Laura Rebecca's Kitchen

David Lebovitz is hosting this month’s Sugar High Friday and chose chocolate as the theme ingredient. Yum! This desert, Chocolate Decadence, not only fulfills David’s requirements but also fulfills mine for 2007: a healthy (or healthier…) dessert that doesn’t taste that way. Wonderfully (luckily, Thank God-ily), this recipe does just that: it is a decadent […]

Rich in cocoa flavor, these lovely Christmas cookies arepunctuated by crunchy bits of mint. I didn’t add the crushed candies to the batter, thinking it would be too much but I regret that decision. An additional minty snap would have added a nice counterpoint to the chewiness of the chocolate cookie. A note: I chilled […]

Tasty little buggers. Essentially, these were a vehicle to try out a bag of Nestle Chocolatier 62-percent Cacao bittersweet chocolate morsels. Shane and I tasted them along with Ghirardelli’s 60-precent Cacao bittersweet chips. Alone on the tongue, I preferred the Nestle (!!!) but in baking, the Ghirardelli still has my heart (and palate). (Shane liked […]

Retro Recipe Challenge #3 Deadline: Sunday, October 15 at 11:59pm. If you’ve ever set foot inside a bookstore in New York State, chances are you’ve spotted this iconic book: First published in 1981, Applehood & Motherpie: Handpicked recipes from Upstate New York is a collection of recipes put out by the Junior League of Rochester. […]

One of Sadie’s favorite candies — if not her favorite — is a marshmallow covered in milk chocolate. This is the cookie version of that confection. A tender chocolate cookie is topped with a soft-yet-chewy marshmallow and smothered in rich and buttery chocolate frosting. Those you share these cookies with might be surprised to find […]

There are few Cosby-related items I remember vividly from childhood: Fat Albert, watched in the afternoon on FOX 5. (The Brown Hornet: a tv show within a tv show. So meta!) The Cosby Show, with Claire Huxtable as perfection in an 80s power suit. (Pretty! Smart! Sophisticated! Did I mention pretty?) Chocolate Jell-o Pudding Pops; […]

Happy birthday kid. Moving has turned me into a horrible bitch goddess . (Well, all right, not that alone — there was always a natural tendency.) Packing is boring, cleaning is tedious, waiting on mortgages is nervewracking, bleeding money is horrifying. For the past two weeks, my inclination is to bury myself in a den […]

It KILLED me not to mention this in the original Closin’ Cookies post, but I did not on the advice of our realtors. I think now, however, I can safely reveal the story: We put the house up for sale on a Friday night. The next day – Saturday – we had two parties look […]

Earlier this year, the New York Times’ Amanda Hesser published chocolate chip cookie recipes for three different types of cookies: Thin and Crispy, Flat and Chewy, and Thick and Gooey. I’d volunteered to bake cookies for a Writers’ Tea in Sadie’s class, and thought “Hey, why don’t I try that thick cookie recipe?” They’re very […]

On Friday evening, Shane & I officially put our house up for sale. A few hours later, we had two separate parties asking to see the house the next day. Saturday morning, Shane ran around like a chicken with its head cut off cleaning the house, taking stuff to storage, etc., etc., where I was […]