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Posts Tagged ‘Christmas Cookies’

Gingerbread Biscotti

How the heck did ginger become the featured holiday season flavor, huh? Why, all of the sudden, I am reaching for powdered ginger, crystallized ginger, and molasses?

I’ll bet it’s because of our British friends and their propensity towards brandied, flaming, steamed puddings. Ginger comes from tropical locales all around the globe, many of these locales were British colonies at one time or another, and ginger has food preservation properties. There is some logic that can somehow be extrapolated from this regarding ginger’s Christmastime prevalence…but I haven’t figured it out. Yet.

I read that one year Martha Stewart made steamed Christmas puddings and gave them as gifts. I think if you are gift exchanging buddies with Martha Stewart and she gives you a steamed pudding for Christmas you should also get a lovely pima cotton t-shirt hand screened with the words, “I am Martha Stewart’s buddy and all I got for Christmas was a steamed pudding. And this lovely t-shirt.” I suppose you could add the words, “You should see what I gave her” but that sounds dirty. (While we’re on the subject of holiday-themed double entendres, last week someone complimented me on my Christmas globes. I replied, “No, those are all year ‘round.” Okay I’m done.)

While I prefer the charms of chocolate on any holiday, I would not like to leave you with the impression that I am immune to ginger’s charms. I am a fan: in fact I even created the Gingerdoodle cookie as a way of waking up those rather flabby, sleepy Snickerdoodles that inevitably appear at holiday cookie swaps.

The Gingerdoodle is a soft cookie, and it is that soft, slightly spicy quality that makes it an easy cookie in which you can overindulge. I am by nature a fan of crunchy cookies, including Chocolate Chip cookies, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Field’s fans when I bake my top secret, unpublished Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

This holiday season I thought it might be fun to bake a crunchy biscotti that would bring together the best of gingerbread, gingerdoodles, and Ginger from Gilligan’s Island into one crunchy treat. Two outta three aint bad. (Ginger—actress Tina Louise—did not return our phone calls, although we did receive a lovely holiday message from her attorneys with the words “cease” and “desist”.)

To keep things interesting I thought it might be fun to use the ginger flavor in a way that is slightly different than the Gingerdoodle—perhaps make it less “rich” and emphasize the gingerbread instead of the ginger. I am not too proud to admit that a stroll through the cookie aisle of my local supermarket reminded me of Carr’s Ginger Lemon creams. I love these although they veer a bit too much into the sweet lane of traffic. Indeed, they are very sweet. But the pairing of lemon and ginger? Perfect and easily emulated.

I had more or less perfected the level of crunch in my biscotti some years ago at the prompting of my late Auntie Esther. At the time she was living way out west in a dude ranch / retirement community. (Okay, not so much. I made up the dude ranch part because she was in a rather sandy suburb of Las Vegas.) I used to send her biscotti—mandel bread, actually—and she would call me and ask me to toast them a bit less next time. This went on for several batches until she finally exclaimed, “We’re old! They’re too hard! You’re gonna break our teeth!”

Good grief. Nonagenarians can be so testy!

So the hunt was on for a mild crunch that wouldn’t challenge fragile dental work—and Auntie Esther, hello, I’m now at an age where I understand completely. Just like the search for any magic cure, the answer was found as serendipitously as the discovery of penicillin. (And yes, I have a suit picked out to wear when I accept the Nobel Prize for this discovery.) You see—and stop me if this is too much information—I went through a cornmeal phase. Yes, I know: who hasn’t? Everything had to be dusted, dredged, coated, and submerged in cornmeal. But I survived because that’s what I do.

The one great thing that came out of this period was learning to substitute a bit of cornmeal for the flour in my biscotti recipes. Cornmeal gives the biscotti a slightly sandy quality that emulates crunch even if you don’t toast the slices. Once toasted—even briefly—you get the perfect level of crunch and your dentist not be making emergency repairs to your choppers.

I did add some minutely diced crystallized ginger. You can vary the amount up or down depending upon your desire for heat in the spice. I glazed a few of the biscotti with a lemon glaze, but this proved to be unnecessary: too much gilt on the lily. Feel free if you want that citrusy sweetness, but the grated lemon zest in the cookies is really all you need.

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Click here for the recipe for Gingerbread Biscotti

Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

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Santa isn't expecting these...

I recently received an email from a precocious youngster named Virginia questioning the existence of Santa Claus. Kids these days! Skeptics in a skeptical age. I replied by telling her to watch the coverage of the Kardashian wedding again. Watch that and, trust me, you’ll believe in Santa Claus. And flying reindeer. And elves.

Funny. I’ve never questioned the existence of Santa Claus. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. No, I’ve never actually met the guy. But I’ve never met George Clooney either, and no one questions his existence. Anyway I think the world is a better place with Santa Claus in it.

Therefore, every year Christmas week presents me with one crucial decision: what kind of cookie to leave for Santa Claus. Yes, I always leave him cookies and milk. I also leave carrots for the reindeer, although I doubt they’d turn their noses (so bright) up at the cookies. No, JOSN (Jolly Old Saint Nick) doesn’t indulge, but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that he’s in a hurry than with my cookies. It is strictly unofficial, but leaving goodies for Santa wins you points when it comes time to decide whether you belong on the naughty or nice list—whether or not he eats them.

This is an extension of something I learned from the folks on Wall Street: hedge your bets. (Santa has always been very generous with them. He must have quite a bit of cash tied up in derivatives.)

Over the years I have left different kinds of cookies for the old guy, usually reflecting whatever I had baked for the season’s parties, although there have been times when I baked a batch of Chocolate Chip cookies especially for Santa so that he would smell that they’d just come out of the oven.

This year with Hanukkah and Christmas overlapping I thought it might be fun to help Santa celebrate the festival of lights. I suppose I could leave him a plate of latkes; surely he doesn’t find those waiting at the base of most chimneys. But I don’t know if he’ll like cold latkes and somehow it just didn’t feel right to leave him anything other than cookies. Why not a latke that is actually a cookie?

This kind of trompe l’oeil / kitsch baking isn’t my usual calling. Yes, it is just this side of Sandra Lee, but as we are in the hap-happiest season of all, it really adds up to a bit of harmless fun.

I got the idea last week when I went to a daytime holiday potluck. People brought things ranging from Devil Dogs to Toll House Cookie bars. (Trust me, my eyes went right to those Devil Dogs.) But sitting amongst all the sweets was a platter of latkes. They were hot, and I was hungry, so I could smell every ingredient, the potato, the onion, the egg, the matzo meal, even the oil in which they’d been fried. (I must have been really hungry.) Still, it was a “one of these things is not like the other” moment, and the thought flashed through my mind, “The latkes should be cookies.”

Back in my kitchen I pondered how I could “make it so.” It seemed as though the best way to do this would be to decide on the flavor. Obviously onion is out of the question. But many folks enjoy their latkes with applesauce, or sour cream. Some like them sprinkled with sugar. The latter felt right. ‘Tis the season for a sugar cookie, and for that extra “zetz” cinnamon and sugar seemed even better.

The technique of making the cookies look like latkes was actually the easy part. The best latkes are made by shredding the onions and potato on the side of a box grater. Why not shred the cookie dough the same way? Then, just arrange the shreds on a cookie sheet. I couldn’t use just any dough, though, because certain cookie doughs would spread too much, losing the shredded look as they bake. My standby “I Heart Shortbread” recipe was enlisted.

The trick is to be extra gentle with the shredded dough when arranging it on the cookie sheets. Also, as great as the cinnamon and sugar is when baked on the cookies, I may experiment by dusting a mixture of cinnamon and confectioners’ sugar on the cookies just as they come out of the oven. I think the result would have a sort of a crunchy / dough-nutty flavor.

I really think this may be the year Santa actually eats the cookies I leave for him. But if not, more for me!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

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Click here for the recipe for Latke Cookies.

For your holiday baking you may also like my Christmas Fruitcake (for fruitcake haters), my Gluten-free Chocolate Crinkles, and Gingerdoodles, all perfect for your holiday table.

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Here’s the link to the Butter Flour Eggs Holiday Cookie Baking Primer 101. It also includes a recipe for Chocolate Pepper Cookies and some technique and equipment suggestions. Don’t start your holiday baking without it!

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

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I saw three tweets on Christmas Day…

Fruitcake (for fruitcake haters)

During the Christmas season it seems as though jokes about fruitcake are as inevitable as youngsters bursting into tears at the sight of Santa Claus. Hey, it happens. Pity the parents who waited in line for an hour at Macy’s for a photo of little Chelsea on Santa’s lap, only to have her experience the dreaded Christmas meltdown. Oh well, c’est xmas.

The thing is, fruitcake is an easy target. I don’t know anyone who likes it. The hunk of fruitcake I saw for sale at Duane Reade had a wrapper that looked like a joke (“…made from an old Southern recipe”). Perhaps this has more to do with America’s collective palate: I think we are a sugar cookie folk. The British seem to be more into the dark, spicy, and pungent. They love a good steamed pudding with hard sauce. (I read somewhere that Martha Stewart likes to give those away as holiday gifts. Martha, when you read this please note my preference for chocolate, and Happy Holidays to you too, doll.)

We all know the fruitcake jokes: that there’s only one piece of fruitcake, it gets passed around and around. Or everyone really uses fruitcake as a doorstop. (I didn’t say they were funny, I just said they were inevitable.) Mrs. Claus makes it out of reindeer droppings. (Love that one. Classy.)

So, why fruitcake on Christmas? Short answer: when people discovered that sugar made a good preservative for fruit, there was an excess of candied fruit available, so putting it in cake and giving it as a gift was a natural progression. Here’s my problem: the fruitcakes they sell now have candied fruit that I do not recognize, and the cake itself seems to be flavored with some kind of spirits that make it smell…er, funky (for lack of a better word.) Rum is one of the traditional fruitcake spirits. I’m not sure what the heck I smell in the fruitcake they sell in Duane Reade.

I don’t hate the concept of fruitcake, I hate the execution. It’s like a beautiful house with musty old furniture and peeling wallpaper. Clearly Fruitcake is a remnant of another age and is ready to be brought up to date. I think this is also an opportunity to highlight all the great seasonal flavors that we expect during the holidays.

One note: fruitcake will never be pretty. It is brown and lumpy. All I ask is that it tastes good. (And does not smell bad.) I will also admit that I know absolutely nothing about making traditional fruitcake. That may be an asset; I’m coming at this problem from a completely selfish place, answering the question, “What do I like?”

I like cinnamon. I like walnuts. Hmmm. It’s fruitcake, and I haven’t mentioned any fruit. Alright, I like figs, and candied pineapple, too. I also wanted to make something that would be relatively easy and fast because—let’s face it, during the holidays we’re all a little oversubscribed.

My cheat, er, shortcut, was that I was really looking at this as a bar cookie. Bar cookies have the advantage of a crust that gives each piece structure: it won’t fall apart in your hand and you don’t need a fork.

I vaguely remembered a blueberry bar I tasted somewhere. I don’t have the recipe, but what I have never been able to get the crust out of my mind. It was a shortbread made with dark brown sugar. It was, hard, had some crunch, and that toasty / sugary taste that dark brown sugar can lend food. If I could just figure that out then I knew the rest would take care of itself.

I kept it simple. Just a bit of flour, brown sugar, Earth Balance (which I use instead of butter), and cinnamon.  I made a mixture like wet sand and pressed it into the bottom of a brownie pan. Right on the money.

To bind my choice of fillings together I used a mixture that is not unlike what you use in Pecan Pie, but skipped the corn syrup in favor of just letting the natural molasses in the dark brown sugar do what it does best: make everything sweet and wet. This also makes the end result a bit less cloying. The walnuts melt into the other ingredients and bring to mind old-fashioned mincemeat. Not a bad traditional reference.

One of the things that used to drive me crazy about fruitcake was that I could never pick the candied fruit out (yeah I know: why bother having fruitcake if you’re just gonna…?) So, keeping that in mind, I reserved my candied pineapple to use only as garnish, and even added a few strips of sliced candied papaya for color. No mystery fruits allowed, and if people don’t want the candied fruit, it’s right there where they can pluck it out.

I nervously presented my new Fruitcake at a cookie swap. Folks were very enthusiastic.

Hello Fruitcake. Welcome to the Twenty-first century.

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Here’s the recipe for Christmas Fruitcake (for fruitcake haters).

For your holiday baking you may also like my  Gluten-free Chocolate Crinkles, and Gingerdoodles, both perfect for your holiday table.

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Here’s the link to the Butter Flour Eggs Holiday Cookie Baking Primer 101. It also includes a recipe for Chocolate Pepper Cookies and some technique and equipment suggestions. Don’t start your holiday baking without it!

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

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I’m dreaming of a tweet Christmas…

Gingerdoodles

I was thinking the other day about folks who live down south. They are accustomed to a holiday season without snow. True, there have been plenty of holiday seasons up north where we had no snow, but we still had the fun of seeing our breath on a chilly winter morning, or hugging a friend just in from the cold and feeling their icy cheek against ours.

Sounds poetic, but deep down all I’m really thinking about is my personal comfort (natch!). I perspire when the temperature goes above fifty degrees; my Mother refers to me as a Polar Bear. Yes, I’m certainly as pale as a Polar Bear, and, yes, I’m the guy who opens his windows in the middle of winter—you simply have to here in New York because our apartments are all heated by steam heat. (Bob Fosse fans should now snap their fingers a couple times, and tilt their bowlers over their eyes.)

One year while “trapped” in hot, sunny Arizona, Irving Berlin coped with a palm tree encrusted holiday season by penning “White Christmas”—the best selling single of all time. While I don’t have orange and palm trees swaying outside my window (as Berlin mentions in the usually unsung verse to the song) it is sixty-five degrees as I write this, and I am willing myself to feel the holiday spirit. (The dozens of Cyber Monday offers in my Inbox don’t seem to be doing the trick.)

My sure fire remedy? Queue up Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” album, and start baking Christmas cookies. There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? (I also placed a snowflake wallpaper on the screen of my phone. It helps.)

Anyway, allow me to introduce my first cookie of the season, the Gingerdoodle. As you can tell from the name, it is built on the chassis of the famous Snickerdoodle. Snickerdoodles are fine, but I always think they are Sugar Cookies with yearnings for greater things. With the Gingerdoodle, their ambitions have been fulfilled. (You think I’m crazy for ascribing ambition to a cookie?) All I have done is take a basic Snickerdoodle and add a bit of spice, heat, and texture. It is still a soft, somewhat cakey cookie, but, as Ina Garten would say, “…with the volume turned up.”

I’ve never understood the Christmas-time passion for sugar cookies or the big cheap tins of “Danish Butter Cookies” –many of which have never been within miles of Copenhagen. Even when decorated, sugar cookies tend to be a bit transparent in flavor, meaning you can roll them around on your tongue as much as you’d like but you’ll never taste anything more than flour, butter, and sugar. The “Danish” cookies usually hint at a bit of cardamom, which is not a bad idea, but it’s usually executed in a sleepy way.

I demand more, darn it. Give me complexity. Give me a bit of surprise. Make me want to come back for more. Throw in some chocolate if you can, and I’ll be abuzz with the holiday spirit. The Gingerdoodle is a chocolate-free zone so we’ll have to look elsewhere for our choco-fix. That’s what the holiday color foils on Hershey’s Kisses are for…this week.

The basic Snickerdoodle is only mildly spiced with a wisp of cinnamon. The overall effect is like cinnamon toast—this, of course, is not a bad thing at all. But here’s my question: this time of year, why do you bake cookies? Usually you give them to friends or coworkers, or share them in cookie swaps. Don’t you want yours to stand out a bit? Tut, tut, baking holiday cookies is not the time to follow the pack. So let’s bake a cookie that will stand above the crowd, shall we?

First let’s take a look at the spice in the Snickerdoodle. A mere two teaspoons of cinnamon is added to spice up a very large batch of cookie dough. It’s not even added to the dough, it is sprinkled on the outside before baking. I’ve added an additional two teaspoons to the dough, plus the heat of two teaspoons (or more if you like) of ground ginger, the fragrance of ground cloves, and the kick of a generous half cup of chopped crystallized ginger. The latter also adds little dots of sugary chew to the finished cookie.

As I mentioned, these are a soft, cakey cookie, but I like a little crunch, so the cookies are made with and sprinkled with demerara sugar, the large grain, honey-brown sugar. (Layers: it’s like a nice cashmere sweater over a really good white shirt.)

As they bake they will fill your home with spiced holiday scents that would turn a Williams-Sonoma holiday candle green with envy.

Luckily, green is a holiday color…

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Here’s the recipe for the Gingerdoodle.

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Here’s the link to the Butter Flour Eggs Holiday Cookie Baking Primer 101. It also includes a recipe for Chocolate Pepper Cookies and some technique and equipment suggestions. Don’t start your holiday baking without it!

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

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Have yourself a merry little Tweet

What happened to the turtledoves?

We’re in the thick of the holiday rush. That perplexing commercial for Elizabeth Taylor perfume (“…these have always brought me luck”) is on heavy TV rotation, the Food Network is re-running every holiday-related challenge, Iron Chef competition, or Rachael Ray special they ever produced, and I went to sleep last night unable to get the smell of sugar out of my nose.

Not that I mind, because I think all of this frantic activity is fun. However, my tiny kitchen is on the verge of tears. My kitchen need not fret: the bulk of its work is done, and now my attention has moved to my holiday card list. All any of this requires is a little organization and the right tools.

The latter reminds me of my Dad. When I was a little kid, we lived in an old two family house. I doubt that my Dad ever baked a cookie in his life, but off in the corner of the basement of that old house he had a workshop. I remember the basement as being a dark, kind of spooky place (although it couldn’t have been too bad: my Mom went down there every day to do the laundry) but I remember Dad’s workshop as being bright, clean, and well organized. In my memory, he had every tool needed for every “handy” job that might come up around that crumbling old house. No mere dabbler my Dad, no sir! He rebuilt our entire kitchen himself, including tearing out walls with just a hammer and his bare hands (okay, maybe he didn’t have the right tools for every job, but then he didn’t go around tearing down walls that often.) He was a real handyman. My brother and I have inherited those skills, albeit in a very watered-down form. (Very.)

What I got from watching my handyman Dad is a respect for tools, and this has served me well in the kitchen (ah! You were wondering when I would bring this back to cooking, weren’t you?) I think having the right tools in the kitchen is important if you enjoy cooking—and essential if you are a casual, infrequent, or unwilling cook. If this seems a touch counter-intuitive, keep in mind that the unwilling or unskilled cook can accomplish a lot more, and do it easier and faster with the right tool in hand.

I’m not advocating expensive machines or gadgets here, but merely the addition of a few simple implements. Let’s put it this way: if you’ve always been struggling to eat your eggs with a straw, wouldn’t you be happy if one day someone came along and introduced you to a fork?

Since we are on our final approach to Christmas, lets make sure our tray tables are in the upright position and I’ll introduce you to a few items and tips that could make holiday time in the kitchen easier and more fun. (It’s the holiday season, so yes, it’s supposed to be fun.) I’m going to use holiday cookies as my laboratory for this, but truth be told some of these ideas will serve you well in the kitchen at any time of the year.

The Butter Flour Eggs Cookies 101 Primer

Cookie sheets. Ideally you should get decent cookie sheets that are heavy enough that you feel some heft when you pick one up. The weight of the cookie sheet usually indicates the thickness of the metal. Too thin and the bottoms of your cookies will burn before the tops finish baking. If you can bend it don’t use it. The cookie sheets with the pocket of air between two pieces of metal are good in gas ovens, iffy in certain electric ovens. You can get decent cookie sheets for twelve to fifteen dollars. Be wary of the ones hanging above the eggs at the grocery store. If you’re sitting there thinking, “Hey, I promised to bake cookies for my kid’s class. I’ll do that and then never bake again—ever. I don’t want to spend that much money on cookie sheets.” Fair enough. Buy the disposable aluminum cookie sheets, but stack three together to get approximately the thickness you need to avoid bottom burn. I make no promises for this technique.

Non Stick Finish. Unnecessary. Walk over to the foil and plastic wrap department and buy parchment paper to line your cookie sheets. One roll will set you back less than five dollars and will likely last you a couple of Christmases or more. If you’re more committed to being a baker (in for the long run, eh?) you can invest in a Silpat. Silpats are reusable silicone liners that will last through hundreds of batches of cookies. They usually cost about fifteen dollars. I’ve used both and prefer the parchment paper. It is less friendly to the environment, yes, but I can cut parchment to fit any pan (including cake pans), and I never worry that the flavor of the spice cookies I made yesterday will somehow find its way into the chocolate chip cookies I’m baking today.

Frenchie and pin bands

Rolling pin. Optional. But again if you’re in for the long run, check out the different kinds before you buy. Go to Williams-Sonoma and take them for a test drive. I use what is called a French rolling pin: a simple straight cylinder of ash wood, I find that I have more control with this kind of pin. And it’ll make a good weapon if someone ever tries to attack me while I’m baking. If you don’t want to invest in a rolling pin, make slice and bake cookies, and using small cookie cutters (or freehand with a knife), cut the shapes out of the slices. (I’ll go into more detail about this with the recipe linked at the bottom of this posting.)

My dirty little secret about rolling out cookie dough is that I cheat and use rolling pin bands. These are color-coded elastic bands of varying thicknesses that slip onto each end of the rolling pin and limit how thin I can roll the dough, i.e., yellow equals ¼-inch. I use an Offset Spatula to transfer the cut out cookies to the cookie sheet. This tool’s angled blade lets you slide it under the cookies.

Offset Spatula

Space.Hey, I have a small kitchen too. But if you’re going to bake cookies you need to make a trade off: either lower your expectations about how many cookies you can make, and how fast, or clear the decks to make room for this project.

Stand mixer or bowls. I use a Kitchen-Aid, and am very spoiled by it. But a lot of cookies (and some cakes) can be made with a big bowl and a wooden spoon. Use a bigger bowl than you think you’ll need. You’ll go out of your mind trying to keep all of the batter in your cereal bowl.

Timer. C’mon. You know you’ll use this. Or you can use the clock on your cable box and burn your cookies. I have.

Organization. This is the biggie, the crucible, the scripture. Even if you have every piece of equipment and a gigantic kitchen, you need a game plan. Here’s what I do: I read the recipe through a couple of times to make sure I have all of the ingredients. Then I break the project into three milestones:

ONE: Mise en place: This is a term the pros use that I will translate as: pre-measure all of your ingredients before you start mixing. Pre-chop the walnuts, pre-grate the orange zest, and let the butter and eggs come up to room temperature. Cardinal rule: liquids are measured in a liquid measuring cup (usually made of glass by Pyrex) and dry ingredients are measured in a dry measuring cup (usually metal or plastic.)

TWO: Mix. Whether you use a wooden spoon or a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, make your cookie dough, wrap it tightly and store it in the refrigerator. Then clean up. You’re done for the day.

THREE: Bake. The next day, bake your cookies, and you won’t have to worry about the space or time for cleaning dirty mixers, bowls, and counter tops while you bake. You’ll be much more relaxed, and most cookies taste better and the dough is easier to handle when it has been allowed to chill for at least a few hours.

Wet measuring cups

Dry measuring cups

My last piece of advice is to start small. Roll out just a little bit of dough until you get used to the feel of the dough, how much flour you need to use to keep the cookies from sticking to the board, and how cold the dough should be when you handle it.

Have fun. Remember no one expects you to be a pro; your family and friends will be delighted by your efforts. This is a great messy project to do with your kids. Mind my pearl of wisdom for baking with kids: keep them away from the hot stove, sharp knives, and whatever they do is the most beautiful and delicious cookie you’ve ever seen and tasted. Ever.

This is the stuff of which happy memories are made.

Click here for my Chocolate Pepper Cookie recipe (pictured above) and more holiday cookie baking suggestions.

Holiday cookie questions? Feel free to drop me an email at the address below. I’ll try to help.

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com