My Grandpa Bernie recently sent me a letter thanking me profusely for the gluten-free cookies I’d sent him, and mentioned he’d look forward to my future kindness (and if I sent some for Grandma Susie, that might be nice, too).

I hadn’t baked in a few weeks but I was feeling some excess energy to burn, so with the excuse of Valentine’s Day, I baked him another batch of Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies, which I discovered on allrecipes.com by Jackie. They are delicious. However, they are pretty much just pure peanut butter and egg, with a little Splenda Sugar Blend and baking powder thrown in. I folded some chocolate chips into that oily, slimy mess and put it on a cookie sheet. It bakes up wonderfully. I was a little concerned (egg whites make it glisten), so I had to eat at least one. I figured, I’d get a little fatter and might get sick, but if I sent bad cookies to Grandpa Bernie, the salmonella could kill him. So I got a little fatter and the cookie was delicious! So I had a second 12 hours later,  just to be certain. It was totally worth its weight in calories. Since the recipe, from allrecipes.com, is so straight-forward, I’ll just include it in the bottom without step-by-step pictures.

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

On Tuesday evening, I got more peanut butter and chocolate chunks and chips, so I was able to start baking first thing in the morning on Wednesday (just for fun) for Grandma Susie and Aunt Patsy. For Aunt Patsy, my husband’s grandparents’ Sheltie, I decided to bake a batch of Peanut Butter Dog Cookies. Other recipes include things like pureed liver, and I really do not want to bake pureed liver cookies. Luckily, dogs seem to LOVE these human-food treats. The recipe I finally found was “Birthday Bones” from allrecipes.com by Tami. I’ve found them to be easy to make and so very appreciated. If you eat them, they’d just taste bland. Basically, you mix peanut butter and milk together, then mix in flour and baking powder thoroughly. Roll it out to be ¼” thick. Then either cut it into strips roughly 1½” wide by 3″ long or use a cookie cutter for fun shapes like doggy bones. You can place them close together on the baking sheet because they mostly puff vertically. The cookie cutter I used seemed to work well for larger dogs (like my student’s boxer) as well as smaller dogs (like my mother’s miniature poodles), because they can break and crumble easily. But don’t worry about crumbs – I have not yet seen a dog that hasn’t acted like a hoover vacuum cleaner for a good 5 minutes after eating a cookie.

Peanut Butter Dog Cookies

For Grandma Susie, I figured it would be nice to have a similar cookie. So I used a recipe from allrecipes.com by Kathy Bliesner for soft, delicious, Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk cookies. This was a very interesting cookie to make because peanut butter was whipped with the butter at the beginning of the recipe and the result is a salty, sweet, chocolatey, peanut buttery cookie that is soft and chewy. Unfortunately, despite wearing an apron, a melting chocolate chunk fell in between my apron and my shirt and I had to change quick before going to work. I love the apron, even if the neck hole is a little large for my height – it’s blue and yellow and pink and apples, it has a pocket, and it’s girly. I bought it from Classic Confections at etsy.com, along with matching oven mitts from Plaid Apple at etsy.com

Oops! Chocolate fell inside my apron!

This is my first step-by-step pictorial recipe. I hope the pictures help.

Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Yield: 24 cookies

Ingredients:

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup peanut butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (or ½ cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend)
• ½ cup white sugar (or ¼ cup Splenda Sugar Blend)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups chopped semisweet chocolate

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
   

   2. Combine dry ingredients.

3. In a large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and sugar.
   

   3. Cream the butter, peanut butter, and sugars

4. Beat in the 2 eggs one at a time.
   

   4. Beat in the 2 eggs one at a time.

5. Stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla.
   

   5. Stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla.

6. Stir the flour mixture gradually into the peanut butter mixture.
   

   6. Stir the flour mixture gradually into the peanut butter mixture.

7. Fold in chocolate chunks.
   

   7. Fold in chocolate chunks.

8. Drop by double-tablespoonfuls, 3″ apart onto ungreased baking sheets.
   

   8. Drop by double-tablespoonfuls, 3" apart onto ungreased baking sheets.

9. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Allow cookies to cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
   

   Cooling Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

adapted from a recipe from allrecipes.com by Kathy Bliesner

Peanut Butter Dog Cookies

Yield: 4 dozen 1½” x 3″ treats

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup skim milk

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. Stir together the flour and baking powder; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, mix together the peanut butter and milk. Stir in the flour mixture until well blended.
4. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Roll out to ¼” thickness and cut into shapes using cookie cutters. Place 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.
5. Bake for 5 minutes in the preheated oven, then flip. Continue baking until lightly brown (about 10-15 more minutes). Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

adapted from “Birthday Bones” from allrecipes.com by Tami

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips

Yield: 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups peanut butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease cookie sheet.
2. Combine peanut butter, eggs, sugar, and salt and mix until smooth.
3. Fold in chocolate chips, if desired.
4. Spoon dough by tablespoons onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for 5 to 10 minutes before removing.

adapted from allrecipes.com by Jackie

When my husband and I first moved in together (gasp, yes, we moved in together before we married, even in this day and age!) and I was starting the summer session of graduate school, I made attempts to cook and the results were pretty good. Then again, two years later when we married and bought our first home, I made more attempts at cooking. Then I worked my butt into exhaustion, we moved to Maryland, I got sick, and I let my husband take over more and more of the cooking duties.

Now I have been feeling better. So after my first forays into baking in December, I decided that my husband could do with some home cooking. The thing is, he grew up with parents who made short-cut from-the-back-of-the-can/box dinners, which are also the kind of thing we’ve subsisted on for nearly a decade. I grew up on meals in which the prepackaged parts were the pasta or spaghetti sauce, but otherwise I get a lot of recipes from my mother that involve adding “some” of this, until it starts to look right, a shake or two of that seasoning, a whole lot of garlic, mostly because the volume grew a lot as my baby brother got older and we still wanted some leftovers and then shrank back a bit. My maternal grandmother’s recipes were some of my favorites growing up. Unfortunately, my grandmother had severe enough Alzheimer’s by the time I was in college that my husband never met her and she was unable to communicate the recipes to me directly. My mother was recently able to scan most of the recipes my grandmother had written down, but most are in varying combinations of English, Czech, and even some German.

So my first attempts to cook were with my mother’s recipes. But now I wanted to try my hand at those recipes I’d wait weeks to taste again, until Babi came to visit (babička is Czech for grandmother; her name was Mila, but as our only Czech grandmother, we called her simply Babi). So, until they are translated, I’ve been utilizing the power of the internet to find the recipes of Czech expatriates or the progeny of Czechs. Like everything else, I did a great deal of comparing and contrasting and trying to determine what seemed familiar and what seemed authentic.

My first meal was my absolute favorite as a child: chicken paprikash (kuře na paprice). It’s a Hungarian favorite, but it also is very very Czech. It turned out very well – the meat was tender, the sauce a nice combination of mild flavor and bland smoothness, but I hadn’t warmed up the sour cream enough or lowered the temp of the sauce so the sauce wasn’t consistent.

The short version of the recipe is to chop up half an onion and saute it in a bit of olive oil until glassy, then take a chicken cut into pieces (breasts, thighs, drumsticks, etc.) or just several thighs, bone-in with the skin still attached (but some of the fat beneath removed), shake paprika all over it (both sides) and brown it on all sides. Then put in enough chicken stock to cover it and bring the stock to a boil, then simmer it for a few (3 to 4?) hours. Remove the chicken, let the sauce cool a little and thicken it up with sour cream you have brought to room temperature (otherwise, it looks a little chunky). Then add the chicken again and shake a little more paprika over it all, and serve over egg noodles.

Chicken Paprikash (Kuře Na Paprice)

The second meal I made was another favorite, but rarely made: roast pork loin (vepřová pečeně) with bread dumplings (houskove knedlíky). I really enjoyed it when my parents took my baby brother and me to Prague when I was a teenager. It was super-easy to make. However, I am not a beer person, nor did I know that beer brings out the saltiness of food. I just read that no traditional Czech meal was complete without a good beer like Pilsner Urquell. I may have had too much salt or the beer might have been a poor addition. Either way, less salt next time.

For pork loin, here is another short-version recipe. Get a 3lb bone-in pork loin, or just a pork tenderloin that is well-marbled with fat or at least has a thick ridge of fat on top. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Make a rub out of two or three cloves of minced garlic, half of a minced onion, a teaspoon of caraway seeds, and a tablespoon of olive oil, then rub that rub all over the loin. Place into a roasting or baking pan with 1 cup of water. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake in a preheated oven for 3 to 6 hours (longer makes it more tender). For the last half-hour or so, remove the foil. Serve with bread, bread dumplings (the recipe for knedlíky is below), or pan-roasted potatoes.

Czech-Style Roast Pork Loin (Vepřová Pečeně)

The third meal was Czech-style goulash (guláš), which is more like a thick stew, whereas Hungarian goulash is more like a soup (gulyás, in the hungarian sense, is known as gulášová polévka, or goulash soup, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia). It was okay (not extremely flavorful). I really enjoyed it for a few meals, but my husband only ate it once for dinner.  I’ll definitely make it again, but with potatoes for my very American husband rather than knedlíky). The recipe I used was from Czechmate Diary, as well as her recipe for a smaller batch of knedlíky, which tasted very much like the recipe I used the week before to go with the pork loin.

Czech-Style Goulash (Guláš) with Bread Dumplings (Houskove Knedlíky)

Houskove Knedlíky (Bread Dumplings)

Yields: 8 servings

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1  to 3 cups milk
• 4 cups stale rye bread cubes

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of very lightly salted water to a boil.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
3. Make a well in the center, and pour in the eggs and ½ cup of milk. Mix it all together until smooth and soft/doughy but still holding its shape (add additional milk as needed – I used just under 2 cups).
4. Fold in rye bread cubes.
5. Use wet hands to form the dough into 3 loaves about 5” long and roll in a cheesecloth, tying the ends.
6. Gently lower into water, and gently simmer for 30 minutes, rolling about 3-4 times while cooking. Remove from the water and unwrap.
7. Cut with a bread knife into half-inch-width pieces.

adapted from a recipe on allrecipes.com

Note: If left to sit for more than 10 minutes, it may get stale.

Houskove Knedlíky (Bread Dumplings), before and after cooking

Over Thanksgiving, I “helped” my mother-in-law bake cranberry pistachio biscotti and create a very yummy rice pudding. She, too, is a math person. I watched her carefully measure ingredients and presliced-dough thickness, length, and width. She even measured the temperature of the water she brewed tea. With a significant amount of excess energy now that my fibromyalgia was pretty much under control and a limited amount of time spent tutoring, I realized that this could be the perfect new mathematically-artistic hobby that could also double as a husband-coddler and social outlet (hostess gifts at parties, thank yous to students, etc.).

After discovering allrecipes.com, I began to bake a new batch of cookies nearly every day for three weeks, sending the cookies to my husband’s office. It was interesting, fun, and soothing. It also was great to hear feedback and yummy noises. The first cookie was extremely successful, but the second and third were only acceptable. So I decided to be more picky with recipes and scoured allrecipes.com to compare similar recipes. I also read all the comments for technique advice and to learn ways to doctor the recipes for best results, then I began to “Frankenstein” recipes and create my own.

Here are my first cookies. My very first attempts to bake from scratch. Later on, I’ll post recipes for the most successful ones.

The most successful cookies were the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip with Walnuts (I later baked them for my town’s cookie swap), Red Velvet (which were like little cakes), anything with peanut butter, and the Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia Dreams (which I don’t understand – but, then again, I passionately dislike white “chocolate”).

The gluten-free cookies were a hit, despite the oily-gooey look of a dough made almost entirely of peanut butter and egg. I baked them for my husband’s maternal step-grandfather, Grandpa Bernie, and mailed them to him in L.A. along with Pumpkin Walnut Chocolate Chip cookies for Grandma Susie (who adopted me when Peter and I adopted kittens together, a week before graduating college and moved in together), and some peanut-butter bones for Aunt Patsy, their sheltie. Actually, I just baked another batch last night to mail to Grandpa Bernie.

The dog cookies were for pets of family members and students’ pets. It was difficult to find a good recipe – so many include pureed liver or beef boullion or other icky meat ingredients (I refuse to bake with meat).  These had peanut butter and flour. The next hurdle had been the lack of a rolling pin in my arsenal, so I used the dowel for the paper towel roll. My cats were steadfastly against the idea of eating anything baked – I put a crumb the same size as one of their dry food in their bowl, and it was removed. Every time I was in the kitchen, at least one of the cats would walk by, sniff the crumb, give me a dirty look, and send a Siamese-style me-yowl in my general direction. I think I’ll stick to fresh tuna as their rare treat. However, my students’ dogs are now all in love with me and my parents Poodle, Spike, refused his milkbone and nosed the dog-food cabinet door until my dad gave them a broken-up half of my cookie.

The only negative response was the crescents. My maternal grandmother used to make these every Christmas. I didn’t remember anyone liking them, but my Babi passed away the previous Christmas and I figured making these would be a nice gesture for my mom. It was, but we only liked the sugar and chocolate-dipped end. However, the look on my mother’s face as she had a mouthful of a chocolate-dipped end, trying to smile and make yummy noises, was absolutely priceless… I let her off the hook after the first bite and admitted I didn’t think they were very good and she didn’t have to finish it.  Interesting to note: it turns out that nut-based dough is a staple of Czech baking. Since neither Peter nor anybody on my side of the family likes almond-sweet delicacies, I’ll be avoiding most Czech cookies from this point on. However, there is a walnut cake (nusstorte) that was an absolute childhood favorite that I’ll definitely be trying once I get a springform pan.

The first cut-outs were for my nephews and niece, who don’t like chunks of things in their cookies. Then I made slightly spicier gingerbread cookies for some friends’ parties. My target audiences certainly enjoyed them, but I had some issues with decorating. First, the icing wasn’t thick enough, and then the plastic icing tubes for decorating did not exactly have even distribution of piping. But I did my best with it until I ran out after making the 10-sided die for my friend’s game party.

I now have a Wilton Beginner’s Decorating Kit and the lesson plan book (ordered separately through Amazon). I’ll be learning how to pipe over the next month. So I’ll also be trying to bake some cupcakes and cakes. Not to worry, I’ll take you on that bumpy journey with me…