No matter how much I plan ahead for the holidays, it seems life starts spinning out of control about this time every year.

Here it is less than two weeks ’til Christmas and I still haven’t made any of the usual decorated cookies.  Maybe sometime next week.  Who knows?

With these buttery shortbread cookies in the house, I’m not too worried.  They’re so good in their natural state, one bite banishes all thought of frosting and sprinkles.

The beauty of these cookies is they’re so simple to make.  No rolling, no cutting into cutesy shapes, no decorating.   Just press the dough evenly into a fluted tart pan and bake.

Over the course of refining this classic recipe and it’s variations, though, I picked up a few tips to make Scottish-style shortbread even better:  Use the best butter, handle the dough as little as possible, and chill well before baking to let the flavors develop.

Butter is the heart and soul of shortbread, so you really don’t want to cut corners here.  I used some pricey vat-cultured butter from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company in one batch and the cookies were wonderful.  However, the Straus organic European-style butter at 85 percent butterfat also was incredibly good and a little less expensive.

Although most recipes call for letting the butter soften to room temperature first, I’ve had better results starting with cold butter, cutting it into small chunks and whirling it in the food processor.  If the butter is too soft and you beat it too long in an electric mixer, myriad tiny bubbles form in the dough, leading to unwanted rising and bubbling in the oven.

For the most tender results, you want the dough to be crumbly and loose before you press it into the pan.  Like pie dough, it shouldn’t be overworked.  It will continue to hydrate in the refrigerator and come together when the butter melts in the oven.

The vanilla bean shortbread should be a pale yellow when it emerges from the oven.  The equally delicious brown sugar variation is a little darker, hinting at its intriguing caramel flavor.

In deference to chocoholics, I’ve also developed a variation with cocoa and cacao nibs. Those chunky little bits of roasted cacao beans bring an extra layer of flavor to these cookies and it continues to develop as they’re stored after baking.  Scharffen Berger makes the nibs, which are readily found at most supermarkets.

After baking, cool the shortbread completely in the pan before cutting into the wedges known at petticoat tails in Scotland.

If you really must decorate, you could drizzle these cookies with melted chocolate.  But I wouldn’t.  They’re perfect just out of the pan.

Baking for Passover is a challenge, especially for cooks who weren’t raised in the Jewish tradition.  Dietary restrictions forbid the use of wheat flour, leavening — even confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract, which rules out most of the average home baker’s best recipes.

Yet dessert is the one course where there’s room for innovation in a menu bound by tradition.  The brisket may have to be braised Great Aunt Ethel’s way for the seder every year and the matzo balls prepared according to an old family recipe, but everyone’s open to new delights by the end of the meal.  A guest can feel safe contributing something sweet to the feast.

This year, I’ve been playing around with a variation on the macaroons that I initially found in Jacques Pepin’s ”Fast Food My Way” (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).  I’ve adapted the recipe over the years to the point where Pepin probably wouldn’t recognize it anymore.

These are not your delicate, colorful Parisian macarons a la the famous patisserie, Pierre Herme.  They’re sturdy, chewy, home-style macaroons with deep almond flavor, a hint of orange  and a filling of bittersweet chocolate ganache.  Crunchy on the edges, they get softer and chewier in the middle as they stand.

As an added benefit, these cookies are gluten-free.

The dough is whirled together quickly in a food processor.  The only real trick is to leave plenty of space on the baking sheet for the cookies to spread.  If you’re not careful in portioning out the dough, the cookies can end up misshapen as well.  I’ve had best results by using a zippered plastic bag as a makeshift pastry bag and piping the dough onto the baking sheet in circles.  But spoons and small scoops will do.

Pepin’s original recipe uses prepared almond paste, which really speeds up the process.  I’ve substituted homemade almond paste to make the cookies more acceptable as a Passover dessert.  It only takes a couple of minutes to whirl together and the taste is fresher, with more pronounced almond flavor.

To balance the sweetness of the cookie base, I’ve also introduced a bittersweet chocolate ganache in the place of Pepin’s apricot jam filling.  That does create a problem for people who keep strictly Kosher, though, since the ganache brings a prohibited dairy element into a meal featuring meat.

A marmalade filling, suggested by my friend Sheila Himmel, is a better choice if seder participants observe Kosher dietary rules.

Meet my new favorite cookie.

I know, I’m a fickle cookie lover, easily distracted by the latest flavor sensation.  I’ve rarely met a homemade cookie I didn’t like.

But this combination of toffee and chocolate chips has my number.  It’s chewy and nutty at the center with crisp edges and the buttery flavor of toffee playing off  bittersweet chocolate chips. One just leads to another and another and…..

It all began with a cookie I spotted at the bakery counter at the local Whole Foods.  I was intrigued by the idea of a toffee cookie and the one I bought was pretty good.  But it was too sweet on balance and far too cakey for my taste.  I knew it could be much better with a few tweaks.

I started with a standard chocolate chip cookie batter and began playing around.  First I needed to find the toffee and, although I’ve read that toffee chips are available in markets, I couldn’t find any where I live.  So I settled on toffee candy bars — Skor brand were the best — and chopped them up myself.

I tweaked the proportions of ingredients, cutting the total amount of sweetener and shifting the balance from granulated to brown sugar for deeper flavor.  I added sea salt and doubled the vanilla.  Then I let the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to allow it to hydrate.

The biggest change, though, was a switch from all purpose white to whole wheat pastry flour inspired by Alice Medrich’s incredible cookbook, “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies” (Artisan, 2010).  Alice is a wizard and her whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are so good that no one would ever compare them to dowdy health food store cookies.

The key is the pastry flour, which is softer and contains less protein than regular whole wheat flour.  It produces a tender cookie with a nicely nutty flavor set off by a generous portion of toasted walnuts.

I’ve been baking these cookies all winter.  The story I tell is that I need to test the recipe one more time to make sure it’s right.  But I’m not fooling anyone.  I’m hooked.

I hope you love them, too.

Chocolate cream pie was always the ultimate treat when I was a child.  No matter the occasion, my Dad asked for one of my Mom’s pies piled high with beautifully browned meringue in the place of a more conventional cake.

I have never been a big pie baker, however.  The crust intimidated me for years before I learned that a food processor would do a far better job of cutting butter into the flour than I ever could.  Even then, the dough had to be rolled out and mine always stuck to the pastry board until I realized that I actually was using too little flour on the board in my fear of using too much.  I won’t even talk about my failures with meringue.

So when I was inspired to make chocolate pie—actually tarts—for Valentine’s Day, I decided to keep it simple enough even for the pie-phobes among us.  The crust is a peanut butter cookie dough pressed into the pans rather than rolled out  The filling is a rich pot de creme quickly made in a double boiler, which is easy to improvise.  The topping is straight out of an iSi cream whipper, although it’s not hard to whip cream with a wire whip or electric mixer.

Think of these tarts as deconstructed peanut butter cups with much better ingredients.  Deep, dark chocolate beats out wimpy milk chocolate in my book any day.

Homey chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies are all very well for the rest of the year.  The holidays, though, cry out for something spectacular.

It takes an over-the-top cookie like these chocolate cherry hazelnut bars to stand out among the fanciful sugar cutouts, elaborate spritz and spicy gingerbread men found on platters at every neighborhood party and office pot luck this time of year.

I usually try out a new cookie every year during the holidays, but this recipe has become a standard.  It’s always a hit on the cookie platter and it makes great gifts, too.  The fact that it takes only minutes to pull together only adds to its charm.

The generous layer of high quality chocolate atop a crunchy cocoa-dusted crust makes a truly decadent offering.  I use the best bittersweet and milk chocolate I can find—Valrhona when I can find it at a good price. What really sets these cookies apart from the familiar 7-layer bar recipe  found on  the back of cans of sweetened condensed milk, though, is the grown-up flavors of tart dried cherries and toasted hazelnuts.

The only problem is they go fast, even though they’re incredibly rich.  So slice the bars smaller if you’re expecting a crowd.

Or set aside a few for yourself.  The cook deserves a treat, too.

Quick: Passover is only two days away and  you’ve been invited to a seder.  What can you bring for dessert?

That question can be challenging enough for cooks who were raised in the Hebrew tradition and understand all the dietary restrictions on flour and leavening associated with this celebration of the Jews’ escape from Egypt in biblical times.

For the rest of us, there’s matzo crunch.  This addictive treat pairs bland and brittle matzo—an unleavened bread that could qualify as the poster food for Passover—with the caramel and chocolate flavors of toffee.  It’s crisp, sweet and impossible to resist.  Only the most self-disciplined can eat just one piece.

Best of all, you can throw it together in minutes and no one will guess how easy was.  There are only four ingredients—matzo, butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips.  You can add toasted sliced almonds, if you want, and a sprinkle of sea salt is a great addition. But neither is really necessary.

If your hosts keep strictly kosher, you may need to substitute Passover margarine for butter and make sure you buy kosher brown sugar and chocolate chips, such as those made by Guittard.

You may be familiar with this sweet treat if you’re Jewish.  It’s been making the rounds of  Jewish kitchens  for a couple of decades.  Cookbook author Marcy Goldman first published the recipe in the 1998 edition of “A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking” (republished in paperback by Whitecap Books, 2009). She likes to tell the story of a neighbor giving her a faded photocopy of the recipe, then laughing off Goldman’s comment that she developed the recipe.

I stumbled across the recipe last year about this time on David Lebovitz”s great blog.  If a renowned pastry chef was making it, I figured it must be good.  Even then, I was amazed by how terrific it was.

Since then, I’ve found the recipe in myriad minor variations all over the web.  Some cooks follow Goldman’s recipe to the letter.  Others add vanilla and increase the chocolate chips dramatically.  I like it best with bittersweet chocolate chips in double the amount called for in Goldman’s recipe.

I also bake it at a little lower heat because my first batches came too close to burning.  And I wait until the candy has totally cooled before I break it into pieces.

This confection is so good, I now eagerly await Passover season—when boxes of matzo appear on the shelves of ordinary grocery stores—just so I can make several batches. Some recipes suggest you can use saltine crackers instead of matzo in a pinch, but that sounds too salty for me.

You don’t have to be Jewish to adore matzo crunch.

My friend Susan’s mother passed away recently, just two weeks shy of her 99th birthday.  With her went the secret to some of the best brownies I’ve ever eaten.

Sylvia Cohen was a charming, gracious and accomplished woman who graduated from Radcliffe in an era when few females went to college. As was expected at the time, she gave up her personal ambitions to raise three children and support the academic career of her husband, Nathan Cohen, who went on to become dean of the School of Social Welfare at UCLA.  She was a lifelong defender of social justice and surely wouldn’t have considered her brownies a significant contribution to the world.

Yet her incomparable brownies came up time and again as her family remembered this remarkable woman last month.  Although Sylvia had shared her recipe freely, no one else had ever achieved the voluptuous texture that she did using the most common ingredients: Baker’s unsweetened chocolate, margarine, sugar and flour.  Her brownies were dense, moist and incredibly silky with a generous portion of walnuts for a crunchy counterpoint.

“It was the consistency that was so amazing,” Susan recalls.

Some things are clear.  Everyone knew that Sylvia undercooked her brownies.  As soon as they came out of the oven, she topped them with waxed paper, bundled them in a towel and whisked them into the freezer.  When they were cooled, she trimmed off the edges, keeping only the fudgy center, before returning them to the freezer.  In later years, she served them straight out of the freezer, which only seemed to improve their already irresistible texture.

But why couldn’t anyone else get the same results?  I’ve made variations on the recipe several times in the last couple of week and I suspect, in part, it may be an issue of ingredients. No one I know still cooks with margarine, much less the same brand Sylvia preferred.  Some family members think she might have used Imperial, the brand with a crown on the box.

Flour, too, can make a great difference.  A moderate protein flour, such as bleached all-purpose Gold Medal, delivers a more tender crumb than the higher protein unbleached flour that many cooks use today.

Technique and experience also are critical.  Chocolate is a delicate ingredient and needs to be treated gently, warmed just enough to melt.  Alice Medrich, who knows chocolate better than anyone, calls for melting chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set in a wide skillet of barely simmering water so you can monitor the temperature of the water easily.

Perhaps just as important, only Sylvia knew what her brownies should look like when they were done.   By trial and error, I finally decided the edges should be set and look a little dry while the center should have lost most of its gloss and be just firm enough to touch lightly.  A toothpick stuck in the center should come out very moist.

Baking at the right temperature is essential, too.  Since ovens vary widely—mine runs almost 50 degrees colder than what it says on the dial— it’s a good idea to use a thermometer to ensure the correct setting.

In the end, it seemed foolish to try to replicate Sylvia’s brownies.  I’m not going to cook with margarine, nor do I want to use ordinary baking chocolate when there’s so much better quality available now.  Instead, I took her brownies as inspiration for a new recipe made with the best ingredients I could find.  I also opted to wrap the baked brownies tightly in heavy duty foil rather than a towel before stashing them in the freezer.  They fit better that way.

If the texture isn’t quite the same, the flavor is remarkable.  Good chocolate—I like Scharffen Berger unsweetened—contributes a fruity note and faint undertones of cinnamon while brown sugar brings a new layer of complexity.

These brownies are my tribute to Sylvia, who proved once again that good food makes great memories.

It’s not Valentine’s Day without chocolate as far as I’m concerned. No other food can match its sensuous pleasure, slowly melting on the tongue and flooding the palate with the rich, dark, almost sinful flavor of cacao.

We’re talking pudding here, but a pudding unlike any you ever knew in childhood.  This is a pudding so dense, so smooth, so deeply chocolate that it  bears little resemblance to the bland desserts of the school cafeteria.  The addition of top quality bittersweet chocolate and an extra jolt of caffeine from freshly brewed coffee make it a grownup treat, indeed.

This mocha pudding belongs on the same gastronomic plane as pot de creme or chocolate mousse, but it’s far easier to make and there are no raw egg whites to worry about.  It begins as a cocoa-infused pastry cream, which is passed through a sieve, enriched by melted chocolate, and beaten until smooth and glossy.  The whole process takes about 30 minutes once you’ve assembled the ingredients and the results couldn’t be more impressive.

The secret is to use the best cocoa and bittersweet chocolate you can buy.  I prefer Valrhona but Scharffen Berger or Guittard would be wonderful, too.

The recipe was inspired by the chocolate pudding in the terrific cookbook, “Tartine,” by San Francisco bakers Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson (Chronicle Books, 2006).  I’ve substituted strong coffee for part of the liquid to develop an extra layer of sophisticated flavor.

For an elegant presentation, spoon the pudding into little demitasse cups or martini glasses and crown with softly whipped cream,  Chocolate-dipped coffee beans, make a clever garnish if you can find them.

Cupid isn’t likely to present a more tempting dish.

When I was a child, I was perfectly happy with Cracker Jacks.  Now that I’ve tasted some of the finer things in life, I have higher standards. But I still get a kick out of caramel corn.

A bag of Moose Munch — a posh version of the childhood treat, embellished with cashews, almonds and dark chocolate — finds its way into our basket whenever we shop at the Harry and David’s outlet. It’s an extravagance, though, at about $8 for a small bag, and there’s usually only a few crumbs left by the time we get home.  So this year I decided I would make my own for the holidays.

Prepared with freshly popped corn and homemade caramel, this version will give you a whole new perspective on caramel corn.  It’s crunchy, sweet,  a little bit salty, and downright fun to eat.   It’s also inexpensive to make and a great gift.  I’ve been taking it to parties and even skeptics are soon happily munching away.

Replicating a commercial recipe is never easy.  It took three tries to come up with a version close enough to the original to make me happy.  I needed a light caramel that lets the flavor of butter shine through. But my first two tries, using  brown sugar both times, were just too dark and heavy.  When I switched to white sugar, everything clicked.

This version may even be better than the original.  The ingredients are all high quality and there’s only enough corn syrup to prevent the sugar in the caramel from crystallizing.

I realize making candy can be daunting.  There’s usually all that fussing with the candy thermometer, which never seems to be accurate.  If you don’t cook it long enough, it won’t set.  Yet if it stays on the heat a minute too long it burns.

Don’t worry.  You can use a thermometer, if you want, to make the caramel, but it isn’t essential.  Watch the time and the changing color of the sugar closely and  you’ll be fine.  Just be sure to wear long sleeves and heavy oven mitts when you pour the syrup over the popcorn.  Boiling sugar can leave nasty burns if you’re not careful.

Pop the corn any way you like.  I’m attached to my old air popper but the microwave works just fine, although you’ll have to work in batches.  (Place about 3 tablespoons of corn kernels in a brown paper bag, say a large lunch bag, fold the top over a couple of times and cook on high until the kernels stop popping — about 2 minutes. Don’t use commercial microwave popcorn, which introduces off flavors.)   Or do it the old fashioned way and heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a heavy 3-quart pan over moderate heat, add the kernels, cover the pan, and shake until the corn stops popping.

The secret to the great crisp texture of this caramel corn is baking it in a low oven for an hour once you’ve mixed the syrup with the popcorn and nuts. After it has cooled thoroughly, dip some of the clusters in melted chocolate.  Good chocolate chips work well.  I use Ghirardelli’s 60 percent cacao bittersweet chocolate chips.  If you want to splurge, try chopping up a couple of bars of premium dark chocolate instead.

There’s plenty of room for creativity here.  I like cashews and almonds, but macadamias and pecans also are great and salted peanuts are classic. If you don’t care for really dark chocolate, use semi-sweet or milk chocolate, although the latter may be a little soft for the job.

When you’re done, you’ll have about four quarts of candy.   It looks like a lot, but believe me, it won’t last long.

Caramel corn isn’t just for kids anymore.

I’d been looking for a great new use for cocoa ever since Valrhona sent me some of its products for review late this summer.  The bars of solid chocolate from France are my first choice for baking and I always try to pick up a couple while shopping at Trader Joe’s just to keep my pantry stocked. But I generally think of cocoa powder, no matter the label, as a pale substitute for the real thing, dry and dusty rather than rich and silky.

Then I tasted a fabulous chocolate sorbet from SCREAM Sorbet at the Wednesday farmers market and inspiration struck.  Melted chocolate alone wouldn’t deliver that intense taste.  I needed a dark and dusky cocoa with an intoxicating aroma for an extra layer of flavor.  What better use for that stash of Valrhona?

The recipe for this sorbet began, as most good frozen desserts seem to, with David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop.” The cookbook author and former Chez Panisse pastry chef, now living in Paris, is a wizard with an ice cream machine.  To make his basic chocolate sorbet recipe my own, I added a sparkling citrus note from grated orange rind and a little kick from a couple of tablespoons of Grand Marnier.  The results were stunning.   Without an ounce of milk or cream, it was as thick and satiny as chocolate mousse, with an intensity unmatched by most commercial products.

This is a super simple recipe.  All you need is an ice cream maker and they’re not such a big splurge anymore.  I use an inexpensive Cuisinart with a cannister that I store in the freezer between uses.

Don’t worry if you don’t have Valrhona cocoa, as good as it is.  Although it’s worthwhile to search for it in grocery stores or order it online, it’s definitely a luxury item.   I’ve found only the most upscale markets carry it, including Draeger’s on the Peninsula.   Alternatively, use the best-tasting cocoa you can afford because it makes so much difference in the dish.

Just be sure your cocoa is Dutch processed, meaning it’s been treated with an alkaline solution to partially neutralize acid, which also makes it easier to dissolve in liquids.  Most European chocolates have been Dutched, but many American cocoas, Scharffen Berger among them, have not.

Melted bittersweet chocolate contributes thickness to this sorbet.  It should be top quality, too.  I used the 61 percent cacao “le noir” from Valrhona.

The only real trick here is to remember to give yourself enough time to chill the mixture well before freezing.  I was in a rush and didn’t leave my batch in the refrigerator quite long enough, so it never thoroughly froze in the ice cream maker.  No worries.  I just transferred the slush to a storage container and let it finish up in the freezer.

It was terrific by any measure.