Rice Krispies Treats

So I live in Connecticut which, if you haven’t been paying attention, is ground zero for this season’s snowpocalypse. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had a garage, but since we live in a city, we have street parking only – which means we have to dig the car out after every storm.

My mother, who lives in Florida, has been demanding pictures.

Double Chocolate Cherry Cookies with Almonds

I know I’ve been gone a while, but this recipe should prove adequate peace offering. These tasty treat depicted here not be photogenic, but don’t let that dissuade you. I make a lot of cookies, and I flatter myself that most of them are quite tasty. These, however, are in another category of tasty altogether. I think they might be my favorite drop cookie ever. Yes, ever. This is not a claim I would make lightly.

The name here is plenty descriptive. These cookies have cocoa powder and chocolate chips, ergo double chocolate. They also have dried sour cherries and toasted almonds because cherries and almonds are like chocolate and peanut butter: they always work together. The recipe also calls for half a cup of red wine, which is a new one to me in a drop cookie.

The first time I tried to make this, I added an extra egg because I was sure – sure! – that the wine in the batter would evaporate and leave me with a crumbly, dry mess. There’s only a stick of butter and one egg, yet the amount of cocoa powder and flour is equal to that of your average (two stick, two egg) chocolate chip cookie recipe. I was wrong. The cookies were great, but they were only great because I tipped in extra flour and cocoa powder once it became clear that the extra egg had given me an extremely soupy batter rather than a semi-stiff dough. There’s a moral here: trust everything you read on the internet. Everything.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

I suppose we’ve just had a food-based holiday; another is rapidly approaching, but I’ve been determinedly absent. This post will not remedy the deficiency of holiday-appropriate recipes, though if you’re inclined to seasonal baking, I would direct you here, here, here, here, or here. Or here. What I’m saying is: we’ve been there, and I’ve been busy.

I did bake two pies for Thanksgiving, so it’s not as if I’ve been a total slacker. We were visiting my sister-in-law and her family, including an adorable new four-month-old nephew.  One of these pies was pumpkin. Pumpkin pie is not a variety of which I’m terribly fond, so I won’t be recreating it in my own kitchen any time soon (though everyone deemed it quite tasty, and I thought it decent … for pumpkin).

The other was an apple crumb pie, though I swapped out some of the granulated sugar for brown sugar because I was feeling daring. It was quite delicious. I think I’ve finally conquered apple pie. So long as you slice your apples thinly and don’t over-fill the pie, it turns out it’s a piece of cake.

In case you were wondering, I possess no fear of mixed food metaphors.

Simple Fudgy Brownies

I didn’t use to be a big brownie-eater, but lately, I’ve been more amenable to the charms of America’s favorite bar cookie. You can make them in one bowl (though you do obtain better texture if you use two); they need not be painstakingly scooped and molded into dollops of dough like regular cookies; they’re easy; and lately, I’ve come to recognize that they’re eminently satisfying.

I’ve avoided brownies for their simplicity. When I bake cookies, I want them to be overflowing with chocolate chips, raisins, coconut flakes, toasted nuts … whatever it is with which I’ve chosen to embellish them. Brownies aren’t so amenable to hodgepodge baking. You can throw in chocolate chips or nuts or spoon caramel atop them, but that seems like a denial of the essence of brownie, which is square, dark, plain, and stolid.

These are indeed square, dark and plain, but they’re also dense, fudgy, and decadent. I first made this recipe up a few weeks ago; I liked them so much that I made a fresh batch yesterday, but this time I tarted them up with cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and chipotle chili pepper on the theory that spices, being invisible, were not a denial of the brownie’s essential nature. Both versions are delicious.

Almond Joy Cookies

There’s a local ice cream parlor that serves the best Almond Joy ice cream I’ve ever had. Since my husband got me an ice-cream maker for my birthday, I’ve been promising myself I would replicate it at home.

And yet: it hasn’t happened. The stores at which I shop have been curiously lacking in sweetened flake coconut in recent weeks, and for ice cream, I just don’t think unsweetened coconut will cut it. I’ve been trying to find some of the sugar-doused stuff for ages, but the shelves are bereft. Increasingly, so am I. Sweetened flake coconut is among my favorite things.

Other kinds of coconut, however, I can find in abundance. Unsweetened coconut flakes and pieces – these healthier alternatives confront me wherever I go. Heck, I even picked up a fresh coconut the other week. I didn’t really care for it. It wasn’t sweet enough to suit my preferences. Does this mean that said preferences have been hopelessly warped by the food marketers and manufacturers of America? I fear it does, but in this instance, I have no desire to fight their nefarious influence.

White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies -- Nut Butter Version

I know I’ve already posted white chocolate chip and macadamia cookies on this blog -- and posted them fairly recently at that.  Variations are good, right?  And I think this recipe is a slight improvement on the original, though it remains highly recommended if you don't have easy access to the almond butter the depicted version demands.

This particular batch of cookies was earmarked for the husband of a friend who graduated from nursing school. The challenge inherent in this baking task is that these friends live on the west coast, whereas I hang out on the eastern seaboard. I find that cookies that incorporate nut butter tend to stay soft and fresh-tasting longer than ones made with an all-butter base. Since these had to get to California, I thought it best to take advantage of all the tricks in my cookie repertoire to assure long shelf life.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is another cookie that I just sort of threw together. And I did it for you, gentle readers: I was hankering for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but I wanted something new for the blog. I had a full container of oatmeal in the refrigerator and thought to myself: self, why not make a new, healthier cookie that contains the aforementioned craved ingredients with an added healthful bonus?

These really are delightful. Because of the oatmeal and peanut butter, they’re also relatively un-guilty as cookies go – I’m of the school that believes there’s nothing to be feared from butter and sugar in moderation, and if you add healthy fats (in this case, peanut butter) and whole grains, then it’s practically health food. (Not really. Don’t go telling your doctor you only eat these healthy peanut butter cookies you found on a blog, so they couldn’t *possibly* be causing your raging diabetes …)

This is in contrast to the cupcakes I made over the past weekend, which have absolutely no redeeming nutritional qualities but which are also delicious. I’ll post that recipe next.

White Chocolate Lime Macadamia Cookies

If you’re tiring of all the French food, I have the remedy in this fine American cookie. Inspired by this recipe from Baking Bites, these cookies are just the thing to bring a hint of the tropical to a New England mid-winter.

We’re finally getting glimmers and intimations of spring, but I baked these up before my recent vacation. In mid-February Connecticut, reminders of the tropical are in exceedingly short supply.
I prefer slightly less sweet cookies, so I cut the amount of sugar from the Baking Bites recipe and, because I prefer cakey-textured cookies, I reduced the butter. I also upped the flour and added some vanilla.  Given its sunshine flavors, I decided that this cookie would benefit from a little bit of coconut and threw in a half cup; I did not regret this addition (though I'm sure the cookies would have been perfectly tasty without it).

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

This is really just a variation on the Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies I posted a few weeks ago, but as with so many things, it’s amazing what an difference a few of small tweaks can make.

I liked the original recipe but felt that the batter was insufficiently chocolate-y and was slightly too cake-like. The flavors also seemed kind of one-note.

Apple Pie Cookies

Apple pie is a baked good for which husband constantly clamors. Alas! For peeling, coring, and slicing apples are among my most-dreaded kitchen tasks. He doesn’t get pie often, yet it seems cruel of me to remain deaf to such oft-repeated pleas.

I thought he might be placated if I devised a simple cookie that had all of the lovely flavors of apple pie but took half – nay, a quarter, if that – of the effort to prepare. And I came up with these. If you’re looking for an approximation of apple pie in cookie form, then look no further.

I used dried apples in place of fresh, because seriously: fresh apples would have made these nearly as much a chore as pie. I waffled on whether to throw in a bag of white chocolate chips and ultimately decided not to, as I was going for unadulterated apple pie taste. However, they would be really good in these. You know, if you’re not such a purist.

Dark Chocolate Rum Balls

Rum balls are one of those treats that sound great in theory but usually fall short in execution. I think this is because one often encounters them in grocery store trays of over-processed, over-colored “holiday cookie treats.” The rum flavoring is either artificial or absent, and the texture is akin to that of a gummy bear.

And yet they ought to be deliciousness incarnate. I mean, it’s crumbled up cookie or brownie soaked in rum. Surely, I thought, a homemade rum ball would have virtues that their processed kin are lacking. For example, one ought to be able to make rum balls whose flavor bears some relationship to the potent potable in question.

I am proud to report that my first attempt at rum balls proved my hypothesis correct. These dark chocolate rumballs are dense, moist, and abundantly rum-flavored. Basically, you bake a shallow brownie, break it up, dump in some rum, and roll the resultant goo into balls – and then roll them in turbinado sugar.

There’s nothing not to love there. So let’s get to the specifics:

Dark Chocolate Spiced Brownies

I’m not really that huge on brownies but ever since I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, I had been itching to try it. The problem: it took me over a year to get my hands on some chipotle chili powder. Every time I thought to look for it at the store, the store would be out, or I would think to look at stores that don’t carry it to begin with – I’m looking at you, my beloved Trader Joe’s.

These brownies, for the uninitiated (or if you couldn’t gather from the foregoing paragraph), get an extra kick from the inclusion of chipotle chili powder, cinnamon, and cardamom. I really like chili and dark chocolate together, so I thought this might be the brownie for me: the one that would convert me to brownie love, the one that would send me into exclamatory raptures, the one that would make me abandon my favored drop cookies and embrace brownie baking forevermore.

Malted Butterscotch Cashew Cookies

My mother-in-law gave us a huge jar of cashews (among other lovely culinary gifts) for Christmas. Both husband and I are unable to resist those rich, buttery nuts when the urge to nosh strikes, so there was no need to exhaust them quickly. However, I really love cashews in baked goods and wanted to make an easy cookie that could be thrown together in less than half an hour. Enter the Malted Butterscotch Cashew Cookie.

This feels lazy because it is basically just a variation of my favorite chocolate chip cookies. However, it’s a tasty variation, so I it would be remiss not to share it.

Because butterscotch and cashew are fairly subtle flavors compared to chocolate, I added extra malted milk powder to these to give them more depth. I really like the flavor and recommend that you do not omit the malt powder from the cookies.

Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

I’ve been searching for the perfect peanut butter brownie recipe for some time. Plain brownies don’t much do it for me, but throw a little peanut butter in the mix, and you have a treat worthy of the extra time on the treadmill.

One wouldn’t think it would be hard to find a good recipe, but prior attempts failed to achieve what I’d hoped by way of flavor and texture. When I was thumbing through my Martha Stewart Cookie Magazine seeking the inspiration for the Whiskey Currant Cookies, I saw that it had been right there, waiting for me all along (well: in my house for the past three years or so). The perfect peanut butter swirl brownies were there in lovingly photographed detail.

Whiskey Currant Walnut Cookies

I made these cookies because I wanted a third variety for the bins of Christmas Cookies I toted to my in-laws places this year. While flipping through the same magazine I used to find the recipe for my Chewy Molasses Ginger Cookies, I spotted a recipe for Currant Bourbon Cookies. I have a stash of currants in my fridge – still waiting to be turned into scones (I’ll get to them soon! Maybe ...) – and they sounded like a nice, simple treat that could be tucked into the crannies of my cookie tins.

I didn’t have any bourbon on hand and used whiskey for my booze flavoring. I was also halving the recipe, and the original called for two eggs, so I threw one whole egg right in without reading all the way through. Alas, the second egg was intended for an egg wash, and not for the cookie dough. I upped the amount of flour slightly, and the cookies came out just fine. In fact, I think the whole egg made the texture slightly softer and more tender, which is how I prefer my unleavened cookies.

Martha’s recipe doesn’t call for any nuts, but I thought they would be nice with the currants. Because I still had a ton of citrus on hand, I also threw in some grated orange zest. The orange is subtle and brightens the whiskey and currant flavors.

Chewy Molasses Ginger Cookies

I love the flavors of gingerbread, but too often, gingerbread turns out dry. Store bought gingerbread in particular suffers from this affliction. Cookies that should be warm and rich with spice have the flavor and consistency of chalk. I felt like I could do better.

This is a heavily doctored recipe based on one from a Martha Stewart Holiday Cookie magazine that my in-laws gave me a few years ago. Martha seems to prefer her cookies more chewy than cakey. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I was kind of hoping for the best of both worlds, and this isn’t it. I can’t say I wasn’t warned; the original instructions say “bake until flat,” and flat cookies are rarely pillowy of texture.

This is not to say that these cookies are a failure. They are flavorful and moist and have a delightfully appealing sugar crust. Instead of plain sugar, I rolled them in turbinado sugar, and the crunchiness that this added contrasts beautifully with the chewiness of the cookies. Most importantly, this cookie is full of the ginger molasses flavors that are redolent of Christmas.

Chocolate Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies

Even though I love chocolate, I tend not to bake with it often. I’m so enamored of plain chocolate, preferably of the darkest-of-dark variety , that there seems little cause to dilute its impact by mixing with flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. Feel free to remember this anecdote should you feel compelled to shower me with culinary gifts.

However, it’s also hard to go too wrong with chocolate. When I first spotted this recipe, it seemed like a likely candidate for my Christmas cookie tray. It called for Nutella, spread of the gods, and for hazelnuts, of which I still had quite a few leftover from my adventures in fruitcake.

Of course, when I went to actually *make* the cookies, I realized I didn’t have a couple of key ingredients on hand. I had forgotten to check my stores of cocoa powder, which were low, and I was also fresh out of powdered sugar (which had all been used for the icing of my Florida Christmas Cookies).

On the other hand, I did have a whole jar of Nutella, and Nutella, like love, can cover a multitude of sins.

Florida Christmas Cookies

This is a rare recipe that I’ve been making for my whole life. Since these are called “Florida Christmas Cookies,” and my family has been in Florida since the 19th Century, I thought it might be an old family secret. I’ve heard that my maternal great-grandmothers were both good cooks, so I used to imagine that this recipe had been lovingly handed down for the past hundred years or so.

When I finally asked my mom, she told me she clipped the recipe from Southern Living when I was a kid. That’s what I get for waxing sentimental. In any case, it’s a family tradition now.

These cookies call for substantial quantities of both orange and lemon zest. Before the advent of the micro-plane grater, making them was a chore. Micro-plane gratersare cheap, they work amazingly well, and they reduce the total zesting time from nearly an hour to around 10 minutes. On a slow day.

Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I always had to zest the citrus for these when I was growing up. I would drag the oranges and lemons desultorily across our box grater while my sister would be, I don’t know, adding food coloring to frosting, which seemed to be her privilege most years. My mother would never be satisfied with my efforts. She got me in the habit of shredding the citrus down to the end of the pith, which is why these cookies taste kind of bitter when she makes them.

Apricot Currant Filled Cookies

I like a good filled cookie. What I don’t like are filled cookies that have a mere smidge or swipe of the good stuff. I’m the sort of girl for whom the chips are the whole point of a chocolate chip cookie, and the cream cheese center is the whole point of the Danish. The filling is likewise the whole point of a filled cookie. If you’re just going to use a tiny dab, then why bother? Save yourself the trouble – make sugar cookies or shortbread and call it a day.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I feel like I’m not yet back in my culinary groove. Ever since I returned from vacation, it’s been catch-as-catch can to tidy the house, take care of the laundry, and take care of even simple, heat-and-serve meals

Given that – but given that I still hoped to bake something over the weekend – I opted for simplicity. This is my version of the classic chocolate chip cookie.

I started baking plain chocolate chip cookies at the age of 9. My church had a little youth group called “the King’s Army” – that’s the sort of thing that Adventists consider a clever pun – and in order to fund its meager overhead expenses, we hosted a weekly bake sale. I made cookies using the Tollhouse recipe most of the time, although occasionally, I made it as a bar cookie because hey– drop cookies are time-consumptive, especially for a little kid.

I like to think I did a good job for a pre-teen, but my baking skills have definitely evolved since then. My love for chocolate chip cookies, however, has not.