• No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

    No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

    This is a week of recipes where the finished dish doesn’t look good, but tastes really good, so I lead with a picture of something else. Yesterday it was Kachin Chicken Curry with a picture of a mortar and pestle, today it’s No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies from Baked Explorations with an image of peanut…

  • The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in the World

    The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in the World

    How many cookies does the average person eat over the course of a lifetime? 500? 5,000? 5 MILLION? I’m not sure but since life is short, I believe it’s important to make your cookies count. Cracking open a box of Chips Ahoy might scratch an itch much like sleeping with a prostitute probably scratches a…

  • Chocolate Cranberry Oat Cookies So Good They’ll Stop Your Kid From Crying

    Chocolate Cranberry Oat Cookies So Good They’ll Stop Your Kid From Crying

    Parents of three year-olds, I salute you! We have house guests this week, our friend Celia and her three year old daughter, Johanna. And while I’d been told that the terrible twos are nothing compared to the terrible threes, that really had no significance for me since I don’t have children, I just have a…

  • Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    The other night I was very cold so I made a hot chocolate. My method for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants hot chocolate is pretty simple: I warm milk, whisk in unsweetened cocoa powder and a bit of sugar. I taste and allow it to thicken a bit at a simmer. Then, at the last minute, I add…

  • Back To Our Favorite N.Y. Haunts (Joe, Joseph Leonard, Bar Centrale, City Bakery, Grand Sichuan & The Burger Joint)

    Back To Our Favorite N.Y. Haunts (Joe, Joseph Leonard, Bar Centrale, City Bakery, Grand Sichuan & The Burger Joint)

    I took a tumble outside of Joe on Waverly, the coffee shop that was a second home to me all those years that I lived in the big city. It was kind of embarrassing: rain was beating down, Craig ran inside the front door, and as I approached the first step, I totally slipped on…

  • Apple Pie Cookies By The Seat Of My Pants

    Apple Pie Cookies By The Seat Of My Pants

    It’s considered a hard and true fact in the food world that baking is a precise discipline and that cooking–sauteing, roasting, salad-making–is looser, freer, more of a vehicle for personal expression. Why does that always have to be the case? Isn’t it possible that, if you know a thing or two in the kitchen, you…

  • Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Until I get a cease and desist letter from Kim Boyce, whose book “Good To The Grain” inspired me to buy six different kinds of flours last week (that led to a spelt olive oil cake with bittersweet chocolate), I’m going to keep blogging my experiences cooking from her book. The good news is that…

  • The Corn Cookie

    The Corn Cookie

    Delaying gratification is an exercise few food lovers can comprehend. We nibble the hors d’oeuvres before the guests arrive, we gobble up the bread basket before the waiter puts pad to pen, we’re ready for seconds while most people are still on their firsts. Which is why I deserve some credit for not devouring the…

  • European-Style Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

    European-Style Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

    Once I was at Murray’s Cheese with David Lebovitz and he stopped to admire the butter from Vermont. I’ll confess, up to that point, I hadn’t given butter that much thought. For years I’d been buying Breakstones–you know, the kind that comes in the red box–and using it pretty universally. But then, after David talked…

  • Eric Wolitzky’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Eric Wolitzky’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Tomorrow (as you’ll see in the next post) I’m hoofing it to Baked in Red Hook so I can do a live-streaming interview with Eric Wolitzky, everyone’s favorite contestant from the debut season of “Top Chef: Just Desserts.” You probably didn’t know this, but I met Eric years ago at my friend Jimmy’s apartment. It…