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….. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)