Bonus Pictures: Ithaca in December

We had a big storm earlier in the week and awoke on Friday to this view from the living room. I think that's about six inches of snow, maybe more. It's pretty, isn't it?

It's slightly less so when you're outside trying to dig out your car, but I like snow when it's powdery and fluffy like this. It's definitely shaping up to be a white Christmas! Now if only the snow went away after that, and not, you know, at the end of April.

Chocolate Thumbprints with Chocolate and Vanilla Bean Ganache

For whatever reason, I have always been a cookie baker. I realize that it's more glamorous to bake pies, more hip to bake cupcakes, more useful to bake bread - but cookies are my thing. Simple cookies, fancy cookies, you name it: there's just something about them that's wholesome and homey and I can't get enough of them. When I get my monthly issue of Martha Stewart Living, the first thing I do is open to the last page and check out the "Cookie of the Month."

I'm saying all this because I want you to know how completely I fell apart when I saw the cover of the December issue of Martha Stewart Living:

Ho-ly-God, cookiescookiescookiescookiescookies. Martha, what are you trying to DO to me?!

The first recipe I tried was, perhaps, the deadliest: Chocolate Thumbprints with Chocolate and Vanilla Bean Ganache. Because of the unsweetened cocoa powder, the cookie itself is incredibly chocolatey and rich, but not sweet, and the course salt in the recipe provides a really interesting counterpoint to the chocolate. I also appreciated that the ganache is sweetened with honey and not sugar. Justin and I took these into our students last week and the response was overwhelmingly awe and disbelief. It's possible that my students were sucking up, but they said they didn't know cookies could be this good.

Also, good Lord, these things are pretty, aren't they?