Wait, weren’t we talking about amazing holiday cookies just the other day?  Yes, I know I just gave you those addictive Maple Jam Thumbprint Cookies a few days ago.  Too many cookie recipes, too soon!  Well, ’tis the season for homemade baked goods.  Besides, who can go to a party with only one type of homemade cookie?  Underachievers, that’s who.  These shortbread wedges are ultimate party showstoppers.  People will be raving.  You will be a party queen.  Recipe requests will come pouring in.  Holiday cookie success.

Sweetened entirely with honey and made with whole wheat flour, these hover on the border of healthy cookies.  Eh, the cup of butter aside … they might qualify.  Either way, they only have six ingredients and I can pronounce all of them which is enough for me.  Honey-sweetened and pecan-studded, these addictive shortbread wedges are drizzled with enough decadent dark chocolate to satisfy even the most demanding palette.

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Cookie season is upon us.  The social calendar is quickly filling up with parties and other cookie-appropriate gatherings. Your kitchen is probably covered in a fine layer of powdered sugar by this point.  In a sea of sugar-laden, overly-processed baked goods, sometimes you want to be able to bring something to the party you can actually feel good about eating.  Or at least not feel bad about eating.  No need to sabotage those New Year’s Resolutions before they even have a chance to get started!

I’m the first to admit that I’m a chocolate snob.  One look at a fruit-based dessert and I’ll quickly move on to something fudgy and decadently chocolate.  These jam thumbprint cookies converted me.  After one bite I was addicted … after eating nearly the whole batch, I quickly had to make a second batch so there would be some to actually take to the party!  Lightly sweet and nutty, these naturally sweetened jam thumbprint cookies are the holiday cookies you can feel good about sharing.

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A few weeks ago, when Hurricane Irene was barreling toward the Eastern seaboard (aka. My Home), New York City was in a panic.  Store shelves were stripped bare, batteries had never been worth more and people were walking around with more cash in their wallets than they had since the early 90s.  Like most other urbanites, I went to stock up.  Load our pantry with necessities.  Non-perishable items to live off of if the worst happened and we were stranded for days on end.  I came home with a whole chicken and a bunch of fresh basil.  Oops.

Of course, that chicken turned into an amazing one-pot meal because I was certain that if the world was going to end we weren’t going to go out hungry.  Then, in a fit of panic upon realizing that I didn’t have the proper necessities to survive Storm-aggedon, I decided it was time for Emergency Cookies.  Cookies to get you through a hurricane tropical storm.  Cookies to soothe the nerve-wracked soul but healthy enough to keep you in your skinny jeans if the world doesn’t end.

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Despite being a fairly frequent banana eater, I inevitably end up with the last few bananas in the batch turning brown before I’d planned.  It’s a safe bet to assume there are at least a few brown (ok, black) bananas hanging out in my fridge at any given time.  I usually throw them into a batch of homemade granola bars or whip up some whole wheat banana bread or muffins, but sometimes you feel the urge to be a little bad.  Something tells you it’s time to pull out the gobs of butter, the heaps of powdered sugar (gasp!) and good ‘ol fashioned white flour.

A moist, spiced banana cupcake topped with a cinnamon-spiked cream cheese frosting is the perfect solution.  You don’t have to tell anyone that the cake is spiked with dark rum or that the frosting is so melt-in-your-mouth delicious that you had several spoonfuls just to test it’s flavor.  We get it.  Some days are just made for being bad.

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Summer is fruit season.  It seems hard to remember a time when we didn’t have peaches, plums and berries aplenty!  This leads to an overwhelming desire to make pies.  Lots and lots of pies.  The problem is that making pies is a pain in the you-know-what.  You’ve got to make the crust, bake the crust (which means locating your pie weights and praying the crust doesn’t shrink), make the filling, bake it again (this time, praying that it doesn’t overflow and ruin itself).  This rustic galette (aka. A Country Pie) is endlessly adaptable and cuts out at least two of those annoying pie-making steps.

Ripe apricots partner up with homemade almond paste to make this light, crumbly galette.  Tangy, sweet apricots laying over a bed of homemade almond paste wrapped up in a light whole wheat crust.  Served warm, the oozey fruit and nutty crust are just begging to be topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream.  A perfect way to put all that summer fruit to use without all the fuss of a pie!

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I’m not going to tell you about how easy these brownies are to make.  I won’t bore you with the fact that they are sweetened naturally, use an olive oil base and are made with whole wheat flour.  Going on about the healthfulness of these brownies, the ease of assembly and the practical bonus of using up excessive amounts of zucchini distracts from the main selling point about these brownies:  They are insanely delicious!

A multi-tasking brownie that cranks the chocolate meter up to a level 10, these Double Chocolate Zucchini Brownies pack a serious punch.  These two-faced little devils are intensely fudgy when served chilled from the fridge yet cakey, moist and gooey when served warmed.  A chocoholic’s dream, these brownies satisfy even the pickiest sweet tooth while secretly throwing in a healthy dose of veggies!

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Bookmark this recipe immediately.  I promise that there is going to come a time when you are backed in a corner, you have to make something fabulous for a party/mandatory work function/end-of-a-bad-day-cure and you are going to feel trapped.  You don’t know what to make!  You don’t have time to make anything elaborate but you can’t show up with a plastic-wrapped, store-bought, chemical-laden baked good.  You don’t have time to go to the store and your kitchen looks as though it’s been ravaged by a pack of wild dogs.  This is your go-to, all-purpose problem solver cake.

A chocoholic’s dream, this flourless chocolate cake is fudgy, moist and perfectly devour-able.  It is endlessly adaptable (top with ice cream, fresh whipped cream, berries, cherry sauce, powdered sugar, chocolate ganache) yet perfectly delicious on its own.  It takes less than 10 minutes to whip up the batter and it’s out of the oven in less than a half hour.  Plus, I promise you that you already have at least four of the five ingredients already in your kitchen.  Problem?  You have met your solution!

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