Sarah made cookies!

I'm always impressed when people spend a whole day in the kitchen and then give away the results.

Take lovely co-worker Sarah: she woke up on Sunday and started baking. She finished at around 9 p.m. And then she packaged her creations in gift bags with pretty paper and brought them in to work.

Espresso crinkles, dense and rich and topped with powdered sugar:





Here's the recipe—Sarah's look much nicer, don't they?

Also, raspberry-filled shortcake cookies:





I forget how much butter she said was in each one, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of All Butter Ever Made, Ever, in The History of the World.

Somehow, I resisted the urge to eat them all at my desk and then slump in my Aeron in a butter-and-sugar coma, white powder covering my face like I was in the VIP room at Studio 54.

I can't promise the same restraint in the privacy of my own home, however.

Sofra, so good (ow! Sorry!)

A confession: we have not yet been to Oleana (what?). I know, I know; you'd think we would have managed by now, given its relative accessibility, its interesting Mediterranean/North African menu, and the fact that there's a general consensus about its awesomeness.

And yet--or perhaps to redress the balance--we have already investigated Sofra, the bakery owned by Oleana's chef, Ana Sortun.

Tucked around the corner from the big Star Market opposite Mount Auburn Cemetery, it's not the most convenient place for us to pick up pastries—not when we could stroll up the street to get poppyseed rolls from the Danish Pastry House or wander into Davis Square for lemon slices at Diesel.

So why do I keep fantasizing about driving out to Sofra?

Oh, I know why:





Sofra's cookies include a rich, intense chocolate earthquake mouthful and a fig-jam-topped thumbprint shortcake that has more butter than a whole cow:



Inside the earthquake:



The almond-rosewater cake manages to be dense, moist and fluffy all at the same time:



Not everything at Sofra is sweet, of course. We watched the busy kitchen staff stretching dough for the flatbread wraps they fill with chickpeas, feta, tomatoes, spinach and olives and then heat on curved griddles:



We also picked up a couple of savory items: plaki, a dish of white beans braised with onions, tomatoes and carrots; and a burek.

My experience of burek to this point had been limited to the Cornish pasty-like meat turnover served at Sabur. Sofra's version is more like a lasagna pie: thick layers of dough striated with ground beef.



It came warm and ready to eat, in which state I'm sure it would have been fantastic. However, we saved it for a picnic the next day, which may account for the chewiness of the dough and the fact that the meat had settled into one thin layer near the bottom. It was great, but not the greatest.

Sofra would probably be a lovely place to hang out for a while; it's light and airy, with cosy window seats and colorful upholstery. But butt-space is limited, and (at least on our Saturday afternoon visit) was hostage to a passel of gray-haired ladies whose plates held just crumbs and who evidently had no intention of moving.

A better suggestion, if not a request: go early to Sofra, for breakfast. Pick up the morning bun with orange-blossom glaze, the Sicilian ricotta-chocolate croissant, the date and walnut brioche.

And then tell me all about it.

Hey Tatte, sorry about that :-)

Recently in this space, I wrote about a visit to Tatte, Brookline's tiny pastry store, where my excitement about the fabulousness of their buttery nut box (oo-er, missus!) was tempered by the superior attitude of the counter staff.

Last week I went back with co-conspirator Mike, who was intrigued by my tales of dessert and detachment.

And of course there was a different girl behind the counter.

And of course she was lovely: sweet and cheerful and enthusiastic about our choices.

So I can only assume that on my previous visit, I caught Tatte on a bad day.

Sorry, Tatte.

Also, your pistachio cookies are fabulous.

No taxation without a nice chocolate coating

We British do love our sweet indulgences, as the amount of floor space dedicated to pastries in the average supermarket illustrates.



And cookies--we love those, too (except we call them biscuits. Or bickies. As in, "Would you like a nice choccy bickie?").

But the distinction between the former and the latter is not always clearly drawn. The Jaffa Cake is an example of this: it says "cake" right there on the box. It's made from spongecake topped with chocolate, with an orangey filling. But you usually find them alongside HobNobs and Chocolate Digestives (the original choccy bickie).

I know, I know. You're wondering why it matters. What's the big deal, anyway?

The big deal, my Yankee Doodle friend, is in that which comes to all of us: taxation.

From Teacake mistake could cost Treasury, The Guardian, December 14:

Confusion over the chocolate-covered teacake--a dome of marshmallow on a biscuit swathed in milk chocolate--could cost the British government £3.5m after an EU court adviser said the retailer Marks & Spencer should get a refund of the tax it paid during the decades that tax authorities insisted they were biscuits.

HM Customs and Excise states that cakes and biscuits are exempt from VAT (think sales tax). However, chocolate-covered biscuits are considered a luxury item, and must be priced to include the 17.5% VAT.

So in this case, M&S had been pricing the teacakes as luxureh biscuits until "Britain saw the error of its ways in late 1994, agreeing that the items were cakes."

1) Don't you love that the government of My People takes the time to deliberate such issues?



2)Rorschach time: What does this look like to you? Cake or biscuit?

(Imagine biting through the crisp chocolate shell, feeling it yield and break, the soft, sweet marshmallow springing up willingly against the roof of your mouth, the chocolate now melting slightly, warm and rich on your tongue, and then the biscuit base, feigning resistance but falling apart under pressure, filling your mouth with generous, buttery crumbs ...)

Uhh ... sorry, what?