Mar-a-Lago Kevin

...and when good biscuits go bad.

My guest on The Secret Life of Cookies podcast this week was the great Elie Honig, CNN Senior Legal Analyst and Rutgers law professor, among other things. His perspective on the busy legal week (SDNY! Georgia DA! January 6th reveals! etc. etc.) were sobering but helpful.

Elie, along with being a brilliant legal mind, is also a great home cook. But he professed to not baking a lot, so I suggested a savory option: my cheesy nibblets (aka: cheesy shortbread). A few days later Elie sent me photos of burnt nubbins he said resembled rabbit droppings. If those were indeed similar to rabbit droppings, I would have to assume it was a rabbit the size of Harvey.

NB: We made what I call biscuits, but they are **British** style biscuits. A savo(u)ry biscuit if you will, not the fluffy, flaky delights from the American south.

• On the podcast we did a post-mortem as to the cause of the rock-like, burnt results (of the cheesy shortbread, not anything the Supreme Court decided). Here’s what I think happened and how you can avoid similar problems at home:

• Buy an oven thermometer and see how your oven is calibrated. This way you can adjust a recipe’s suggested temperature up or down to match your oven to the recipe.

• Unless otherwise stated, always bake on the middle rack of the oven. If you are baking multiple trays, halfway through baking, rearrange the baking sheets not only top to bottom, but back to front (in other words, give the pans a spin). Ovens famously have hot pockets where scorching is likely to occur.

• Don’t use the convection fan on your oven when baking, unless the recipe suggests it. If you do find yourself using convection and the recipe doesn’t otherwise say it, lower the temperature by 25 degrees F.

• If you find yourself using dark pans (either through overuse/greasy build-up/or it’s a dark pan), you may want to lower the temperature by 25 degrees, or monitor very closely, because as your 6th grade science teacher told you: black absorbs the heat, which can cause foods to cook faster and burn before you know it. (I use my older, gunkier pans for roasting meats and veg, where a little browning is desirable.)

• And like all recipe creators pray: Buy yourself a scale so you can measure your ingredients by weight (grams or ounces!) instead of volume (cups…), It’s much more precise. For more detail, listen to the podcast.

And to my regular subscribers: Although Julia Child said never to apologize, I apologize for the repeat recipe below. I promise you two new ones this week to make up for it!

Cheddar - Everything Seasoning Cheesy Nibblets

Makes 3 dozen (you will want more)

What you’ll need:

100 grams or 1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese (don’t use pre-shredded cheese)

125 grams or 1 cup all-purpose flour

100 grams or 7 tablespoons or 3.5 ounces unsalted butter, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons ‘everything bagel’ seasoning

What You’ll Do:

1. In a food processor, pulse the cheddar cheese until very small crumbles form. (I don’t want you to have to grate cheese and dirty one more thing.)

2. Add the flour, butter and everything bagel seasoning and run the machine until the mixture begins to clump together.

3. Divide the mixture in half. Roll each half into a long snake-like shape, 1- to 1 1/2-inch thick. Roll each piece in parchment paper and refrigerate for an hour, or if impatient, freeze for 20 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.

5. Slice the log into 1/4-inch slices and arrange about 2-inches apart on the baking sheet, as they spread a little while baking. Bake for 15 to 25 minutes, depending on your oven. If baking all 3 pans at once, rearrange the pans twice to ensure even cooking. The nibblets should be light golden in color. Remove from oven. Let cool a few minutes on the pan, then transfer to rack to cool completely.

6. Store in a tight-lidded vessel of your choice. These are, as we say in England, very more-ish. You have been warned.

What are your most memorable baking disasters?

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