chocolate chip cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Coconut and Pistachios

I own a dangerous book called By The Book. It’s a collection of the By The Book column from the New York Times; a column where artists, musicians, and writers talk about their favorite books and what’s currently on their nightstand. It’s dangerous because any time someone sings the praises of a book, I immediately want to own it. (See: the stacks of books currently on my desk, coffee table, and nightstand.)

Not only am I susceptible to “By The Book,” I’m also susceptible to book suggestions in real life. Case in point: Nik Sharma came on my Instagram Live two weeks ago, and sang the praises of Samantha Seneviratne’s Sugar and Spice. It was on my doorstep three days later.

Nancy Silverton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies, cookies everywhere and not a chocolate chip cookie in sight. Look, let’s be honest about Christmas cookies: they’re fun to look at but are they really fun to eat? Most of them taste like cardboard with over-sweetened frosting slathered on. While everyone tries to reproduce the cover of Bon Appetit (which is, admittedly, pretty stunning), why don’t you do what I’d do and make a batch of these comforting, hot from the oven chocolate chip cookies from one of America’s greatest bakers? As someone who makes a lot of chocolate chip cookies (Martha’s, whole wheat, Eric Wolitzky’s, ones with cranberries and oats) these may be the most wholesome and comforting I’ve yet made, partially because they’re packed with walnuts.

The Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie at Jacques Torres

Citizens of America, it is my duty to inform you about something unholy, something sinful that is going on in that wicked city known as New York. Deep in the bowels of a village known as “West” is a veritable Sodom & Gomorrah of chocolate whose creator, a Frenchman!, is trying to tempt our children into evil with a contraption known as the “cookie warmer.” This sick device results in the dangerous, corrupting specimen you see above!

Revelations of the Kitchen Freezer (Or: Hot Homemade Cookies, Biscuits & Dinner Rolls Whenever You Want Them)

Sometimes we think we know things, but we don’t really know them.

For example: for a long time I’ve known that you can put unbaked cookies, biscuits and/or dinner rolls in the freezer, instead of the oven, and that after letting them freeze on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets, you can put them in Ziplock bags and conserve them for later use. Even though I knew that, I didn’t really know that; if I’d really known that, I would’ve realized, in all caps: “HOLY CRAP! I CAN HAVE HOT HOMEMADE COOKIES, BISCUITS AND/OR DINNER ROLLS WHENEVER I WANT THEM!” And even though I knew it as a fact, I hadn’t lived it; but now that I’ve lived it–I’ve been there and smelled the hot biscuits–I can share with you what I saw at the top of the mountain, the revelations of the kitchen freezer.

Scroll to Top