Flour, Sugar + Butter

Flour, sugar, and butter.

So darn much of it.

Has anyone else found themselves recently with counters laden with red and green plates full of sugar cookies, cello bags filled with frosted Scandinavian goodies, and tins full of fudge and shortbread?  Apparently, ’tis the season to eat cookies.  And I’m not complaining.

I have delayed writing anything lately, partially due to the busyness of shopping, wrapping, and shipping, but also because I have absolutely no need to bake anything. I’ve been having trouble rationing out this motherlode of cookies in my kitchen and to add to that would be dangerous to my health.

Plus, Keller has adopted a new word that he finds great meaning in: cookies.

My friend Dee and I did spend an afternoon baking a week or so ago, and we churned out two batches:  soft sugar cookies and our first ever attempt at French macaroons.  Here are a few images from that afternoon of those lovely pink macaroons . . .

They were quite addictive, even better on the second day than on the first.  The recipe is called Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons and is from the December 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine.  And since it’s Christmas, let me be honest here:  I don’t have the energy today to type up the recipe for you.  Since it’s not mine anyways, I’m just going to give you the link to it right here.  Joyeux Noel!

Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons

Cranberry Almond Biscotti

Do you like biscotti?

Or, let me phrase that differently:  do you like hard cookies?  Really, really hard cookies?

I honestly was never a fan of biscotti, because it seemed to me that every time I tried one, I almost chipped a tooth biting in to it.  And then, of course, if I dipped it into coffee like I was supposed to, it softened up but left little pieces of floating cookie in my coffee that got soggy and kept me from wanting to drink the rest of my coffee.

Until one day years ago . . . my mom has a friend named Margie Jones, and she gave us a recipe for Raisin Walnut Biscotti.  My mom swapped the raisins and the walnuts out for cranberries and almonds, and, oh my goodness . . . I discovered that I loved biscotti! My whole family learned that we loved biscotti!  We became a clan of biscotti-eating people, and the generations that come will also be biscotti-eating people!