cookies « A Woman Sconed

Cookie of the Month: Dusting up celebratory tradition

By rahoward, on May 4th, 2020

I never needed a wedding (or any special occasion) to enjoy a Mexican wedding cookie. Just eating one of these buttery little orbs, its crumbly texture dusted with the cooling sweetness of confectioner’s sugar, was cause alone for celebration.

Long a fan of this cookie, a tradition in Mexico (and other places) at . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Dusting up celebratory tradition

Cookie of the Month: ‘Testing’ chocolate chip recipes

By rahoward, on April 28th, 2020

I’m pretty sure my baking life began with chocolate chip cookies. They (and their M&M variation) are the first I remember my mom making, my sister and I lying on the kitchen linoleum to take in that distinctive warm, vanilla-toffee aroma as my mother fanned the giant cookie sheet back and forth to . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: ‘Testing’ chocolate chip recipes

Cookie of the Month: Hunting an Irish ‘biscuit’

By rahoward, on March 17th, 2020

I can certainly be accused of “procrastibaking” that “practice” of baking when you should (“should”?) be doing something else (I’m also guilty of its flipside — procrastinating on getting baking projects done). But in that same vein, I also fall under the spell of what I call “escape baking” or “esca-baking” (you heard . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Hunting an Irish ‘biscuit’

Cookie of the Month: Feeling the (red-hot) love via bars

By rahoward, on February 12th, 2020

It probably sounds strange that when it comes to Valentine’s Day, I think of sugar cookies, not chocolate. Maybe I have holiday goodie dissociative disorder, but my Feb. 14 tastes run directly back to childhood, where, along with white embossed cherry suckers and chalky conversation hearts, there are sugar cookies, too, that I . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Feeling the (red-hot) love via bars

Cookie of the Month: Dressing up brownie cookie with ginger

By rahoward, on January 31st, 2020

The holidays are over, and yet I hang onto them. I always reluctantly enter the Christmas season, but by the time it comes then goes, I’m so overtaken and in love with the holidays that I mourn hard when that time is over. I even love the stress of the holidays. It gives . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Dressing up brownie cookie with ginger

Traveling — via cookies — for the holidays

By rahoward, on December 29th, 2019

Every year, as the holidays approach, I study countless cookbooks and recipes that share cookie traditions from other places, and for awhile, I’m overwhelmed in trying to choose which cookies I’m going to make. At a certain point, it gets to be too much — I get behind, and I have to narrow . . . → Read More: Traveling — via cookies — for the holidays

Molding an artful cookie

By rahoward, on May 5th, 2019

Life, baking and the Internet can sometimes take you down paths you never expected to go. On one innocent afternoon about a year ago, I was “tossed” one of those random food videos that come our way, generated by our googling interests. Sometimes when these are sent in my direction, I’ll ignore; . . . → Read More: Molding an artful cookie

Baked Sunday Morning: Revisiting what’s best about chocolate chip cookies

By rahoward, on April 7th, 2019

I’ve made zillions (and eaten nearly as many) of chocolate chip cookies. I’ve written here before that it was the first recipe I remember baking, climbing on a chair at age seven to assemble my ingredients and make my first batch from the recipe on the back of the yellow Tollhouse package.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Feeling like a Millionaire’s Shortbread

By rahoward, on January 27th, 2019

I don’t need much encouragement to make shortbread. Even after a busy cookie-baking holiday season, the chance of making this simple, homey, buttery favorite treat — whether it comes in a pan or sliced from a roll — appeals to me because making it is simple; eating it is another reward altogether.

The . . . → Read More: Baked Sunday Mornings: Feeling like a Millionaire’s Shortbread

Slicing and baking through the holidays

By rahoward, on December 23rd, 2018

I’ve been pretty obsessed with slice-and-bake cookies for…awhile. Like many things I become obsessed with, I spend most of my time obsessing and not enough time doing. Every Christmas cookie season, it has been my aim to have a catalog of cookie logs in my freezer, ready to go, so that I would have . . . → Read More: Slicing and baking through the holidays

“People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”
--M.F.K. Fisher

"It was in a yellow limestone church in Stockdale, Kansas, a crossroads town, that I sat dreaming during summer Sunday sermons, not of heaven or hell, but of the good dinner to come."
--Clementine Paddleford