A Basque cheesecake is traditionally served crustless and with no berry adornments, but I promise you’re going to fall in love with this rebellious version. I layer it with a cookie crust; I really like the spice in the Speculoos (Biscoff-ish) cookie and bright berries, which just make the mahogany top and lusciously smooth texture sing. You’ll notice the ingredients— like the cream cheese— are cold rather than at room temperature, so it won’t overbake in the hot oven as the top browns.
The first stop on my coffee cart treat quest (second stop, Raspberry Mazurkas, page 108) is the elusive Pink Cookie. Uncle Seth’s Pink Cookies are palm- size cookies scented with cardamom and topped with a pink- tinted cream cheese and almond frosting. Here, I’ve made them into a pat- in- the pan cookie bar with a layer of perfectly pink cream cheese frosting scented with a bit of almond extract.
A good molasses cookie should achieve a harmony between the sweetness of brown sugar, the bitterness of molasses, and the gentle heat of spices. This cookie does all that, but where it really delivers is the texture: perfectly soft and chewy. The dough can be portioned and frozen ahead of time, making these your all-purpose holiday cookie.
Some of my most memorable recipe breakthroughs are a result of error, mistakes, and happenstance. I try to reframe even the most upsetting accidents as a potential victory or chance for growth: Does it help me examine a recipe or dish from another angle? Is there something I can learn from my failure? Can I repurpose my mistake in some way? The answer is yes!
In the process of revising my favorite biscotti recipe, I accidentally doubled the amount of butter and sugar. Butter isn’t even a traditional ingredient in biscotti, so what happens when you add twice as much? In the oven, the log spreads like inching lava, finally settling into a flat, bronzed disc. Once the disk is cooled, sliced into thin spears, and baked again, the result is a super-crisp cookie, studded with toasted fennel seeds, dark chocolate, and whole hazelnuts.
A small tumbler of vin santo or espresso for dunking would be a heavenly accompaniment. Cheers to happy accidents and faux biscotti.
INGREDIENTS
A Ritz cracker smeared with cream cheese and hot pepper jelly is the holy trinity of snacking. The cooling richness of the cream cheese balances the sweet spiciness of the pepper jelly, while the buttery crunch of a Ritz cracker holds it all together. It’s the ultimate combination of hot, cold, smooth, and crisp. These festive thumbprint cookies borrow that same flavor profile.
These cookies are an amalgamation of various recipes I have made throughout my life: my family’s macarrones de almendra, which are still made at the pastry shop; the macarons at Maison Adam in Saint-Jean-de-Luz; and Moroccan ghriba or ghoriba. They are very simple to put together—a mixture of almonds, sugar, and egg—and as the name indicates, they are cracked on the outside and chewy on the inside. If you prefer not to use orange-flower water, substitute with 2 additional teaspoons of finely grated orange zest. You can flavor the crinkles with vanilla, cinnamon, rose water, lemon zest, or anything you prefer.
Crispy around the edges, chewy in the middle, and delicious all over -- it's virtually impossible not to fall in love with these tahini cookies. As their name suggests, the star of the show is the sesame paste that you may know as the crucial component of hummus, but it also works wonders in sweet treats. In this recipe, tahini gives an incredible depth of flavor, and a coating of sesame seeds makes the cookies as pretty as they are delicious.
This cookie was inspired by pastry chef Matthew Rice's Neapolitan cookie, which I stumbled upon while searching Pinterest for the color pink. This cookie popped up, and I was intrigued by the pretty colors all rolled together. I headed straight to the kitchen. I used my sugar cookie as a base and came up with the version here. My children beg for this cookie, and it's worth the extra steps needed to create it.