Photo by Snack Behrens/LAist Have you ever made homemade vanilla ice cream? The ingredients are pretty basic: cream, milk, sugar, egg yolks and natural vanilla flavor. But if you want that same taste without having to make it yourself, we've found that Trader Joe's version tastes like homemade versions. In fact, it has all the same ingredients plus two preservatives and that's it -- no long list of unpronounceable colorings and chemicals. So with......

Once you try these, you'll never eat a plain rice krispy treat again! These spicy alternatives to the sweet treat we all know and love will win you many fans and they will never (ever!) suspect that they're the easiest things to make! How easy? Check it out: Ingredients: 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 (10 ounce) bag of minature marshmellows 6 cups crispy rice cereal 1 teaspoon ground cardamom 1 cup chopped unsalted cashew......

I am a peanut butter freak. And my Mom knows it. No matter how old I get (and I’m waaaay past the age of consent), she makes my favorite cookies – Peanut Butter Kisses – when I come home for Christmas. Typically, I’ll be sleepwalking through the door straight from a redeye from LAX to the east coast with nothing but the sofa is calling my name. But there’s always a stack of PB......

Making these cookies is one of my fondest Christmas traditions. This would lead you to believe that I am a total sugar-holic (which I am), but I mostly enjoy flexing my artistic muscle to decorate these bad boys. We have about 50 different cookie cutters, 6 colors of icing, and decorations galore. It’s always fun to make the standard snowman, but after 2 hours of baking you start to get creative. Dinosaurs, shoes, cars…......

This is the summer cookie that works well in winter - especially in LA, where women are still wearing flip-flops on Christmas Eve! At every holiday party, the dessert table is full of heavy chocolate confections, heady alcoholic affairs (figgy pudding!) and dense fruit-cake-y type items. If I'm just not up for making sugar cookies (and the insane hours it takes to decorate them all!), I make these instead. They're lighter, fresher. Oh so yummy......

I think it started about a year ago, when the students in one the classes I was teaching found out that I was going to cooking school. "Will you make us something?" they begged. I pictured myself whipping up something in the French tradition from my growing pile of recipes and modifying it to serve thirty or so college freshmen. "No," I replied sensibly. "But if you're good, I'll make you cookies!" I love......

" src="http://laist.com/attachments/lindsayrebecca/gingersnapsinapile.jpg" width="375" height="318" class="left"/> I can't remember a time when I wasn't baking cookies. My mom used to sit me up on the counter and let me pour ingredients into the mixer. I had to hold the measuring cup with both hands. I started baking these gingersnaps one Christmas soon after I had moved out on my own. They are from one of those Family Circle cookbook sets with 15 volumes. I have......

It was a sunny morning when I decided to stop by Jamaica Cakes on Pico. I’d heard good things, and I was ready for something sweet. They had some great looking chocolate espresso cupcakes, looking almost like muffins, with just a dollop of cream cheese frosting, and red velvet, but no others. Still, there was a pleasing assortment of cookies and a number of breakfast pastries. I wanted that chocolate espresso cupcake, but went against......

It's hard to find a person out there who doesn't like cookies. And it's even harder to find someone who will turn down a free one. So what if I tell you that over the next few days at several Los Angeles-area Whole Foods Markets you can get yourself a free sample of an organic Crummy Brothers Chocolate Chip cookie? I think you just might say "Hell yes!" So what's the deal with Crummy......

Leave it to the Atwater Village Newbie (at what point are you no longer "new"?) to fill us in on something that we had no clue about. Not only is our favorite neighborhood on Glendale Blvd. hosting their Street Festival this Sunday, but there's also going to be a freakin HOMEMADE COOKIE CONTEST! According to the rules (.pdf), if you think you've got what it takes, and baby we know you do, bring your......

Time and time again, the small little boutique bakery on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks keeps on building its reputation. First, Leda's Bake Shop comes on to the scene with its whimsical cupcakes and baked goods, put together in their clean-cut 1960s open style kitchen. Then last fall, to appeal to soccer moms with lactose intolerant sweet teething children and vegans, they added vegan cupcakes. Then came vegan chocolate chip, oatmeal cherry and snickerdoodle......

Have a food-fanatic on your shopping list? May we suggest some local sources for fabulous gifts, both big and small. LAist will help you Eat It, Use It, Learn It, and Read It with our food-focused installment of the Holiday Gift Guide. Some of these items will last for just a few precious bites, and some will let your lucky recipient get their own hands dirty. Since the clock is ticking, you'd best high-tail......