There are very few activities that you can do that are as good as making cookies. Maybe playing a favorite sport or listening to your favorite CD or maybe even sex. But there's just something special about making homemade cookies.

Today is Homemade Cookies Day, which means if you go to the store and buy anything in a package the food police will come to your home and slap the handcuffs on you.

This is where I usually link to various recipes, but have you seen how many cookie recipes there are on the web? 94 trillion (I counted). So I'll link to a bunch of collections at various sites, such as AllRecipes, Food Network, Joy of Baking, and Kraft Foods.

This page dedicated to National Sugar Cookie Day starts by saying that today is "a day to satisfy your sweet tooth." Hey, sounds like every Monday to me!

But let's make some sugar cookies today. I think that sugar cookies are sometimes taken for granted, because people see them as "plain" or "basic." But there's something so simple and nice about the taste of a sugar cookie. Even the name tells you what you're going to get. Everyone who cooks should know how to bake a good one.

Here's a recipe for sugar cookies, and here's one for Cotton Candy Sugar Cookies. AllRecipes has one for Cookie Jar Sugar Cookies.

By now, with all of our Christmas cookies recipes - Gingersnaps (two ways!), Cranberry, Orange & Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies and Chocolate Peppermint Drops - your cookie plate is going to look very appealing when you put it out with a nice variety for Santa on Christmas Eve. But Christmas just isn't quite right unless you get to spend some time decorating cookies. Not only is it a great creative outlet, but you get to eat the results.

Rather than opt for the traditional gingerbread men with royal icing, especially in light of the fact that I made gingery cookies last week, I opted to make some of my favorite Vanilla Cutout Cookies. These cookies are soft, but not cake-like, and are very easy to make. They use both butter and buttermilk in dough, both of which add a richness to the cookie, and vanilla extract with a touch of almond to keep the flavor bright. As always, I recommend using a very high quality vanilla extract or something even more vanilla-y, such as vanilla bean crush or vanilla paste to boost the vanilla flavor.

We love it when we can support a good cause with some of our favorite things, especially when those things happen to be delicious cookies like these. Eleni's New York, one of our favorite specialty cookie companies, has a whole line of cookies to raise breast cancer awareness. Everything is either pink or adorned with pink ribbons, as are these Reach for a Cure handbag cookies. No matter which set of cookies you choose from the collection, 50% of the proceeds will go directly to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

The cookie tins make fantastic gifts, too, especially if you know anyone who has had breast cancer. They range in price and the number of cookies that they include, but the cookies pictured here come in a box of 18 and sell for $58.50.

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The World's Greatest Mom cookie collection is offered for Mother's Day from Eleni's Bakery in New York, though there is no doubt that Mom deserves something special more than once a year. Eleni's specializes in elaborately decorated cookies, all done by hand, that are as much a treat for the eyes as they are for the taste buds. This cookie gift set includes 21 iced sugar cookies, each one unique and mom-related. It's $65 for the cookies, which come packaged in a lovely gift tin.

Eleni's also has an I Love Mom set and a floral Mom's Bouquet collection, both of which would also be great choices for a Mother's Day treat. 

For the full assortment in the World's Greatest Mom tin and the other collections, click past the jump.

 As Sarah pointed out, not everyone has a heart-shaped cookie cutter to help them make Valentine's Day Cookies. While the use of a cookie cutter can turn just about any cookie into something appropriate for the holiday, it certainly isn't your only option. These Easy Sugared Hearts are formed by hand, rolling and pinching the soft dough into a heart shape. The dough is easy to work with, so your kids can even help you shape them. The cookies are dipped into both red and plain granulated sugar before baking, which adds extra sweetness and beautiful color. The cookies are light and crisp without being crunchy. Not too sweet, despite the sugar coating, there is also a hint of butter and vanilla in them. They go perfectly with a cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate.

Because frosting cookies, even for a special occasion like Valentine's Day, sometimes to require more of a time commitment than we are able to make, it is nice to have a simple decorating stick up your sleeve. Or in this case, in your kitchen drawer. All you need to make these heartbreakers is a heart shaped cookie cutter and a knife. After punching out the heart shape, simply use a small, sharp knife to cut a zig zag line into the cookie. Pull the edges slightly apart so the line doesn't seal itself up during baking. You can roll them in sugar, as I did here, or simple leave them plain.

Not having any particular allegiance to either team that is playing in Super Bowl XL has its advantages. The primary one being that I don't feel bound to a particular color scheme and can use blue, silver, black and gold with abandon. Not being one for tablescapes, I limited my wild color use to blue and gold sprinkles. White icing outlined hand-drawn football helmets, which I decorated further with blue Seattle Seahawk S's and yellow Pittsburg Steelers P's. Interestingly, the blue-sprinkled cookies disappeared much more quickly than the yellow. Are more people supporting the Steelers or are the blue sprinkles just more enticing?

[Photo by Nicole Weston]