For February 24

Hi everyone,
mostly well again - I guess this is what a chest cold is like - I don't like it. I am mostly better, although particularly at the gym (while gasping for air) I am finding I still have gunk in my lungs. Poco a poco.

Anyway, this week, we are in a back to basics week: fairly simple round(ish) cookies, one chocolate, one sugar. Both are Alice Medrich cookies:

Spicy Chocolate Wafers 3.0
Sugar Crunch Cookies

From Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies

The "3.0" reference in the chocolate wafer's title refers to the fact that Alice is constantly reinventing her recipes. A year or two ago I made the "2.0" version (it was probably closer to "2.5" given the recipe similarities) of the chocolate wafer, which was in an earlier cookbook. The cookie is very basic - a chocolate wafer, with lots of flavor and good crispy texture. Good for munching on with a glass of milk, or to crush and turn into a pie crust. This is a very unpretentious cookie - a round, dark wafer of a cookie, no decoration, no filling. I have, however, used a variation from the book to add cinnamon, cayenne and black peppers to the dough, and so it does have quite a bit more of a flavor complexion than it appears to on first glance. It reminds me of some other spicy chocolate cookies I have made in flavor, but the texture of this one is quite different. You do have to like crispy to like this cookie.

If you don't like crispy/crunchy cookies, then this is not your week, because the other cookie, as its name - Sugar Crunch Cookies - suggests, is, well, crunchy! This one is a definite highlight cookie - very simple, and soooooo good. It is basically just a simple sugar cookie, but one that is crunchy, not soft and chewy. Like the chocolate wafer, it is the product of a lot of work and reinvention - neither of these two recipes has any eggs in them - and uses just the simplest ingredients to make a spectacular cookie. It is quite simple to make, and I highly recommend it. While a sugar cookie does not sound like a very exciting item, this week it is the star!