Snow days. You probably heard all about it on the news: massive snowstorm batters the east coast, end of the world as we know it, we’ll never be able to leave our houses again, Fox News makes outrageously irresponsible and and misinformed statements about global warming, yadda yadda yadda. What it meant for me was that I got to leave work at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. It was amazing; it felt like skipping out of school at recess. And what was even better than the coming home early was that there was ample time to bake. So I pulled out Elinor Klivans’ wonderful Big Fat Cookies, looking for an inspiring idea for cookies. I’ve made many of the recipes from Klivans’ book before, but not in recent years, as my copy lives at my mom’s house. But I was wanting to make some of those recipes again, so a few weeks ago, I went out and bought a new copy, and I’ve since spent a bit of time reacquainting myself with the aforementioned big, fat cookies. And so, on that snowy, blustery afternoon, I chose a recipe for chocolate-dipped macaroons, because, well, macaroons are awesome. Let’s get to it, shall we?

get to it, indeed, yonder.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Hiro wrote to me with a desperate plea for some advice on chocolate chip cookies. She recently moved to Denmark, and is having trouble replicating the crispygooeychewy texture that is so desirable in these enigmatic little mounds of dough and chocolate. Always eager to take on a challenge, I assured her that I would do some research and come up with a good recipe, along with an at least pseudo-scientific explanation of why (and which) things can go wrong when whipping up a batch of these suckers.

get your chips on, over here.

Okay, so I’ve never actually had a subscription to Gourmet, but I’ve always wanted one. As the Times said this week, Gourmet was kinda like the New Yorker of food magazines: erudite, fancy, well-researched and well-edited. I always pick up a copy when I’m traveling, and I leaf through issues at bookstores, looking wistfully at all the fancy things I have yet to bake, and all the fancy places I’ll probably never go. Oh, well. I believe they have a great number of Gourmet’s recipes up on Epicurious, so I suppose there will still be at least one way in which to revel in the glory of things past.

Get your chocolate fix and say farewell, this-a-way.