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. (more…)

The first granola bar I ever tasted came from a natural foods bakery in Oakland.  It was a tempting combination of chewy bar cookie and enough crunchy whole grains to make me feel virtuous about the indulgence.

I bought them whenever I could until the store that carried them went out of business.  I pined for something similar but no other commercial granola bar has even come close.  Most are hard bricks that taste little better than sawdust and are suited only for emergency rations in my book.

Recently, though, I’ve been working on my own recipe, prompted by a hike with a friend who was working very hard to make her calories count.  Not for her the chocolate chip cookies I usually bring along on hikes, even though they’re loaded with oats and granola, too.

For Sara, I came up with something new — a whole wheat blondie packed with as much good granola as possible without losing the moist, chewy foundation. (more…)

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…)

I’ve been looking for the ideal lemon bar recipe for ages.  Over the years, I’ve made bars with fabulous citrus zing and bars that held their shape when cut, but only rarely did I get both in the same pan.  More often than not, the very best tasting bars never set properly and I ended up chilling them to the edge of freezing before cutting. Or I’d just slurp up the soupy center squares with a spoon.

Leave it to Martha Stewart to solve the problem.  I found these luscious squares in “Martha Stewart’s Cookies,” Clarkson Potter, 2008, one of the best cookie cookbooks in my experience.

These bars are bright and fresh tasting with just enough mouth-puckering tartness to satisfy a real lemon lover.  Yet they’re also firm enough to slice into perfect squares when cooled. (more…)

As far as I’m concerned you can never have too many cookbooks.  My own collection spills out of bookcases in two rooms, upstairs and down.

Shelf space is at a premium, though, so I’m fairly selective about what I add to the collection these days.  A cookbook has to bring something new and unique to the kitchen before I give it a home.  I don’t need another compendium of Italian standards or repackaging of old cookie recipes and I’m hesitant to add a book from a cuisine I rarely cook because the ingredients are such a challenge to find.

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