MAKES 30 COOKIES

The almonds will continue to toast while the biscotti bake, so toast the nuts only until they are just fragrant.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We wanted biscotti that were hard and crunchy, but not hard to eat, and bold in flavor. To keep the crumb hard, we used just a small amount of butter (4 tablespoons), and to keep the biscotti from being too hard, we ground some of the nuts to a fine meal, which helped minimize gluten development in the crumb. To ensure bold flavor in a biscuit that gets baked twice, we increased the quantities of aromatic ingredients.

MAKES 32 COOKIES

If the dough gathers into a cohesive mass around the blade in the food processor workbowl, you have overprocessed it. Make sure to stop processing at the point where the mixture is separate and pebbly. If at any point during the cutting and rolling of the crescents the sheet of dough softens and becomes impossible to roll, slide it onto a baking pan and freeze it until it is firm enough to handle. Once the crescents are baking in the oven, start checking them for doneness at eighteen or nineteen minutes, especially those on the top-level rack. Feel free to substitute an equal quantity of chopped pitted prunes, chopped dried apricots, dried currants, dried cherries, or dried cranberries for the raisins in the filling.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
On the way to a rugelach recipe that gave us tender cookies with a bounteous filling, we discovered that freezing the circles of rolled-out dough before applying the filling gave our baked cookies the flakiest, most delicate texture. For the best filling for our rugelach recipe, we processed the preserves briefly in the food processor to break up larger pieces of fruit, which tend to spill out during baking. We chopped the nuts very fine and added them to the filling last, so they would block seepage.

Permalink: http://ohsheglows.com/2012/12/05/crispy-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies-vegan-gluten-free/
Makes 22 cookies (2" daimater)

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

Any flavor of jam can be used for this recipe; we found seedless jams work best. For best results, bake only one sheet of cookies at a time.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: Including cream cheese in the cookie dough gave it a welcome richness. When making the impression for the jam, we made sure to wet our fingers before touching the dough. Re-indenting the dough balls after baking them for a few minutes prevented the indentation from disappearing during baking.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2012/11/secrets-to-jam-thumbprint-cookies/

Grandma Voegele made these all the time. Our favorite! I found it on the web; known as: Brown Sugar Refrigerator Cookies. Dough keeps up to 10 days in the refrigerator. Wrap well in waxed paper.

Grandma Voegele made these all the time. Our favorite! I found it on the web; known as: Brown Sugar Refrigerator Cookies. Dough keeps up to 10 days in the refrigerator. Wrap well in waxed paper.