Cookies

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.

Florentines are pretty little lacy cookies, studded with sliced almonds and dipped in chocolate. These were in my childhood cookbook and I could not make enough of them. They are so simple to make and yet so elegant. Give these to close friends and loved ones.

Our well-proportioned sandwiches feature relatively small, thin cookies and precise scoops of ice cream that give each bite the perfect combination of textures and flavors. We added water to the dough to prevent the cookies from turning rock-hard in the freezer, as well as plenty of browned butter, dark brown sugar, vanilla, and salt to compensate for the flavor-dulling effect of the freezer. Mini chocolate chips provided bursts of chocolate flavor and delicately crunchy texture.

 

During a college study-abroad year at the Università di Bologna, William Teresa of Minneapolis, Minnesota, dated a fellow student. The couple would frequently visit her family in Cesena, a small city in Emilia– Romagna, where Teresa became immersed in the cooking lives of his girlfriend’s parents and grandparents. “They were so lovely,” he said. “It was wonderful to be in a place where food is so rooted in tradition and place, and to encounter something that has always been made by the same people, with little variation.” One of the grandmothers baked a chewy-crispy and outrageously rich almond cookie, which the family enjoyed with espresso. Teresa was instantly smitten and perfected the formula when he returned home. “They’re not like any other American cookie,” he said. “Maybe that’s why so many people ask me for the recipe.”

When he’s not working, Scott Rohr of St. Paul, Minnesota, is baking. “It’s sort of a joke with my friends,” he said. “I don’t remember a time when I haven’t baked. I grew up in one of those houses where everything was homemade. Some people come home from work and boil water for dinner. I take out eggs and butter.” For his winning recipe, Rohr started with his tattered recipe card for a cream-of-tartar-based sugar cookie, which is a copy of a similarly well-worn card from his grandmother’s kitchen. The filling and the pistachios, however, were all his idea. “I just started messing around,” he said. “It’s really hard for me to follow a recipe. These cookies aren’t complicated, and they come together fast. They look like something substantial, but they’re not hard to make. If you’ve ever baked a cookie, then you can bake these, for heaven’s sake.”