Welcome to the inagural post for the new Tuesdays With Dorie bake-a-long. We’re working from Dorie’s newest book: Baking Chez Moi. Its a beautiful book filled with simple homey French baking. Sounds complicated? Mais, non! According to Dorie, the French leave the fancy baking to the professionals and bake simple things at home.
These tiny cookes could not have been easier to bake. The ingredients were simple enough: butter, sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla extract. I mixed up a 1/2 batch in a small bowl with a fork. Easy, Peasy! Dorie was kind enough to put metric (weight) measurements for each recipe, so dividing the recipe in half was super simple
Things had to get a little creative when it came to rolling them out, though. Dorie said to use a two teaspoon scoop. Hmmm, my smallest scoop is (I learned) four teaspoons. I scooped the batter onto my cookie sheet and then cut each ball of batter in half, and then rolled each half into a tiny little ball. They ended up about as big as my thumnail, before baking. Totally adorable. I got 19 cookies.
They baked for about 9 minutes, cooled for a few and then got a dunk in a confectioners sugar frosting. Also very simple (sugar, milk and a drop of lemon juice).
Dorie suggests sprinkling with sanding sugar for some extra sparkle. Instead of sugar, I ground up some sea salt and sprinkled that on top to cut the cloying sweentess of the confectioners sugar.
Two out of my three kids enjoyed these cookies. The one who didn’t enjoy them REALLY loves chocolate, so that might be why he didn’t like them. They remind me of the ubitquious black-and-white cookie that you find in delis all over the northeast. All that’s missing is the dip into melted chocolate!
If this is an indication of how this book is going to go along, I think I’m in for a tasty–and non intimidating–adventure.
I do have pictures to go with this. but my computer seems to have eaten them. I will do my best to add them when I figure out what happened!
Bake with Amy 
Having baked all the way through Baking from My Home to Yours, I quite agree that you are in for a tasty–and non intimidating–adventure. Yay!
So glad to have you with us! I have one boy who prefers chocolate, too. Picky kids! 😉
So glad to be baking along with you on this new adventure. 2 out of 3 is pretty darn good and I would have chalked it up to “more for me” 🙂 And yours is another blog that mentioned the black and white cookies- which I am now craving. Great minds think alike ~
Oh the joys of blogging! I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent trying to figure things out that went wrong! I am sure they will show up! Glad I will be baking along with you on this journey! Happy baking!
Hey – 3 out of 3 is a very good record. Sometimes, I am happy to get one like 🙂
2 out of 3, I meant “:-) Apparently, I can’t be trusted with math today.
We’ve all been there!
Welcome to the group! So glad you’re baking with us. The cookies look yummy!
I really hope the rest of the recipes are as simple as this one. Nice meeting you, Amy!
So glad you are baking along! 2 out of 3 liked them? I would go for chocolate first myself. 😉
Oh, I like the idea of sprinkling a little sea salt on these – it would make for a nice contrast. I loved these cookies! Looking forward to baking along with everyone.
It worked so well! I couldn’t stomach the idea of more sugar
Lovely cookies, and what a nice idea to top them with salt for a little contrast!
Ahh computers – they can be so fidgety! The addition of salt sound like a great idea. I agree that this is going to be a fun adventure!