VIDEO: Oatmeal crispies and a reader question for the test kitchen

 

A reader, Dot Goldish, wrote to the L.A. Times test kitchen about this recipe for Oatmeal crispies, which comes from the new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, by blogger Ree Drummond, and had the following question:

You say to remove the cookies from the baking sheet immediately. Does that really work?... In any event, they're wonderful cookies. I make them often and keep a bag of baked cookies in the freezer.

Dot, the cookies will be a bit fragile just out of the oven, but we do remove them immediately using a spatula, where they cool (and continue to crisp) on a rack. Hope this helps.

-- Noelle Carter

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Sampler Platter: Ludo pops up in Culver City, hummus wars, albino carrots, chili cornbread sandwich

The Hummus War drags on while Amelie Mauresmo sips a 1982 Lafite Rothschild and albino carrots plot a return to store shelves.

--Los Angeles magazine, which features real L.A. waitresses in November's fashion spread, says chef Ludovic Lefebvre will do a pop-up restaurant in Culver City come December.
--Regional cuisine war simmers as Lebanon retakes from Israel the coveted world record for largest plate of hummus. Yahoo! News
--All McDonald's in Iceland to close after krona collapse. Bloomberg
--Chili cornbread sandwich gains national fame. Marshall News Messenger
--After centuries away, albino carrots return to store shelves. Daily Mail
--Slate explores the world of hardcore couponing.
--The culinary adventures of chef Celestino Drago. LAist
--French tennis star Amélie Mauresmo shares her passion for collecting wine. Wine Spectator
--"Corndog on a PLane," art that delivers what it promises. Finally. Etsy
--Half of Britons injured by their biscuits (i.e. cookies) on coffee break. Telegraph

--Elina Shatkin

--Photo: Lebanese chefs joyfully react after breaking a Guinness World Record by making a bowl of hummus weighing more than 2,056 kilograms. Credit: Hussein Malla / AP

Sampler Platter: ice cream & burgers control your brain, Bangladeshi goat, red velvet cookies

From roasted goats to red velvet cookies to recalled waffles to trayless cafeterias:

--Bangladeshi goat on the cusp of Koreatown at Taurat Tandoori. Mattatouille
--The 99 Cent Chef answers five questions for Time's Cheapskate Blog.
--Car smashes through front of Wokcano in downtown L.A.; two injured. Los Angeles Times
--Red velvet cookies at the Studio City Farmers Market. Sku's Recent Eats
--The ultimate mobile candy shop -- in Afghanistan. New York Times
--Chocolate and avocado cake with avocado buttercream. Not Quite Nigella
--Doing pullups at a Waffle House will get you arrested. NWF Daily News
--The cafeteria of the future is trayless. Los Angeles Times
--Are your friends making you fat? The power of social contagion. New York Times
--Kellogg recalls Eggo waffles over Listeria fears. Oregon Live
--Fannie May recalls 43,000 candy bars. Forbes
--Ice cream and burgers can control your brain. Reuters

--Elina Shatkin

Photo: A street vendor sells a roasted goat on the first day of Ramadan at the traditional Iftar market at Chalkbazaar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Abir Abdullah / EPA.

It's like pecan pie, but in cookie form....

Linda e-mailed me yesterday evening looking for a recipe from our archives:

"I was looking ... for a cookie recipe from Harris Ranch Restaurant, but did not locate it. Could you help me find the recipe for Pecan Thumb Print Cookies? Thank you, Linda"

We tracked down the recipe, which originally ran as a Culinary SOS on Jan. 11, 2006. We had written:

"Travelers driving between Southern California and the Bay Area on Interstate 5 have made these cookies a popular fixture at the Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant in Coalinga. Chewy in texture, they have a pecan pie flavor and taste like a buttery lace cookie, although they have no butter."

Enjoy, Linda!

The recipe follows the jump. And click here for more Culinary SOS recipes. If you have a favorite restaurant recipe you'd like to request, feel free to e-mail me at noelle.carter@latimes.com. I'll do my best to track down the recipe.

-- Noelle Carter

Photo credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

Post-City Bakery, Birdbath rises in West Hollywood

Maury Rubin closed the L.A. outpost of City Bakery in Brentwood this spring but promised he would open a Birdbath Neighborhood Green Bakery in West Hollywood this year. And so it is. Rubin says he has signed a lease, and a Birdbath bakery -- the first outside of New York -- will open in the newly renovated Pavilions complex at Santa Monica and Robertson boulevards this fall.

"It's a small-scale [700-square-foot] takeout bakery with lunch to go and some unusual beverages," Rubin says. "The food and drink is organic or locally sourced or seasonal or all three."

Expect the pretzel croissant plus cookies, muffins, scones and breakfast tartines. For lunch, small pizzas (including the "green pizza," which just made its debut on the High Line in New York) and pressed sandwiches. Vegan options include the sesame-banana-agave cake, pictured above. And the "unusual beverages" refer to edible flower lemonade, the "Two-Tone" (coffee & chocolate), "foamy" organic orange juice and a new Birdbath hot chocolate. 

Wait, there's more: "some form of shaved ice and/or sorbets and/or frozen custards and/or dessert-like fruit soups," Rubin says. "Eco-themed" pastries include the "What's Your Carbon Footprint?" cookie, "Save the Whale's Tail" turnovers and "Green Energy" cookies (organic butter cookie with jalapeno peppers).

In New York, customers who arrive by bicycle or skateboard get a discount. Here, anyone who arrives in a hybrid vehicle will get a discount.

-- Betty Hallock 

Photo of sesame-banana cakes courtesy of Birdbath. Photo of footprint cookie by Betty Hallock.

Culinary SOS: Molasses cookie with a ginger snap

 

The Model Bakery in St. Helena makes a molasses cookie that's hard to forget. So Sarabeth Rothfeld from Woodland Hills asked Culinary SOS to get on the case. The Model Bakery was happy to help, and Times Test Kitchen Manager Noelle Carter adapted the recipe. (The cookies were a huge hit in the test kitchen too. Noelle had to make sure there were enough left for the photo shoot.)

Enjoy, Sarabeth!

And if there's a recipe out there that you're just dying to have, write to us at food@latimes.com and we'll do our best to get it for you. In the meantime, here's a look at some other Culinary SOS requests that we were able to answer.

--Rene Lynch

Photo credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

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Retro dessert roundup

Blame it on the red velvet cupcake. Blame it on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But it looks like the ebb and flow of the retro dessert trend is at high tide. Inspired by last week's whoopie pie post, here's a list of some other retro desserts.

101 Coffee Shop (Hollywood): chocolate cake in a jar
Baby Blues BBQ (Venice, West Hollywood): buttermilk pie
Beacon an Asian Cafe (Culver City): Rice Krispie sundae, Ring Dings
BOA Steakhouse (West Hollywood, Santa Monica): raspberry cotton candy, s’mores
The Cabbage Patch (Beverly Hills): whoopie pies
Kate Mantilini (Beverly Hills, Woodland Hills): lemon icebox pie
Louisiana Best Seafood (Long Beach): 7-Up cake and sock-it-to-me cake
Milk (Mid-City West): moon pies, blue velvet cake, bonbons, ice cream sundae bars and more
The Nickel Diner (downtown): Pop Tarts, Ho Hos
Nola Ice (Sherman Oaks): New Orleans sno-balls
Simon L.A. (Mid-City West): junk food sampler platter featuring cotton candy
SusieCakes (various locations): whoopie pies, animal cookies, snickerdoodles and more WestCoastWhoopies.com: whoopie pies

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Desserts at the Nickel Diner made by pastry chef Sharlena Fong. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Gluttony + charity = a win for everybody

If the idea of mixing charity and cuisine inspires visions of stuffy hotel ballrooms and wilted vegetables, you have two tasty ways to do good this weekend -- and mercifully they're the antithesis of the rubber chicken circuit.

For those who have $125 to drop, Taste of the Nation Los Angeles offers a gourmet feast, deftly uniting the culinary with the altruistic. Forty-six local restaurants including the Bazaar by Jose Andres, Mozza, Lucques, Craft, Palate Food + Wine, Church & State and Rivera will set up booths in Culver City's Media Park, where they'll hand out samples of their signature dishes. The afternoon also includes cooking demos from Michael Mina of XIV and Mary Sue Milliken of Border Grill and Ciudad; a silent auction; waiter races and a mole cook-off between well-known Mexican restaurants Moles La Tia, Guelaguetza and Tlapazola Grill.

Where: Media Park, Culver and Venice boulevards, Culver City
When: 1-4 p.m., Sunday
Price: $115, advance; $125, day-of; $175, VIP
Contact: (877) 268-2783, www.tasteofthenationla.org

For those looking to spend a little less, fight world hunger by gorging yourself on a smorgasbord of delicious baked goods at the No Cookie Left Behind bake sale. We promise it's for a good cause, although who needs altruism as an excuse to scarf down desserts from Lark Cake Shop, CakeMonkey, Kiss My Bundt Bakery, Spork Foods, Laurel Avenue Bakery, Whisk LA and Taste on Melrose?

Where: Scoops, 712 N. Heliotrope Drive, L.A.
When: 2-6 p.m. Sunday
Price: Free admission
Contact: (323) 906-2649, www.nocookieleftbehind.com

Both events benefit Share Our Strength, which will divide the proceeds among local charities working to end hunger here in Los Angeles.

--Elina Shatkin

Photo: Buckwheat sugar cookies. Credit: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times. Hazelnut chocolate Linzer cookies. Credit: Robert Gautheir / Los Angeles Times

Sampler Platter: Best beers map, squirrel pie & defeating terrorism one cookie at a time

Your next meal could be walking around your garden gathering nuts as you read this — at least if you're British.

• Map of the best beers in America. (California wins with 474!) Strange Maps
• "The most successful interrogation of an Al Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies." Time
• Just in time for National Doughnut Day (June 5), the 99 Cent Chef takes you from Krispy Kreme to his kitchen for a step-by-step glazed doughnut recipe.
• Frank Bruni decries the "predictability" of the Obamas' date night restaurant of choice: Blue Hill. Diner's Journal
• Hot new British food trend: squirrel pie. BBC
• From the Department of Mixed Messages: After her big People cover story about losing 42 pounds, Melissa Joan Hart opens Sweetharts, a candy store in Sherman Oaks. (Who says our culture has schizophrenic expectations about food, dieting and women's bodies? Hush, hush.) LAist

— Elina Shatkin

Photo: Being fattened for the kill? This comely squirrel could land on your dinner plate if Americans fall for squirrel pie the way the Brits have. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.