Posts Tagged ‘Cookies’
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Sugarsnap Expands to Tech Park
When you pull into the parking lot at 30 Community Drive, the hub of South Burlington’s Technology Park, you might have to squint to spot the cheery little sign for the new Sugarsnap restaurant. It’s off to the left, sandwiched between
TelJet’s and Test America’s no-nonsense logos. It feels far away from Sugarsnap’s friendly home at the edge of the Intervale. But once you step inside, warm aromas from simmering soups and just-baked cookies tell you you’re headed to the right place.After six years of serving impeccably fresh, ready-to-eat, mostly local foods from its Riverside Avenue location, Sugarsnap has just expanded into a new commissary kitchen and second retail store in South Burlington. The move brings all the food preparation, storage and catering operations for the growing business into one place—and frees up freezer space in founder, owner and co-president Abbey Duke’s garage. It’s all part of Sugarsnap’s mission to put delicious, sustainable food within reach of everyone.
All of Sugarsnap’s sandwiches, salads, soups, baked goods and daily special entrées (like today’s terrific Beet & Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Sauce) showcase ingredients from its own three-acre farm in the Intervale as well as from more than 20 regional Food Partners. Co-0wner and co-president
Rob Smart estimates that more than half of the ingredients used at Sugarsnap are locally grown. “We aim to move that to 60 or even 70 percent over the next couple of years.”“Our plan is to make really great, healthy food accessible to all—and to make the regional economy stronger in the process,” says Smart. “We’re building a new regional food business model here.”
Stop by either of the two stores to have coffee and pastries at breakfast, to savor soup, sandwiches and salads at lunch or to grab ready-made entrées to take home for dinner. The Tech Park location includes restaurant seating as well. Sugarsnap Catering offers farm-fresh foods for events of many sizes, from business meetings to private parties.
Sugarsnap Zucchini “Linguini” With Basil Pesto
from Sugarsnap, Burlington, Vermont2 large zucchini
One 8 ounce container of pesto (homemade or purchased)
½ cup pine nuts or nuts of your choice
3+ tablespoons Parmigiano Reggiano or other hard Italian cheese
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Salt and pepperWash and dry the zucchini and using a julienne peeler, make the “linguini“ using the white flesh and skin of the squash, stopping when you get to the seeds. In a bowl large enough to toss the mix, add pesto (to taste), nuts, half of the cheese and the lemon zest. Use lemon juice to thin the pesto as you would use hot pasta water in a hot pesto/pasta dish.
Add salt and pepper and more or less of anything as you wish. Top each serving with some of the remaining cheese. Serve with a green salad and crusty bread.
Serves 4
Sugarsnap on Riverside • 505 Riverside Avenue, Burlington, VT 05401 • 802.652.5922
Sugarsnap at Technology Park • 30 Community Drive, Suite 9, South Burlington, VT 05403 • 802.861.2718 • contact@sugarsnapvt.comSee more great images of Sugarsnap on our flickr page!
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Ringing Mirabelles’ Praises
Mirabelles — the melodic word means ‘plums’, the small, round golden yellow kind that make delicious tarts, preserves and a killer French plum brandy.
In Burlington-ese, Mirabelles translates into the best pastry/breakfast/lunch spot in town.Two NECI grads, Alison Lane and Andrew Silva, opened Mirabelles nearly 20 years ago, establishing the shop as the place to order a wedding cake, the place to stop for a slice of gateau ‘Opera’ and a cup of coffee and the place to run into somebody interesting. Ten years later, Lane and Silva doubled the size of the restaurant to make way for a bigger kitchen, more seating and, best of all, a full breakfast service.
The Mirabelles menu has been expanding and evolving as well. Its roots are still American and French (le croque monsieur est toujours excellent!), but now there are more Southwest dishes showing up as daily specials, like last week’s quesadilla with adobo-spiced Vermont steak, chiles and jack cheese. One of the biggest changes is that customers are seeing the word “local” more and more on the menu board.
“Thank goodness people are over the health thing–we don’t get requests for egg-white-only omelets like we used to,” says Lane. “Now all our customers want local. Local meat, local salad greens, local cheeses.”
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Gingery Gingersnaps
from Susan Stuck
This one’s for the ginger-lovers on your list. Packed in an airtight tin, the cookies keep for weeks.
¾ cup shortening (really, shortening works better than butter in this recipe)
1 cup sugar
¼ cup dark molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
Dash of cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped candied ginger to taste
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
Coarse sugar for rolling cookiesPreheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease 2 baking sheets.
Cream together the shortening and sugar. Beat in the molasses followed by the egg.
Sift together the dry ingredients and stir into shortening mixture. Add the chopped and grated gingers and stir to blend.
Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and roll in the coarse sugar. Arrange on the baking sheets about 1½ inches apart. Bake until the edges are firm, the centers are still soft and cracks appear on the tops of the cookies, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.
Makes about 4 dozen cookies
Variation: Gin-Jams Sandwich Cookies
Make a batch of gingersnaps but roll them a little smaller, about the size of shooter marbles. Bake, let cool then sandwich the little cookies with a half teaspoon of orange marmalade, seedless raspberry preserves or jarred lemon curd.
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Carousel Cookies
from Heather Pringle
As a kid, I never liked carousel cookies. When presented with a brightly colored sugar cookie that looked like a reindeer and a small cookie with nuts and jam, the decision was easy. When I grew up, I realized just how wonderful these slightly unusual cookies are—the combination of the crunchy nuts and the not-too-sweet preserves are a perfect afternoon snack on a lazy winter’s afternoon.
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 egg, separated
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
1 cup chopped pecans
¼ cup strawberry jam
¼ cup apricot preservesPreheat the oven to 375ºF.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in the egg yolk, vanilla and salt. Stir in the flour and mix well. In a small bowl, beat the egg white until frothy.
Shape level tablespoons of the dough into balls. Dip each ball into the egg white then roll in the nuts. Arrange the balls on ungreased baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Flatten slightly then indent the centers. Fill with preserves (about ½ teaspoon each), alternating with the strawberry and apricot preserves.
Bake until lightly browned, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies
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Christmas Cutouts
from Emily Morgan
This recipe is so simple, but I’ve never had these cookies come out tasting quite as good as when my Gram makes them. Growing up, it was a tradition for me to help her make a batch every year. I recommend eating the dough—it’s delicious! If you have enough dough left to bake, the cookies are best served with a glass of milk for dunking!
Double-strength vanilla extract from Penzeys Spices is perfect here.
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, at room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2½ cups flourCream the butter. Gradually beat in the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Gradually blend in the flour. Chill the dough for at least an hour or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets.
Roll out the dough ¼ inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and arrange on the baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Bake until golden, 8 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely then frost festively!
Makes about 4 dozen cookies
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Chewy Sugar Cookies
from Sarah McClain
I absolutely love good ’ol sugar cookies. For the last three years, my almost 5-year-old niece, Iris, and I have been making sugar cookies on Christmas Eve for Santa. We tie our aprons and get to work. My poor sister—by the end of each cookie session, her kitchen is covered with a fine layer of flour. I bounce around with which recipe to use each year, but my most recent favorite is this one, courtesy of Linda McClure, from the Food Network’s Sweet Dreams episode “Cookie Jar.”
King Arthur Flour’s Baker’s Catalogue has a wide selection of colored sugars and holiday sprinkles to decorate cookies.
2¾ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 to 4 tablespoons buttermilk
Colored sugar or sprinkles for decoratingPreheat the oven to 375ºF.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Gradually blend in the dry ingredients. Add enough of the buttermilk to moisten the dough and make it soft but not wet.
Roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. With a brush or your fingers, moisten the top of each cookie with the remaining buttermilk and slightly flatten the tops. Sprinkle with the colored sugar or sprinkles. Bake until slightly golden, 8 to 10 minutes. Let stand for 2 minutes before removing to a rack to let cool completely.
Makes about 4 dozen cookies
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Pecan Puffs
from Kim Werner
This recipe—passed down from my grandmother Muriel—is now a Werner family tradition. They are a cinch to make, which is lucky since these bite-sized morsels are much too easy to pop into your mouth, so they disappear quickly!
2 cups pecans
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, at room temperature
¼ cup sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour
½ cup confectioners’ sugarPreheat the oven to 300ºF. Grease 2 baking sheets.
Pulse the pecans in a blender or food processor until coarsely ground. Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla. Stir in the flour and ground pecans.
Roll the dough into small balls and arrange on the baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Bake for 45 minutes. Roll in the confectioners’ sugar while hot. Transfer to a rack to cool completely then roll again in the sugar.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies
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FarmPlate’s Cookie Plate
We asked our FarmPlate staffers to share a favorite Christmas cookie recipe. All with the exception of one rely on butter for richness. Susan Stuck prefers Cabot Creamery’s unsalted butter in all her baked goods that call for butter. “It has a great creamy flavor and low moisture content. It’s like using good French butter.”
Christmas Cutouts
from Emily MorganThis recipe is so simple, but I’ve never had these cookies come out tasting quite as good as when my Gram makes them. Growing up, it was a tradition for me to help her make a batch every year. I recommend eating the dough—it’s delicious! If you have enough dough left to bake, the cookies are best served with a glass of milk for dunking!
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Woodstock Farmers’ Market: Nothing Short of a Blast
Woodstock Farmers’ Market owner Patrick Crowl loves what he does for a living–and it shows. It shows in the thousands of personally selected (and tasted) products for sale. It shows in the attention he gives to customers. It shows in the respect he has for his more than 35 food-crazy employees.
“Our staff is amazing—we literally wake up every day living and breathing food—plus everyone genuinely loves to help our customers make choices,” boasts Crowl. “To actually know where your food comes from is so important these days—and to guide our guests toward something new and cool is nothing short of a blast.”The 2,000-square-foot market specializes in sourcing artisanal foods from all over the world but focuses on regional and local foods, such as Vermont meats, poultry, cheeses (50+!) and produce, and uses many local ingredients in its prepared lunch and dinner selections.
The on-site bakery is known throughout the region for its breads, cakes, pies and cookies. (Covered Bridge Hermits are a personal favorite.)
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