speculaas (dutch spice cookies)

December 11, 2023 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

These cookies are meant to be pressed into a mold, but I don’t have one. I opt to roll and cut them out like sugar cookies (actually, I always make these with my kids the same day as those). These are a humble cookie, but if you love spice cookies like I do (I often laugh at how many variations of spice cookies I have in my yearly list), these will find a spot in your own holiday baking, not only for their warm, comforting flavor, but also for their being a cinch to make!

ricotta cookies

December 07, 2023 by Sophie Barrows in baking, dessert, sophie

A few years ago, I started baking several different cookies leading up to Christmas, freezing them as I went. The goal was to have a stockpile of beautiful cookies to pull out on Christmas, give to friends, bring to gatherings, and enjoy throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas. Each year, I try to rein in the near absurd amount of cookies I plan to make, but the list of keepers continues to grow…

Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti

October 09, 2023 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

These chocolate cherry almond biscotti were good enough to pull me out of sluggish apathy this morning and finally revive a blog wallowing in abandonment for over a year. Well, abandoned by us as bloggers, but not as bakers. We continue to reference this blog for our favorite shared recipes on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And it looks like many of you reading this do the same! We thank you all for continuing to follow along for the past year, even when new content was scarce. After a long break I think we’re ready to start posting regularly again…just in time for the holidays!

Peanut Sandies

September 18, 2020 by Maria Almeida in baking, maria

As much as I love Ottolenghi’s savory recipes for their dynamic flavor profiles, so much do I love his sweet recipes for their subtlety and finesse. Just like his Oat Cranberry Almond Cookies, these Peanut Sandies have flavor without being in your face. They perfectly balance butter with peanut, sweet with salty, not one element outshining the other. The texture is delicate and crumbles away in your mouth. They are, in a word, a delight.

magic kiss middles

July 24, 2020 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

This is kind of a crossover between two cookie classics—Keebler’s Magic Middles and Hershey’s Secret Kiss cookies.

graham cookies + a wonderful baking tool

July 01, 2020 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

I love these cookies. They are the perfect snack cookies that are sweet enough to satisfy a craving, but not sweet enough to make you think you’re over doing it on any regular old day. And they are so yummy! And satisfying! To be honest, I’m finding myself baking these up every other week or so.

Chocolate Oatmeal Lace Cookies (GF & Milk Free)

February 06, 2020 by Sophie Barrows in dessert, baking, sophie

I’ve loved these cookies for years. Though only five ingredients (six with the chocolate), they are interesting and addictive. They just happen to be gluten and milk free. I sometimes add spices like cinnamon to them to vary them up. They are thin, crisp, and almost melt-in-your-mouth.

Lemon Tea Cookies, 3 Ways

January 16, 2020 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

I found this recipe many years ago. A friend came over after school, and we paged through my family’s cookbooks for baking inspiration. We hit upon this one, and it has remained a beloved recipe ever since.

great British Bake Off Challenge July: Eton Mess

July 07, 2019 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

When I started thinking about what GBBO bake we should do for July, I immediately thought something light, fresh, easy and perfect for summer. Eton Mess is all of that and more.

rice flour snickerdoodles [gluten-free]

June 24, 2019 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

We aren’t gluten-free in my home, but I have enough family and friends who are that it helps to have a few stellar gluten-free recipes on hand to pull out for parties and get-togethers, or just because! And I have to admit, I’m prejudiced against recipes that tout themselves as “gluten-free” and then simply call for a gluten-free flour mix in the ingredients list, or worse for me, some home-concocted mixture of 100 different flours and powders that I simply don’t have on hand and probably never will invest in.

French Snacklettes & Dorie's Cookies Review

June 21, 2019 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

Ever since I tasted Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies, I have had an eye on her cookbook Dorie’s Cookies. One bite of the World Peace Cookie, and I was crazy over the play between crumbly and chewy, the deep chocolate flavor, the ease of baking, and the adorable little puddle-circle shapes. The recipe struck me as genius, and I wanted more.

Chewy Molasses Cookies

December 21, 2018 by Maria Almeida in baking, maria

I love these cookies so much. They’re giant, and chewy, and full of all the spices of the holiday season - but not too spicy, lots of molasses flavor, and accented by a sweet sugar coating that causes delightful crusty crinkles all over. I actually can’t imagine making these at any other time of year (I think I actually have a mental restriction on the idea) which makes them that much more special. Molasses cookies come but once a year!

Chocolate peanut butter bark

December 20, 2018 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

A lot of holiday recipes can be quite involved, and require fancy ingredients, which makes sense, because Christmas is a time to celebrate and pull out all the stops.

But sometimes you just need a break. You want something that’s delicious and festive but comes together in under an hour with ingredients you probably have on hand.

This chocolate peanut butter bark is just the thing. It’s quick and easy, and ridiculously addictive to eat. It freezes well, and makes a lovely gift.

Oat cranberry almond cookies with white chocolate

December 19, 2018 by Maria Almeida in baking, maria

These cookies are a refreshing change from the typical Christmas cookie assortment. They have a great texture - crumbly and studded with oats and chopped almonds, but not at all clumsy or chunky. The not-too-sweet, buttery cookie base is a perfect backdrop to the cranberry white chocolate pairing.

Baci di Dama (Italian Hazelnut Cookies)

December 18, 2018 by Sophie Barrows in dessert, baking

I find few things as luxurious and festive as hazelnuts. Pricey, compared to other nuts, hazelnuts simply beg to be a Christmas splurge. So here they enter in for Day 11 of our Twelve Days of Cookies.

Dulce de leche spritz rosettes

December 17, 2018 by Sarah Blanchard in baking, sarah

Spritz are a Christmas cookie standard. Although deliciously simple, they can also be a bit…well, simple. They easily take the back seat to other, more indulgent, treats.

That’s why I’m so excited about these jazzed-up Christmas spritz. That simple butter cookie is piped into attractive rosette swirls, baked to a light golden crunch, smeared underside with creamy sweet dulce de leche, and then sandwiched to form a show-stopping treat.

Bourbon Snowballs

December 15, 2018 by Maria Almeida in baking, maria

Okaaaaaay, so I use bourbon in a lot of my desserts. Yes, I brought a bourbon walnut pie to an Octoberfest party and yes I accented my chocolate chess pie with a boozy bourbon whipped cream. My favorite bread pudding is bourbon raisin with a bourbon butter sauce that could make you tipsy. I love bourbon! Just gotta own it.

Cucidati (Italian Fig Cookies)

December 14, 2018 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

Christmas has become our Italian holiday (where Easter we go full out Polish). And if there is something I’ve learned from living among Italians, they love their cookies. At any family gathering from weddings to funerals, there are platters upon platters of homemade cookies.

Fudgy chocolate walnut cookies (gluten-free)

December 11, 2018 by Maria Almeida in baking, maria

Ok, these cookies are kind of magical.

For one thing, they require very little preparation or fuss. I made them in the amount of time my 5-month-old was happy to sit in her bouncer. Magic.

They’re also gluten free. I know, that’s not always the best advertisement for baked goods, but it’s undeniably handy to have a couple GF recipes in your collection, like if you have a GF friend or relative … or if you set out to make cookies but you have no flour (yes, real life story, don’t ask, it has been a long week and it’s only Tuesday). But these cookies are so delicious that you would never even guess it. Magic.

And they are cookies, but they taste like brownies. Fudgy, chewy, chocolatey brownies. But no flour or butter needed! Like I said, magic.

I might add that found this recipe in Food52’s Genius Desserts cookbook. Magical AND genius.

minty world peace cookies

December 11, 2018 by Sophie Barrows in baking, sophie

Whenever an occasion arrives and cookies are called for, these cookies come to mind. So it didn’t take long for me to volunteer them for Day 2 of our 12 days of cookies this year. They are unbelievably easy and flexible and taste SO GOOD. Seriously, there is something spectacular about the texture of these cookies — crumbly, shortbready yet with a bit of chew and ample patches of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate.