"cookie recipe" news and stories

Sugar cookies get the decorative treatment in this recipe, which is a favorite with kids. Why? It has a melted hard candy in the middle, and we have yet to meet a kid who would turn down a candy in a cookie of their own free will. And for adults, the stained-glass effect of the melted candy is a visual treat (you can even hang them on your holiday tree as an ornament). KitchenDaily contributor Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez (who created this beautiful and delicious sweet) hasn't been dubbed the Cookie Queen for nothing.

More Christmas cookie recipes, and decorating tips

Snickerdoodles are supposed to be one of the great standards of American cookies, although they look relatively nondescript when compared to an ultra-rich chocolate chip cookie loaded with bittersweet chocolate and nuts. Once you get past their plain appearance, you'll discover that the chewy vanilla cookie with the crunchy cinnamon sugar coating is indeed one of the cookie greats. But bringing up the comparison with the very varied chocolate chip cookies introduces the one drawback of the snickerdoodle: it almost never undergoes any variations because everyone likes the original so much. Karen at FamilyStyle made up a batch of Chocolate Chai Snickerdoodles that bucks this trend, though. These cookies have the classic texture that we know and love from the original cookies, but with lot of added spices and a base cookie that has a healthy amount of cocoa added for chocolate flavor. The recipe is after the jump:

Reducing fats in baked goods is difficult, without question. The reason that so many recipes involve copious amounts of butter and sugar is that they taste best that way. Shortbread without butter is just a cracker and a pecan pie without sugar is just a bunch of nuts. Since baking is actually more science – a delicious science - than not, each ingredient in a recipe has a role to play, so changing them can adversely effect the outcome you are trying to achieve when your real goal is to indulge without expanding your waistline.

Fats in particular are important. They are important to dieters and they are important to bakers. Light Life, which is a new feature here at Slashfood, is going to take a look at lightened and low fat recipes, as well as at some commercially avaliable products, like baking mixes.

While they may lack the aesthetic daintiness of Nicks Raspberry Thumbs these simple to bake Chocolate and Walnut cookies taste just superb. The recipe is adapted slightly from one sent to me by French food blogger Cindy from Montpellier. As part of the Euro Blogging by Post parcel exchange I received the recipe and ingredients to make these; and damn nice they were to. So good in fact I thought I would give them another go for the Slashfood bake-off. The original recipe used a mix of dark and white chocolate. I substituted walnuts for the white chocolate.