I'm a bit embarrassed to post desserts two weeks in a row, having professed no serious interest in this category of food. However, when you have promised snacks to a class of feisty improv-ers as a salute to a session well played, cookies and their relatives are the only things that pack up nicely and behave.

Bored of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin which, if I had made them would have been nothing more than the back of the package, I wanted something more fun and whimsical. A friend recently made Snickerdoodles and I’ve been thinking of them ever since. All I could remember was their role in a period of my childhood when I ate nothing without cinnamon and sugar. At home we had a separate shaker to host these two fine ingredients. Toast was the most common vehicle for enjoyment, but as a seven-year-old I extended the privalege to waffles, untoasted bread (sugar sandwich), and my favorite, a buttered flour tortilla (Mexican sugar sandwich).

This may be a suitable choice when the only thing greater in the world is mixing shampoo bottles in the bath and wearing socks with lace on them, but I like to think my taste and sensibility has matured since that time and I must therefore, confine cinnamon and sugar to the limited scope of the cookie. The Joy of Cooking claims the name “Snickerdoodle” came from a mispronunciation of the German word Schneckennudeln, meaning snail noodles, (does anyone else get an image of a lederhosen-clad Fraulein baking Schneckennudeln in her Bavarian Küche?) German or not these are the finest of all sugar cookies, lightly spiced and doughy with a slightly crunchy exterior.

I accompanied the Snickerdoodles with Coco Choco Clusters to offer the other end of the spectrum in portable desserts. The recipe comes from 101cookbooks, one of my favorite food blogs and is an inviting resource for vegetarians and vegans. The clusters are an absolute cinch with only two necessary ingredients (coconut and chocolate) but a few others that make them delicious (like salt sprinkled on top).

SNICKERDOODLES (makes 18-20)

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• generous pinch salt
• generous pinch cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

AND

(For the sugar coating)

• 2 tbs sugar
• generous pinch of cinnamon

Combine dry ingredients, set aside. Cream butter and sugar, once fluffy add egg and vanilla, beat until well mixed. Slowly add dry ingredients until combined. After the dough comes together let it “rest” in the fridge for 45-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Remove dough from fridge and form balls of about 1 tbs of dough. Roll the balls in the cinnamon/sugar mix and place on baking sheet. Give each ball of dough a bit of a squish to flatten. Bake 10-12 minutes until slightly cracked, then transfer to cooling rack.

Peanut Butter Brownies

This weekend I failed to buy the necessary ingredients for the beet risotto I had aspired to replicate from a recent restaurant trip but was itching nevertheless, to muck about in the kitchen.

Stress, listlessness, anxiety, despair, boredom: all treatable with idle time spent amongst ingredients. I find that when other areas of life are less than superb, happiness and passion are only a chop, boil, julienne, sauté or roast away.

Fresh out of delicious cooking ingredients, and devoid of any will to propel me out the door to buy these things, I was left with sad, rejected baking accoutrement and a sprawl of free time. No doubt, the next few hours were more messy experimentation than tidy or gourmet.

But the afternoon produced varying results, some tasty and others questionable, with these chocolate peanut butter brownies taking center stage. Intensely chocolatey but without any cakiness, the peanut butter frosting draws them away from a “death by chocolate” situation to a more well-rounded treat.

I suppose when a cold Hop Devil and a sun drenched patio are not available, the next best combination– chocolate and peanut butter– can offer a suitable substitute.

Yields 9-12.

Brownies

• Nonstick vegetable oil spray
• 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate (baker’s), coarsely chopped
• 2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• pinch salt

Frosting

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (needs to be full of junky preservatives, like Skippy)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

OR 3/4 cup Nutella

Preheat oven to 350.

Drag out that muffin tin you used last week for baked eggs and lightly spray the muffin cups (12 unless you’re a batter freak in which case, I only made 9). If you’re lacking a handy bottle of “Pam” you can also butter and lightly flour the cups, OR just use paper cupcake liners. In a double boiler (just a glass bowl on top of a saucepan of simmering water– heating the chocolate directly usually burns it,) melt the chocolates and butter gently. Once combined, set aside to cool.

Beat sugar, eggs, and vanilla with a mixer on high for a few minutes until slightly thickened. Slowly mix in flour and once combined, fold in chocolate. Fill muffin cups with about 2 tbs. batter each, until halfway filled. Bake brownies 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick, inserted, comes out clean. Let cool for a few minutes, then gently (avoid a fork) lift brownies out of pan.

While the brownies are baking blend your frosting ingredients together until smooth (or just whip out that jar of nutella). After they have cooled, simply frost the brownies and refrigerate until set (about 20 minutes). If you’re going for fancy, decorate with nuts and a sprinkle of powdered sugar

Fancy Baked Eggs

Breakfast. Such a lovely, comforting word. A hearty and satisfying conclusion to the night’s hungry tired hours. The promise of energy, and the first sensory indulgence of the day.

People’s breakfast habits tend to say a lot about them. Skipping the meal altogether could, I suppose, simply express a lack of appetite, or the incapacitation of fatigue, or some sort of ill-advised determination to cut calories. The morning person is more invested, with their protein juice smoothies to-go, or egg white omelets (get a job!), or my favorite, the yogurt-berry-granola concoction that so very much pins one into the corner of athleticism and general health consciousness. I, however, am a pillager of all things leftover. I have little interest in sweets, having retired pancakes with whipped cream to the basement of my elapsed youth next to jelly sandals and Fraggle Rock.

Hailed as “the leftover goblin” by someone who has seen my morning antics first-hand, I hanker for the Thai food from last night, maybe spaghetti or chicken cacciatore or, dare I admit it, that spinach dip from last weekend. Protein and a bit of grease, already assembled and begging to be consumed instead of wasted. This is what I can muster after coffee-making strips me of the only energy available on a Tuesday morning. That is, until the weekend.

Saturday morning arrives and I make an about-face, putting forth the effort to get up at a reasonable hour and hit the cutting board with Nina Simone at my side. The result of these mornings is always in egg form. Poached, scrambled, fried, benedicted, omeletted, boiled, or my new favorite—baked—there is no finer food.

Unwhisked baked eggs are similar in consistency to fried eggs, and can be cooked to different degrees of runniness. Particularly practical if you are serving a group, they are all finished cooking at once and retain heat, as they are contained. Ramekins make easy work of baking eggs, but I was turned on to an edible cup and then created a baked egg all-in-one breakfast with potatoes and red pepper. Sliced ham served as the cup of choice but I’ve also seen suggestions of tortilla and pita bread.

To the recipe…

Figure two cups per serving

• 2 tbs. olive oil

• 1/4 cup shallots, finely chopped

• 1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped

• 3 or 4 new or red potatoes, finely chopped

• salt and pepper

• 2 tbs. sour cream

• fresh tarragon or chives

• 8 thin slices of ham

• 8 eggs

Preheat oven to 400F degrees

Heat oil in a pan and sauté shallots, pepper and potato until cooked through, 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in salt and pepper, sour cream, and 1 tbs fresh chopped herbs.

Lightly oil 8 cups of a full size muffin tin, and fit one slice of ham into the mold. Divide potato-pepper mixture into ham cups, then crack a single egg on top of each cup. Bake 12-15 minutes until egg whites have become opaque but yolk is still runny. Remove gently with two spoons, garnish with fresh herbs, season and enjoy!