cookies Tag

flourless chocolate chip peanut butter cookies This recipe was inspired by my cousin Donna. She loves chocolate and isn't all that into baking, so this one's right up her alley. Recently, she asked if it was okay to put chocolate chips in my Buttery Oatmeal Squares....

If you’re lucky, TV gives you five minutes. Five short minutes to put together a dish under bright lights and a bit of pressure. These Mini Icebox Cakes are perfect for television cooking -- and for anyone wanting to put together a Mother’s Day treat. I’m on...

Slice-and-bake shortbreads can be perfectly uniform and not put me off. I’ve no issue when one gingersnap looks exactly like the next. But I don’t trust chocolate chip cookies unless they resemble a culinary version of the Rorschach test. Although roughly the same size, each should bake...

my Favourite Oatmeal Cookies I’ve decided to embrace winter. Not with skis or a toboggan. But with my imagination. When I scan the colourless world around me, I see myself as an astronaut floating in space — only I’m weaving about a universe where the colours...

My mother insists I didn't drive her to what she politely referred to as "the brink of distraction." She may well have found my inquisitive nature delightful, but my non-stop questions got under her skin. When Mom had reached her limit, she would cup her...

Removing the skins from toasted hazelnuts in preparation to make hazelnut sandwich cookies - TheMessyBaker.com Hazelnuts. Filberts. Cobnuts. This tasty kernel goes by many names. I'm going to add one more to its repertoire and dub it the "hasselnut." Because of the bitter skin, hazelnuts require a bit more work than pecans or walnuts. They need to be roasted and then rubbed with a clean kitchen towel before being added to baked goods. Some may think hazelnuts are being divas, but I think they're just a bit shy. After all, you can rub and rub and rub and they will never completely reveal themselves. Perhaps this bashful nature is why they hide behind so many aliases?
Last year, due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't do any Christmas baking. Not so much as a single shortbread came out of my kitchen. But this year? I'm making up for the loss. The rumballs are rolled, the eggnog is chilling and now it's time for some serious sugar. Luckily, Anna Olson recently released a new book devoted entirely to baking -- Back to Baking: 200 Timeless Recipes to Bake, Share and Enjoy -- so should I suffer from Bakers Block, I will have a muse to help me. Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with the muse Anna after one of her demonstrations. I promised to try to stump her with your toughest baking questions but Anna's been studying. I'm not sure if I was more impressed with the accuracy of her answers or her her ability to zero in on possible solutions without a lot of background information. I'd have been demanding to know about the humidity, altitude and the position of Mercury. Here are the questions you asked and Anna's answers. Immediately following, we'll have a cookie break.  I'm sharing a recipe to one of Anna's amazing cookies -- one she let me sample even though they were just for display. They've got orange, toffee and salt all in an icebox cookie. Life is complete.
This is Mairlyn Smith. Like me, she has a  frequently misspelled first name and a passion for chocolate that borders on illegal. She even has an impossibly small kitchen (like mine was until last year). I had the pleasure of interviewing her earlier this month and the longer we talked the more I realized we had in lot common. By the end of our conversation, the only difference between us -- other than hairstyle and a few inches of height -- is that I don't go into grocery stores with a big blade and hack at the root vegetables. Other than that? We're practically twins. She also wrote a health-conscious cookbook that fits my tagline, putting flavour before looks. Unlike many health-focused cookbooks, where fibre content and finger-wagging trump taste and joy, Mairlyn's Healthy Starts Here!: 140 Recipes that Will Make You Feel Great is rooted in pleasure and practicality. She believes, and backs up with studies, that treats are essential to your emotional health. She believes if  something is "good for you" it should also taste good. She believes cooking shouldn't be so complicated you end up huddled in the corner nursing a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome and an anxiety disorder.

EJSGHPK2KBS4 Huh? What is that gobbledy-gook in the previous line? If you thought this was going to be about oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, be patient. Apparently, this cryptic code is the high-tech way one "claims" their blog on Technorati. For some reason it refuses to recognize...

The tree outside my bedroom window is turning a golden red as we move past the halfway point of September. This glorious hue is often called "ginger" and reminds me of golden retrievers and freckle-faced red heads. Not actually the colour of ginger root, it...