Feast Awards

You know you can expect tasty and reasonably priced food when Thai Lanna & Sushi Bar’s Facebook page apologizes for and adapts to long lines and wait times for food on its “Sushi Mondays.”

For me, the ingredients for a great carryout restaurant during a global pandemic include delicious food, an easy-to-use online menu, a curbside option and sturdy to-go containers. Papa Gyros Greek Grill checks all the boxes.

I chose these cookies because I love anything with pecans, cream cheese and almond extract. For the crushed pecans, I used pecan pieces from Heggy’s Nut Shop. I rolled the balls of dough in them, pressing on the pieces to make sure they stayed in place.

I’ve made this recipe many times, and it comes out different almost every single time. The key is making sure the butter is properly cooled.

I swapped out the lemon extract in the recipe for fresh lemon juice, using the ratio recommended by the author (1 tablespoon of lemon juice = 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract).

I used Swiss Miss dark chocolate variety for the cocoa powder. I needed almost 13 minutes of bake time for best results.

I handled my butter the normal way (aka just dropping the two softened sticks into the sugar), and my cookies still turned out like the pictures in terms of dimensions.

I baked mine for nine minutes instead of seven, which is what it took for the cookies to feel set on the sides and soft in the middle. I left them on the baking sheet for maybe another three minutes before moving them to a tray to finish cooling, and they turned out perfectly.

I’m a big fan of coffee, but I absolutely hate the jitters it gives me, so I was excited to make these espresso cookies. They did not disappoint.

These cookies called for a little extra work than normal cookie baking. Because they include pieces of Andes mints and mint Oreos, you need to chop all of those first.