Cookie time!

Oh, man. I love holiday baking. This year is going to be a grand day of candymaking with somewhere between 6 and 9 friends coming to invade my kitchen. (I hope Hank's ready for some serious dishwashing!! ;)

But really, Christmas cookies are where it's at. I baked some last night that had me a bit worried, but they actually turned out SO amazing! I was essentially inspired by a bag of Andes peppermint chips I found in the store. They're soft and minty, but with a crunchy candy center, somewhat smaller than chocolate chips. I know Julie will gag at the thought, but I felt they really needed to be paired with some deeply chocolatey cookies.

I made up a batch of Cook's Illustrated Double Chocolate Cookies but when I added the chocolate (an entire pound, not including the cocoa powder), the batter sort of seized up. I had been really careful to make sure the chocolate wasn't too warm and that the butter wasn't too cold. It could have been that I replaced about 1/4 of the total amount of chocolate in the recipe with unsweetened chocolate (the recipe called for all semisweet). But with the addition of maybe 1/2 cup of milk, it loosened up perfectly and made these really rich cookies that were still super moist the next day.

And I thought I'd just pass along a really awesome link I found: TasteBook. It lets you create a custom cookbook with your own recipes, pull in recipes from Epicurious.com (my favorite recipe site), add photos, create a custom cover... how cool!!