[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

When I want to squelch my chocolate craving, I usually head for my favorite brownie recipe. This time, though, I thought I'd bake off a cookie version instead. Brownie cookies are probably as chocolatey as you can get with a cookie as they have lots of melted chocolate and very little flour. They're meant to offer everything good about a brownie—moist center, chewy exterior—without having to wait for a whole pan of brownies to bake.

I decided to take my brownie recipe for Perfect Brownies and give it a makeover into a cookie version. Knowing that the cookie dough/batter would have to be scoop-able and hold it's shape in the oven, I tweaked a few things. I cut back slightly on the butter and the eggs, and begrudgingly stirred in an extra 2 tablespoons flour (they were super flat without it). I stuck with deep dark 70% bittersweet chocolate, and instead of cocoa powder I added unsweetened chocolate.

While you don't usually whip your eggs for brownies, I found a few recipes for brownie cookies that do, so I tried it thinking that volumizing the eggs would create a thicker batter. Nope. While this step didn't do that at all (I still had to chill the batter to get it to hold it's shape), the dissolved sugar from the egg beating created that sought after glossy surface on top (which I never seem to get with my pan brownies).

To counter the extra flour that I had to add to the batter, I tossed in a whole cup of bittersweet chips. That means that when you bite into the still warm cookies, there's a luxurious molten chocolate center. So maybe these aren't faster than a pan brownie, but for pure chocolate factor, brownie cookies are a definite keeper in my cookie file.

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Chocolate Chip Brownie Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

I've got a pathetic confession to make. I've never tried kugel, the classic Jewish noodle and custard pudding. I have no excuse either, especially given my pastry background. Even when I lived on the south shore of Long Island, where delis abound that sell big square hunks of it, I never opted to give it a go. For some reason I couldn't get over the sweet + pasta flavor profile, though I've certainly eaten plenty of sweet rice desserts. In my defense though, it was mostly the raisins that put me off (I'm averse to raisins in most desserts, especially custards), and most of the kugels I've encountered have had them.

So here I am, at the age that I'm at, never having tucked into a kugel. So I baked one. I can't say that it was the wisest way to try it for the first time. How do I know what it's supposed to taste like? What about the texture? Undaunted, I plowed in with a base recipe that I'd put together from a few online offerings. With ingredients like sour cream, cottage cheese, and cream cheese, this dessert seemed way more indulgent than I ever imagined. How could I not love it? For mine, I skipped the cream cheese but tossed in a generous amount of melted white chocolate—an unusual but mild enough ingredient that would add yet another layer of richness to the flavors. And because white chocolate is so buttery, I left out any additional butter.

Pre-boiling the egg noodles keeps them nice and soft, and baking the pudding on an upper rack nicely browns the top. Don't over-bake the pudding or the eggs will curdle, as mine almost did (the edges definitely did). I'm assuming that you want the pudding just set, sliceable, but still creamy. The flavor and texture was like a warm white chocolate cheesecake, slightly tangy from the sour cream and sweet and buttery from the white chocolate. It's even better served cold the next day. I could kick myself that I waited so long to try it, and when I'm in NY again I know right were I'm headed—to savor the real thing and see how mine stacked up.

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White Chocolate Noodle Pudding »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

I wish that I were young enough to not even know what a real icebox is, but I'm not. I even had a grandmother who must have used the real deal herself because she only referred to her fridge as an icebox. Her vintage electric Frigidaire was modeled after a real icebox—you had to open the main fridge door to access the tiny freezer compartment (and I mean tiny). It was cute, but terrible. The inside of the little freezer box constantly leaked water. And it would completely ice up, causing ice cube trays and boxes of frozen veggies to become wedged in for life.

Invented in that bygone era, icebox cookies are nothing more than cookies baked from a dough that's been chilled. The dough is usually rolled up into a cylinder, chilled until firm, then sliced and baked. Even after all these years, the name has stuck. That's fine with me. The name "refrigerator cookie" reminds me of unpleasant refrigerator smell.

I love icebox cookies because they're an awesome make-ahead cookie dough. If the dough is rolled into a neatly shaped cylinder, the cookies bake up perfectly round. I have a particular affection for these double chocolate icebox cookies because they're wicked chocolatey (1:2 ratio of cocoa to flour). I'll stand at the counter shoving dough into my mouth to get my chocolate fix right then and there if I'm not careful. The only thing that stops me is knowing that the baked cookie is even better: tender, slightly crisp, and with a mound of chocolate chips baked into the top.

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Double Chocolate Icebox Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

This recipe for chocolate polenta was inspired by a recipe that I've kept forever but have never even made. You see I've had a recipe for sweet polenta souffle in my recipe file for, seriously, over ten years. I've been meaning to make it, will never toss it out, but somehow the timing never seemed right, or I just didn't have polenta on the shelf. And even today, as I was leafing through my folder looking for inspiration, and came across this recipe once again, I still passed it by (today's excuse: no patience for a souffle). Instead, the recipe inspired me to stir up something simpler—a polenta pudding, and a chocolate one to boot.

Now I know most of us think of polenta as savory, which is still my favorite way to eat it, but polenta is absolutely delicious as a sweet concoction. Swapping in whole milk for water makes this pudding delectably rich, and as the starch granules of the ground corn cook and swell, the pudding takes on an appropriately thick consistency without having to add a more traditional binder such as cornstarch or egg. A touch of cinnamon and hot pepper lend a mexican-chocolate vibe to the flavors.

Though I expected the polenta to take a bit of time and stirring to cook, this polenta thickened up in no more than three minutes (the bag was just labeled "polenta" but I suspect that the no-name brand was instant polenta). No matter, it made the process even easier and it still tasted great. Served warm, this rich and satisfying pudding retains the slightly grainy texture of the corn and has a creamy milk chocolatey flavor. My sweet polenta souffle will just have to wait it out in my folder till the next time.

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Creamy Chocolate Polenta »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

Cool and luscious. [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

I'm a recent convert to summer pudding, the cool and juicy dessert traditionally made by soaking white bread with a berry compote. For years, I'd thought it odd to soak white bread with berries, expecting the texture to be like a mushy jelly sandwich. And to be honest, most images of summer pudding—with a gash of blood red berries spilling out from the center—seem more suited to a slasher flick than something I want to eat. But in fact the texture of the bread becomes pleasantly soft and almost creamy as it gels with the saucy berries, and once I realized that summer pudding is basically a no-bake bread pudding, I got to thinking about other ways to present this easy, cool dessert. As in, say chocolate?

When I come up with a new idea I always do some research to ground myself, but this time, I found nothing. Nada. So I had to wing it. My vision was a creamy chocolate raspberry bread pudding made from chocolate custard soaked bread—but without the oven. To do it, I gently cooked a custard sauce of milk, cream, semisweet chocolate, and egg. After cutting pieces of soft white bread to fit my cups (for individual servings), I assembled each pudding by layering the bread, chocolate sauce, and crushed raspberries into each cup.

Patience is king with summer puddings. It takes time to allow the bread to fully absorb the liquid and "set". I let mine soak overnight in the fridge before turning it out onto a plate (digging in with a spoon works too). The texture is like a super moist and creamy layer cake, and the extra chocolate custard that didn't soak into the bread spills over the top. Though saucy enough as is, I served it on a pool of dark chocolate sauce for an extra blast of chocolate.

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Creamy Chocolate Raspberry Summer Pudding »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

As a non-vegan who eats, cooks, and bakes with animal products daily, I don't think about vegan baking in the slightest. However, I have experimented in special diet and vegan baking a few times at the request of clients. When the opportunity pops up, I take it as a challenge to devise a recipe that tastes delicious and as close to "the real thing" as possible (apologies for any offense here). When I bake up these recipes, one thing is important to me—I don't want to use any "substitute" ingredients, such as egg replacers, xantham gum, and the like. This is mostly because I just don't stock the stuff and I want to use whatever I have in house.

Years ago, an order for vegan chocolate chip cookies came in at my bakery. As I searched for recipes, I came across a popular one called "Unbeatable Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies." I glanced it over, eliminated the oddball ingredients such as the egg replacer and soy milk, made a few tweaks, and whipped up a batch. Even without the egg replacer binder, they were truly great. Admittedly more delicate than an egg-bound cookie, the cookies were still great thanks to the oats and coconut which impart a decent chew. They were so good, in fact, that I'd bake up a batch to sell in the pastry window whenever I had the chance. I wouldn't even say they were vegan, and no one ever knew.

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Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

Despite their blended interiors, these cheesecake swirl brownies wind up being just as rich, if not richer, than an all-chocolate fudge brownie. Creamy, tangy cheese layered with rich, dark chocolate? I'm not complaining: I love chocolate and I love cheesecake. And interestingly, even though cheesecake is one of the most guilt inducing desserts, swirling it into a brownie base makes it seem a tad less threatening. Or so I say to myself.

You see I was really craving cheesecake, but feeling guilty about it (here in Singapore I'm in a perpetual bathing suit season). And the problem is that unlike other desserts which I'm happy to share with others, I look forward to managing a whole cheesecake alone. So I convinced myself that this dessert would satisfy my cheesecake fix without going overboard.

I took a favorite fudgy brownie recipe of mine and changed a few of the ingredients to account for what I had on hand. The cream cheese layer is simply softened cream cheese, sugar, and an egg. A butter knife was used to swirl the batter together. The bars are done as soon as the cheesecake is soft set. I couldn't even wait till the bars cooled properly before I dug in. Just a little bite.

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Cheesecake Swirl Brownies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

The lazy man's cookie. [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

I'll never forget the time that my great grandmother showed up with a pan of chocolate chip bar cookies. Her regular cookies were good, but these chewy morsels were hard to beat. I thought this invention of hers was genius, and begged her to always bake her cookies that way. It wasn't until years later when I saw a recipe on the back of the package of chips that I realized that these weren't her special creation, she was just trying out a new recipe.

One of the best things about bar cookies is that you can pretty much spread any drop cookie into a pan and bake them as one giant cookie. The edges bake up firm and crispy while the center remains moist and a little underdone.

In the mood for a chocolate cookie but not up for scooping, I reworked the ingredient amounts of a favorite cookie so that it fit a 9-inch square pan. Not too shallow, not too deep, and chock full of chocolate chips, nuts, and white chocolate chips, I might not go back to my old recipe again.

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Black and White Bar Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

There were very few desserts that my great grandmother chose to buy rather than bake. One of her store bought delicacies were coconut macaroons, which came in a can to keep them moist. Unlike small, light as a feather, delicate French almond macarons, the coconut variation is rugged around the edges and full of chewy, crunchy texture. Very rich, it doesn't take many coconut macaroons to satiate a sweet fix.

By adding chocolate, these macaroons up the ante when it comes to indulgence. These macaroons are also slightly different than the ones of my youth. Instead of the fine coconut texture and cloying condensed milk, these cookies have a super duper moist, fudge-like center that comes from melted chocolate, egg whites, and the absence of flour. Sweetened flaked coconut give the macaroons structure and a delicious chewy crunch. A dash of coconut extract ensures that the coconut flavor doesn't get lost behind the copious amount of chocolate, which includes extra chopped chocolate folded in at the end.

Make sure to not over bake these cookies so that they stay soft in the center. My favorite way to eat them is just barely warm, when the center is like a molten pot of fudge.

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Double Chocolate Coconut Macaroons »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

My favorite milkshake in mousse form [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

Every Easter, my mom was the bomb at procuring fun and unique candy to buy for me and my sister. One item that I especially remember was a box that contained a huge chocolate egg filled with fluffy malted milk candy filling. I'd never tasted anything so delicious in my life. I don't know what makes one addicted to malty flavors, but I have got it for sure. (My malt cravings are mostly for sweets though—beer, not so much). I go nuts for Ovaltine, malted milk balls, Milky Way bars, cold malted milks, and creamy ice cream malted milk shakes.

Malted milk powder, a dehydrated mixture of malted barley (dried germinated grains of barley), wheat, and milk, is one of the most delicious ingredients in the world to me. It also matches amazingly well with chocolate, so I whipped up a rich, creamier than creamy malted milk chocolate mousse concoction. Because chocolate works well to thicken desserts, and because I was serving it out of a glass like a pudding, there was no need for gelatin. A dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream on top cuts through the richness.

The ingredients are ridiculously simple: melted milk chocolate, cream, and malted milk powder. Not even sugar because milk chocolate and malted milk are plenty sweet. I'm partial to Carnation Milk Chocolate Milk, but other malted milk powders should work as well. Though I kind of like the gritty undissolved malt that pools at the bottom of a glass of malted milk stirred up with cold milk, I wanted the mousse to be smooth. Though that meant taking the extra step of melting the malt powder into a warmed cream, the satiny texture of the final mousse made it worth it.

More malt. I couldn't leave out my favorite crunchy malted milk balls. I folded chopped Whoppers into the mousse before chilling. But as I expected, the crunchy malted candy doesn't stay crunchy after sitting around in the damp mousse, it becomes somewhat tacky. The best way to enjoy the bits of crunchy sweetened malt is to sprinkle heaps of 'em on top before digging in.

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Malted Milk Ball Chocolate Mousse »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

The best way to have chocolate [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti

Recently I interviewed a local Singapore chocolatier for the popular food website, HungyGoWhere. Megan Lin runs the ship at Cacao7, a unique chocolate shop which specializes in low-carbohydrate/low-GI chocolates and desserts. During the interview, Megan offered to let me sample a few of her creations, including a flourless warm chocolate lava cake made with her organic Equadorian chocolate. Based on my previous experiences with diabetic friendly "sweets", I was really skeptical, but I love Equadorian chocolate (yes, I know, it's a hard life being a food writer).

After a few minutes Megan came out to the counter from behind the back with a tiny little paper cup and plunked the warm chocolate cake in front of me. Each spoonful of molten chocolate was absolute heaven. Without any flour, the chocolate flavor was completely pure and the texture like pudding. On top of that, I seriously would never have been able to tell that there was anything other than pure sugar in it. This was really diabetic? How can she do it? By using an all natural product called Whey Low to sweeten up her chocolates and desserts. I was so in love with the flavor and texture of this molten chocolate cake that I had to give it a spin at home.

Most of us (myself included) do bake with sugar (lots of it), so I decided to take that road instead. I fiddled around with the very few ingredients that make up chocolate lava cakes. I took out flour, and tried both unsweetened chocolate and rich 70% bittersweet (which had the best flavor). The method couldn't be simpler: Whip the eggs with sugar till light, then stir in the melted chocolate and butter. After a super brief bake in the oven, the cakes emerged with a gooey center that still read 160°F on a thermometer. I was in chocolate heaven. Again.

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Flourless Chocolate Lava Cakes »

About the author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog, shophousecook.com, or follow her on Twitter @yvonneruperti.

Bake with your booze. [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

I find it hard to believe myself but Guinness stout was the first beer that I learned to drink and like. And I did so with fair regularity at an Irish pub near my hometown. I'm not crazy about super carbonated drinks, and this dark beer was nutty, mildly carbonated, and creamy. Drinking up a pint of the dark heavy stout also made me feel like one of the guys. "Bud Light? Heck no, that's for girls". The day after St. Patrick's Day, the strip of road in front of the pub could be found painted green with loads of shamrocks (drunk patrons?).

Guzzling down mugs of stout, especially an intense chocolate flavored stout, doesn't do it for me anymore (or my figure), so now I bake with it. While the chocolate flavor isn't super intense, this stout adds deep, roasty, slightly bitter tones to not only gingerbread, but chocolate cake as well. An added bonus? This bundt cake is super easy to make: Just whisk the ingredients together and bake. The combination of cocoa, brown sugar, and stout make this an especially rich, dark cake. In fact, it's almost black. It's also one of the moistest chocolate cakes you'll ever find. And forget the wimpy Irish coffee, a mug of stout on the side is the perfect pairing.

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Chocolate Stout Bundt Cake »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

The elusive chewy chocolate cookie[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

In my shop, I always baked chewy molasses cookies, soft sugar cookies, and chocolate cookies. I never tried a combination of these three, but I'd always longed for it, this chewy chocolate cookie that didn't exist. Except that it did, right under my nose. Creating a chewy chocolate cookie is difficult to do, especially when you want the cookie to be super chocolatey (is there any other kind worth eating?). Cocoa is structureless, and when mixed with flour, it sort of waters down the capability of the flour to hold things together. The result is a cookie (or cake) that has a "short" texture that breaks apart easily.

I wondered if I could take a chewy ginger molasses cookie and incorporate cocoa in place of the hoards of spices which, in effect, don't offer any structure either. I wanted a soft cookie that had a dense, chewy center. The short answer: yes.

I added too much cocoa in my first try, and the cookies were too crumbly without enough structure. But after tasting them I realized that I really didn't even need that much cocoa—the combination of brown sugar and molasses already help to add dark, roasty flavor. The second batch, with less cocoa, was perfect. To add to the chew, I used melted butter in the second batch which accomplished two things. First, less air in the butter means a less cakey cookie, and second, melted butter meant I could just stir it all up in a bowl instead of using a mixer. I also gave the cookies a good knock as soon as soon as they came out of the oven. Deflating the puffed cookies while fresh created the dense, chewy middle that I was looking for. And of course, a little under baking always points toward your soft and chewy destination.

Beautifully cracked, crunchy around the edges, soft and chewy in the middle, and full of deep, caramelized and chocolate flavor, I'd finally found my elusive chewy chocolate cookie.

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Soft Chocolate Molasses Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

Chewy oatmeal bars are one of my favorite go-to travel snack foods, especially when faced with budget airlines that don't feed you for free and also don't want you to bring your own stash. Regardless, I try to pop something sort of healthy and hearty (and easy to scarf down on the sly) in my bag before I hop on the plane. I've tried twice to make the chewy variety of these bars at home, but gave up. Nothing worked to get them significantly chewy while staying together. I have come to terms with the fact that using all from-scratch ingredients will simply not get you that really chewy texture that you expect.

Then I got to thinking: the manufacturers are probably not baking their bars. So what no-bake cookie could give me an amazingly chewy consistency? Rice Krispie treats. Which means marshmallow. It made perfect sense that stretchy gelatin would hold everything together.

I took a look at a basic recipe for Rice Krispie treats, then played around with the ingredients to get the right consistency. Because the oats are not baked, I used quick cooking oats, and I toasted them in a skillet first. The most frustrating part was flavoring the bars, as I wanted them more like an oat bar than like marshmallow. Adding lots of honey made the bars way too soft. Peanut butter to the rescue! A little bit of honey, a bit of thick peanut butter, and some chopped peanuts did the trick to mask the marshmallow. Toss in a handful of chocolate chips and just press into the pan. Easy, chewy, and chocolaty.

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Super Chewy Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oat Bars »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.

Chocolate peanut poppers [Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

Forever on a quest to add to my chocolate-peanut butter repertoire, I set out this week to bake some peanut butter and chocolate filled thumbprints. As I'm sure you know, thumbprints are shortbread-like cookies which are rolled into tiny balls and plunged with a finger (index for me) so that they can be filled before baking or emerge from the oven with a filling-ready divot. The peanut butter version are most commonly seen with a big chocolate Hershey's Kiss pressed into the center. But I wanted a deeper chocolate flavor, so I chose to fill the cookies with a rich ganache.

These cookies are super peanut-buttery with a strong brown sugar flavor. They can be made even more peanut-y if you roll the bottoms in crushed peanuts before baking (something I would have done if I'd remembered to look at my shopping list while in the supermarket.) However, even without the extra peanuts, they're pretty much perfect; a sweet little cookie all on their own.

Chocolate brings these cute thumbprints to a ridiculously addictive level, with a pool of satiny chocolate and cream spooned into each cookie. I waited to fill the cookies until after they baked because I didn't want the ganache to cook. Luckily this batch makes a good amount (4 dozen), so there's plenty to go around even after this baker has had her fill.

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies »

About the Author: Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Easy Artisan Bread. You can also watch her culinary stylings on the America's Test Kitchen television show. She presently lives in Singapore working on her new baking cookbook, and as a recipe developer for HungryGoWhere Singapore. Check out her blog: shophousecook.com . Follow Yvonne on Twitter.