This site began as a chronicle of my cooking mishaps. The purpose of documenting my trials and errors in the kitchen was as much to keep myself cooking as it was to prove that if I can cook, anyone can. Throughout this last week I’ve been traveling through Europe, eating my way from London to Berlin and Stockholm. In the meantime, I’ve also begun writing about local food practices for the Green section of The Huffington Post. Though I’ve missed the ins and outs of my own kitchen, I’ve also been spoiled by a few great meals and some wonderful European markets. In addition, I’ve been thinking about food a bit more analytically of late, from a social, political and economic perspective. What are the ramifications of what I choose to buy and how I decide to prepare it? I believe that how we eat reflects who we are, and if we make food a conscientious and deliberate occasion in our lives, we can have more thoughtful, engaged relationships with our communities, friends and food sources. As such, I will expand the reach of this site to cover my food perspectives and tastes on a number of levels: through cooking, eating, restaurant and book reviews as well as musings on the origins of my comestibles. In the meantime, here are links to my two pieces on The Huffington Post. The first, Local Food: Scandal and Slander deals with those who deign to begrudge local eating, while outlining some of the core reasons why I favor local food whenever possible. The second, Wal-Mart Goes Local…So? looks to how capitalism and oil prices might save small, regional farms. I will also offer food features I write for findingDulcinea, which index some of the best Web sites for studying the history and culture of different food varieties. The latest, Barbecue Season, explains the history of barbecue in America from Brooklyn to Texas. Feel free to comment if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of. Tomorrow, expect a cheesecake.

Sometimes I confess, I carry packets of hot chocolate in my bag. I have a pathetic tendency towards cold-bloodedness, frequently shivering from July to June and all months in between. Drinking warm liquids is a comfort to me: it helps me stay warm and satisfied, instead of hollow-bellied and frigid like a hungry newt…which is often how I feel between meals and in blistering air conditioning or winter weather. Hence my faithful Stanley thermos and packets of hot chocolate, to be enjoyed whenever I can get my hands on 16 oz of boiling water. Last night, I had the hot chocolate of a lifetime. I am afraid it will inspire me to divorce my long-time partner Swiss Miss–which admittedly has been a marriage of convenience. She’s always been there for me, ready to remind me of childhood days on the ski slopes or of family ice skating in the high school hockey rink. She keeps me warm and my sweet tooth sated. But now I am afraid that even when I happen upon a floating marshmallow from one of her special packets, I will feel forlorn and disappointed, yearning for something more. Something like what I had last night. I came home late from a long night of eating, drinking and dancing. I went to a Greek-themed party, which I will post on tomorrow. Though the entertainment was spectacular, the hot chocolate at the evening’s end was by far the best part. It was extraordinary. It was the best chocolate ever brewed, I am convinced. When I woke up today my thoughts went right back to it: to the dark cubes wrapped in thin paper like tea bags, and placed bottoms- up in fine little tea cups. These dark chocolate squares were served like lollipops on wooden sticks, wrapped in paper and resting in empty china. (Drinking from a proper saucer and cup makes any beverage better.) On the side there was a big, white thermos with pewter piping full of steamed whole milk: partly frothy, partly rich liquid. But when I poured the milk into each cup and swirled the chocolate around with the wooden stick, it turned into a paisley mix of white and brown before the chocolate melted some more. Once I deemed it dark enough, I removed the lollipop from the cup, sucked at the remaining cube (now a cylinder) and placed the naked stick and the dripping paper into a deep side saucer, offered specifically to hold these remnants of my brew. Licking melted chocolate off of my fingers made the process especially enjoyable…  apparently I got some on my nose. When I go home I will melt and mold chocolate around sticks so that I can enjoy this kind of cocoa anytime. I suggest you do the same.

I am in London on vacation. This makes photographing food a challenge, as propriety insists that I don’t snap flash photos at the dinner table. And anyway, England is worse than famous for its comestibles: it’s notorious. (An accusation I think is increasingly incorrect, given the abundance of fruit stands, Marks and Spencers and all of the great ethnic cuisine to be had…Not to mention Gordon Ramsey.) Since I don’t intend on writing much about Shepherd’s Pie or Fish and Chips, I’ll focus on the British green thumb. One of the reasons I like food so much is that it gives me a reason to pause and reflect at least three times daily. The more I’ve invested in a meal, the more I enjoy the experience. Maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance, but when I go out to a nice restaurant I always enjoy myself. And, when I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, the meal never fails to impress me more than a bowl of Lucky Charms would. In England, the gardens demand the same kind of reflection as a high-quality meal. Even better, they exist for everyone, and nearly everyone indulges. Yesterday as I watched hundreds of Londoners gather in Hyde Park to smell the roses, it dawned on me: when you have pergola and green fields this good, some wax-paper wrapped sandwiches, a beer and a box of sliced fruit is all the fancy food you need. Unfortunately, I realized that too late and was torn from my rose-sniffing post by a grumbling belly. Tomorrow I will bring a picnic and life will be supreme.

Last week I found out that the Cavendish banana—the yellow wonder we rely on to cover our corn flakes and as a bed for banana splits—is threatened by a soon-to erupt fungus. Unfortunately, the banana doesn’t have the likes of Mars, Inc. on its side: the chocolate manufacturer has just offered the U.S. Department of Agriculture $10 million dollars to have its best and brightest researchers examine the gamut of the cacao plant genome as a preventative measure against chocolate-killing fungi. Apparently, Chequita is not so generous, and the banana is at risk of extinction.

There are a couple of reasons why I can confidently condone buying bananas even though they are not local to most places in the U.S.. First and foremost, I buy them to bake with. This means, I buy the already brownish or blackened variety—the kind that no one else wants. I would rather put food to use than let it go to waste, local or no. Second, if my children or grandchildren will never have the luxury of eating a banana, I’d like to ensure that enough of the stuff makes into my blood stream before it vanishes. That way they will at least feel the after-effects of all of that sweet potassium. What a tragedy it would be to deny myself something that won’t last much longer.

And recently, I made my best batch of banana bread yet.Banana bread is especially dear to my heart. Last September, when I first decided to learn how to cook, it was the first thing I baked. Even then—when my kitchen skills were mighty dubious—this recipe worked. It’s practically not even a recipe. More like a plan for some ingredients, which is my favorite form of food instruction.

Just do this: beat 1 c of vegetable or canola oil in a bowl with 3 eggs and 1 ½ cups of sugar. * Mix in 3 cups of flour plus 1 tsp. each of baking soda and salt. * Mix in 6 mashed bananas and 1 cup of chopped pecans. * Bake in a 9 x 13 for 1 hour at 300 degrees. Cover the top with aluminum foil if it starts to brown prematurely.

Everybody likes banana bread. Before you know it, the loaf will be gone. And so might the bananas…dun dun dun..

On Tuesday afternoon I sat encircled by my go-to cook books: “The Art of Simple Food,” “Moosewood Restaurant Lowfat Favorites,” “Vegetable Harvest,” and a few others. I was planning my trip to the farmer’s market, scouring lists of ingredients and directions, hoping for the perfect meal to emerge from the pages. But even as I revisited these tried and true, I felt under-whelmed: every recipe I saw had some ingredient I didn’t feel like finding, or some technique or time requirement I didn’t feel like abiding. What if I wanted something with eggplant and squash and onions that didn’t require Parmiagiano-Reggiano or a mandoline? What if I wanted asparagus and fiddlehead ferns but not mixed into a rich risotto? I turned more than 700 pages looking for the perfect combinations to appear. Nothing. In the early stages of my culinary experimentation, this would have made me feel like a failure. There is something subliminally dispiriting about directions. Sure, it works against me every time I try to put together Ikea furniture without the instructions, but food is another story. Especially when it comes to non-baked goods, which can really be dictated by intuition in lieu of chemistry. Somehow, I feel like recipes keep me from fully experiencing food. The imposed restraints hold me back from following the sensibilities of my nose, knife and gut. Still, I felt obliged to support the farmers who had worked so hard to harvest produce this week. At the market, I was seduced by all of my favorite June vegetables: their lumpy shapes, their warts and bright colors. Haphazardly, I threw whatever tickled my fancy into my old brown bag, yet unsure of what they would become. When I got home, I ordered take out, still stung by the cookbook roadblock I’d faced a few hours before. I wasn’t ready to deal with the mass of raw eggplant, orange peppers, cauliflower, tomatoes, basil, mint, eggs and cucumber I’d procured, seemingly without a purpose. The next day, still discouraged, I got all of my eats from random sources—eggs at a coffee shop, salad from the grocery store, a bag of nuts and dried fruit from yet another coffee shop… lots of coffee. I felt thoroughly unsatisfied. All of my food had been outsourced: not a bite of my own doing, despite the many ingredients dormant in my crisper drawer. But still, I thought, “At home, there’s nothing to eat.”

Have you ever had this feeling? Absolute discouragement at the prospects of what’s in your kitchen? The sense that there’s nothing to eat, even when an abundance of items lines the shelves and drawers of the refrigerator or pantry? I have this feeling a lot.

And cookbooks are to blame. Cooking should be an experience unique to each person—just as appetites and food preferences are. What if we can’t find a recipe to encompass the complexity and dynamics of our palate? Does that mean we should order take out, because we know the pizza will deliver those same reliable flavors? In my experience, recipes can be quite limiting: I think if I put something in that doesn’t belong or leave something else out, I won’t measure up to the standards of the author. I’m revolting against recipes. For the rest of the summer, I will use them only as inspiration for some combinations of foods, but for nothing else.

Until I need to make a proper Béarnaise sauce or soufflé, I am abandoning anything that puts a limit on my interaction and relationship with food. When I decided that, it suddenly became obvious what all of my ingredients needed: the vegetables yearned to be roasted with olive oil and sautéed shallots and herbs, and the cauliflower, basil, mint, pine nuts, avocado and cucumber I had lying about were hoping to meet the blender and a soup bowl. All I did was steam the cauliflower, let it cool and throw all of my ingredients into a blender with a diced super-hot pepper. It was one of the most pleasing chilled soups I’ve ever had: thick and creamy and light all at once. Now my refrigerator is stuffed with things I cannot wait to eat, and all it took was a blender, a broiler and a bit of confidence in my own tastes. I want to love food for what it is–a complement to my appetite and cooking. After all, I know what I want. Why shouldn’t I have it?

Yesterday I had an abundance of two things: sour cream and requests for lemon squares. And last night, I almost lost both. In a careless butter-wielding maneuver, I nearly over-greased the crust of my bars and ended up with soggy butter crumbs. Fortunately, a miraculous addition of flour saved the occasion. My bars pulled through, the sour cream was put to good use, and scurvy was averted for the week with this heady citrus dose. I drifted from baking source to baking source until stumbling onto a recipe for lemon squares that would puff atop a rich butter shell. Rich and puffy… sounds like something to get seriously involved with. But it was a great stroke of irony: just yesterday, after having posted about how much I love veering away from recipes, (and how successful I’d been in my Ratatouille pursuit la-di-da) and not necessarily using the tools called for (la-di-da-di-da) I was vindicated. The recipe for these sour cream lemon shortbread bars calls for ¾ c butter, chilled and chopped and then mixed in with flour, sugar and lemon zest to make a crumbly crust—“whizz in a food processor until sandy with pea sized crumbles”—it said, or something to that effect. “Whizz in the food processor?” I thought of some little pig-tailed six-year-old standing on a stool and making whizzing sounds over her mom’s machine. I was not about to “whizz” anything edible. Fork and forearm it would be for this highly snobbish food purist. But as the crumbling and sanding of the dough seemed interminable, and all I had were large chunks of butter and very dry flour, I decided to add a couple more harmless tabs. What’s 2 extra tablespoons on top of 12? Well, it turns out, a lot. I knew the second I started spreading my crust that this would be a temperamental batter. A little too fatty for its own good, it kept slipping down the sides of the pan. I extracted it and put it back in the bowl, dusting it with a couple more tablespoons of flour, sugar and salt and cursing my confidence, hoping that it would not get tough with all this extra manhandling. What’s more, the intended recipient was dutifully keeping me company despite the 112 degree kitchen. I could not mess this up—especially since I’d just run out of butter in the process. It would be a big, fatty waste. Once it went into the oven, I kept a sharp eye on the dough, which managed to hold its shape and survive the 19 minutes it took to bake until golden. Nevertheless, its cooking time was frequently interrupted by my prodding spatula, which I used to push the slinking dough back up the sides of the pan. I needed to keep it all from sliding into the center so that these bars could at least have crusty edges. It produced a nice scalloped effect in the dough, though, which was a plus.

All the while, I hesitated to make the filling in case my crust was a bust. With 3 minutes remaining on its bake time, I started zesting and juicing, mixing and measuring. I ran out of sour cream and had to use 2 tablespoons of the fat free variety to complete the recipe. I ran out of sugar (what kind of baker runs out of SUGAR?) and had to replace ½ c with confectioners’. The potential for massive failure was again mounting.

What would I do if all had been for naught? Pout. I was, in fact, no better than the six year old “whizz” baker I had scorned in my imagination just moments before. I gave the crust a little spatula uplift before pouring in the rapidly mixed batter. I would know its fate in 21 minutes. To my amazement, the dessert didn’t die. In fact, the lemon mass seemed to come to life in eerie and spectacular ways, rising up out of the crust as a looming, yellow, flat-topped cloud. Something was reacting right. After a full 25 minutes in the oven, I removed it and let it cool. The puffy center sank a bit, and the crust held together. My only complaint: these squares are not quite lemony enough. I wish the author of this recipe had called for more lemon zest. As a self-proclaimed “baker,” she should know better.

Here’s what she calls for, and how I did it. If you want an extra rich (albeit slightly temperamental) batter, go with my version.

Crust:
1 ½ c all-purpose flour ( I added 2 tbsp); 1/3 c sugar (I added 1 tbsp); 2 tsp lemon zest; ¼ tsp salt (I doubled); ¾ c butter, chilled and cut into chunks—here’s where I added 2 tbsp. * “Whizz” together the dry ingredients in a food processor, add butter, mix until “crumbly, sandy, pea-sized chunks” form. Press into pan. If you do it my way, you’ll use your arm instead of a machine, and your batter will be smooth. * Bake 19 minutes at 350 in a 9×13 incher.

Lemon Filling:
3 large eggs at room temp; 1 ½ cups of sugar ( ½ of mine was confectioner’s); 6 tbsp sour cream ( 2 of mine were fat free); 3 tbsp all purpose flour; ½ tsp baking powder; ½ tsp salt; ¼ cup lemon juice; Zest of 2 lemons (DON’T BE FOOLED! USE MORE!!!) Pour this in once the crust has been removed from the oven but is still warm. * Bake 25 minutes or until corners brown. * Dust with confectioner’s sugar. * Cool completely. These are fluffy and puffy and yes, indeed rich. But personally, I prefer a more traditional lemon square.

If you love the idea of savory summer vegetables in a heaping bowl of herbs and spices, you’ve likely tried your hand at a steaming pot of Ratatouille. But, if you’re anything like me, you’re likely to have ended up with a limp blob of hot, mushy mass. I have difficulty following recipes properly. When I open a book, I glance at the ingredients, jot them down and then proceed to modify the steps involved in putting them together to suit my own fancy. There are always—always—at least two or three aspects of a recipe that I don’t appreciate and am not interested in following. I am often put off by the food processor, for example, favoring things that can be frothed or chopped via my very own elbow grease. Electric mixers can be fine, but mine broke a few months ago, and I’ve gotten along better without it. Maybe I am a purist, maybe I am just lazy—and maybe this is why my ratatouille attempts have failed in the past.

Usually, I procure the necessary ingredients and follow along until I have a better idea of how to tackle things. Hence, my goopy, over cooked vegetable clumps. Nothing is worse than overcooked vegetables. Except, perhaps, wasting pounds of good produce. Though I can’t honestly say that I followed her recipe exactly, Alice Water’s Ratatouille-making advice from her book “The Art of Simple Food,” was a great jumping off point for my summer stew ambitions. In the end, it allowed me to experiment a bit, while honoring the integrity of the flavor and consistency of fresh vegetables. No wilted zucchini, no pulverized eggplant, no rubbery tomatoes.Ultimately, she taught me a great lesson: it all boils down to the order of things. You must cook the eggplant first, then remove it: allowing it to soak up enough olive oil to have flavor and heft, but protecting it from your whirling wooden spoon and from the hard-bodied peppers and squash that might otherwise turn it into mash during the cooking process. Then, you must add onions; garlic and herbs; peppers; zucchini and tomatoes in that order, as it coincides with how long each vegetable will take to cook down to an equivalent consistency.

Finally, something all good cooks know, but that I failed to take into account during erstwhile ‘touille failures: make sure that all of the pieces of produce you put in the pot are equal in size. That will ensure even cooking.

Here’s how my version went:

(Do this in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Cut ALL vegetables into ½ inch pieces.)

* 3 Italian eggplant, salted and left to drain 20 minutes. Once drained, sauté in a generous 2 tbsp olive oil, until golden. Remove from heat and set aside. * Add 2 chopped, red onions to 2 tbsp olive oil in the same heavy-bottomed skillet. * Cook for 7 minutes, or until translucent. * Add 6 chopped heads of garlic, about 12 basil leaves and a generous pinch of chili flakes to the onions, stir for a few minutes. * Add 2 chopped red peppers, cook for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. * Add 5 small zucchini, cook for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. * Add one large can of Roma tomatoes. I chopped mine and poured in the juice as well. * Season with herbs of your choice, and cook another 3 minutes or so. * Add eggplant and cook for 10 minutes, or until all veggies are tender—but not insubstantial. If you cook too long you’ll lose both consistency and color. If you don’t, you’ll have a heaping and delicious batch of summer food at its finest. I served mine up with a grilled cheese sandwich made from Anima goat-cheese Gruyère on a toasted French baguette. For those of us working without a panini maker, it’s easy enough to flatten out a thick sandwich like this between to piping hot skillets. I’m told Bud Light goes very well as an accompaniment to this meal.

Most people are supportive of my food experimentation. This may be because few are actually forced to taste everything I produce, and can comfortably come and go online, peering at my haphazard creations from a safe, virtual distance.But one reader had a recent complaint: “You never make anything with frosting.” Catherine, these are for you… and for Michael, too, whose birthday finally gave me an excuse to make chocolate icing. Though I’d been told the birthday boy favored chocolate cake with strawberries, I opted for cupcakes to make sharing easier. Nobody wants to stare down a birthday cake all alone at the office—a dozen miniatures strike me as slightly less overwhelming.

My only regret is that cupcakes provide significantly less surface area for strawberries. I stuck them on where I could, but didn’t want my precious icing to be pushed too much adrift because too many fruits had been crammed on.

The recipe was remarkably easy and might have been ready in under an hour, had I not opted to chill the frosting a while. Which actually was a wise move, as it provided added traction and control. I’m sort of a klutz, so I need all the help I can get when frosting.

I took the recipe from a favorite food site Joy of Baking, which has nothing to do with the cookbook of a similar name. Stephanie Jaworski took her recipe from Judy Rosenberg’s “All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar- Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book.” I MUST get my greedy little hands on that book.

For the cupcakes:

Melt 4oz unsweetened or very dark chocolate, chopped and 4 oz chopped butter in a saucepan. (Be careful not to let this boil, or even simmer…) * Once the chocolate is melted completely, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes. * Stir in 1 and 1/4 cup granulated white sugar (unless using sweetened chocolate, in which case use only 1 cup sugar). * Add 1 tsp pure vanilla * Add three eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. * Mix in 3/4 c all purpose flour and 1 tsp. salt until well blended. * Bake at 320 degrees in cupcake holders lined with paper baking cups.

For the frosting (weeee!)

Melt 4 oz unsweetened or dark chocolate and 6 oz butter in a saucepan (if you use the same one as before, you don’t have to wash it first, hoorah! * Remove from heat and stir in 3/4 tsp vanilla extract and 2 tsp light corn syrup. * Whisk in the 1 and 1/3 c powdered sugar, a little at a time. * Don’t get scared, Catherine. At this point, your frosting will be thick. * Add 1/2 c sour cream plus 1 tsp hot water and mix thoroughly until smooth, shiny, creamy–all of that good frosted stuff. Chill it for an hour before spreading onto completely cooled cupcakes. FYI, I made these without an electric mixer or food processor. Good old fork and forearm did the trick just fine.

Garnish with strawberries and deliver.

Another advancement in scurvy prevention was taken in my home last night, with the addition of key lime pie to edible things I can produce. I used to judge a place by its key lime pie. I would sample one at ever eatery I frequented and base my opinion of the kitchen on that first sweet and sour bite. I took the habit from a dapper man who lives on Nantucket. He never eats out in the summer without sampling the key lime. He is a very cool dude. So for a while, I copied him. Having had my fill of outsourced key lime pies, I’ve been hankering to build one of my own. But after tasting so many triumphant specimens, I was more than a little intimidated. I’ve been putting off this key lime for about five years.

I rummaged through a series of possible pies, from Bubby’s to The Joy of Cooking. I decided on a straightforward recipe from Gourmet Magazine. I was surprised by how few ingredients it called for. (Time was an issue last night, so instead of baking graham cracker cookies with which to make a crust, I needed a recipe that would allow me to use the store-bought kind, without feeling like an underachiever. Ahem, Martha.)

As I pushed my cart through the grocery store aisles, procuring the necessary crackers and condensed milk, I stumbled upon the citrus aisle and glanced at my recipe. A mere ½ c plus 3 tablespoons of limejuice—child’s play! How may limes would I need? Five? Six?

Twenty limes later, I had enough juice. But my oh my, it was worth every squeeze. The tiny, tough little suckers I bought, twenty for $1, were pinched dry, each and every one. If I hadn’t seen the sale sign above the overflowing bin of these diminutive fruits, I probably would have picked up a handful, assuming it would be sufficient. When I walked out of the store with my little sac of citrus, I imagined four, maybe five pies. And maybe some lime-aid, too.

Not so. But, after reaching the amount of juice called for by the recipe, I had four limes remaining. What would I do with these little guys later? They would barely make a dent in anything. I squeezed them in.

This morning we had key lime pie for breakfast, as we decided to let it chill overnight—though the temptation to pierce the custard inside after just a few hours of chilling was mighty strong. Our mouths puckered with the first bite—this pie was a serious Lolita. As tart as any homemade dessert I’ve ever enjoyed, since I’ve yet to tackle Lemon Heads.

Here’s how it went:

Preheat oven to 350 * 12 graham crackers pulverized plus 6 tbsp. melted butter and 3 tbsp sugar mixed together completely. (I made more of this than the recipe called for… I am a crusty kind of gal.) * Press the crust evenly along the bottom and up the sides of a 9’’ pie plate. * Bake for 10 minutes.

As the crust cools, mix 1 can of sweetened condensed milk with 4 egg yolks until completely blended. * Add ½ c plus 3 tbsp. fresh squeezed key lime juice and mix again. * For me, this meant 20 little limeys. * Pour into crust and bake for 15 minutes.*

Cool for at least 4 hours in the fridge. When ready to serve, garnish with lime or homemade whipped cream, though you can also serve it with a side of coffee. This is a nice eye-opener.

If you’ve ever had François Payard’s flourless chocolate cookies with walnuts, you know what transcendent bliss feels like. If you’ve never had François Payard’s flourless chocolate cookies, get yourself one and get the Kingdom of God within you, bite by heavenly bite.

If you can’t make it to Payard in New York (or Vegas or Rio) you can still come close to Paradise, if you play your cards right. The recipe we chocoholic plebeians have prayed for has finally been published, allowing even the lowly to recreate the divine qualities of French baking. (Celiac and Passover friendly to boot!)

I found the recipe in New York Magazine. My batter looked and tasted exactly as I would have anticipated. When it baked, however, some of the chocolate “dough” meted around the nuts, rendering my cookies significantly flatter than the Payard version I am so deeply in love with.

Nevertheless, they were delightful—chewy and crunchy around the edges, as I prefer my cookies to be. They require very few ingredients, just one fork a big bowl and a nut-chopping block. They are remarkably easy to construct.

Next time I do them, I will probably add more nuts to thicken the cookies a tad. Ironically, copying the great François would mean deviating from his recipe—which makes me wonder if the Payard cookbook is engaging in a conspiracy to keep us civilian bakers frustrated and lowly. But maybe that’s a paranoid suspicion…

Here’s how it went:

Roast 2 ¾ c walnut halves in the oven for 9 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool, then coarsely chop. * Mix 3 cups of confectioner’s sugar (if you are Kosher, grind your own granulated sugar into confectioners, since the store-bought stuff contains cornstarch to prevent clumps) with 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder and 1/4 tsp salt. When finished, add the chopped walnuts. * Add 4 egg whites and 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla (pre-mixed) in 3 batches to the dry mix. Bake at 320 degrees for about 14 minutes, or until tops are shiny, shifting cookie trays to ensure even baking.

The recipe warned about over-mixing, so I opted out of using an electric apparatus and went with fork and forearm instead. (Initially, I went with a whisk, but the walnuts got stuck inside the wires.)

The recipe also suggested laying 12 cookies on a parchment-lined paper and baking two batches. IGNORE THIS!!! Don’t put more than 9 on a pan—they spread like nobody’s business. In the end, I chose to make my cookies larger with only 4 to a cookie sheet. This makes them extra-delicate, however, so be sure to let them cool completely before tinkering.

Crumble these on vanilla ice cream, and you’ll bypass St. Peter entirely.