This melt-in-your-mouth dough cradles delicious bites of macadamia nuts and white chocolate. You’ll be craving these White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies even if you’re a milk or dark chocolate person! If I had to pick one chocolate to eat for the rest of my life, I’d probably pick milk chocolate. But I’d make an exception for these cookies! Sweet white chocolate pairs perfectly with the salty macadamia nuts. Macadamia…
This Aztec Wonder is a fudgy, rich chocolate cookie with the perfect amount of cinnamon and cayenne. Chocolate and spice come together in the most superb way you never knew you needed in a cookie. It’s the perfect chocolate cayenne cookie! This Aztec Wonder Cookie is one of my original cookie shop recipes. It came about on a day when I wondered why there was such a trend to add cayenne pepper to anything chocolate. I…
This Coconut Lemon Crackle Cookie is buttery, moist, and full of flavor. With real lemon zest and sweetened coconut flakes, this cookie is sweet, lemony, and has that chewy texture you crave in a crackle cookie. This Coconut Lemon Crackle Cookie’s life began in the cookie shop. As business picked up, so did our inventory and cookie variety as we worked to meet the desires of customers with seasonal offerings. My shop…
Toasted pecans folded into crisp, buttery shortbread cookies with vanilla and hints of maple make for a divine pecan shortbread! A handful of my cookie ideas come directly from childhood memories, and this pecan shortbread is one of them. I grew up in a household with seven siblings. During the warm summers, we loved to go on picnics. I still think my mom was a genius to get us out of the house and let nature pick up the…
Walnut, three types of melty chocolate chips, and your patiently waiting self. You “walnut” regret making these perfect, buttery chocolate chip cookies. I wanted a really great chocolate chip walnut cookie recipe. I started with my #1 Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, made some minor adjustments, and knew I was headed in the right direction. With three types of melty chocolate chips and toasted walnuts, how can you go wrong…
Just when you thought all your luck ran out when trying to make soft, crispy butter shortbread cookies, Missy saves the day! Some of the most difficult things to perfect in baking are: a really good chocolate chip cookie, a good loaf of white bread, a tender pie crust, a flavorful vanilla cake, and a simple shortbread cookie. These basic flavors and textures are important to get right because they are so familiar to the…
Thin, crispy chocolate shortbread dipped in chocolate. It’s a total showstopper with minimal effort. These Easy Crisp Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread cookies are light, perfectly crisp, easy to make, and look beautiful too. Melted chocolate is the trick to making perfectly crisp shortbread without the chalky mouthfeel that cornstarch gives. It helps to lighten the crunchiness of shortbread, turning it into a melt-in-the-mouth…
Move over chocolate-covered strawberries. There’s a new sheriff… I mean cookie in town! Amish Country in Lancaster, PA is not far from where I live. They have a variety of stores with a great selection of all sorts of foods. As I was perusing the bulk foods section of one such store, I came across some dried strawberries that were a beautiful, bright red instead of the normal dark brown. I bought a container on a whim and…
These Raisin Filled Cookies have so much more than meets the eye! With a delicious raisin and pecan filling, enveloped in a tender buttery cookie, these will win over even the most doubtful of palates. I was never a raisin fan as a child. Then, someone placed one of Grandmother’s Raisin Cookies into my 9-year-old hands. I tentatively took a bite. Wowwie! It made me believe that maybe raisins aren’t so bad. My grandmother’s…
Adding some coconut vibes to this brownie-like cookie will have you saying hula-lujah! I like coconut on a lot of treats. I LOVE it on top of these Chocolate Coconut Cookies. The brownie-like cookie and chewy coconut topping are reminiscent of coconut pecan frosting on a chocolate cake, but with less richness. Coconut flakes come from the white flesh of a tough seed from a tough tree. It is a tender, tasty gift! Sweetened…
I have oatmeal for breakfast everyday… well, I have oatmeal chocolate chip cookies every day, so pretty much the same thing, right? These Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are definitely a “Taste Before Beauty” kind of cookie. Although a little homely on the outside, the inside is chewy and rich. They only get better with time, too, as the oats spread their moisture to the crispy edges and turn the whole cookie into a soft…
A quick, buttery sugar cookie designed for those who are short on time, but still want a colorful, tasty treat! These cookies were created in response to a need for a colorful sugar cookie without frosting. People loved our Frosted Sugar Cookies but they took extra time and space for the frosting layer. These Butter Sugar Cookies are simple to make and look beautiful, no matter where you take them. This little gem of a…
The superb combination of a moist chocolate cookie filled with two types of minty chips makes for a perfect end to any meal! I love to eat Andes mints, fancy mints, candy canes, peppermints, buttermints, and York Peppermint Patties. There are so many good mint candies and treats out there. I had tried to make cookies with mint in them before but they were, well… awful. Why is it so hard to get a good mint flavor? This recipe…
Cranberries and oranges are perfect partners for this sweet, tender shortbread duet guaranteed to make your mouth sing! This Cranberry Orange Shortbread was created during the cookie shop days. At the time, I was keeping all of my recipes secret. So when the local news station asked to do a Christmas special interview, where I would get to showcase one of my cookie recipes, I scrambled to create a new cookie that I could…
These are light, soft, and chewy inside, with just the right cinnamon to sugar ratio. With so much to love, they are sure to become a family favorite. Snickerdoodles. The name itself kind of mocks you, doesn’t it? My theory is because this seemingly simple cookie can trip you up in the end. It’s like a baker’s test to make the perfect snickerdoodle. This cookie’s magic power is two-fold. It begins with the tried-and-tested…
Hi, I’m Missy. Welcome to Taste Before Beauty. For 28 years I’ve been developing recipes that taste delicious, before they look delicious.