For August 6

I was in San Diego today, so Andrew took care of the cookies. So now I turn it over to our guest blogger, Andrew!

World Peace Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home To Yours

OK, Tom actually made these Wednesday night. They are the kind of cookies that you roll into logs and refrigerate, so all I had to do was slice them up and bake them. I am always a little worried about sizing cookies according to the recipe, so I confess that I actually pulled out the tape measure to be sure I was slicing in 1/2-inch segments. Yes, I know it's a little crazy. It was definitely worth it - these are really really good cookies - chocolatey and rich with an almost-melt-in-your-mouth texture. Quintessential cookies that should definitely bring about global harmony!

Blondies, adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Tom called on his way home from San Diego and jokingly suggested I shop for and bake the second cookie, and he said that he thought maybe brownies would be good but that he didn't want two chocolate cookies. I thought blondies sounded good, so I did some googling (why bother using the 40 million cookbooks we have when I can just google?) and came up with this recipe. It is really simple and has the advantage of having an ingredient list consisting of stuff we already had in the house. I did change it slightly based on other recipes and comments by other bakers by creaming the butter and sugar rather than melting the butter. I also added toasted walnuts and some chocolate chips. I am sending them into the world untested, so you will have to let me know how they turned out. The best part was that they were all done by the time Tom got home, so we had takeout for dinner and got to bed before midnight - hurray!