A Sure Bet

As I'm approaching the halfway point of the year I'm pretty happy that I have yet to have any 'repeats' in the cookie department. OK, maybe with the exception of some of the cutout cookie recipes, but they've been different shapes so with my 'make the rules up as you go along' philosophy, they don't count - and I'm still good in the 'unique each week' quest.  It was my own little rule to force me to try new recipes.

So as my list of 'tried and true' cookie recipes starts to dwindle I'm having to take a few more chances with recipes that 'sound good.'  As a result I've had some iffy results recently ... a bit of the Goldilocks syndrome with some of them being too soft or too flat or too dry or too hard or too burnt - well, guess I can't blame the recipe for that last one, and don't fret, I don't waste a lot of food (a curse of growing up in a family of 10) and all those slightly over baked ones usually ended up in, uh, lets just say 'testing services.'  But luckily, overall, I don't think there have been any real 'clunkers' in the taste department.

Yet whenever I find myself in a pinch for a recipe and don't know what to bake - as I did this week - I've been able to turn to one of my 'cookie project purchases' that has turned out to be well worth the investment.  Dorie Greenspan's "Baking. From My Home to Yours."  Talk about a sure thing?  This is the third cookie I've baked from this book - all of them were sweet and flavorful and delicious.  If I were smart (no comments please!) following this pastry chef should be my 'Plan A."  And another smart move is to bake a cookie that's filled with chocolate and candy and candy bars - that is definitely good plan.  Have you ever had a cookie with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in them that has been bad?  My point exactly ... so I wasn't too worried when along about Tuesday afternoon I finally settled on Dorie's Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops... I think they were "just right!"

I can't forget to mention that I also threw together a light Cappuccino Biscotti for Gilda's Club - that may have fallen in that 'too hard' category - but it's a biscotti after all - so it's nothing a quick dunk in a hot cup of coffee wouldn't remedy ... now I'm off to work on my very own original cookie recipe - I'm thinking something with chopped up snickers bars might be a good idea!