Last week, my cousin Judy was our guest baker, and she introduced us to one great classic cookie dough recipe.  In my book, it’s a keeper.  And this simple dough really is such a great basic, as it literally “took shape” in the forms of vintage Bavarian Springerle wood molds.  The feedback we got from you, was that it had a lot of “look” for such a humble dough. We agree. So today, we’ll up the ante by taking this humble dough to the next level and making it a ‘Linzer’ inspired cookie. The beauty in this cookie, other than whatever shape you choose to do, is in the sandwiching of delicious jam and finishing the top with confectioner’s sugar. This aesthetic difference makes it a little sweeter than last week’s Springerle cookie. The Linzer cookie evolved from the traditional famous Austrian dessert, the Linzer Torte that originated in the eighteenth century in the city of Linz, Austria. This traditional torte recipe was made up of flour, sugar, ground almonds, eggs, and lemon zest. The torte’s crust was filled with jam and then topped off with a beautiful lattice crust. Judy’s Linzer inspired recipe has all the elegance of the original torte, but with the simplicity and convenience of a cookie.

The traditional Linzer Torte and cookie is filled with black currant jam.  Since that is not so easy to find, we substituted with apricot and strawberry jam.  Historically, the center of the Linzer cookies are called “the eyes”.

We pooled our assortment of basic shaped cookie cutters, and decided on larger flower and smaller “crimped” circular forms.

You will need 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups of confectioner’s sugar, 2 1/2 sticks of butter (room temperature), 6 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, the juice of one lemon, vanilla sugar, and apricot and strawberry jam.

Cut up butter and egg yolks.  Beat at medium speed.

Add confectioner’s sugar to the mixture.  Continue to beat at medium speed until the batter becomes much lighter in color.

Add the teaspoon of baking powder to the flour, and add the flour mixture to the batter.  Beat just a little bit to incorporate mixture, and then stop to add the lemon juice. Beat on low just until the lemon juice is incorporated.

Remove from mixer, and with a sturdy spatula, fold together well.

Sprinkle with a little flour to help the batter be “less sticky”, so it will make for an easier removal from the bowl.  Wrap the rough dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Place dough on generously floured board.

Knead dough until it becomes a smooth ball of dough.  One main thing I learned during this kneading stage was the importance of a well floured surface.

We cut the dough ball in half for an easier and faster rolling process.  While working with the first ball, cover second dough ball, and return to fridge.

On a well floured surface, start rolling out dough.

As your rolling, change direction of dough, and again keep adding flour to the surface.

Roll out to 1/8″ thickness.

Take your cookie cutter, dip into a small bowl of flour, and start cutting your cookie shapes. 

Try to cut them as close as possible to each other.  Remember, it takes two cookies sandwiched together to make a Linzer cookie, so it’s important to end up with an even number.

Every other cookie shape needs a smaller cutter to make “the Linzer eyes”.

Place on Silpat or wax paper covered cookie sheet and bake in oven set at a temperature of 300 degrees F for 10 minutes.  Judy has an electric stove, and mine is gas, so we have found that our ovens bake very differently. The cookies in my oven needed a few extra minutes.

This is a good example of the desired “doneness”.  When they are done, with a metal spatula place each cookie on a rack to cool.

Mix together confectioner’s sugar and a packet of vanilla sugar.  You can also use confectioner’s sugar that has a vanilla bean added to a shaker container.  Place all “cookie tops” with holes on a separate cookie sheet and sprinkle well with the sugar mixture.

Take “cookie bottoms”, and by holding the “good side” up, spread a small dollop of jam onto the center. 

Gently place the sugared top onto the jammed bottom.

To finish it off properly, with a butter knife or small metal spatula, add a very small dollop of jam to the “eye” of the cookie.  This adds a little extra luxury to the look of the cookie. Let’s face it, it’s not just important to taste marvelous – it’s got to look marvelous!

Ta-dah! A gorgeous Linzer inspired cookie!  Serve right away, or refrigerate in an airtight container and they will stay fresh and yummy  for a few weeks!

Thanks very much Judy!

Enjoy!

With love,  Nora

This morning I walked into my local grocery store, and was met with the most amazing blast of Easter flowers.  The selection was incredibly varied and quite honestly, pretty overwhelming.  As I looked around, I could see that it would be quite the challenge to choose just the right combo and then take them home and make them be “the best they can be” within my home environment. Now, I was planning on a “Flowers for Easter” posting today, but as I stood there, I came up with the idea of giving myself a challenge, an ‘Easter Flowers Challenge’. I would choose the most common and least expensive cut and potted flowers, in colors that I would not normally gravitate to, and once I got them home, I would have the task of giving them an Easter flower “make-over”.  Good luck Nora.

Once I got my “hodge-podge” assortment home, I popped the cut stems into pots of water, plopped them down next to the plastic potted tulips and hyacinth, and just stared at them. I guess the simplest thing would be to dig up some vases – but that would be expected, too easy, and way too boring. Not to mention that this big bunch may look a little garish all together.

I think the trick is to show them off, in different and unexpected containers and place them in spots around the house that would highlight them in various ways.  I want to take something so simple and humble, and make it important.

I needed to come up with something special for my main entrance.  Four, two dollar bunches of daffodils were so simple and understated, that I wondered what I could do with them to make them become “a statement”.  I found that by splitting them up randomly and spreading them out within a collection of dark chocolate brown glazed crocks would give them some “weight”.  I added the old wood tray to group them all together, so they would be viewed as a unit. I couldn’t help it, I had to throw in the yellow with dark chocolate polka dots pitcher to give it a touch of whimsy.

I love mixing cut and potted flowers.  Here on a small sideboard, potted  ”Purple Velvet” tulips and another variety of cut purple tulips, work beautifully together in these old splint baskets.  The “Purple Velvet” Tulips, as well as the cut tulips were a buy at ’3 for $15.00′. I inserted plastic pot liners for the three potted tulips in the long splint basket.  I needed “to tuck” the center potted tulip between the splint basket’s handle, so it would sit in there naturally. I turned the plant on its’ side and ever so gently, flower end in first, worked it into its’ centered position.  To cover up the “not so pretty” part, I finished it off with a fluffy layer of moss.  The smaller green stained basket got the cut flowers that were divided randomly into three small water filled crocks. When you looked into the basket, it looked like it was meant to carry the collection of tulip filled crocks.

I wanted to create a very “naturalistic” still life on our Easter Sunday buffet table.  I love the feeling of bringing the garden inside. Here I repotted the “Purple Velvet” tulips, as well as some white and purple hyacinth into old mossy terracotta pots that I had on hand. I thought it was important to use different shapes and sizes. I also wanted to take the eye off the soil, so I generously finished them off with moss that I had soaked.  I draped the table with a creamy white antique linen shawl to be the foundation for the buffet: my stack of Country French glazed plates, folded napkins in a rustic twig basket tray, and all the different shaped serving platters. By keeping all the foundation parts, as well as the serving platters, all creamy white, the flowers and the food on this buffet table will become “the stars”.

I love the versatility of these potted flowers.  As soon as I am done with them, I will plant them out into the garden.  Over the years, I have done that after each Easter celebration.  I plant them, forget about them, and every spring it’s a great surprise.

Right outside the family room’s french doors, we’ll have our Easter Sunday Easter Egg Hunt.  What a perfect spot to add a little wild color and whimsy!  Here I arranged tulips in shades of yellow, orangey yellow, and hot pink in oasis that I anchored into a vintage bright yellow wooden bucket.  By placing this vibrant color palette of an arrangement on an old painted black chair, in a deep moss green painted room has quite a dramatic effect.

It’s funny, but using flowers for Easter, in colors that were out of my norm of white and soft pastels, did challenge me. No matter what color and type of flower, it had to work beautifully and seamlessly into my home.  It had to look like it naturally lived there – the whole package.  I guess I’m a creature of habit, and this time I ended up surprising even myself!

See you Wednesday!

With love,  Nora

The Coop Project was like the story from ‘The Wizard of Oz’.  Pretty much from the get-go, we found ourselves on a crazy, winding road experiencing one roadblock after another.  There was nothing easy or straightforward about this project.  Especially, when shortly after the coop was placed on its new home base, our contractor, Jay, very suddenly passed away!  He was a man in his early forties with a very large personality – so it came as quite a shock.  This broke our hearts, and knowing how much he was looking forward to really digging into a project that was not your everyday contracting gig made it even sadder.  As a matter of course, Rick and I had a meeting with Jay’s crew, three guys who suddenly found themselves out of work, and the two of us left with “a shell” of a structure.  Quite simply, we needed each other.  From that moment on, these three guys had their “coop” hats on. They were so into it. They paid such attention to all the details, and kept coming up with fabulous “coop – like” design details that really blew me away (which is not so easy to do).  Our mutual admiration society worked beautifully.  So much so, that in a funny way, our cast of characters, ended up just like the team in the ‘Wizard of Oz’: Dave, the scarecrow, Jeff, the tin man, and dear Ed who was my lion, and you guessed it, I was Dorothy.   When the coop was completed, I was very sad to see them go.

So where do you start?  Well, we needed a plan, literally.  So,we hired a fabulous architect, Jacquie Salame, founding partner at Tour De Force Designs, in Brookfield, Connecticut, who specializes in historic restorations.  We needed to be sensitive in honoring the humble and simple nineteenth century architectural nature of the coop, while outfitting it into its new twenty-first century function as our master bedroom suite. We divided the space in two: two-thirds bedroom and one-third bath, with the dividing wall lining up with one of the four existing beams.

The original windows on the front façade were restored and we added three new double hung windows on the back wall – two in the bedroom and one in the bath for additional light and ventilation.  Then, to add even more light, as well as adding an architectural feature, I went on eBay and found a 2’ diameter round window salvaged from an eighteenth century house.  The antique window needed to be located near the peak of the roofline, and would end up pouring in southern light from an unexpected height and direction.

We tried, where we could, to have a symmetrical solution, we specified a new version of this window for the bathroom end.

Our dear friend, Bridget Kellogg, is a master draper, and she very simply styled “soft-bellied” roman shades made of creamy white Irish linen that were inside mounted in each pair of windows (with exception to the rounds). The shades are an extremely functional solution.  These understated shades are opened and closed on a daily basis.

It was important to keep the original wood planks as the ceiling (that’s what really gave it its’ character), so we needed to create a new roof over the old one.   The opening for the cupola ended up with a new hatch door, and the original hardware for the pulley system that was used to operate the hatch was put back up.  The chandelier is a reproduction from one of my favorite shops that specializes in eighteenth century reproduction American primitive home furnishings, The Seraph, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

New wide board floors were made to look old.  And a great old, very worn, rug (10’x almost 14’) at The Brimfield Antiques Show, in Brimfield, Massachusetts was a steal at $425.00!  It’s color palette of rich tomato red, inky blue and cocoa brings warmth and rich color to the space.

The walls were insulated and horizontally re-boarded with new wood.  The entire interior, walls, ceiling, trim and doors were painted in one color: Benjamin Moore, Bennington Gray.  I feel that the decision to go with one color helps to keep the architecture of the space “the star”.

The black painted bed is the Quincy Bed from Ethan Allen.  It is near and dear to my heart. Other than its’ vibe and scale fits the room so beautifully, it always reminds me of my furniture design brainstorming days at Ethan Allen.  The artwork is kept to a minimum. The early American flags are hand painted on “found” antique boards by Brian Laurich. 

The original saw toothed boarded walls were “reinvented”.  We used some of the wall as the outer shell of the shower stall.  It was so reminiscent of one of my favorite summer things – an outdoor shower.  The rest of the boards were used to craft battened doors for the interior doorways in the coop.

In the new ‘connector’ that was designed by Jacquie, and built by the guys, the remaining boarded wall was recycled as a big wide door for the new linen closet.  I remember the morning they hung that door.  That particular section of the boarded wall had a fabulous peeling whitewashed painted finish.  As I cheerfully walked in, bearing coffee, dear Ed, (the lion), was busy sanding the whitewash off the door!  I (Dorothy) stopped dead in my tracks and cried out “No!” and just burst into tears.  The poor hard-working soul had no idea what he was doing wrong, so I explained that a big part of the beauty of this door was the fabulously “messed-up” finish.  We ended up agreeing to “clean-up” (ever so gently) the really bad peeling areas, and seal the door with poly’.  It really “pops” against the Benjamin Moore, Lancaster Whitewash painted walls and trim.

In the bedroom, the library wall was key.  You see, where we attached the coop, we had a tiny home office housed in the end of the house’s saltbox lean-to.  The former owner was a master woodworker and he outfitted the room with floor to ceiling shelving.  It worked pretty well as an office, but as our book library grew, we did outgrow this space.  When the coop arrived, the space was then converted to our master bedroom closet.  With all the storage at hand it seemed like a natural choice.   So, as you enter the bedroom from the new connector, we designated that end of the room as the library wall – wall to wall and floor to ceiling.  I did a lot of digging for bookcase references, and ended up with an unorthodox concept. I asked the men to build me shelving that would have been found in an early general store or hardware store.  Make it very utilitarian; seeing as the coop is all about plain and simple function. I think that was the ticket.

In this project I felt that scale was very important…it was my design compass.  Keeping to a few larger scaled furnishings vs. a lot of little “doo-dads”.  Bottom line, I wanted the structure to be celebrated – vibe and bones. Every thing needed to make sense in here, without getting hokey.

In the bathroom, the sink was quite the coming together of ideas and parts.  It started as an antique dry sink that we bought upstate New York many years back.  In it’s life, it had been painted bittersweet orange when I first found it, then I painted it forest green to work into the living room of my old house, and then a bright white so it could live outside on the covered back porch as my potting bench.  Looking at this piece with a whole new point of view, I thought it might make for a great “vanity” solution that could accommodate two sinks, and had a lot of storage below.  It has a great length, and not too deep.  I commissioned my friend, Glenn George to faux paint it to work with the wall color.  He went beyond my expectations.  He also painted and distressed the interior, shoring up the shelving, and adding a copper lining detail to an area on the top.  I then found two sinks on eBay (for a whopping 65.00 each!).  I loved them because they reminded me of vintage, over scaled white mixing bowls.

Found the hardware from Baths from The Past, up in Massachusetts. They specialize in reproduction fixtures.  I wanted this to be an unvarnished brass, so it would tarnish and oxidize naturally to match the patina of the coop.

The mirror above the sink was quite “the coup” for the coop. I found this humungous mirror at Marvin Gardens, in Wilton, Connecticut.  The frame of the mirror was part of one of the original double hung copper casement windows of the Flatiron Building in New York City.  I loved the idea of owning and recycling a piece of New York City history in my home.  But most of all, I needed to hold out for a mirror with amazing scale.  You see I measured and mocked-up all kinds of mirrors, but every one looked so dinky in the space. I had to go super-duper big.  And I love how it reflects back the room with a lot of light to boot!

The lighting in the room is made up of a pair of over scaled copper and brass outdoor sconces from Scofield Historic Lighting, Ivoryton, Connecticut.

And I found this gorgeous over scaled antique hanging lantern at one of my favorite antiques consignment shops, Wayside Exchange, in Wilton, Connecticut.

The antique tub lived in our teeny-tiny bathroom upstairs, and I hired Braun Movers to come “with their brawn” and hoist it downstairs to the coop bathroom.  The vintage vibe and smaller size was a perfect fit for that spot.

A huge French grape harvest basket that I found at the Farmington Antique Show, in Farmington, Connecticut, was perfect for the scale of the room, and to hold our entire hodgepodge collection of hand towels.

The quilt was found at The Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market, in New Milford, Connecticut (open every Sunday, now through Thanksgiving).  Loved the large graphic scale of the wonderfully faded red pattern and its square shape. This one humble quilt became a fabulous statement piece in the room, and creates balance to the opposite library wall.  The early nineteenth century cherry chest of drawers came with Rick when we got married.  His Mom was a lover of antiques as well, and had bought it for his room when he was a boy.

The ‘Gentleman’s Chair’ from The Seraph in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, is one of a pair, and originally lived in another room of the house.  I love to keep all my furniture in colors that can be moved all over the house.  Each chair lives in both rooms of the coop for the season.  Upholstered onto the in-back of the chair, is this fabulous French antique burlap sack I found at the Rhinebeck Antiques Show, in Rhinebeck, New York.  I loved the inky color of the printed type, crest and crown.  I got such a surprise when I got it home, when I opened it up, only to find that it had an exact “twin” print on the other side of the inside!  So I cut it in half, and had The Seraph upholster up two Gentleman’s Chairs using their inky check on the wings and arms, and a plain matching burlap on the outer back.  Works beautifully in the coop.

This painting of a mid-nineteenth century boy, by Kolene Spicher, lives beautifully on the wall of our 1857 coop.

So that’s the “Cliff Notes” version of the story of “The Coop”.  As I sat and wrote this story, I myself couldn’t believe we did what we did.  And as crazy as it all sounds (and yes, some moments were pretty crazy),“The Coop”, as we have officially named it, has turned out to be just the right addition to our home. I love the saying, “Imperfection is beautiful”.  So true.

I hope you enjoyed!

With love,  Nora