Cookie

Crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside, these irresistible cookies get extra crunch from dry-roasted peanuts. The recipe, from Epicurious member Ashlee L. Galletta of Winnipeg, Canada, was inspired by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so get ready for a heady dose of peanuts balanced by creamy milk chocolate. If you prefer your cookies a little less sweet, skim a couple of tablespoons of sugar from the recipe and swap in semisweet chocolate chips for the milk chocolate ones.

These deliciously sticky nut bars are like miniature maple pecan pies and are perfect as a dessert, snack, or indulgent breakfast. Swap out the walnuts and pecans with other varieties, or try mixing some dried fruit into the filling to add another layer of sweetness. Make a batch to share with friends—or store them in a container as a gift to yourself.

Greece is more synonymous with flaky, honeyed pastries than gooey brownies, but amid the hills of Crete, Epicurious member Lisa Lindy swirls a figgy-cherry caramel into a chocolaty batter before baking it into a moist-in-the-middle brownie. These fruity delights will provide sticky fingers and happy faces on kids and adults like.

These chocolate delights manage to be both light and decadent at the same time. Dark chocolate mingles with earthy rolled oats as juicy bits of dried cherry add extra dimension to the already satisfying chewiness. “These cookies are best served light and fluffy, just baked through,” notes Epicurious member alyb2002, the author of this recipe, and they are easy enough to be a cookie jar mainstay all-year round.

A chocoholic’s dream, these cookies from renowned Seattle chef Tom Douglas incorporate melted chocolate, cocoa powder, and chocolate chips. The soft and chewy, decadently fudgy texture makes them brownie-like, and their generous size will satisfy the strongest of chocolate cravings. For a smaller cookie, use a tablespoon to portion the dough and reduce the baking time by a few minutes. Wrap either size cookie in parchment or wax paper and tie with a pretty ribbon to create a sweet edible gift, but be warned: if you take even one bite, you’ll want to keep them all for yourself.

This variation on the classic biscotti from home cook Andrea Daly in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which first appeared in Bon Appétit, integrates almond extract and dried cranberries, packing both sweet and tart flavors into each biscuit. The inclusion of fruit gives them a characteristic chewy-crisp texture. These visually appealing treats make great holiday gifts, excellent accompaniments to tea and coffee, and lovely endings for a holiday feast.

A much-loved brainchild of the legendary cookbook author Dorie Greenspan, this recipe features a dense, peanut-studded cake topped with a creamy layer of peanut butter, which is in turn topped with a thick, rich ganache. The recipe yields 30 pieces, but you can cut the brownies into even smaller squares for larger parties.

Traditionally for Jewish holidays, these little pastries are perfect any time. While making rugelach may seem daunting, this recipe gives you helpful tips that cut the time and effort required.

The moist and toothsome coconut macaroon becomes a delicious (and infinitely more portable) bar cookie when built upon a dense shortbread base. The result is a surefire bake-sale winner, a kid-pleasing picnic finale, and an inviting edible gift for holidays or birthdays.

This may be the most sought-after cookie recipe in the book, the cookie that makes it into Seattle Metropolitan magazine's food lover's guide year after year. Once, when director, screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally), and novelist Nora Ephron was in town, she stopped by the dahlia Bakery and bought a few of these cookies. Later she e-mailed me, saying this was her all-time favorite and asked for the recipe. Naturally, I sent it to Nora along with a big package of cookies. When I asked Nora if I could name the cookie after her in my cookbook, she said, "Are you kidding me? This may be the greatest cookie ever ever ever." A sandwich cookie takes more effort than a drop cookie, because you have to make both cookies and filling. In addition, this recipe involves a chilling step and requires the cookies to be double-panned. But the results are worth it for the best-textured peanut butter cookie with the creamiest peanut filling. After arranging the scoops of cookie batter on a baking sheet, slip another baking sheet underneath to double-pan so the cookies bake more slowly and evenly. Since you can bake only eight cookies per baking sheet, and the cookies must be double-panned, you'll have to bake them in batches. Be sure to let the baking sheets cool thoroughly before reusing them. We use two different peanut butters in this recipe. Skippy creamy peanut butter makes the filling smooth and creamy. Adams crunchy peanut butter, which like other natural peanut butters must be well mixed before using to incorporate the oil, has just the right almost-runny consistency and crunchy bits of peanuts to give the cookies the perfect texture. To re-create our peanut butter sandwich cookies, we suggest you use the same or similar brands. We prefer moist brown sugar from a resealable plastic bag rather than from a box. This recipe requires a 2-hour or longer chill of the shaped cookie dough, so plan accordingly. The amount of salt in the filling is a perfect balance to the creamy peanut butter, but if you are substituting table salt for the kosher salt called for in the recipe, be sure to cut the amount in half. This recipe was inspired by the Bouchon Bakery.

Amazingly, the New York Times fashion critic, Cathy Horyn, is also an accomplished cook and intrepid baker. The equivalent would be if I, a food writer, were also a sleek fashion plate with a deep bench of vintage and modern pieces. This is certainly not the case, so I find her extremely impressive. She claims that these cookies are a Swedish-American tradition in her hometown of Coshocton, Ohio, but I feel they are the cookie equivalent of Paris Fashion Week: a modern, edgy take on a classic. They are truly remarkable, with a robust and smoky undertone that sets them apart from other gingersnaps.

I am a big fan of rugelach made with cream cheese, so I used soy cream cheese to make these. There are so many different fillings for rugelach; my favorite is apricot jam or chocolate. It is fun to make different flavors so that when you place them on a platter, you see rows of different color swirls. In my baking classes, I give the students a buffet of choices so they can create their own combinations. Here I've given you three fillings to choose from. If you prefer to make one type, simply double one of the filling recipes (each filling amount is enough for half the dough). Or you can divide the dough into four and make four types—any flavor of jam, coconut, raisins, currants, or any kind of chopped nuts make great fillings.

Sometime during the first year of my marriage, I visited my mother-in-law in her kitchen. There she was, listening to the radio, whistling (she is a formidable whistler) and rolling cream cheese dough around raisins and nuts to form the crescent-shaped cookies known as rugelach. I was spellbound—I'd had no idea that rugelach could be made at home. As far as I knew, rugelach, like ketchup or ships-in-bottles, were only made in laboratories. But here was my mother-in-law shaping the cookies with ease. And a short time later, there I was, eating them with ease. These cookies weren't like the rugelach my mother bought every week at the local German bakery—they were much better. I was so excited I asked for the recipe.
My mother-in-law wrote it out in her precise hand on a 3-x-5 index card. And, as she wrote, she told me that this recipe was not exactly the same as the one her mother used, that it had come from Mrs. Strauss, her next-door neighbor, and that she was sure I'd have no problem making the cookies as long as I didn't overmix the dough.
She was right. I was a newcomer to the world of baking, but I had no problem with the dough, the only potentially tricky part of the process.
Since then, I've made rugelach countless times, but nowadays my dough is even more foolproof because I make it in a food processor. I've also made a few other changes to the recipe. While my mother-in-law's rugelach were filled with cinnamon-sugared nuts, mine also include a slick of jam, some currants and a handful of chopped chocolate. This is a very old recipe, and I have no doubt that everyone who has made it has added or subtracted a little bit to make it her own—and my mom-in-law, Mrs. Strauss, and I expect you to do the same.

We're always experimenting with new flavor combinations, so once you get the basics down, have fun mixing and matching.

This fairly straightforward and versatile dough can be made as drop cookies instead of icebox-style sliced logs: Chill the dough, then scoop it into rounded-tablespoon-size balls, roll in the salt-sugar mixture, arrange at least 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) apart on the baking sheet, and flatten slightly. In addition, you can substitute just about any kind of flour for the rye.

This super-simple shortbread gets festive thanks to a tart cranberry-grapefruit compote. Use a five-hole zester to form ribbons of grapefruit zest.

During the late nineteenth century, as part of their Protestant beliefs, the Templers arrived in Jerusalem from Europe and established the German colony, a picturesque little neighborhood southwest of the Old City that to this day feels unusually central European. This is the "civilized" part of town, where you go for a coffee and a slice of Sacher torte if you wish to escape the harsh Levantine reality. Germanic influences on the city's food are evident in Christian contexts—the famous Austrian hospice at the heart of the Old City serves superb strudels and proper schnitzels—but Czech, Austrian, Hungarian, and German Jews arriving in the city from the 1930s have also managed to stamp their mark, opening cafés and bakeries serving many Austro-Hungarian classics. Duvshanyot, round iced cookies, made with honey and spices, typically for Rosh Hashanah, are possibly a result of this heritage; they are similar to Pfeffernüsse. These are very loosely inspired by duvshanyot, or Pfeffernüsse. They are actually more closely related to an Italian spice cookie and are hugely popular on the sweet counter at Ottolenghi over Easter and Christmas. The recipe was adapted from the excellent The International Cookie Cookbook by Nancy Baggett.

Rae: We wanted to come up with a version of this Purim pastry that was light and crumbly but not dry, and these really fit the bill. At Mile End we make the three classic kinds: apricot, poppy seed, and prune. If you want to make a mixed batch, just make all three fillings, using a third of the amount of each of the filling ingredients called for below. Mile End's baker, Rich Maggi, swears by his tortilla press for flattening the dough, though a rolling pin will also do the trick.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.