The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly in search of the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. And not one ever, quite lives up to the hype. Too crunchy. Too Chewy. Too sweet. Etc. etc.

Well, search no further. This is, literally, the best cookie I’ve ever tasted or made (of the chocolate chip variety). And good news to all you gluten-avoiders: it’s got no flour in it!

“Oh, geez.” you may say, “Another one of these silly ‘healthy’ desserts. Desserts aren’t supposed to be healthy. Stop trying!”

Well, I promise you, that’s usually what I say. Don’t mess with a good thing and all that. I mean, if I’m going to ingest sugar, it had better be as tasty as it possibly can be. HOWEVER, in this situation, it works excellently. The recipe replaces wheat with almond flour, and the absence of gluten makes for an extraordinarily tender cookie. These are more on the crunchy side of the spectrum, but they are by no means hard. They’re a little like shortbread – melt in your mouth.

Seriously, you have to try these – if you’re not converted – well, I don’t know what to say…

Best Brownies

Brownies. Everyone needs a good brownie recipe. It’s pretty much a necessity of life. I’m here to tell you that you need look no further! This is it. The one, the best, the only brownie recipe you ever need. It’s that good. I swear. And it’s really pretty easy to whip together. Just make sure you have enough chocolate!

The low baking temperature creates a really nice texture, and there’s room for playing with flavors. I’m partial to coffee and rum myself – because, why not? However, there are so many options! I’ve done coffee and cinnamon (clearly, I’m partial to coffee and chocolate), which was excellent. You can also boil down 1/2c stout to 1/4c and add that – I haven’t done this yet, because I don’t often have a stout just sitting around waiting to be used. It sounds excellent though. You could do lavender. Hazelnut. Plain, obviously.

Enough of the variations, you say, get on to the recipe! Ok, ok. I got carried away. Here it is:

Grown Up Milkshakes

A chocolate milkshake. One of the joys of childhood. What better way to update it as you mature than to add rum? It’s a dessert and a digestif all blended into one. Yum. In fact, it was so tasty that I didn’t even wait to take a picture of it. All gone! And what could be easier? Start with your favorite chocolate ice cream (ok, ok, it doesn’t have to be chocolate), add as much or as little milk as you like (it all depends on how thin you like your shake – I’m a thick shake girl). Throw it all in a blender with 1-2oz of rum and, voila! A grown-up milkshake! Enjoy.

Chocolate “Hostess” Cupcakes

Another fun thing to do when you’re home alone is to bake – and then bring things into work so that you don’t eat it all yourself, and so your coworkers like you. 🙂 I’m particularly partial to cupcakes myself – chocolate please! Usually I just make my favorite chocolate cake from Gourmet, Dec ’87. After all, that’s the year and month I was born – it must be made for me, right? But, this time I decided to switch things up a bit. I’ve never made a chiffon cake before ’cause I’ve always heard they were more finicky. Maybe they are, but I had good luck with this recipe, and now, in my opinion, chiffon is the way to go for cupcakes. Light, fluffy, moist. But they have a firm enough texture that they don’t fall apart when you take a bite. Perfection. I even ate one without any frosting and it was good! But then, to top it all off – to guild the lily as the saying goes – I decided to fill them with pastry cream and smother the top in chocolate-coffee ganache. What?!