The Holiday Cookie Project has just about reached it’s conclusion with Kitchen Sink Chocolate Biscotti. It’s hard to believe the month has flown by so quickly, and yet here we are on the second last day of Vegan MoFo 2010.

Kitchen Sink Chocolate Biscotti

These super crunchy, chocolaty biscotti get their kitchen-sink moniker from the option to add up to three of many suggested ingredients that you just might have in your pantry. The authors provide several tempting suggestions ranging from fruit to nuts to candy. For these crunchy numbers, I went with cacoa nibs (adds a fabulous bitterness that contrasts nicely with the overall sweetness of the cookie, as well as some further crunch), crushed candy cane (lends a nice hit of peppermint and chewiness – also caused some biscotti to collapse where pockets of the candy melted during the second baking – so beware), and whole almonds (crunchy, nutty, win).

They disappeared quickly, with nary a trace.

I cannot wait to try these with dried cherries and almonds, and nothing else. I’m pretty sure that would be rad.

These chocolaty biscotti can be found in Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, along with all the other beauteous cookies from the Holiday Cookie Project.

The Holiday Cookie Project moves further into the Fancy chapter of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, with NYC Black and White Cookies. It is the 26th day of Vegan MoFo.

Black and White Cookies

New York will always be my favourite city – and the ubiquitous Black & White cookie is close to being my favourite cookie of all time. These are the real NYC deal. I knew it as soon as the batter started to come together and those familiar aromas began wafting up. It’s been a decade since I picked up my last genuine black & white cookie from an NYC street vendor, but I recognized that enticing scent instantly: The tiniest essence of lemon and orange in a light as air, vanilla spongecake. Yes, spongecake. These are not really cookies in the traditional, crispy sense at all you see – but rather small, free-form cakes, or drop cakes. That is what they are supposed to be and that is what the recipe delivers. And the texture of these little cakes is beautifully light, delicate and soft. Perfection.

And like all New Yorkers, these cookies are good-looking, edgy, and well-dressed.

Warning: the icing packs a sugar wallop - in future I’d spread it a lot more thinly than I greedily did for this round. A lot thinner. It seems my eyes were writing cheques my teeth couldn’t cash.

As the authors point out in the book, you can easily make these in varying sizes. Just be sure to adjust the baking time for each size and keep an eye on them – especially the smaller ones. I made some big whopping ones, just like those ginormous NYC street-side specimens, using an ice cream scoop (baking time, 18 minutes) – perfect for self-indulgence; and a bunch of smaller ones using a tablespoon sized cookie scoop (baking time, 11 minutes) – perfect for spreading the cookie love around.

Looking at those little ones, I can’t help but think that this recipe would make a promising base for a little whoopie pie alchemy. A little cocoa here, a little matcha there, no? We shall see.