I baked up a batch of these beauties recently for a folk dance workshop and their success was measured in moans and swoons. Just the right quota of deep bittersweet morsels and the crunch of toasted walnuts encased in a fragrant, buttery, chewy cookie dough. All of these elements enhanced each other in an intoxicating interplay of flavour and texture, a virtual marriage of disparate parts that synthesized into a unified whole.

I realized, after a thoughtful chew, that the recipe for success in this cookie is essentially balance. You will find a dough sweet enough to titilate but that does not overwhelm the chocolate. There is a certain, special chewiness that feels just right, a small snap with every bite that melds into tenderness. The chocolate must stand up on its own two feet, delicious enough to win praise as it nestles into the crevices of your mouth. You expect a sweet sensation of nuttiness, little nuggets that play off of the silky smoothness of the chocolate. Here, the size of the nuts, their freshness and amount, come into play. Too many is the wrong emphasis. Too few is just wrong.

I subscribe to the school of thought that ordains that a chunk of chocolate is better than a chip. And chunking your own bar of chocolate yields all kinds of extra bonuses - lovely little pieces of course, but also slivers, shavings, dust, all useful in the cookie you are about to build. It all goes in, the dust speckling the dough, the slivers adding small dashes of flavour, and, the part you live for, the chunks, the explosion of chocolate indulgence that elevates this cookie to a realm unattainable by its cousin, the chocolate chip cookie.

From where does this cookie come to me? The one and only David Lebovitz, chocolate guru, ice cream maven, food blogger, essentially the perfect man:

David Lebovitz's Perfectly Balanced Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2+1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 3/4 tsp. baking soda; 1/8 tsp. salt; 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature; 1 cup light brown sugar; 3/4 cup granulated sugar; 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract; 2 large eggs at room temperature; 2 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped; 14 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped - use the best quality you can get your hands on.

In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. In a stand mixer beat together butter, the two sugars and vanilla and beat on medium speed until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly blended. Stir in the flour mixture, nuts and chocolate chunks and mix just until the flour disappears. Chill the dough overnight in the fridge. Preheat oven to 350 F. Form teaspoon sized balls of dough and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, 2 inches apart. Press down gently on each ball with the palm of your hand to flatten slightly. Bake about 10 minutes or until the cookies are set, very lightly browned in the centres and are still soft.

Learn more about great cookies:

Every family birthday at my house precipitates the question "What will we have for dessert?". The birthday meal itself is not really debated, as family members are quite satisfied with my varied offerings of salads, grilled grub, pastas and the different permutations and combinations they have come to expect from me. But dessert is another matter altogether, with lots of suggestions and opinions about what we should indulge in. One thing I know for sure: no one quibbles about chocolate cupcakes, especially moist, fudgey ones with a thick, luscious, bittersweet ganache topping.

Which brings me to what I baked for my daughter Claire's birthday this weekend. Easy to prepare and a total delight to indulge in after a lasagna dinner and a few games of pool at our home. Cupcakes offer us the complete satisfaction of having our very own decadent dessert to eat any way we like, from fist to mouth, cut into dainty quarters, taking little forkfuls of icing alternately with morsels of cake. A cupcake is all yours to do what you please with.

You can buy cupcakes at specialty shops for over $3.00 a pop but why would you when you can whip up these from scratch in almost no time at all? Birthday or not, a fabulous chocolate cupcake is a classic crowd pleaser that you can count on to boost the mood of any event on your agenda. The Fine Cooking website takes the credit for this simple but delicious recipe that helped make Claire's birthday meal special, memorable and festive:

Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache
adapted from www.finecooking.com

1+1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour; 3/4 tsp. baking soda; 1/2 tsp. kosher salt; 2 cups granulated sugar; 1 cup strong brewed coffee, warm or cold; 1/2 cup sour cream; 1/2 cup canola oil; 2 large eggs; 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled.

My ganache - 2 cups heavy cream; 12 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped; 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped; 2 tbsp. granulated sugar; pinch of salt. Place chopped chocolates in a large bowl. Heat cream, sugar and pinch of salt in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Do not let the mixture boil. Pour hot cream over chopped chocolate and whisk until smooth. Set ganache aside and let cool until thick enough to spread without dribbling. Ganache can be refrigerated and then brought to room temperature for spreading.

For cupcakes, heat the oven to 350 F. Line 16 muffin tins with liners or grease the cups with butter. Sift flour, baking soda, salt and sugar into a medium bowl. In a large bowl, whisk coffee, melted chocolate, sour cream, oil and eggs. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and whisk until there are no lumps. Pour the batter into prepared muffin tins, dividing the batter evenly into all 16 cups. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a cupcake comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool for 15 minutes and then remove them from the pan to cool further. Top generously with ganache.

Those of you who like to use pastry bags may wish to swirl icing or ganache overtop your cupcakes in a graceful swoosh. I just took a pallet knife in hand and got to work building a sweet layer of truffle-like smoothness onto each graceful cake. A little easier, and prettily annointed with a chocolate coffee bean.

Cupcakes are a bit of a craze right now which begs the questions, did they ever really go out of style? Aren't they always a good idea? Some food trends come and go (foam? architectural food styling? raw food?) but cupcakes deserve a permanent place on the party table.

Go crazy for cupcakes with our support:

I promised you more Jewish cookies with cute names and these festive Hamantashen are beauties you will love. If you have fond memories of playing with playdoh as a child, you will enjoy the tactile similiarity this dough has to that product. Except this product smells so much better, of butter and sweet vanilla. Encasing a lively and textured filling of ground poppy seeds, these three-cornered cookies have an intriguing persona, a little bit pastry-like, yet miniaturized and dainty. Jewish people eat Hamantashen during the holiday Purim as a symbolic reference to an evil man named Haman who wore a three-sided hat and who wanted to kill all the Jews in Persia. He did not succeed.

Those of us who are practiced Hamantashen eaters fall are divided into camps: sturdy cookie dough disciples or delicate pastry dough devotees. Also, some of us favour poppy seed fillings and others prefer prunes. In Israel, where demand is high and competition fierce during Purim, bakers are dreaming up new ways to seduce customers, with modern takes on this traditional treat: marzipan, sour apples, pistachio and rosewater fillings are now on offer. As Joan Nathan explains in her recent article on modern Hamantashen in The New York Times, "the globalization of Israeli food. . . . inspires this generation of Israeli bakers to compete for ways to tweak tradition for a more sophisticated clientele."

Lehamim Bakery in Tel Aviv sells a variety of unconventionally flavored hamantashen - photo courtesy of The New York Times

All of this to say that the Hamantashen culture is here to stay and is adapting to new tastes and influences for a new generation. Never one to get in the way of good baking, I applaud these creative ventures and will say this: I still love the old standards, prune and poppy seed. And I fall into the cookie dough camp, though I flirted with the pastry dough rendition for many years. Today I offer you what I consider the gold medal of Hamantashen, a traditional poppy seed studded treat with a sturdy cookie dough casing. If you fall in love with these, go forth and experiment with my blessing.

Traditional Hamantashen
adapted from Marcy Goldman's A Passion For Baking

Dough: 1 cup unsalted butter; 1+1/4 cups sugar; 3 large eggs; 1/4 cup orange juice; 1+1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract; 4 cups of all-purpose flour; 1/2 tsp. kosher salt; 2+1/2 tsp. baking powder. Egg wash: one egg, beaten.

My filling: 2 cups poppy seeds, ground in a spice grinder; approx. 1/2 cup granulated sugar or to taste; approx. 1/3 cup water or enough to evenly moisten the poppy seeds; 1 tbsp. runny honey; 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon; pinch of kosher salt. Combine filling ingredients in a pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continually, until thickened to a moist paste, about 3 minutes. You want the filling to be firm enough to hold together when pinched. Cool. Filling will continue to thicken as it cools. Can be prepared ahead and kept, covered, in the refrigerator for a few days.

In a mixing bowl cream the butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time and blend until silky. Stir in the orange juice and vamilla. Mix to blend. Fold in flour, salt and baking powder and mix to form a soft but firm dough. Cover and let dough rest for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Divide the dough into 3 flattened discs and work with one portion at a time. Roll out each disc onto a lightly floured counter to a thickness of 1/8 of an inch. Use a 3-inch cookie cutter and cut as many rounds as you can. Brush the rounds with egg wash. Fill with a generous teaspoon of filling. Draw 3 sides together into the centre. You should now have a 3-cornered or triangular pastry. Pinch the sides together where they meet, leaving some filling showing in the middle. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Brush egg wash on the top of each filled pastry. Bake at 350 F for 18 - 25 minutes or until golden brown.

All kinds of possibities await you once you fall for Hamantashen. Take inspiration from the creative creations in Israel, including savoury versions, feta cheese and beets, potato and sesame seeds. But remember that tradition has a strong pull and, as the Lehamim bakery owner Uri Scheft, says "even with all the different fillings we make, the most popular is still poppy seed."

Traditional Jewish food is celebrated here:

How about a cookie that perfumes the air with a waft of warm cinnamon? And that houses floral notes of tangy tangerine, not just the zest, but a whole fruit? Yes?

Here is a cookie from my past, a traditional eastern European Jewish homey staple called Mandelbrot, meaning almond bread. Perhaps the "bread" reference refers to the logs of cookie dough that are baked first, as with biscotti. These logs are then cut into slices and the slices are then baked, also a la method for biscotti. And, like biscotti, mandelbrot are dunkable, crisp and certifiably addictive. My version makes use of a fresh, whole tangerine, seeds removed, pulverized into pulp in a food processor (oranges work too). The marriage of tangerine with cinnamon and almonds is seductive, aromatic and warmly sweet.

Mandelbrot and biscotti part ways somewhat in the construction of the dough. Where the most staunchly authentic Italian biscotti have little other than eggs to bind them, mandelbrot feature a bit of unflavoured canola oil, yielding a crumblier, more tender product than what you find in the dry hardness of biscotti. Mandelbrot could indeed be considered better biscotti, less likely to crack a tooth. And while they are certainly dunkable, you can dig right in and manage them easily in their undunked state.

Mandelbrot
recipe courtesy of The Pleasures of Your Processor by Norene Gilletz

1 whole medium orange or large tangerine (honey tangerines work very well), cut into quarters and seeds removed; 2 large eggs; 3/4 cup granulated sugar; 1/2 cup canola oil; 2 tsp. baking powder; 1 cup chopped almonds; 2+3/4 cup all-purpose flour.

Cinnamon/sugar mixture: 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 1 tbsp. ground cinnamon.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Chop almonds coarsely and set aside. Quarter orange but do not peel. Remove seeds and process in a food processor until finely minced, about 25 seconds. Add eggs, sugar and oil and process for 10 seconds. Add baking powder, almonds and flour and pulse JUST until flour is blended into dough. Do not overprocess. Dough will be sticky. Remove dough from bowl with a rubber spatula onto a lightly floured counter and shape into 3 equal logs. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake logs at 350 F for 25 minutes. Dough will be cake-like and not fully baked. Let logs cool and slice into 1/2" slices with a sharp knife. Dip each slice into cinnamon/sugar mixture on both sides and place cut-side down on the cookie sheet. Return cookies to the oven at 250 F for 1 hour, until dry and crisp. Makes about 4 dozen mandelbrot. Freezes well.

There is something so quaintly charming about Jewish baking and some of the adorable names for cookies: mandelbrot, rugelach, hamentashen, kichel. Each one has an equally adorable personality which I promise to feature here soon! In the meantime, explore the sweet traditions of the Jewish kitchen with help from these titles:

Spending your hard-earned dollars on expensive crackers? Fueling a fixation on fancy Raincoast Crisps you can't resist buying at gourmet shops? Well, we've cracked the code and you can now make these special savoury nibbles yourself at home. Thanks to the enormous proliferation of food crazed bloggers, there are no secrets anymore. Your mother was right: it's good to share! I will now share my knowledge with you. Thanks to Julie Van Rosendaal's blog for this inspired copycat creation.

Just before we jump into the technical details, let me assure you that these crackers are FANTASTIC! My husband declared them the best crackers he has ever eaten. I was mildly concerned about how easily they would slice into pretty, thin, little things and, after a good chill in the freezer for a couple of hours, they sliced evenly and effortlessly. I followed the recipe exactly and would not change a thing. Except for when I want to change a thing. Then, I may sub in dried figs, dates, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds. Next time: half whole wheat flour and half white flour. Maybe a scoop of corn meal. Nothing too crazy as we don't want to mess up a great cracker, do we? Let the greatness begin:

Photo courtesy of www.dinnerwithjulie.com

Rosemary Raisin Pecan Crisps
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (optional)
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup flax seed, ground
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 350° F.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the buttermilk, brown sugar and honey and stir a few strokes. Add the raisins, pecans, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flax seed and rosemary and stir just until blended.

Pour the batter into two 8”x4” loaf pans that have been sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for about 35 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

The cooler the bread, the easier it is to slice really thin. You can leave it until the next day or pop it in the freezer. Slice the loaves as thin as you can and place the slices in a single layer on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I like to slice and bake one loaf and pop the other in the freezer for another day.) Reduce the oven heat to 300° F and bake them for about 15 minutes, then flip them over and bake for another 10 minutes, until crisp and deep golden. Try not to eat them all at once.

Makes about 8 dozen crackers.

What do YOU put on your Raincoast Crisps? There is always the old standard, brie and red pepper jelly. Aged cheddar and orange marmalade. Goat cheese and tapenade. Goose liver pate and a slice of gerkin is pretty darn good too. A dab of chicken salad topped with a sprig of dill makes a lovely little canape. Or a little slice of shaved roastbeef with a small dot of hot horseradish. Spread some natural peanut butter on a cracker with a slice of banana. I quite like cream cheese and smoked salmon on these too, with a sliver of red onion and a caper or two. Raincoast Crisps say PARTY to me, and with your own homemade batch, you can dazzle your guests with generosity that will not break the bank.

Crack the code to other savoury baked goodies with help from these books: