Chocolate Jam Sandwich Cookies, and more Rome

I really hope you all aren't Italy-out-ed yet--I promise that I'm coming to the end of my Italy trip photos! It just seemed that breaking them up into individual 'stories' made for the best approach so as not to overload a single blog post. And I really like the process of coming up with cohesive visual stories/essays and accompanying recipes to present. It's the academic in me. :)

Here was the first portrait of Rome from a few weeks ago, a story of alleyways and the reds, pinks, and oranges of the external face of the city. Today, this portrait of Rome is about its internal treasures, the blues and golds and the history that seeps from the corners and shadows.

[inside Ancient Rome]

Literally outside our door in Travestere, we discovered an ah-mazing pastry shop -- Biscottificio Innocenti -- that we became obsessed with. And by "obsessed," I seriously mean obsessed. All of the pastries are sold by weight there, and over the course of the week between the three of us traveling together, we polished off a neat 4.5 POUNDS (that's 2 kilos!) of cookies. Yes, we were obsessed. (Thank goodness for all the walking we did in Rome--we needed it between the cookies and the constant gelato!) Note also that this does not include the crostata slices that we kept getting, too!

There were so, so many different types of cookies at Biscottificio Innocenti. Many were based around a basic shortbread and then either slathered in jam, studded with cherries, sprinkled with sugars, or dipped in a soft, yielding chocolate ganache. My favorite one, I quickly discovered, were these small sandwich cookies that had it all: apricot-apple marmalade in between the buttery shortbread cookies, half-dipped into chocolate. Marmalade! Cookie! Chocolate! All in one satisfying bite--what more really do you want?

(Also! The proprietress's name is Stefania! What are the odds of that?! Because she loaded us up with so many buttery and sugary treats, she quickly became one of our favorite people in all of Rome.)

[inside Il Vaticano. Top to bottom: the Egyptian exhibit; a room based on the Pantheon; the ridiculously gaudy ceiling of the map room; the Sistine Chapel; the famous Vatican staircase. Last two photos: inside Santa Maria church in Trastevere; the Tiber]

After the insane number of cookies we ended up consuming, we all felt a bit of withdrawal suddenly getting cut off from our source when we came home from Italy, so I set out trying to concoct my own version of chocolate-dipped jam sandwich cookies. The Italian kind from Innocenti were good because the cookies themselves weren't too sweet, which allowed for a sweeter but very thin layer of jam inside. For my version, I used a sweet apricot-orange jam from my favorite local jam company (yay, Blue Chair!), and dipped the shortbread into a dark chocolate ganache. The ganache firms up just enough after an hour or two so that you can safely eat the cookies without dripping chocolate everywhere, but because it's a ganache, the chocolate gives as soon as you bite into it, almost like it's melting into the buttery shortbread inside. Mmmmmm... a piece of Italy in my own kitchen. :)

[click on photo for a larger image]

If you missed any of my previous Italy trip posts, I encourage you to go back and catch up:

Rome, part I

the Amalfi Coast

P.S. If anyone happens to know what these cookies are called in Italian, I would love to know! I managed to learn the names of a few types of cookies, but the name of these still eludes me.

Read on for recipe....

Berry, Apple, and Rosemary Shortbread Bars

M'dears, cookie season is officially upon us! My fridge is stocked with butter, Costco has rolled out the huge packs of parchment paper that they only carry during this time of year, and I've already had to refill my sugar and flour jars twice. Ah, the holidays!

A couple of years ago for the holidays, one of my oldest friends, Priscilla, gifted me with a box of assorted homemade cookies. In them were these amazing, amazing raspberry jam shortbread bars--so good that ever since then, I've been begging Priscilla to make the bars for me again every Christmas. For some reason, however, my begging skills are apparently not up to snuff (NTS: practice Puss'n'Boots face) because I have yet to convince Priscilla to make them for me again! Alas, great sadness. :(

But then, in the midst of a desperate craving for jam shortbread bars, it suddenly dawned on me that, as a baker, I am perfectly capable of taking matters into my own oven-mitted hands. So, enter my spin on this bar-cookie: berry, apple, and rosemary shortbread bars. Before you go and accuse me of once again going off the deep end with potentially insane flavor combinations, allow me to explain where the inspiration for this one comes from. A couple of days ago, a few local San Francisco Bay Area food bloggers and I were brainstorming flavors of blackberry jam that Sean should make (backstory: we were at an event promoting blackberries). Of course, brainstorming flavors is one of my favorite pastimes--I swear a psychologist would have a field day doing food-related free word association analysis on me. Anyways, we all threw out a bunch of suggestions: blackberry-rose! blackberry-ginger! blackberry-vanilla! And somehow, admist all of this, Irvin and I both arrived at a consensus on blackberry-apple-rosemary jam.

Over the next few days, the idea of dark berries paired with apples and rosemary stuck with me. Tart chunks of green apples seemed to be a fitting companion to supple and ultra-sweet berries, and rosemary lends the combination a more sophisticated, rustic air. Together, this trio formed the perfect storm for my long-desired shortbread bars, with homemade blackberry and wild blueberry jam and large pieces of baked apples sandwiched between crumbly layers of almost-savory rosemary shortbread. It's like having jam and apple pie all at once! :)  (For a more standard variation, the rosemary can easily be left out of the shortbread, which is flavored with lemon zest as well, so it will still taste plenty yummy.)

As if these bars weren't awesome enough, I realized, after pulling them out of the oven, a fact that makes them even awesome-er. You see, these little squares of delicious are called "Berry, Apple, and Rosemary Shortbread" bars. Now, if you acronym-tize that, you get.... BARS bars. Oh yes, dear friends. Pun-age! (Okay, cue collective groan and facepalm from most of you out there and a mild applause from English major dorks like me who appreciate a good pun when they hear one!)

[click on photo for a larger image]

Anyways, Priscilla--if you're reading this-- I'm still waiting for you to make your awesome raspberry jam version of these bar-cookies again! *hint hint* And for the rest of you: what cookies are you planning to make this season? Share below!


[full disclosure: thank you to Driscoll's for the blackberries used in this recipe, and thank you to my mom for the apples used herein. As always, I wouldn't be telling you about any products that I don't myself use and love.]


Read on for recipe....