cookies of the week

I'm a sucker for snacks.  I always want them, but when I'm at the grocery store, I always skip buying them just to make sure I don't eat too many.  Don't worry, candy still makes its way into my life.

March is a very dreary time here in Portland.  Its kind of cold, its windy, it rains a lot and its been doing this for months.  I had the brilliant idea of trying to bake a new kind of cookie I've never made before every week all month.  So that's 4 new cookie recipes to love or hate.

Now I am not a baker.  In fact, I'm not that remarkable of a cook either, so everything I do has to be easy.  That's how you know you'll want to make these cookies, too.  They take very little effort, and not a lot of ingredients.

Last week's cookie was this:  Trissalicious Pistachio Cookies.  (She wants us to CALL the cookies "Trissalicious" because they're from her blog. Major eyeroll, as these are a classic Italian cookie).  Even if the name makes you want to roll your eyes, the cookies are so delicious they will be gone in two days.  They come out fabulously chewy and nutty, though I kind of felt they were missing something when I made them.  My friend, who has a gluten allergy (and made these right away because they are flourless), alerted me that she added vanilla to hers.  I will certainly try that next time.  So maybe if you add vanilla you can call them "Hilarylicious Pistachio Cookies" because that's Hilary's version.

The Recipe is all in grams.  I could give you my conversions, but then you wouldn't get to try and use this awesome tool for converting recipes:  Gourmet Sleuth.  Hint:  you'll want to select "ground" when you convert the almonds.

This week's cookie was a bit different.  There is one left and I didn't get any pictures.  They came out kind of badly but this time I blame my oven and my laziness for that, not the recipe.

Mayan Chocolate Cookies.  The idea of this recipe is to make the plain-ish cookie and then top it with this mixture that is supposed to caramelize in the oven.  Welp, I didn't have any heavy cream so I used milk.  NOPE.  These need cream.  Or maybe the cinnamon sugar needs to be mixed with the cream instead of sprinkled. The cinnamon stayed...powdery and made me cough while eating them.  If you can get it to work, I bet these will be tasty, but for me they were a failure. Even so, they disappeared in less than 24 hours.  These cookies definitely turned me on to the flavor combination of chocolate-spicy-sweet-cinnamon.  There are plenty of mayan chocolate cookies out there, with chocolate and cinnamon and spicy pepper in them, and I might try another recipe, because I'm just no good at the two-step.