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Byline: - Daily News Staff and Wire Services

With just a pot, a spoon and a pan you can create divine cookies and desserts. Andrew Schloss and Ken Bookman have streamlined making homemade desserts. In their newest cookbooks, ``One-Pot Cookies'' and ``One-Pot Chocolate Desserts (Broadway Books; each $12.95), you'll find easy recipes for making cookies and chocolate desserts from scratch. ``One-Pot Cookies'' contains 60 recipes including Macaroon Fingers, Hazelnut Crunch, Cashew Shortbread Biscotti, Dried Cherry Chunkies, Marble Brownie Rounds and Spiced Apricot Bars. ``One-Pot Chocolate Desserts'' features 50 recipes with names such as Black Forest Brownies, Chewy Crunchy Chocolate Chunks, Hot Pepper Fudge and Praline White Chocolate Torte. Those in a hurry should find these small volumes useful.

Looking for lunch?

The Orange County School of Culinary Arts serves lunch to the public noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. Cost is $10 per person. Reservations are required. Call [phone]. The school is at 201 W. Orangethorpe Ave., Fullerton.

Cups of culture

A new addition to Illycaffe's line of espresso cups comes from artist Robert Rauschenberg. Maps of Rome, Moscow, New York and Berlin decorate the cups; Mexico City, London, Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro are on the saucers. A set of four, signed and numbered, is sold through the Guggenheim Museum gift shops in New York, and costs $85 plus $8 shipping; call [phone] to order.

New on the shelf

Betty Crocker just introduced four new Stir'n Bake products. All include an add-water only mix, a 5x7-inch disposable pan and frosting, topping or chocolate Kisses that make these special treats. The mixes come in the following flavors: Devil's Food cake with Chocolate Frosting, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Coffee Cake with Cinnamon Streusel and Brownies with Hershey's Milk Chocolate Mini Kisses. Each serves six and costs $1.59 a box.

Best fruit buy

Cherimoya's short season runs through February. This exotic-looking fruit resembles an apple that has crossed paths with a pine cone. But once you get past its gatorlike exterior, the creamy-white pulp is sweet and juicy. At market, buy cherimoyas that are a dull green (it can brown a little but not too much) and feel soft but not mushy. It's best to eat them with a spoon that lets you sidestep their many inedible seeds. Ripe fruit should be eaten promptly; they'll keep at best two days in the refrigerator.

SAD may affect taste

If nothing seems to satisfy your taste lately, maybe you have Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, the wintertime depression that affects an estimated 15 million Americans.

In addition to feeling depressed and moody, people with SAD may have trouble detecting sweet, sour and bitter flavors, according to a recent article in Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter.

The newsletter says a study by the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Medical Center found that people with SAD were less able than others to tell when sweet, sour or bitter flavors had been added to water. And they also were less able to tell those flavors apart. Only their taste for salt was unchanged.

When people have trouble getting all the taste they expect from food, it may cause them to eat more of certain foods, head researcher Paul Arbisi said. ``Those with SAD might choose foods that are most intense in taste, especially combinations of fats and simple sugars,'' he said.

Now you know why you've been craving a slice of double-crust apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

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Photo: (1--Color) no caption (Cookbook - One-Pot Cookies)

(2--Color) no caption (Cookbook - One-Pot Chocolate Desserts)

(3--Color) no caption (Betty Crocker Stir'n Bake)