Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

When I see a recipe repeatedly I sometimes feel compelled to give it a try. Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies from Danielle Oron's Modern Israeli Cooking is one of those recipes. It was published in the New York Times a little over a year ago, then Food52 got in on the act and reprinted it as well.  Just recently David Lebovitz published his version of the recipe, which he had adapted and then raved that they were "some of the best chocolate chip cookies to ever come out of my oven." His goal was to make the cookies a bit more chewy and to increase the chocolate. Those are goals I thoroughly support. While I pretty much used his recipe, I took it a bit further. Instead of using one half cup of light brown sugar in place of one half cup of white sugar as he did, I used one half cup dark brown sugar. I also increased the chocolate. While Lebovitz uses chocolate chunks, I used chocolate chips and the whole bag, why not? It’s 12 ounces and 340 grams of semisweet......

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Red Grapeseed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars Recipe

If you’re familiar with the White Lily brand, you probably know it’s a Southern company, famous for flour that is used in biscuits. It’s been a very long time since they’ve introduced a new product, so they invited a bunch of mostly baking bloggers (and me!)  to come visit wheat fields outside of Spokane to learn about their latest venture—wheat flours with tracability and blends with red and white grape seed flour. Red and white grape seed flour from Whole Vine is blended with flour from Shepherd’s Grain and sold in 2 pound resealable bags . It’s designed to be an optimal blend, offering cup for cup replacement of all purpose flour. Plans are to offer it nationwide. Although the flour is a blend, each bag has a traceability code allowing you to see and learn more about a farmer whose wheat is in the specific bag. To produce the flour, White Lily partnered with Shepherd’s Grain, a cooperative that has roots in an 1888 farmstead farm. The goal of the company is to provide......

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Easy Almond Cookies Recipe

This is the easiest almond cookie recipe ever. And I bet you could use an easy cookie recipe about now. It requires only a few ingredients and you prepare the dough in the food processor so making them takes maybe 10 minutes and there's barely any clean up. They are a variation of almond macaroons, rich and chewy with just a little crunch from the almond on top. The secret is a hint of almond extract, and to really processing the ingredients until they make a very easy to work with dough. I was recently sent some almonds from the Almond Board and I was looking for a good way to use them. There are lots of similar recipes to this one, but the comments on Epicurious led me to make a crucial change in the recipe. I cut the sugar in half. I also made slightly larger cookies than the recipe calls for and skipped dusting them in confectioners sugar. It might seem odd to add almond extract to almond cookies, but without it they can be a little bland. Because they are su......

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Jam Bars Recipe

I'm something of a party pooper when it comes to Christmas. I can't stand anything red and green and find Christmas trees universally tacky. Don't even get me started on the rampant Christmas consumerism or we'll be here all day! But I have always had a soft spot for Advent calendars. I like the surprises behind the windows, even if they are just paper windows. So I couldn't resist when the folks at Lexiophiles invited me to participate in their Recipe Advent Calendar. It's a bit like those Cookie of the Day newsletters that I sign up for every year. It doesn't matter that I don't actually make any of those recipes, the surprise of seeing them appear in my email box each day is a treat. This recipe is one I've been making since college. It's super easy and you can prepare it in no time at all. I've made a few adjustments to it over the years. Most importantly, don't use jelly, use good jam, or better yet, use preserves. I used Oregon ......

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Potato Chip Cookies: Recipe

At an "early 60's tacky tiki" theme party this weekend, it occured to me how sometimes the most retro recipes can also be very of-the-moment. At this particular party there were modern takes on all sorts of things. In each case very high quality ingredients were used and, you know the saying, "quality in, quality out." There was a cucumber gelatin mold salad, only the cucumbers were fresh from the farm, agar-agar was used to gel it and fresh dill and citrus flavors punctuated the dish. It was so good I took some home! Another dish that hasn't been popular in a while was the cheese ball, though at this party there were three of them. When made with the best cheeses, fresh roasted red peppers and rolled in nuts, it was positively delicious. The dish I had the hardest keeping my paws out of was nothing more than a premium "seven layer dip". Seven layer dip is made from refried beans, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, cheese, olives and green onions or ......

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Peanut Butter & Jelly Cookies: Recipe

No one likes airplane food. The best solution is clearly to bring your own eats. So what snacks do you bring on the plane? That's the question that was posed by Epicurious editor/blogger Tanya Steel a few weeks back, prior to her travels. Suggestions were made for granola, chili coated dried mango, cereal bars, deli sandwiches, beef jerky and more. But it was this comment "I will be staying in hotels, so I can't even pack a PB&J!" by Tanya that got me thinking. How about a cookie that tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? The first batch I tried was too sweet but the second one was just right. These cookies aren't very sweet, so you get a hit of sweetness from the jelly or in this case, strawberry preserves. They are fairly healthy and great with a glass of milk, of course. The basic recipe is an adaptation of the peanut butter cookie in Jane Brody's fabulous Good Food Book . Just a couple of these really satisfy, but bring more for your seat......

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Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe

Is there a cookie more American than the chocolate chip cookie? I can't think of one. It was invented in Massachusetts after all. There certainly can't be a more popular cookie. I recently read that 80% of all cookies baked in American homes are of the chocolate chip variety. Like so many before me, I've been on the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I think the sheer variety of recipes signifies one of the many reasons chocolate chip cookies are so appealing to Americans. They are really all about individuality and an expression of personal cookie preferences. After trying many recipes, I decided to develop my own. I used a bit of oatmeal for texture, a bit of molasses for chewiness, walnuts for crunch and some chocolate bars broken into chunks instead of chips. No matter how good your chips are, it's tough to beat chunks of a high-quality chocolate bar. You end up with a cookie flavored with whatever flavor the chocolate bar was, my batch today was......

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Cinnamon Balls: Recipe

Oh the trials and tribulations that come with spending holidays with the family! Will they never cease? The trials and tribulations that is. With so many relatives around it's easiest to just go with the flow. This year due to some changes in plans, it looks like Lee and I will be celebrating Passover three times. Oh joy! Lee loves the holiday so it's no big deal for him. And actually we will be spending the first night together just the two of us which will be a first in our five years of marriage. A first time celebrating the first night of Passover means I can try a bunch of new recipes. New to me anyway. I have a couple of books I am eager to try out. One is Jewish Food: The World at Table and the other is The Healthy Jewish Cookbook . Both books have tons of exotic recipes that will allow me to wipe out the memories of the Jewish food I loathe most--gefilte fish. Neither book has a Passover section, so I will delve into each book to find recipes that fit the specific......

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San Francisco Rum Balls Recipe

Whenever my sister-in-law comes to visit, she tries to sneak in rum balls. There's a deli near Union Square that sells them and it must be sending out a homing signal. A rum ball beacon. It doesn't matter what we're doing or where we are, it's only a matter of time before she says "who wants to go get rum balls!" It's not really a question so much as a rallying cry. So this holiday season I decided to make them. Not having eaten very many of them makes it hard to know if I have duplicated the version my sister-in-law likes so much. Lee says they are actually better than the deli version. All the recipes I could find are fairly similar. You can use rum or bourbon, cocoa or chocolate, walnuts or pecans and vanilla wafers, chocolate wafers or graham crackers. The crucial element in the beloved rum balls seems to be that they are covered in chocolate sprinkles (or jimmies as they are sometimes known). Making them stick presented a problem but not an insurmo......

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