Cookie

This is a perfect example of using the exalted Sugar Cookie as a launching pad. Once you’ve fussed around with it enough, you begin to understand its dormant qualities. What if you asked your brain what would happen if you had the foresight to roll a butter-taste-based batter around in a cinnamon-sugar mixture before baking? If your brain, schooled in the ways of the Sugar Cookie, answered that you’d get a wonderfully wrinkly explosion of the Snickerdoodle variety, you and your brain are well on your way to total cookie enlightenment.

This recipe is the foundation of a lifetime’s worth of holiday merriment, a blank but delicious canvas for you and your kids to customize until your hearts explode with happiness. By way of texture, I aimed for something traditionally crisp, playing up the flakiness and butter-tinged richness. Just roll out the dough; they’re a cinch. In general, just about any flourish you can imagine to add to the top—sprinkles? Gummi bears? frosting?!—will complement this cookie with a little density. There’s a photograph on page 46, so you know what you’re working with.

For the longest time, I might have been the only person in the tristate area completely oblivious to the beautiful oversize black-and-white cookies found in every bodega from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Have you had one? Me, I was never allowed because of my food sensitivities, of course. So when I went to the kitchen and started brainstorming ideas for iconic cookies, this was one of the first ones I tackled. Prepare to be bathed in the sweet comfort of vanilla-chocolate overload.

I’m a lady who unabashedly prefers her cookies thin, chewy, and intoxicatingly buttery. If I want a hunk of cake, I go for the cake section. This isn’t to say, however, that the preeminent cookie of my youth was not the mighty and comparatively meaty Chips Ahoy! And not those late-issue, M&M–flecked monstrosities, either. I’m talking the real-deal original flavor, in all their dry and crumbly wonder. This is my version of that wonderfully named cookie.

I’m Catholic by birth. Winter to us means Lent, which, to be honest, is about all I remember beyond the school uniforms. Anytime winter/Lent rolled around, the only thing we could count on was the house-wide hostility that would mount as we spent several weeks avoiding sweets and desserts in all their overindulgent forms. The colder months, you might recall, make up Girl Scout cookie season. In a unique show of torture, rather than simply not placing an order with the Scouts, our family bought a bunch, tossed them into the freezer, and stored them until Easter—about two months later. This recipe is for all you lifetime gluten-free folks who have never been able to enjoy a winter of Girl Scout Thin Mints—and for all you weak-willed kids who can’t help but break the Lenten period of atonement. Bless your hearts!

There is a plum tree on Interstate Highway 35 in Austin, Texas. My uncle Jon keeps an eye on this poor little tree growing in the median. After its showy blooms fade he watches for the red plums. When they look ripe he pulls over with his hazards blinking and picks every last plum and brings them home to make jelly.

Brownie mixes are easy, I know, but what you gain in time you lose in flavor. This recipe comes together quickly and yields fudgy brownies with more chocolate taste than you’ll ever get from a mix.

With melted chocolate blended into the batter, chunks of chocolate throughout, and a shiny outer chocolate layer, these really should be called “triple” chocolate chunk cookies. My nieces and I love to make these together. They do the very important—and fun!—job of dipping the cookies in the melted chocolate and arranging them carefully on wax paper to dry.

One year when I was very young I wanted to give pan de polvo, also called Mexican wedding cookies, as Christmas presents to my teachers at school. My mom taught me “her” recipe. In fact, it was this one—Aunt Elsa’s! I went to the flea market and spent my allowance on a collection of cookie cutters. I returned home and set out to make about 15 dozen in different shapes. Unfortunately, many of them broke because, as I discovered to my great frustration, pan de polvo is a very delicate cookie that doesn’t hold shapes well—especially intricate ones like snowflakes. Those cookie cutters were probably my first purchase of kitchen equipment—but far from my last. They were so cheap that when I washed them for the first time, they rusted the next day! Polvo means “powder,” an apt description of a delicate cookie, generously rolled in sugar, that shatters on your tongue. I roll these very thin, just like Aunt Elsa used to, so they practically melt in your mouth. They are often rolled a little thicker, to about 3/8 inch—if you do so, just bake them a little longer.

This cookie dough can be kept in the freezer for up to at least two months, so whenever you want warm, freshly baked cookies (with none of the additives found in commercially prepared frozen cookie dough), just slice it and pop it in the oven.

The combination of the chewy cookie and the caramel–cream cheese filling has made this cookie many fans . . . so many, in fact, that though the cookie was originally introduced as a short-term special, our guests wouldn’t permit us to remove it from the menu. But to enjoy it at home, please note that unlike the other two cream’wiches, this cookie does not last long once it has been filled with the cream. It will begin to grow soggy after about four hours.

This is one of our most popular menu items. In fact, we receive numerous requests each year to have these shipped to folks across the country. Unfortunately, we are unable to do so because the cookies are so fragile. The secret ingredient in the cookie: oats. They add some texture and help keep the cookies together.

Two surprises set this cookie apart: The first is that the filling is made with a chocolate ganache as opposed to just a frosting. The cream and the chocolate melt together perfectly, yielding a satisfyingly smooth texture to the filling itself. In contrast to the creaminess is the second surprise: the cocoa nibs, little pieces of roasted cacao beans. These bits add a crunchy texture that is wholly and delightfully unexpected.

This recipe’s dynamic is hard to explain, and I really like that. This is the charm of the blondie. The vanilla and chocolate have a subtle repartee, with neither really dominating nor giving way to the other. Initially, the vanilla seems to cede center stage to the chocolate, but if you pay close attention, you’ll notice how the vanilla rounds out the chocolate with a seductive mellowness, ultimately creating balance. Making them bite-size gives a great crunchy texture, but you can also bake them in a cake pan and serve them as squares. Either way, blondies are best served warm.

In order to get the same melty chocolate sensation that comes with the basic brownie without evaporated cane juice, I rely on a simple method of denting the agave brownies in the center and filling them with a puddle of rich, silky chocolate sauce (page 93). The sauce seeps out when bitten into and is so gratifying I wasn’t surprised when they began to move off the shelves faster than their sweeter counterpart. You can mix it up a bit by adding vanilla sauce to the center if there happens to be some, you know, lying around. Be sure to keep a special eye on the agave with this recipe. It’ll dictate whether you end up with a dry chocolate roll or a luscious fudgelike brownie.

I used to make from-the-box brownies on Friday nights to keep me busy during commercials for Miami Vice, in my opinion the premiere television drama behind Degrassi High. My sister Bridget taught me that if you take the brownies out of the oven about five minutes early, you will have a perfect gooey texture. At BabyCakes NYC, I developed a recipe to replicate that consistency but with a full cooking time, mostly to avoid the retching stomachache I’d have for the second half of the Don Johnson fashion parade. Initially these brownies were made in a square casserole pan and each batch yielded twelve brownies. Because they are so rich, however, I decided to bake them in mini-muffin trays and serve them as bite-size morsels. Now these tiny little flavor agents are nearly impossible to keep in the case. If you’re whipping up a batch, be warned: You may want to double the recipe.

Many allergic, health-conscious, and vegan bakers are quick to write off macaroons because two of the three ingredients are sugar and eggs. But with a versatile crumb mixture (pages 115–116) at your disposal, this isn’t a problem. Grab your preferred crumb (I like vanilla for this recipe) and get to it. Make sure that when spooned out, your mixture retains its shape on the baking sheet; if it falls apart, it’s too dry and you need to add a bit more agave. If it spreads, you’ve gone overboard with the agave and need to add more crumb. The baked macaroons will be the same size as the uncooked. Because of the intensity of the coconut, I prefer them the size of a melon-ball scoop or even a bit smaller.

I grew up in California just inches from the Mexican border, so I’ve always had an affinity for that country’s culture—in particular the lightly spiced cookies rolled in powdered sugar and served at weddings, ingeniously referred to stateside as Mexican Wedding Cookies. My homage to this perennial favorite has more crunch and some newfangled flavors, but I’m sure you’ll agree it, too, is piñata-worthy.

Have you been eating twice as much chocolate now that studies have shown conclusively that this miraculous bean is actually good for you? It’s certainly more appealing than gulping down a $7 wheatgrass shot with the rest of the aerobics squad at the health-food store. Here, then, is BabyCakes NYC’s ode to cocoa: A tried-and-true chocolate-worshiping recipe with crunchy edges and a soft, chewy center that will put you in antioxidant overdrive. Bonus tip: If you add minced fresh mint to the dough, the cookies taste just like Girl Scout Thin Mints! So here’s to putting those overachieving little nerdlettes out of business. (Oh, relax. Love, love you gals!)