For September 18

This week, the recipes are from two new cookbooks, but the authors are two I admire greatly:

Hazelnut Shortbread Brownies, from Bittersweet, by Alice Medrich

Quintessential Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Desserts by the Yard, by Sherry Yard

Alice Medrich is also the author of Pure Dessert, which I have been baking from for the past few weeks.  This cookbook is an earlier one, devoted solely to chocolate recipes.  The recipe involves making a shortbread crust with lots of chopped hazelnuts as a bottom layer, and then baking the brownies on top of the shortbread.  OK, so it sounds a little decadent, I thought we could use a little variation on the usual brownies.

Sherry Yard is the pastry chef at Spago Beverly Hills, and also the author of The Secrets of Baking, which has been a very influential book for me in terms of technique.  The chocolate chip cookies are rather crisp - Sherry says that Wolfgang Puck likes his chocolate chip cookies crisp, so hers are crisp.  Not my favorite style, but they aren't going in the trash (certainly not with so much Scharffen Berger chocolate in them!)