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I love to cook. I also love to bake. This does not go well with my other pastime: worrying about my weight (no, I will NOT tell you what it is!).

But during the holidays, I don't feel quite so bad about it. The best part is that I can use this time to persuade my mom to buy me special ingredients for my holiday cooking projects. And boy, what projects!

This year, in the Food section of the La Times, I came across two of the most delicious cookie recipes ever!

One is for a chocolate cookie, made with cocoa powder and dark chocolate, which gives it a complex and lingering flavor that is guaranteed to make you involuntarily reach for another one. Its consistency is almost like that of cake, but its sugar-rimmed edges give it a crispy shell.

The other of these amazing cookies is known as the gingerbread macarons. A delicate piped cookie made with egg whites, molasses, and almond flour, it is filled with a rich apple compote (think applesauce, but very dense and with spices), and the combination of taste and texture is absolutely heavenly. It is also the most complicated and labor-intensive recipe I think I have ever undertaken.

I have gotten extremely favorable reviews for both the chocolate cookies and the macarons- along with my obligatory English toffee (I make it every Christmas season to give out to my family), I tucked a few cookies into a bag along with some gingerbread and rosemary shortbread, and handed them out to every one in my family on Christmas morning in lieu of my gifts.

Members of the family who have tried them have raved about them. At least two friends from church, upon trying the chocolate ones from a cookie plate I had helped provide for a Christmas party, complimented me on them. But it was after my cookies recieved my grandmother's praise (she's a phenomenal cook- this is good news), I knew that I would have to make them again!

So everyone went home on a tremendous sugar high, and I collapsed into bed!