Gabrielle Langholtz: Carrot-oatmeal cookies
I realllly want to come back as Heidi Swanson in my next life. Meanwhile, I just cook from her blog and pretend. One recipe I make often is these carrot-oatmeal cookies. I love many things about this recipe: it’s got carrots and maple syrup in it. It’s eggless so my daughter and I can lick the bowl with abandon. It’s free of white flour and white sugar. And you can really riff — I often add chocolate chips and all sort of seeds (pumpkin, sesame, flax). The cookies are a bit crumbly so I often bake them in muffin tins (for 25 minutes) which works great. I eat them for breakfast, close my eyes, and for just a second, believe I’m Heidi.
Caroline Lange: Anise biscotti
Each year, my mother and I make a big bowl of biscotti dough scented with anise extract and packed with slivered almonds — her grandmother’s recipe. We shape them into logs and sprinkle them with red and green sugars before baking them. I don’t have the recipe, but this one is pretty close.
Carrington Morris: Cherry, pistachio and vanilla biscotti
This one comes courtesy of award-winning wood designer Phil Gautreau, whose breathtaking cutting boards and hand-turned bowls were singled out last year as an exceedingly thoughtful holiday gift. Phil swaps out the pistachios for almonds, uses almond extract in place of vanilla and then adds a cup of finely chopped (not minced) crystallized ginger into the mix. For a final flourish, he dips in 90 percent cocoa chocolate.
Eleonore Buschinger: Chocolate globs
I’ve never had a sweet tooth but Pooja and her Social Kitchen blog do make me reconsider that fact. Her dessert recipes are always a winner. And these chocolate globs won’t fail to convince you. To make your mouths water: they are almost like brownies in a cookie form. Heaven!
Lauren Wilson: Spiced ginger oatmeal drops
I had a series of job interviews in DUMBO when I first moved to New York. I wandered the waterfront between meetings while anxiously sipping juices from Foragers and combing over books at Powerhouse. Turning a corner on Main Street after my last interview, it took me all of two seconds to enter the line at One Girl Cookies — my body knew that I needed some soothing with sugar. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t remember exactly what I had (likely a whoopie pie), but I do recall taking note of the spot just in case I got a job in that area. The jobs didn’t work out, yet I still remembered that moment of sweet One Girl respite. I’m coming up on year two in the city this winter and as a little celebration of eventual employment, I’m thinking of making this One Girl’s spiced ginger oatmeal drops recipe that ran in an Edible Brooklyn holiday issue a couple of years ago. Employment secured for a while now, I imagine I’ll find them even more satisfying in the comfort of my own Brooklyn kitchen.
