Our whole family loved this! I used olive oil instead of butter for sauteeing and added a clove of minced garlic to the onion, which was yellow. Basmati rice worked well for this, and I browned it with the oil and onion for a few minutes. I added parsley, thyme, and basil and increased the broth to 2 cups. Just a few grinds of pepper was all it needed. Try grating in a few baby carrots to give it a nice color. I'll make this again, probably adding almonds or pecans.

Reviewed On: Mar. 7, 2006

I baked this for a French party, and it was quite good. I recommend making just one cake (use a 16 x 20 rectangle of dough), but whatever you do, double the filling - it's the best part! Once you've spread the filling on the rolled-out dough, cut off the edges to make a a neat rectangle and so you don't have large doughy parts in the cake. It was great without the raisins. Try making the frosting more interesting by adding butter, sour cream, and vanilla.

Reviewed On: Mar. 3, 2006

Extremely tasty, but needs a bit of tweaking to be award-winningly soft. The high amount of butter makes them crispy, so try replacing some or all of it with shortening or margarine. Next time, I'm also considering replacing 1/4 of the butter with egg yolks. For big, attractive cookies, chill the dough for an hour or two, then scoop it out with an ice-cream scoop and flatten the balls with your palm (they won't spread much if they're cold). Try making the dough w/o the chips, then pressing lots of chips into the cookies before putting them in the oven. Make sure to underbake them A LOT - even if the dough is very soft and shiny, it'll firm up as the cookies cool. Looking forward to trying these again.

Reviewed On: Feb. 19, 2006