Last week, while I was taking a bath and Kat was assisting by throwing rubber duckies into the tub on top of me, I decided to attempt to distract her by telling her that we were going to start making cookies this week for the holidays.

And she said my favorite word in the English language. (No, not “chocolate.”)

She stopped, poised in mid-throw, ducky hovering over her head like a bloated blue hummingbird and said, “Why?”

I nearly wept with joy. It was the first time she had asked one of us “why?” about anything! And it was about cookies!

I grinned and said, “Well, making cookies is a tradition at Christmastime. I’ve been baking cookies every Christmas for thirty years, and I hope to be doing it for another thirty.”

“But why, Mommy?”

Why, indeed.

I perked right up, and happily watched as the wee blue ducky, long forgotten, was dropped on the bathmat where it would lurk, waiting to trip me up as I got out of the tub. Putting on my best “Mommy has a minor in history voice” I answered, “All over the world, at this time of year, when the nights get longer and longer and longer and darker and darker, people celebrate the return of the light, as the days slowly start to lengthen and the nights become shorter again. All over the world, people have holidays that celebrate the light, and on those holidays we give gifts, we feast and we make sweets like cookies, to rejoice in teh return of the sun, and the light of hope and love in our hearts.”

It sounded good, and Kat nodded sagely.

I finished and she piped up with, “But what do cookies have to do with light?”

Ah, she thought she got me with that one, but no! I had a ready answer, and it is even historically accurate.

“Well,” I said as I started draining the tub, for the ablutions were completed, the last five minutes of them blissfully duck-free, “long ago before there were refrigerators and grocery stores, people had to grow all of their food and store it for the winter. And sometimes, if the winter was really cold, or the harvest had been bad or if the snows lasted longer than usual, people would start running out of food near the end of winter. So, in the beginning of winter, when there was still plenty of food stored up, people would make and eat fattening foods like cookies and roast meats and cheeses so they could fatten themselves up to live through the winter. That way, if they ran short of food, they had a bit of fat on them to keep them strong until springtime. And the feasting just happened to coincide with the return of the sunlight, so the holiday tradition of making cookies was born.”

So there we are. That’s why we make cookies at Christmas.

Now, as to why I make cookies at Christmas, that is another story. I make them every year, because since I was fourteen years old, that was my holiday job. I did the baking. I made bread, cakes and especially cookies. I wasn’t really allowed to cook anything else in my mother’s kitchen, but since she didn’t much care for baking, and I did it so well, she turned the duty over to me, and I just kept on with it, happily becoming along the way somewhat of a cookie expert.

The first recipes I used were the family ones, handed down from great-grandmothers, a couple of them even coming all the way from Germany. And, of course, I used the Toll House Cookie recipe on the back of the pouch of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate chips. I insisted on using real butter in all of my baking–my Mom liked to use margarine, but I was having none of that. All of the recipes called for butter, and butter is what I used–who was I to argue with my long-dead great grandmothers? You don’t mess with the ancestors, man–they can come back to haunt you. I also insisted on real chocolate chips, and real vanilla extract too. Mom grumbled, but bought the ingredients I specified, and when she tasted the results, she stopped grumbling.

Over the years, I started experimenting, and worked out new recipes, some of which were based on the old family favorites, like my Aphrodite Cakes, which is based on my great-grandmother’s German sugar cookies. Others were based on ideas I had, like what would a cookie with Sichuan peppercorns in it taste like? Would lavender be good in shortbread? What about chilies in a brownie? Why can’t I put toffee chips and cinnamon bits and espresso powder and just use brown sugar in chocolate chip cookies? If Irish Cream is good with cream cheese in brownies, what happens if you add raspberry preserves and Chambord?

That is the cool thing about cookies. They are easy to play with. You can add ingredients, subtract them, change them, modify them by chilling or melting them, and you can almost always, if you have a bit of knowledge about baking, come up with something that will taste amazing. Cakes–they are much trickier, and I would not play as fast and loose with cake recipes as I do with cookies. Pies–well, I play with fillings all the time, but I stick pretty close to the general ideas when it comes to the crust. I will add ingredients and change proportions a little, but not like I do with cookies. Pie crust is too fragile to mess with very much, and cake–it is just finicky.

But cookies are forgiving. They are easy and they are fast and they are fun. So, I love playing around in the kitchen every year and coming up with new and tasty additions to the holiday sweets repertoire.

This year, I wanted to do something new with a chocolate chip cookie.

But I didn’t want to overload it like I did with the Coyote Chip Cookies. Granted, they are lovely, and I like them a great deal, but Zak is not fond of them, and I wanted to make a chocolate chip cookie that both he and I could enjoy together.

What flavors go with chocolate?

Coffee. Been there, done that.

Nuts? Eh–I have to be careful with that, Zak can be weird about nuts. He likes some of them and not others.

Something was niggling at the back of my brain, trying to get my attention and suddenly, I remembered–Zak had just said the other day at the grocery store when we were buying candy canes that he doesn’t know a thing about those because he doesn’t really like peppermint candy, but chocolate covered cherries–those he used to be able to eat by the box.

And what is his favorite (non-Jeni’s) ice cream? Cherry Garcia.

Ah ha! Cherry chocolate chip cookies!

Why had I not thought of it before? What exactly is wrong with me? Dried sour cherries added to the usual Toll House style cookie, with milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet, since Zak prefers the former, and some almonds to help boost the flavor of the cherries and add a bit of crisp texture to the chewy fruit and cookies–perfect!

Yeah, I was right. The tart cherries are chewy and tangy, and you can taste the cherry flavor very well in the golden cookie, and it pairs beautifully with the rich, sweet milk chocolate. Almonds pair perfectly with both chocolate and cherries, and they added some crunch and the whole thing is just soul-satisfying.

He ate three for breakfast this morning. Brittney, who came to take care of Kat while we were in Columbus for my therapy appointment and for Generic Winter Holiday shopping, had one and declared it “Amazing.”

There are a few caveats: one, use Mariani brand dried cherries if you can find them. They are plump, chewy and delightfully tart. You don’t want to use sweet cherries in this–you want to use sour red cherries. Mariani are the best I have come across for baking–they do not dry out and do not require plumping before baking. So, seek them out. Two–toast your almonds before you put them in the cookie dough–it brings out the flavor in them. And three–you can use half semi-sweet chocolate chips and half milk, but I think milk chocolate is better, because it is a better foil for the tart sour cherries than the lightly bitter semi-sweet would be.

It is my new favorite, and here it is–one of my gifts to you this holiday season. Go bake a batch and celebrate the return of the light with a little bit of dietary fat and sugar!

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour (or 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour and 1 cup white whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cold butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
2 large eggs
12 ounce package milk chocolate chips
6 ounce packaged Mariani dried sour cherries
1 cup sliced almonds, toasted

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Stir flour, salt and baking soda together in a bowl and set aside.

With a mixure, cream together the cold butter and sugars, until well blended and fluffy. add the extracts and eggs, and beat well until mixture is smooth. Add flour mixture in thirds, and mix until well blended. add chocolate chips, cherries and almonds, and stir until combined.

Drop by rounded tablespoonsful onto not greased baking sheets (I line mine with silicone liners) and bake for 9-11 minutes, or until golden brown, but still seeming to be lightly underdone in the center. Remove from oven and allow to cool two minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a rack. Allow to cool until the cookie is still warm to the touch, but is firm and not hot. Place into a container with a tight-fitting lid and seal them up and allow them to cool the rest of the way. (This guarantees a chewy texture to the cookie.)

Makes about three and a half dozen cookies.

I know what you are thinking, and you have a dirty mind.

I will have you know that in this house, monkey nuts are not what you think they are, they are peanuts.

And it is all Cathy MacLennan’s fault.

She is the author of two of Kat’s favorite picture books, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey and Chicky Chicky Chook Chook. In her book, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, a little baby monkey gets hungry and goes in search of his favorite food–monkey nuts. And it turns out monkey nuts are peanuts, but monkey nuts is more fun to say, and it fits the rhyme and rhythm of the story better, so monkey nuts they are.

The books are really fun to read–the stories are cute with great flowing, bouncing sing-songish rhythms and the illustrations are dynamic and full of movement and color. It is no wonder Kat likes them–and luckily, so do the rest of us. (I think that Zak just likes an excuse to say monkey nuts over and over, but that is just me. The fact that he reads it in the Beavis voice sometimes leads me to this conclusion.)

So now you know why we call peanuts monkey nuts at our house.

Which also explains the name of these cookies–they have peanuts, I mean, monkey nuts in them.

I actually came up with them as something for Kat and I to make together and as a vehicle to get her to eat more different dried fruits, more peanuts, I mean monkey nuts, and oats. I used white whole wheat flour for these cookies and ended up putting dried sour cherries, golden raisins and dried cranberries in the dough along with the peanuts.

I could have used half butter and half peanut butter in the dough, but I was running low on peanut butter so I didn’t bother with it. But next time I make them, that is what I will do.

What were the results of my cookie baking experiment with Kat?

Well, she loved helping to bake the cookies. She helped measure spices, fruits, oats, nuts and salt, and dumped stuff into the mixer bowl and helped crush up the peanuts a little bit with the mortar and pestle. Then she helped scoop cookie dough onto the baking sheets. We knew that she already loved dried cherries, but we discovered that she also likes golden raisins and dried cranberries. And she liked the resulting cookies as well, so I am pleased with the outcome.

So, Fruity Monkey Nut Cookies were a success which shall be repeated in the future.

Now, Kat is already excited about making a batch of cookies to take to Great Grandpa before we go visit him in Baltimore later this month!

I love teaching kids about food and cooking!

Fruity Monkey Nut Cookies
Ingredients:

1 cup white whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon cardamom
1 cup butter (or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup peanut butter)
3/4 cup raw sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup lightly crushed roasted unsalted peanuts

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Line cookie sheets with silapats or parchment paper. Mix together flour, salt, baking soda and ground spices.

With an electric mixer, cream together butter (and peanut butter, if you are using it) and sugar until it is fluffy. Add honey and vanilla extract and beat until creamy. Add eggs and beat until well combined.

Add flour to bowl and, scraping down sides as necessary, mix it thoroughly in with butter mixture.

Add the oats, fruits and nuts, and combine on low speed, scraping down bowl and beater as necessary.

Drop by rounded tablespoonsful on cookie sheets about two inches apart and bake in a convection oven for nine minute, or until lightly browned. (For a regular oven, bake for twelve minutes.)

Allow to cool on the sheet for about a minute before removing cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Note: Other healthy additions you could make to these cookies–chopped up dried apples, flax seeds or flax seed meal, roasted unsalted sunflower seeds, or you could use soy nuts and soy nut butter instead of the peanuts, I mean, monkey nuts.

Every year around Christmas, I try to come up with a new cookie recipe or two to add to the already copious list of cookies I make every year.

This year, I didn’t get started baking until, oh, yesterday, so that curtailed my explorations in cookiedom. However, I did manage to adapt a recipe from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion that I think will become a new favorite in our home. The original recipe was called “Cafe au Lait Bars,” but my high-octane, Kahlua-iced version was given the less mellifluous name, “BuzzBarz” due to the fact that after eating one of them, I found myself perched on a kitchen stool, swinging one leg back and forth like Edith Anne on crystal meth.

Yes, I am giving away my age, now. Do you know who Edith Anne is? She was a character played by Lily Tomlin on the old comedy sketch show, Laugh-In, back in the late sixties and early seventies. She was a precocious five year old who used to sit in an over-sized rocking chair and tell stories about herself, her family and her dog, Buster. They always ended with her tagline, “And that’s the truth,” which was followed by a raspberry.

So, yeah–these little squares of caffeinated bliss are great–especially if you want a little, okay, a big pick-me-up. Just watch out if you are sitting in a rocking chair–you might rock so fast you whiz off into orbit. Yeah, I added more instant espresso than was strictly necessary–and then added a glaze of espresso, Kahlua and lots of sugar–but boy, it made them good.

I guess you could consider them rocket fuel for your inner child.

And that’s the truth.

The coffee bean garnish is optional, by the way. It looks really pretty–hower some folks don’t like to chew on coffee beans like I do. Those who don’t like crunching on them can remove them–or, you can just leave them out.

BuzzBarz

These are great with milk–but even better with–you guessed it–coffee.

Chiles are one of my favorite fruits and flavoring agents in the entire culinary universe.

As far as I am concerned, they are among the most versatile of ingredients, and can allow the cook to play with a range of flavor, color, heat and aroma that very few other ingredients can manage. As a result of this versatility and the playfulness that it evokes in me, I have come up with a few recipes where chiles appear in contexts that one does not usually expect the fire of a pepper to erupt.

One of those contexts is in a dessert.

A decadadent, rich dessert, filled to bursting with chocolate.

Yes, I know. Chiles with chocolate are becoming a bit de rigeur these days, what with the film “Chocolat” and all.

And I have to admit that I was first inspired to make these brownies after I belatedly rented and watched that movie, and was enchanted with the thought of pairing chile pepper with chocolate in a sweet context. (Mole sauces are wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but I have to admit to liking my chocolates sweet. But, not too sweet.)

But, these brownies, which I named in honor of another film (“Pirates of the Caribbean,” if you are wondering) are not just about sweet and hot, chocolate and chile. Oh, no. I packed them full of flavors that are associated in one way or another with Mexico: vanilla, cinnamon and coffee, to be precise. And I used high quality chocolate in them, plus added Dutch process cocoa, in order to get a deep, dark chocolatey flavor, color and aroma.

And then, just for kicks, I sprinkled gold leaf on the top of them. You know–to give them that extra bit of flash, and to help them live up to their name. (Allright, I have to ‘fess up here. I did the gold for the blog. And it looks cool, and it is extremely cool to be eating gold. But for the first two years worth of making these lovelies, I have not used the gold. You don’t have to. But, if you want to–follow the instructions on the gold leaf and have fun.)

These brownies are addictive, and have become a favorite dessert around here since I made them up a couple of years ago. I have made them for weddings, for holidays, and just because. This winter, I may try glazing them with dark chocolate ganache and then sprinkling them with gold leaf and see what happens. In the summer, the ganache would just melt into puddles of goo, but in the winter–well, it may just add a little bit moreishness to them.

The flavor is complex. The first flavor to hit is a combination of the good chocolate and the smokiness of the chipotle. Then, the cinnamon kicks in, and then the espresso. Finally, the chipotle chile heat creeps up the back of your throat and warms your mouth. And then you take another bite, and a whisper of vanilla insinuates itself on your tongue, and then dances with the espresso and chocolate, and then the smokiness cuts in and the chile turns it all into big party. And you take another bite, and it all starts over again. They are, in a word, fantastic. These brownies are one of the few of my recipes I -will- brag about, like in public, even though it is not at all in my nature.

They really are that good. They are sexy hot, and I don’t say that about many of my recipes.

But these brownies–they are smokin‘.

So, there we are. My entry for The Spice is Right IV: It’s Too Darned Hot!. A bit close to late, but still within the deadline–and by popular demand. For those who loved my Aphrodite Cookies–I am giving you another recipe of a similar caliber–these brownies will make your reputation. I promise you.

Just tell folks where you found the recipe, okay?

Aztec Gold Brownies

They will still taste good, but they won’t look very good when you go to serve them, and they -will- be hard to eat.

Shepherd’s pie is that way. So is split pea soup. Many dishes with beans and southern cooked greens are less than attractive–one glance at the beans, ribs and greens in my Hillbilly Deluxe Dinner (you pronounce that “deelux,” by the way) shows how powerfully ugly really flavorful food can be.

And really, I feel odd putting oatmeal cookies in the same category as some of these dishes. It isn’t like they are that hideous to look at. It is just that they look rather plain and unassuming.

Simple, you might say.

Humble.

Compared to prettified cookies like “Aphrodite Cakes” and “Frostflowers,” though, my oatmeal cookies do look kind of pock-marked and homely.

But that is okay with me. What they do not show outwardly, they reveal upon taking a first taste.

Unlike the rather hard, unyielding nuggets that they appear to be, they turn out to be chewy, and the brownish color reveals the sun-warmed flavors of honey, golden raisins and almonds, with a hint of tartness provided by the garnet-colored dried cranberries. Spices add further warmth while lemon oil gives a kiss of citrus tang that accentuates the fruits and boosts the ginger and cardamom flavors.

I am pretty proud of these; they turned out really well. The base recipe is adapted from Judy Rosenburg’s oatmeal cookies in her Rosie’s Bakery Chocolate-Packed, Jam Filled Butter-Rich No Holds Barred Cookie Book, but I changed it so much I am not sure she would recognize it herself. For one thing, I did away with her awkward measurments; in converting large scale bakery recipes to be made in home kitchens, she puts some weird measurments in her recipes, like “8 1/2 tablespoons of butter,” and “2 cups plus two tablespoons of rolled oats.” This comes from converting from weights to standard measurements, I have no doubt, but please–I am not going to put those extra half tablespoons or two tablespoons of anything in a cookie recipe. It is silly. So, I did away with all of that, to no ill effect, and I safely ignored her injunctions to sift flour and play with fiddly extra steps. (I also discovered that using old-fashioned roll butter, which comes in a big two-pound cylinder, is challenging when it comes to measuring; however, I managed.)

And there was a certain flavor I was looking for in these cookies. A distinct fruitiness; I have been craving dried fruits and oats quite strongly, though I have not been wanting to eat oatmeal. Zak had bought me some Pepperidge Farm cranberry oatmeal cookies, and they were quite good, though I refused to buy more of them after I saw that both partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil and high-fructose corn syrup were in the ingredients list. I decided that I would do better eating cookies made from organically grown oats, whole wheat flour, local honey, local butter, local eggs and raw cane sugar.

So, that is what I made last night–and I was right. They were better! I wish my ratio of local ingredients was higher, though. Baking is a challenge–I’ve still yet to get that elusive Ohio wheat flour. But, still, they were delightful, and for a cookie, reasonably healthy–it was all of the good parts of warm oatmeal in the morning, without the stickiness!

Oatmeal Fruit and Nut Cookies

Serve with a tall glass of ice cold milk.