"chocolate cookies" news and stories

The weekend's coming, and there's no better time for baking. The brains behind "Big Girls, Small Kitchen" at The Huffington Post have six great recipes to fill up your cookie jar. But beware: If you aren't careful, these cookies -- from espresso biscotti to double ginger snaps -- might not make it past the baking tray. (Yes, they're that good.)

Read The 6 Best Cookie Jar Cookies at The Huffington Post.

Thanksgiving is over and the holidays have descended upon us once again, which generally entails a hectic month of harried gift shopping, family gatherings, a frenzy of social obligations, and a few cherished small pleasures, namely: holiday baking. Granted, that too may be a stressful undertaking -- where does one find the time for all the grocery shopping, baking and cookie exchanges! -- but within one bite of a sublime cookie, holiday stress is bound to just crumble.

And these Chocolate Crinkles appear to be just the thing to unwind, with an oh-so-subtly-crunchy cracked crust, a soft, fluffy chocolate-y interior and a powdered sugar coating of snowy sweetness. Blogger Patricia from Brownies for Dinner confesses to have "spent two days with my lips dusted with tell-tale powdered sugar" with these delights -- and so can you, with her simple recipe.

And as luck would have it, today is National Cookie Day! Help other readers rejoice in the small pleasures and share your favorite cookie recipes, after the jump.

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• The allure of tapas.
• Cooking lessons from Rome: Ricotta pudding.
• Green tea: it's the new "bran."
• It's spring, and that means it's time for asparagus.
• This book says to drink olive oil as an appetite suppressent.
• Everyone's eating lunch again (did it ever really go away?).
• This week's recipes: Beef with Cumin, Lemony Chicken Caesar, Homestyle Bean Curd, Cod Salad, and Chunky Dark and White Chocolate Cookies.

The name of this book pretty much says it all, so after mentioning that the title is The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie Book, I should be able to stop this preview right here. If you like chocolate cookies, you'll like the book. But chocolate cookies are hard to resist, so we'll press on anyway.

The book contains about 100 different recipes with variations - sometimes multiple variations - provided for all of them. This is a fantastic structure for a cookie book, since all cookie recipes become variations on a theme at a certain point: oatmeal chocolate chip becomes oatmeal raisin becomes spiced oatmeal with dried cranberries. Bringing the number of potential variations to the attention of the readers will encourage even the most dedicated to recipe-follower to experiment a little, substituting pecans for walnuts, or adding crushed peppermints to create a chocolate cookie that would be perfect for the holidays. The book, in addition to providing pages and pages of worthwhile cookies, shows the reader how many variations there can be on a concept that seems so simple. I'm not going to say that it will create a deeper appreciation for the basic cookie, but it might. And if it doesn't, at least it will let you appreciate the value of a glass of milk to wash those cookies down.

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