The key to making big, thick bakery-style chocolate chip cookies isn’t in secret ingredients or tricky techniques—it’s actually just a matter of shifting the ratios of your ingredients a bit. These dense, thick, decadent cookies have less sugar and more baking powder than your standard chocolate chip cookies, which helps inhibit the cookies’ spreading during baking. While we think that preparing this recipe as six gigantic cookies is sort of an essential part of the experience, you could make twelve smaller cookies if you prefer; you will simply need to adjust your bake times accordingly. For more helpful cookie baking tips, check out our guide to making the perfect batch. 

Our Chicken Asparagus Pasta celebrates spring flavors, but it still easy and comes together quickly. The creamy sauce is balanced by the lemon juice and zest, which cuts the fat and makes the dish feel a little lighter. Feel free to add other in-season produce, like chopped Brussels sprouts or garlic scapes. Plus, all those herbs and the asparagus add a freshness to the sauce. All ingredients are easy to source, but you can also utilize leftover chicken or veggies to make this even more economical.

Our Italian Easter Bread is the perfect centerpiece for your Easter brunch. The bread is sweet, almost like challah or a sweet roll dough without cinnamon, while the orange glaze adds some bright flavor. Meanwhile, the dyed eggs add pops of color and will impress both kids and adults. The key here is dyeing the eggs raw and letting them cook while in the oven—for a softer egg, crack them soon after baking. You could also make the bread without the eggs, and bake it into a simple braid. It’d also make some killer French toast. This bread works great for breakfast, but we also like it served with charcuterie, especially with the eggs.

Our Asparagus Stuffed Chicken is tender, herbaceous, and super cheesy. It’s beautiful and will impress any guest, and it’s way easier to make than it looks. The asparagus has a nice bite to it, while the cheesy ooze brings all the other ingredients together, giving this chicken a classic feel. Everything’s easy to find at the store, and the entire dish comes together in just over half an hour. Serve with a microwave rice blend.

You know that pasta salad from childhood (you know the one—rotini, canned olives, underripe grape tomatoes, cubed cheese)? It showed up at cookouts, sleepovers and every occasion in between, and it holds a special place in hearts a plenty—or at least it does around our office. So, we made a few swaps to create a fully grown uptake that still hits all the nostalgic notes we crave. Think a more sophisticated nood (we went orecchiette, but you can go with whatever you like!), buttery Castelvatrano olives (i.e. the best olives), juicy-sweet heirloom cherry tomatoes for dynamic color, hunks of savory salami, rich and creamy mozzarella pearls, radishes for fresh crunch, and an easy, from-scratch Italian dressing. Sure, it may require a trip to the grocery store’s olive bar, but trust us, it’s so worth it. 

  Corn dogs just got way more fun. The bread-to-meat ratio is a lot less than a traditional corn dog’s, so it really lets the hot dog be the star while the perfectly sweet and savory breading backs it up. Regular length hot dogs, not bun length, work best here. Make sure the oil isn’t too hot or the breading will cook too fast on the outside, leaving the interior batter raw.