These are not from City Bakery (too crispy and marzipan-y).  Nor Jacques Torres (too sweet).  Not Bouchon (too buttery) either.  After making Levain Bakery copycats, eating the real deal and amassing 310+ comments, those are close but no cigar.

My favorite chocolate chip cookies are not from a bakery per se. I’ve been telling people about them for years, but it hasn’t caught on. So now I’ll shout it out for everyone to hear.

First, some criteria. Chocolate chip cookies should not be the size of your face. Bouchon, you sophisticated French bakery, what were you thinking? Maybe you can take a page from French Women Don’t Get Fat about portion control. Second, CC cookies should not be crispy. Then they’re just like crackers and what’s the point? Lastly, CC cookies cannot have nuts. It totally disrupts the texture. Okay, I’ll let the nut people put nuts in their cookies, but not mine.

The magical place I speak of is Times Square Hot Bagels on W. 44 St. and 7 Ave. They’re one of the few places in New York that makes traditional bagels, but never mind that, we’re talking cookies here.  They’re pliable, toffee-esque (probably from brown sugar) and chock full of chocolate CHUNKS.  One will set you back about 80 cents (they’re $12.50/pound). You can eat one or two and be satisfied without feeling gross afterwards. Since they’re at the crossroads of the world, you don’t have an excuse not to try them.

I first heard about these through church. After service, there was a huge table of humble-looking cookies. I was wowed and only had these clues: a checkerboard logo and some name with “Times Square.” Eventually, I tracked down the store.

A little caveat: sometimes the cookies from the shop are a bit hard. They can easily be fixed with a sprinkle of water and 10 seconds in the microwave. The only guarantee of getting a fresh cookie is to attend the evening service at Redeemer church. Try it: you might like the cookies. And the service. Senior pastor Tim Keller is like a modern day C.S. Lewis. He randomly speaks throughout the day, but he’s always at the 6:00 service at the Hunter College auditorium (69 St. between Park and Lex). Well actually he’s on vacation (no doubt reading more philosophical material) till Aug. 16, but you get the idea.

Times Square Hot Bagels
200A W. 44 St. (by 7 Ave.)
New York, NY 10036
212-997-7300

The last time I hoarded leftovers, everyone must have laughed their faces off.  Some people bring home entrées; others take home french fries. I do both and then some, like the time I doggie bagged bread cubes that were meant for the fondue pot.  I had the last laugh when I turned them into Nutella bread pudding and made everyone jealous.

It gets even better: the other day I used leftover saltine crackers (from Hill Country barbecue) for chocolate-caramel bars.  I’m not one to relish in packaged foods and refined flour, but the saltines are key. I tried a similar recipe with homemade graham crackers, but you really do need a flimsy base to soak up the toffee. A fancy “crust” will only break your jaw. I haven’t gone crackers: these are even surpass the chocolate matzoh crunch that’s become popular of late.

Bittersweet Chocolate-Caramel Cracker Cookies

Adapted from Deep Dark Chocolate by Sara Perry

1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted, divided
35 saltine crackers
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
10 ounces premium dark chocolate, coarsely chopped (about 1 3/4 cups)

For topping:
1 cup toasted unsalted nuts, chopped medium coarse or
1/2 cup cacao nibs or
5 teaspoons fine salt (such as fleur de sel or gray sea salt), turbindado sugar, finely ground espresso, pepper, spice blends/rubs

Special equipment: a 10-by-15-inch pan

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). To make the cookies easy to remove, line a 10-by-15-inch pan with a sheet of foil, shiny side up, leaving a few inches hanging over the longer edges. Drizzle 1/4 cup melted butter onto the foil-lined pan, and brush to cover the bottom of the pan. Line the pan with the crackers (don’t worry if there are small gaps).

2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the remaining 1 cup butter and the brown sugar and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes, until the mixture forms a thick syrup (248°F/120°C on a candy thermometer). Remove from the heat and slowly whisk in the condensed milk until blended. Pour the mixture over the crackers, making sure all the crackers are covered.

3. Bake until the syrup layer bubbles, for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the oven, scatter the chocolate over the topping, and allow them to melt for 5 minutes. Using the back of a spoon or an offset spatula, spread the chocolate over the surface and sprinkle with the nuts, cacao nibs, salt, spices, etc. Using your fingers or the back of a spoon, press the nuts into the chocolate. Freeze until the chocolate sets, about 30 minutes.

4. Remove from the freezer and invert the pan onto a clean surface (don’t worry if you lose some nuts from the surface; they’ll be great for topping an ice cream sundae or for adding to cookie dough). Carefully peel back the foil to reveal the soda-cracker underside of the cookies. Using a sharp knife, cut the cookies along the cracker outlines. This is easier to do when the cookies have begun to thaw slightly. Invert and cut the squares into quarters for bite-size pieces or thirds for finger-size pieces.

The idea hit me like a stroke of genius.  If everything tastes better with bacon, surely dessert does too.  A handful of them get it right, like Roni-Sue’s bacon buttercrunch.  (Save yourself from Vosges’ bacon bar though.)  But I wanted to try something new: “double” bacon cookies.

A couple years ago, The NY Times ran a recipe for bacon-dripping cookies, but there was no bacon in them.  Other recipes have bacon bits, but they make no mention of drippings.  Why oh why would you waste pork fat?

The draw of bacon cookies is the balance of sweet and salty, and I know of no other recipe that epitomizes the two like olive shortbread.  I love them so much that I used them as a base for these experimental cookies.  Of course I substituted the olives with crumbled bacon, and instead of butter, I used the drippings.  After all that work, I expected to hit the jackpot.  But my flash of genius was more like a flash in the pan.  The cookies were nauseatingly rich.  The texture was literally like sand; they wouldn’t hold together.  Maybe I didn’t render enough fat (more on that later), or maybe you can’t make all-lard cookies.  I think the bacon-and-lard idea is better suited for savory crackers.  Not so avant-garde, I know.

Why did I even bother sharing this idea then?  Because I kick myself when someone beats me to it.  Like the time I made the crispiest pizza without a wood-fired oven or a pizza stone.  A cast iron skillet did the trick.  By the time I made it known, it was too late: Heston Blumenthal was credited with the idea.  Never mind that I did it more than a year before he documented it in his book, In Search of Perfection.  See what procrastination does?

Or sometimes I do start a popular idea, and it gets passed down so much that people forget the source.  More than three years ago, I created a knock-off recipe for Nutella.  One that had cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, just like Nutella itself.  At the time, I couldn’t find any such recipes on the Internet, so I shared it here.  This Feb., the L.A. Times ran a similar recipe, citing the same book that I did.  Heck, even the title was similar.  “Nuts for Nutella” vs. “Nutty for Nutella.”  Perhaps I’m paranoid, but in the past people have copied my recipe word for word and passed it off as their own.

Let this serve as a marker.  If three months or three years from now, someone comes up with a great bacon shortbread recipe, perhaps a seed was planted here.   For those who are wondering, here’s the recipe I used.  I didn’t like it though.  Sorry, no pictures, as I only had a pile of crumbs.  These would probably be better with butter instead of drippings.  Too lazy to try it again though.

P.S. – this dough is also good with seaweed or furikake.

Bacon Shortbread Cookies

Adapted from Susan Herrmann Loomis and The Traveler’s Lunchbox
Yield: about 34 cookies

1 to 1 1/2 lbs uncooked bacon, to yield 1/2 cup drippings and 1/2 cup bacon bits
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted or 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, whizzed in a food processor until fine
1 Tablespoon neutral-flavored oil (Don’t get smart and try olive oil, peanut oil, etc.  Your tastebuds will go into shock)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Cook the bacon.  The cleanest, unfussiest way is to bake it at 400° F in a large foil-lined baking sheet for about 20 min.  Turn the bacon over half way through cooking.  Don’t put the bacon on racks.  The little grates are a pain to clean.  Also, don’t be like me and bake it at 200° F for 3 hours, no matter how good it sounds.  The fat won’t render all the way.

Reserve 1/2 cup of bacon fat and let it cool to room temperature.  Crumble 1/2 a cup of bacon, and save the rest.  It keeps for a long time in the freezer.

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.

In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the bacon fat until it is soft. Mix in the sugar until blended, then drizzle in the oil and mix until combined. Add the flour and the salt, and mix gently but thoroughly until the dough is smooth, then add the bacon bits and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated into the dough.

With your hands, press the dough into the pan until it is 1/4-inch thick. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, and up to 24 hours. Score the dough into rectangles with a knife.

Bake until the cookies are golden, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately cut the cookies while they are still hot. Cool on wire racks.

If you find that the middle pieces are still doughy, re-bake them in a preheated 300° F oven for about 10 minutes.

Goji berries used to be one the best-kept secrets in Chinese herbal medicine.  Oddly enough, they’re usually used in savory dishes; my mom drops a handful into chicken or abalone soup. You can also make fruit “tea” by steeping dried gojis, Asian red dates, and logans in hot water.  As the fruits reconstitute to their former glory, they also infuse the water with their sweetness.

But now that gojis have gone mainstream in energy bars, chocolate, and cereal, I look at them not so much as medicine, but as dessert.  Since they’re like a cross between raisins and cranberries (but with a slight medicinal aftertaste), why not put them in oatmeal cookies?  And while I’m on that route, why not replace cinnamon with Chinese five-spice powder (a mixture of star anise, fennel, cinnamon, Szechuan pepper, and cloves)?

Since I’m not fond of fennel and anise, I made a back-up batch of six-spice cookies (with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and cayenne), just in case I couldn’t stomach the five-spice powder.

For the base cookie dough, I used a recipe from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Light Desserts (thanks to David Lebovitz for the find).  As promised, they were chewy but not tough, cakey, or soggy (things that characterize most low-fat cookies).  They obviously don’t taste as buttery as traditional cookies, but no one will know they’re “healthy.”  BTW, my favorite low-fat oatmeal cookies are the florentines from Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts by Alice Medrich, but that’s another post.  Now those taste buttery.

In the end, the six-spice cookies were good, but the five-spice ones were better.  The latter reminded me of my childhood—of dim sum with my grandparents and my mom’s home cooking.  They had an earthy taste, and five-spice powder works so well in desserts that I’m going to keep substituting it for cinnamon.  It’s really good in coffee fruitcake, for example.  Next experiment?  My morning oatmeal.

The six-spice cookies had a little bit of heat, and I like that concept too.  The point isn’t to make dessert taste like hot sauce, but just to give your mouth a little sensation.  I have an idea for another cayenne pepper dessert (not with chocolate though; that combination’s been played out enough).  Stay tuned for that, if I get a chance to bake more. 

P.S. I’m on Twitter.  Come find me at twitter.com/sugoodsweets.  It is Ruth Reichl’s fault.  I saw her there and realized how fun it is.

Asian Oatmeal Cookies

If the Chinese made oatmeal raisin cookies, these would be it.  Goji berries have a sweet-tart flavor akin to raisins and cranberries, and they call out for Asian spices—in this case, Chinese five-spice powder.

For the best results, buy gojis from a reputable natural-foods store.  They can cost $20/lb, which is sticker shock compared to the $6-lb bag in Chinese supermarkets, but we know better than to trust Chinese ingredients.  I’ve heard horror stories of Chinese gojis that were dyed red.  Besides, the better the berries, the more sweet (and less medicinal) they will taste.  If you can’t find gojis, raisins or cranberries will work fine.

About 24 cookies

Adapted from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Light Desserts: Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs

1 cup flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 cup goji berries

2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper, greased foil, or silicone mats

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack on the lower and upper thirds of the oven.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and five-spice powder.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and granulated sugar until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, then the egg, applesauce, and vanilla.

4. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the oats and raisins.

5. Drop the batter by rounded teaspoons 2-inches apart on the baking sheets and use a fork to gently flatten the dough.

6. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they “look dull on the surface but are moist and soft.” Rotate baking sheets during baking for even heating.

Storage: Once cool, store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Six-Spice Variation: Substitute the five-spice powder with 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves, plus a big pinch of cloves and cayenne pepper.

Tip: Dough can be refrigerated for several hours before baking, which should make the cookies even better.

Happy Thanksgiving!  After a three-month absense, I have returned.  I must warn you, updates will be infrequent (if at all) until 2009 at least.  I’m in an awkward housing situation with an even more awkward kitchen.  Actually, I haven’t baked anything since my many moves, and I’m riding on recipes that I did long ago.

Any person who cooks with Nutella (spreadable chocolate) is a genius, and judging from Pierre Hermé’s Nutella tart, the man is a kitchen god.  He is such a master of contrasting flavors and textures that his leckerli recipe called out to me, even though it contains no chocolate.  The combination of citrus, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg is haunting—and novel.  Unfortunately, the texture is what you’d expect from a no-fat-added cookie: chewy and borderline stale.

So I kept the flavors but contrasted them with creamy white chocolate in my chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe.  If you’re craving warm, tingly spices this time of year but don’t want to resort to gingerbread, these cookies will turn heads.

Winter Spice Cookies

Makes 3 dozen cookies
Adapted from Pierre Hermé’s leckerli and my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe

For an extra hit of flavor, these cookies are dusted with more spices when they’re hot out of the oven (a trick from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich).  I made these so long ago that I can’t quite remember the proportion of spices/honey.  Apologies if something goes wrong.  If you run into trouble, please leave a comment here, and I’ll see if I can backtrack.

1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
pinch nutmeg
pinch ginger
pinch cloves
pinch freshly ground white pepper
3/4 c sugar
2 Tbsp honey
1 stick butter, at room temperature
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/3 cup finely diced candied lemon and orange rind
1/4 c chopped toasted almonds, preferably blanched
1 c white chocolate chips (with real cocoa butter)

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a small bowl, combine the cinnamon, white and black peppers, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, honey, butter, egg, and vanilla.

In a separate medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and spice mixture, reserving a couple pinches for later. Add the flour mixture, lemon zest, candied citrus rind, almonds, and white chocolate to the wet ingredients. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 8-9 min, or JUST until the edges begin to brown.

While the cookies are still hot, sprinkle them with the reserved spice mixture.

While it’s good to cut down on animal products for the environment (think of how many people you could feed with 14 trillion gallons of water, instead of giving it the cows), it’s also hard to refuse a buttery chocolate chip cookie.  Vegan dessert options aren’t good; most taste and look like Birkenstocks.  Ironically, some are junkier than their regular counterparts.  I’ll take butter over Crisco any day.

Liz Lovely is an exception.  They only use fair trade, organic, and natural products: flour, sugar, Spectrum sustainable palm oil, baking soda, and your typical flavorings (chocolate, peanut butter, ginger).  They make some of my favorite cookies, vegan or not.  They practice what they preach too; they ship the cookies with biodegradable corn “peanuts.”  These aren’t the corn forks that actually fill up landfills; they dissolve in water.

The nice folks at Liz Lovely sent me a three-pack sample, and the Chocolate Moose Dragons are my favorite. Unless you make flourless chocolate cookies, you can’t get much richer than this.  The chocolate chunks are top notch.  I didn’t care for the spiciness of the Ginger Snapdragons, and it was heavy on the baking powder taste.  Although I fantasize about raw cookie dough, the Cowgirl Cookies showed me that too much of a good thing is just too much (but I bet the dough would go well with vanilla ice cream).

Just be careful with these cookies.  Each bag comes with two cookies the size of your hand.  While the package brags that you can share it with a friend, you won’t want to. But you should, because each cookie contains two servings.  Liz Lovely’s mission is to do good, but I hereby declare their cookies evil because they ruined my dinner…and breakfast.

They might ruin your appetite too, if you win a sampler containing two each of the Chocolate Moose Dragons, Snicker Dudes, Goats a’ Grazin’, and Macaroonies Sock-It-To-Me!  To enter, please promise to do a good deed and give me your best vegan dessert recipe (either write it in or provide a link) in the comments below.  No recipes with trans fatty shortening please.  The entry with most delicious sounding recipe will win.  Contest ends Sun., July 13 at 5:00 PM EST.

Just because it’s hot and sticky outside, it doesn’t mean you can’t make dessert.  Especially one that doesn’t require the oven or stove.

This dish is as much a function of the weather as it is the economy.  Sure, stone fruits and berries are in season, but my local supermarket was selling cherries for $6.99 per quarter pound. So I’ve been buying bananas instead.  When I found free organic vanilla wafers at a street fair, I immediately thought of banana pudding.  Instead of making custard though, why not use yogurt?

The result was a little tangy, but it was entirely worth the two-minute effort.  You really don’t need a recipe (Layer yogurt with cookies and sliced bananas.  Refrigerate.  Eat.), but here’s approximate amounts.

Effortless Banana Pudding

4 cups plain or vanilla yogurt (see note)
60 to 70 vanilla wafers
4 to 5 organic bananas, sliced 1/4-inch thick

Line the bottom and sides of a 10-inch pie pan or a wide 1 1/2- to 2-quart dish with wafers.

Layer with half the yogurt and bananas.  Put another layer of wafers on top, and repeat with the yogurt and bananas.  Save a little yogurt and cover the top of the bananas completely, to prevent browning.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Note: Because the bananas and wafers are sweet, you don’t want the yogurt to be loaded with sugar.  I prefer plain yogurt and flavor it to taste (1-2 tablespoons sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract).  Seek out a high-quality plain yogurt, or else it will be grainy and very sour.  I don’t like Dannon, Axelrod, La Yogurt, Stonyfield (the low-fat variety), and Trader Joe’s.  Wallaby and Brown Cow are more mild.

Although conventional bananas are safe to eat, they contain far more pesticides than American-grown fruit, and are possibly killing off songbirds.

This shortbread has such a short ingredient list that you might be tempted to overlook it. There’s no chocolate or vanilla. Not even eggs or baking powder/soda. There’s just flour, sugar, butter, and salt (and a secret flavoring agent).

Despite its simple nature, there’s an amazing number of things that can go wrong with shortbread: it comes out too plain, hard, dry, doughy, greasy, or stale-tasting. But you can’t mess up shortbread if you make olive cookies (scourtins) from the reputable French chef, Susan Loomis. The dough is crisp yet delicate. Every bite melts in your mouth. The olives don’t overpower the cookies, either. Whether you can taste it or not, every dessert has a pinch of salt to round out the flavors. In this case, the salt predominantly comes from the olives. (For more olive oil desserts, try making chocolate mousse, truffles, or gelato.)

The first time I made these cookies, they were supposed to be a birthday gift. Then I ate 10 in one sitting, and I eventually had to re-bake an entire batch. They were so addictive that I made about six more batches after that (as gifts, of course). They’re the most repeated dessert I’ve made all year.

Since the genius of these cookies is their unusual source of salt, I thought of another savory substitute: seaweed. I know vegetables don’t sound appetizing in cookies, but just think of seaweed as the complex version of sea salt.

When I thumbed through my pantry last night, I saw furikake (a mix of soy-glazed bonito flakes, sesame seeds, and nori) and thought, “Hey, why not? Fish come from the sea, too.” So I made two batches of cookies (which you should always do with this recipe, because you will run out!).

While the furikake tasted great in the raw dough (I loved the sweet-salty combo of the fish and the soy sauce), the fish flakes didn’t keep their crunchy texture, and the flavor became too distracting. It was still tasty, but I preferred the seaweed version.

PS-I conceptualized these cookies a long time ago, but that darn David Lebovitz scooped me. But my adaptation is different, as there’s a lot more seaweed but no egg. For another sweet-savory twist, I bet bacon would be good, and you could substitute some rendered bacon fat for the butter.

Seaweed Shortbread Cookies

This recipe doubles easily (trust me, you will need to double it), so you can munch on the cookies and still have some left for gifting. They stay delicious for weeks and hold up well in the mail.

Adapted from Susan Herrmann Loomis and The Traveler’s Lunchbox
Yield: about 34 cookies

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted or 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, whizzed in a food processor until fine
1 Tablespoon roasted sesame oil (recommended brand: Kadoya)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup crushed wakame flakes

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.

In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter until it is soft and pale yellow. Mix in the sugar until blended, then drizzle in the sesame oil and mix until combined. Add the flour and the salt, and mix gently but thoroughly until the dough is smooth, then add the wakame flakes and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated into the dough.

With your hands, press the dough into the pan until it is 1/4-inch thick. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, and up to 24 hours. Score the dough into rectangles with a knife.

Bake until the cookies are golden, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately cut the cookies while they are still hot. Cool on wire racks.

If you find that the middle pieces are still doughy, re-bake them in a preheated 300° F oven for about 10 minutes.

Variation: Substitute 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons bonito-flavored furikake for the arame seaweed. (Furikake is like rice confetti. It’s also a delicious seasoning for cold silken tofu, eggs, noodles, popcorn, and salad. If you want to make your own, Gourmet and Egullet have recipes.)

Two years and 262+ comments later, I finally decided to make Levain Bakery’s monstrous chocolate chip cookies. Weighing nearly half a pound, I lusted after them but never dared make them. When they were featured on Bobby Flay’s Throwdown, a torrent of commenters asked me how the recipe was. I shrugged my shoulders but gave educated guesses.

Then, more commenters swooned over the tweaked recipe. With high expectations, I attempted this new version. Sadly, they tasted plain (even after I added 2 tsp vanilla) and had a sandy texture. Sure, there was a nice contrast between the crisp outside and doughy center, but if you piled any chocolate chip cookie dough into a 1/4-cup mound, you’d probably get the same result. My favorite recipe is still the one I’ve been using for nearly 15 years, and it has whole wheat flour. The whole wheat gives it extra flavor, and combined with the brown sugar, a good chew.

Before you think I’ve gone nuts for pairing chocolate with garlic again, I have an excuse. These cookies were a birthday present for my roommate, who loves garlic. She stores several cups of garlic in the fridge and even pre-minces it so it’ll be ready when the moment strikes.

Since my idea of a gift always involves sugar, I made garlic brittle chocolate chip cookies, inspired from the Gilded Fork. The garlic is pre-cooked and added to caramelized sugar, so it has a sweet, nutty flavor. If you’ve ever had roasted garlic, you know that garlic loses its bite after a long period of cooking.

Because I’m a sucker for new recipes, I made the cookie dough from a free review copy of Elizabeth Falkner’s Demolition Desserts. The first chapter is devoted to chocolate chip cookies. (The premise sounds better than it is. I was hoping for a chocolate chip cookie primer, giving us variations on chewy, cakey and crisp cookies, like Alton Brown did so well in Good Eats. Elizabeth’s chapter is a compilation of really different cookies, like traditional chocolate chip and chocolate-chocolate chip, without such a thorough explanation.)

I’m too lazy to type out the recipe, but Rachael Ray’s recipe is similar. Just make these changes: add half a batch of crumbled garlic brittle (no nuts, please!), use 3 Tbsp more flour, reverse the ratio of granulated and brown sugar, add 1/4 tsp baking powder, refrigerate the dough for at least 30 min. before baking, and bake 1-inch balls for 13-17 min. (rotating the pans from top to bottom and front to back after 7 min.). Got that?

These cookies didn’t turn out, and it had nothing to do with the garlic (they didn’t taste nasty, but I don’t think the garlic was necessary). They were as thin as credit cards and extremely floppy. The dough didn’t seem to cook.

Lessons learned:

• When adding hard candy to cookie dough batter, reduce the sugar in the dough accordingly. Elizabeth’s dough had 3/4 cup more sugar than the Gilded Fork recipe. Too much sugar prevents the dough from setting up. You’ll burn the sugar before the dough looks “done.”
• When adding hard candy to cookie dough batter, line the cookie sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat. I used foil, and the brittle (which turned to liquid) stuck to the sheets. I wouldn’t recommend greased foil, because that makes the dough spread more. No waxed paper either, unless you like the taste of candles.
• To prevent dough from spreading, refrigerate it till firm. Elizabeth’s recipe said to refrigerate the dough for 30 min., but even after that, my dough was still soft.
• Corn syrup creates a pliant, chewy cookie. I found this out because the brittle had a little corn syrup. Finally, the secret to chewy cookies is revealed!
• For the deepest flavored brittle, cook the sugar just before it burns. My caramel never registered hot enough to reach the “hard crack” stage, so I kept cooking it. I only pulled it off the heat right when I smelled a little of it burning. Luckily, I got a smoky, molasses flavored brittle that’s worth replicating.
• Grey sea salt rocks. I sprinkled the top of my brittle with the grey salt rather than mixing in table salt. The best grey salt from Guérande in Brittany, France is harvested with naturally occurring minerals. It has a deep, almost smoky flavor. The large, irregular crystals melt on your tongue slowly, so you get an extra POP. I like it so much that from now on, I’ll add it to all my cookie doughs. That’s saying a lot, because I’m not a huge fan of salt. At $8 a pound, it’s seems frou frou compared to a 50-cent can of Morton’s. But if you use a teaspoon here and there, that one-pound canister will last you a while. Much of grey salt’s “flavor” comes from the shape of the crystals, so think of it as a finishing salt. The last thing you want to do is toss it in soup and let it dissolve.

The idea of brittle in cookies is promising, but this recipe needs some work. Next time, I’ll use cacao nibs instead. No more garlic and chocolate for me. If you’re feeling adventurous, maybe diced fried bacon would go well in the brittle, too.