Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Lemon cookies are probably one of my favorite types. These crinkle cookies are quick and easy. Err on the side of under baking them to keep the center chewy. You can store them in an airtight container for a few days. One note on baking time, if using a dark baking sheet, your cookies will bake faster.

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Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

 I am always dabbling in a variety of chocolate chip cookie recipes. Personally I prefer a soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie. This recipe is one of my favorites. If your over temperature runs accurately, trust the timing on this. It may seem a little under baked, but will have a great texture. These will keep for a week store in an airtight container at room temperature.

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Chewy Gingerbread Cookies

When it comes to cookies, I generally prefer the chewy variety. These are really easy to make and can be stored up to a week in an airtight container, making them a great make-ahead cookie or gift during the holidays.

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Soft and Buttery Oatmeal Cookies

Soft baked oatmeal cookies are one of my favorite winter snacks. I have tried many different recipes but really love the end result on this one. The cookie might look like it's under-baked when you make these, but trust your timer (so longer as your oven temperate is accurate). They were the perfect soft baked, chewy cookie. I ended up bringing the majority of these to work and they were gone very quickly.
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German Style Hazelnut Cookies

It's cookie season, which means some new recipes have been tried, along with some of the old classics. I had a bag of hazelnuts in my pantry that I wanted to use and started looking for a hazelnut cookie recipe. This one turned out to be a delicious, crumbly cookie that everyone in the extended family loved. These lasted about 4 days in an airtight container on my kitchen counter before they were all eaten.

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Almond Horn Cookies

The first time I made these cookies it was Passover and I was looking for something to make other than the usual macaroons. I found this recipe and gave it a try. I absolutely love these cookies and they are something I enjoy year round now. If you enjoy a strong almond flavor (like marzipan) you will enjoy these. You can find almond paste in the baking section of most larger grocery stores. The dough is very wet so it take a bit of getting used to working with it. The recipe is also very small, making about 10 cookies. This quantity often works for me, but I imagine it can be doubled fairly easily.

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Strawberry Lemon Spiral Cookies

With the weather getting colder, baking has finally resumed in my kitchen. I was looking for a recipe for a bright, flavorsome cookie and came across this recipe. It does have a few steps involved where chilling the dough is required, but is otherwise fairly easy to make. You can also make these ahead of time and freeze the dough once you have rolled it in to 2 logs. If you have a big crowd coming over I would suggest doubling the recipe since I made about 32 cookies from this recipe.

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Chocolate Rugelach

It's Jewish holiday season, so there's no better time for some rugelach. I made these for Rosh Hashana and although it takes a bit of time to make the rugelach (you have to chill the dough 2 times), the recipe is pretty easy to follow. My family loves all chocolate desserts, so these were a hit. You can prepare these ahead of time by making the dough and letting it chill overnight and making the cookies the following day.

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Soft Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have always loved a soft baked chocolate chip cookie, but had never baked one that I loved. Recently my niece requested to bake chocolate chip cookies so I looked in to a few different recipes. I found this one and decided to give it a try. This instantly became my new go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. They turned out wonderfully. Everyone who tried them was pleasantly surprised by how good they were (clearly my chocolate chip cookie reputation was mediocre prior to this). These turn out soft baked and thanks to the instructions, you actually know when to take them out of the oven to keep that chewiness of a soft baked cookie.

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Crispy Speculoos Cookies

I originally came across this recipe while looking for a Biscoff Lotus cookie copycat recipe. My family and I love these cookies, but I wanted to try making them myself. Though this does not truly taste like a Biscoff cookie, it is a delicious speculoos cookie with fantastic flavors and a great texture. This cookie is now one of my go-to cookies that I know everyone in my family will enjoy. The dough can be difficult to roll if it gets too warm since it has a lot of butter in it, so chilling the dough prior to rolling is very helpful.

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Almond Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

More often than not, I love jam cookies. If it's a bow tie cookie or a linzer cookie, I love the combination of a shortbread style cookie with sweet jam. This recipe proved to be yet another tasty jam treat. I was a little skeptical making these since the dough was drier and more crumbly than I am used to, but bear with it and you will probably love these cookies too. Ideally, you'd make these with a square or round cookie cutter. But oddly enough I could not find a simple shape anywhere, so I opted for stars. Feel free to use whatever jam you like in these cookies. I love raspberry jam, but stick with your personal preference.

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Soft Baked Oatmeal, Walnut and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I absolutely love soft baked oatmeal cookies. I was looking for a new oatmeal recipe to try when I came across this one. With a few tweaks here and there I ended up with delicious, chewy cookies. I don't think you can go wrong with this recipe. I love having these cookies with a giant glass of milk or cup of tea. This recipe made over 60 cookies, so I tend to share these with friends or coworkers when I make them.

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Maple Bacon Macarons

A couple weekends ago my friends and I took a macaron cooking class. I had never tried making macarons in the past since they always seemed to be very labor intensive. Turns out there are a lot of steps involved, but they aren't actually that hard to make. If a class of amateurs manager to make multiple successful batches of these, so can you. My favorite flavor from that class was the maple bacon macaron. The filling is a caramel and maple sauce with bacon morsels. I could eat it by the spoonful (I may have done that in reality). These macarons can be refrigerated and will last a week. In fact, the flavor comes through even better on day 2.

In the top picture, the macaron has been in the fridge overnight and is much more stable and together. The bottom photo is of the macarons right after we added the caramel bacon sauce. Make sure you don't go crazy with the caramel or it will ooze everywhere. We had a few macarons where that happened if you didn't already notice. They are a very delicate cookie so take extra care when transporting them.

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Nutella and Traditional Rugelach Cookies

I have always been a huge rugelach fan. As a kid I I would devour the chocolate variety any time they were around. I used to consider them a special treat when my mom brought them back from the bakery. This recipe is somewhat time consuming, but the cookies are delicious. I have made these many times in the past and have shared them with coworkers for holiday. They have always been a huge hit with all age groups. I only recently made Nutella rugelach, but they are so easy to make that it may have to become a regular thing. They are also very addictive and it is impossible to only eat one- consider yourself warned.

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Spitzbuben (Swiss Butter Cookies with Jam)

Spitzbuben are a typical Swiss cookie which is usually baked around Christmas time. The consist of a buttery cookie base and are filled with jam. My favorite jam for this cookie is raspberry jam, but feel free to use apricot, quince, blackberry, or any flavor you love. These cookies are an easy hit and look beautiful too. You can serve them with or without a sprinkle of powdered sugar. My dad always prefers his plain, but the powdered sugar makes it look more festive. To me this cookie is not particularly just a Christmas cookie since it doesn't have an ingredients which shout "Christmas!" (no nutmeg, no cloves, no cinnamon...). But a traditional Swiss family will make sure to stock their cookie tins with these come December. Clearly I am behind schedule, but trust me, you will love these regardless.

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Bow Tie Cookies with Apricot Jam

It's been a while since I've added a new post, but this past month has been crazy. I've moved back to the US and have been unpacking and repacking for my move to San Francisco. Luckily, there's been some time to try out new recipes even with all the commotion. When I got to my parent's house, I knew I wanted to bake something for my dad. He's the kind of guy who loves having a pastry or cookie with his morning coffee. But he doesn't like things to be overly sweet and dislikes anything with frosting or icing.

I was browsing recipes at Fine Cooking when I came across this cookie recipe and knew it would be perfect. The cookie itself is not too sweet and is the perfect coffee or tea cookie. The flavor is simple yet the cookies are extremely addictive. We managed to finish the entire batch within 4 days (there were only 3 of us at home at the time). You can use any jam you want for these. I made half of the cookies with apricot jam and half with strawberry rhubarb jam and both were delicious. The apricot ones were a little more tart since the jam isn't as sweet. You can fill them with whatever flavor you like, but choose a firm jam. A thin, runny jam will seep out of the cookies more so than a thicker one (this was the case with my apricot jam cookie). Best of all, the original recipe claims you can freeze these cookies in a freezer bag for up to 3 month, so if you don't plan on going on a cookie binge you can save them. But seeing as how these cookies seem to magically disappear, that might not be necessary.

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Vanilla Pudding Chocolate Chip Cookies

I feel like it's really hard finding a great recipe for soft chocolate chip cookies. I've tried lots of different variations  but always thought they were just OK. I actually avoided baking chocolate chip cookies for a while since I felt like each batch in the past was a waste of time. Luckily my sister's friend gave her this recipe. Part way through making this recipe we realized it yielded 3 dozen cookies and thought there was no way we were going to eat them all. Well, between my sister, brother-in-law, and I, we polished them off in 5 days (don't judge).

These cookies are the softest the first 3 days. If you store the cookies in an airtight container with a slice of bread in it, it helps the cookies stay soft if they seem to get harder. That trick also works really well if you ever slightly over bake cookies. I'm not sure what makes these cookies so soft, but I'm guessing is has to do with the vanilla pudding mix since that's the only ingredient I've never worked with in a chocolate chip cookie recipe. It might sound like an odd ingredient, but it makes these cookies phenomenal. Another tip for baking these cookies- use a silicone mat instead of parchment paper if you have one (or a few). I had 3 baking sheets filled with cookies, two sheets lined with silicone mats and one lined with parchment paper. The cookies on the parchment paper spread out much more and were thin and crispy whereas the one on the silicone mats puffed up perfectly and were much softer.

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Caramel-Glazed Cardamom Palmiers

I was recently looking for a new cookie recipe that I could make for my dad. He prefers drier non-chocolatey cookies that go well with tea or coffee. After looking through tons of recipes, I found this one and though it sounded manageable (and it had a couple good reviews). I've never attempted a similar cookie before, so I was a little bit pessimistic, especially when I first started kneading the dough and was convinced the seemingly dry, crumbly mass would never form a dough.

These cookies aren't necessarily difficult to make, but they take time. The result is delicious! Within less than 24 hours, 3 of us had finished the batch. I also saved the scraps of dough that I trimmed away to form the rectangle. I used those to make mini palmiers, which were adorable, bite sized snacks (even more addictive thanks to their size). Though I haven't tried it yet, I imagine this dough would freeze well.

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Orange Poppy Seed Cookies

Before you start comparing my cookies to the perfect looking ones on the Fine Cooking website, have some mercy. I forgot to set the timer when I put them in the oven, forgot about them altogether, and only realized they were still baking when the house smelled like (slightly overdone) cookies. I had to throw half of them away and the rest were really tasty, but extra crispy. Oven failure aside, these cookies are great! They're really easy to make, the dough freezes well if you want to prepare it ahead of time, and the flavor is just right. The citrus and poppy seed combination is always one of my favorites, so these cookies quickly made it into my baking repertoire.

I was going to serve these as part of a holiday cookie platter, where they would have been a nice change from the usual ginger and chocolate and sugar cookies that seem to be popular this time or year. From my small sampling, these were nice to have with tea and coffee (probably because of the added crunch). Don't get me wrong, the cookie is meant to be crispy, but mine just took it to the next level. Give these cookies a try for a refreshing flavor this holiday season.

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Double Ginger Crackles

Last Thanksgiving I attempted a ginger cookie recipe which sounded amazing but was 100% horrible. It was so bad that we all ended up laughing about the awful gingery taste. Every time I'd convince someone to try them I'd laugh all over again seeing the looks of disgust on their faces. I gave up on ginger cookies for the year and threw away the rest of the batch. This year I began a new search and found a promising recipe from Fine Cooking. Lately I have been loving every recipe I try from their website or magazine, so i'm not surprised that this was another winner.

The key in this recipe is the crystallized ginger. It adds great flavor and a slight kick to the cookies. I found a Japanese version of crystallized that cost a lot less than the stuff found in your grocery stores spice aisle. Another key to this recipe is to not over-bake the cookies. My first batch was left in a minute too long and the cookies turned out crispy. They still tasted great, but I prefer when they are softer. Luckily my sister remembered to put a slice of bread in the cookie jar with the crispy cookies and they softened up the next day. These cookies will last about 5 days stored in an airtight container.

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