please note: this discount is not valid on our Taste The Holiday Dream 6 ($20 gift package).

Toffee Apple Cookie Crumble:

If you need a last minute ridiculously delicious and simple idea for your Thanksgiving dessert, try this! (Of course you can substitute the ACD Toffee Doodle Dream with a plain vanilla cookie )

Toffee Apple Cookie Crumble:

Serving Size 4: Individual Ramekins (4′ round)

Preheat oven to 400 Degrees

Ingredients:

4 Macintosh Apples or Brae Burn Apples

6 Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams Toffee Doodle Dream Cookies

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 tablespoon cinnamon

1/3 stick butter (slightly softened)

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

2. Peel and cut apples into thin slices, and gently coat them in cinnamon sugar mixture (just a light coating, you will have extra cinnamon sugar to use later)

3. Crumble 1/2 Toffee Doodle Dream Cookie in the base of each ramekin, press firmly down.

4 Start layering the apples slices from the outer edge of the ramekin inward. In between layers sprinkle cinnamon sugar, pecans and a little dab of butter, continue until to reach top of ramikin (press apples down firmly).

5. Crumble 3/4 of a Toffee Doodle Dream cookie on top of each raminkin, and press down firmly. Leave the remaining 1/4 of the cookie to eat with finished Toffee Apple Cookie Crumble.

6. Place ramikins on cookie sheet and bake for approximately 35 min, until apples are softened. Let cook for 45 min, and Enjoy!

I wish you all a very sweet Thanksgiving Holiday!
Alexandra

Welcome to the “Unofficial” start of Fall! This week at ACD we will be debuting our new “Back-to-School” gift packages to give a “sweet” start to the school year and all your tailgating parties. Sign up for our Enewsletter, “The ACD Cookie Scoop”,  to receive a private code for a discount on the “Back-to-School” cookie package reserved only for our Enewsletter subscribers

This weekend Rich and I were in Remsenburg (a small enclave near Westhampton, NY) visiting my family at their country home. We are a food obsessed family and weekends spent in the Hamptons feeds directly into this obsession. We have a “country kitchen” big enough for the family to gather and two refrigerators and garage to stock supplies, all of which are a fantasy that fades like summer when they return to their NYC apartments. My family loves to discuss the “menu”, shop for food, cook, grill, entertain and EAT!  The combination of my dad (who is his teens owned his own luncheonette, named Irene’s in the Catskill Mountains and makes a mean Chigramy (email me for this recipe) and my younger sister Alana’s boyfriend Aaron, whose gourmand skills please both the foodie and non-foodie alike, made for an incredible food fest!   Let’s say Rich and I have taken a welcomed break from our standard Whole Foods salad bar dinner in Austin.

Some of my favorite dishes of the weekend: Daddy Alan’s BBQ chicken and beef with his secret sauce (of course before moving to Texas, I was a BBQ neophyte, I didn’t know the difference between this type of Hamptons BBQ and Kreitz Lockhardt. Now I know, it’s about 500 calories and Texas family heirloom coals.) August corn in the Hamptons, simply cooked or grilled, is one of nature’s greatest gifts, sweet, plump, a perfectly pale shade of yellow.  The farm stands out there (my favorite being Harbes Family Farm on the South Fork) roast the corn to perfection in the husk, then you can roll them in butter (or Molly McButter - which I’m not afraid to openly state that I love) and salt and pepper on a white plastic coated paper plate. You eat roadside and think, life is good! Of course, you can’t come out here without a stop at Briermere Farms on the North Fork for their Peach Cream Pie- light and fluffy, creamy seduction for $15 - amazing. My older sister Terri’s daughter Gigi (picture left), who’s almost three, is ridiculously cute, smart and fun! We played “Bakery” using Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Wish dough and Gigi’s  William Sonoma animal shaped cookie cutters; we went to “work”. When I was a teacher, we always said it’s “the process not the product”, and I think this is a key example. It’s probably better to use plain shortbread dough or sugar cookie dough, unless you want a giraffe with a cranberry for a head. Finally, there was Aaron’s, “ACD White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Wish Midnight Shake-Down”, recipe below, to which I am partial.

When we go to Remsenburg we rarely like to leave our house unless it is for a trip to the beach or to go food shopping. However, there are some fabulous restaurants here and we ventured out to Bridgehampton to one of our favorites, Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, with our favorite newlywed friends Brett and Jake Smith (aka Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Alana and Aaron.  The food, as predicted, was perfection. For appetizers, Alana and I shared the crab cake, and the smoked salmon and goat cheese tower (I’m not sure of the exact name of this dish but the title describes how it looks.) I was pleasantly surprised to discover that these two sensations can happily share a plate and their flavors were like an old couple, that quietly know how to make each other happy. For my second course I had the beef carpaccio, (also an appetizer.) I usually order two appetizers instead of one entree, then I use my “roving fork” to try everybody else’s dish. We of course happily shared fries for the table.  We were only disappointed by the Mac n’ Cheese, which lacked flavor, seasoning, and any sort of fulfillment that frozen Stouffer’s could have easily provided.

Recipe time…

ACD White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Wish Midnight Shake-Down by, Aaron Feldman

2 Scoops Vanilla Ice Cream. We love Graeter’s from Ohio and they will ship to you on ice and of course Haagen Dazs vanilla bean is always awesome too.)

1 Cup milk (add more milk to achieve a thicker milkshake)

2 ACD White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Wish cookies

Put all ingredients in a blender, pour into cups and drink (straw optional) makes approximately 16 ounces of frothy goodness

And now to the shopping…

Everybody should check out my favorite jewelry line Rich Rocks by my friend, Robin Rothfeld. This weekend Robin brought her new collection to our house and all the ladies were ecstatic. Her costume jewelry line looks extremely similar to the styles of Van Cleef & Arpels, and Ippolita, and her pieces average around $85 each. You can’t beat that, check out her new redesigned website at richrocksnyc.com , where you can shop online. You’ll be so thrilled you did!

Well as the un-official end of summer is here, Labor Day Food Fest ‘08 is done , and Rich and I return to Austin, I wish you all a “sweet” start of unofficial fall, football season, and back to school!

Sweetly,

Alexandra