One of my New Year’s resolutions was to make more cookies. It came about because I made the usual epic amount of cookies for the holidays, and some of them were really fantastic, but the sheer over-abundance made it difficult to appreciate them individually. Cookies have a really great time-commitment-to-happiness ratio as far as desserts go (the way I make them, anyway; there are some insanely complicated cookie recipes out there, and then there’s all the fancy icing stuff…), and I guess I wanted more of that spread throughout the year.

Then this spring my daughter was going through kind of a rough patch, and, when I asked her how I could support her, she requested cookies. Specifically, some Nutella-stuffed cookies from the Delish cookbook. I was happy to oblige, and happier to learn that my baking skills might contribute to making her day a little brighter, but the cookies were a production. I mean, the hazelnut-cocoa-spread-from-Whole-Foods-filling was tasty, but the cookie surrounding it was kind of plain, and stuffing them was a whole thing. By the time they were finished, I was inspired to try and come up with a chocolate hazelnut cookie in the style of a Milk Bar cookie, and after some planning, and some ordering of exotic ingredients from Amazon, I got to work.

And here is where I wish I had a finished cookie recipe to give to you, for this, my first real post, but it turns out we are still in the testing phase of this plan.

My friends, that is a wide-mouth jar lid for scale. The smaller cookie, baked on a chilled cookie sheet, is pretty close to what I’m looking for, but it still needs some work. How do they taste? Oh, fantastic. Maybe needs a little more hazelnut. But they spread like, well, obviously, and they released a bit too much fat on baking. I think less butter and sugar, and a bit more flour, maybe some chopped up hazelnuts, and we’ll be good to go.

So instead of a recipe, this is a lesson being patient with yourself, and allowing yourself to take risks, and make mistakes. It’s a lesson for me, mostly, but maybe you need to hear it too?

Anyway, welcome to the blog, and I hope you stick around, because I promise those finished cookies are going to be amazing when I’m done.