Truth be told, it’s kind of fun to announce plans to spend a day with the CIA, even if the answer to the subsequent question — “Doing what?” — is “baking cookies.”

This is our CIA, of course, the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, which, come to think of it, probably is an altogether more comfortable place to spend a day than that other one whose pursuits are neither so sweet nor savory.

Greystone, the former Christian Brothers winery, is now the site for all kinds of culinary activities, most of them geared for professional chefs, or those on the path to chefdom, like the students enrolled in the intensive baking program.

Over the course of 30 weeks, these students learn everything from bagel baking to cake decorating, but on this day, the subject of study was cookies; this being the season for cookie baking, the Register wondered if it might be able to sit in on a session.

Sit is the wrong word actually. No one sits in these classes. The massive third-floor teaching kitchen was abuzz with activity that brought to mind Santa’s workshop, as student cooks in  tall white toques and white jackets scurried about their tasks. At seven huge island work stations, some were piping out trays full of lady fingers, others were making madeleines, the delicate French cookie that apparently inspired Proust to write his seven-volume series “Remembrance of Things Past.” Several students were preparing to fry doughnuts and apple fritters, while a fourth group was just taking its linzertorte out of the industrial ovens.

Overseeing all this elfish activity was Aaron Brown, a pastry chef and baker, who has been teaching at the CIA for two years. Between demonstrating the proper technique for piping perfect lady fingers and testing the consistency of various doughs, Brown escorted the Register around the room, offering samples from racks filled with trays of lemon bars and chocolate-dipped macaroons and answering questions like, why isn’t everyone enrolled in this course shaped like a snowman? (The answer, students unanimously agreed, is that you quickly get tired of eating and then only minimally taste the cakes, tarts and breads you concoct.)

In addition to training future chefs and pastry chefs, the CIA, which also has a campus in Hyde Park, N.Y., is  in the vanguard of an effort to explore and preserve culinary traditions around the world. It was no surprise, therefore, when we asked for a couple of recipes for cookies for the holidays that could be adapted for home cooks, that Brown’s two choices were drawn from international sources.

Cinnamon Stars and Ricciarelli both use almond paste. “Nut paste cookies are popular this time of year,” Brown said. In one version, you make the paste yourself; the other calls for purchased almond paste, which is available locally at grocery stories including Vallerga’s and Browns Valley Market.

The diamond-shaped Ricciarelli are an ancient traditional Italian Christmas sweet, according to recipe notes, “delicate and soft cookies shaped like the almond eyes of early Sienese painters’ madonnas.” Descended from marzipan (although Brown notes it’s important in both recipes to use almond paste and not marzipan, which are different products), they’re fragrant with the scent of vanilla, with a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar. Brown shaped the dough into logs and then cut off slices that he shaped by hand into the traditional diamond.

In the CIA recipe the leavening agent is ammonium carbonate, which is also called baker’s ammonia and is most easily found online at www.kingarthurflour.com. Although Brown noted you can substitute baking soda, he said, “Yes, there is a big difference  (between the two products). Imagine eating a buttermilk biscuit that has too much baking powder in it. You get that sort of alum flavor in your mouth? The same sort of thing happens in the ricciarelli. You can substitute baking powder but it is much better to use the ammonium carbonate.

“They are both alkalis that are neutralized by an acid. They both both produce carbon dioxide to leaven and both have other bi-products that leave different flavors in the cookie.”

Tiny Cinnamon Stars show up at Christmas markets and bakeries in the holiday season in Germany, Austria and Switzerland where they’re cut into the traditional six-point star and coated with royal icing. The recipe the CIA provided comes from Chef Robert Jörin, one of the team leaders of the Greystone baking program, who shared a recipe from his family’s bakery in Davos, Switzerland.

Brown provided these additional tips for baking with nut pastes:

• Use fresh almond paste. If you have any left over, make sure it stays well wrapped.

• Soften the almond paste in a mixer with a little of the egg from the recipe. This will help it combine better with the other ingredients.

• Most almond paste cookies bake better if they have been allowed to dry overnight, uncovered before backing. “Make sure you have time to let them dry out,” Brown said. “They develop a crust and when you put them in the oven, they have a different taste.”

• Almond paste cookies usually bake better at lower temperatures so they do not brown in the oven.

Although it’s not traditional, he added, almond paste cookies are delicious dipped in chocolate.

We’ve included the recipes for the two cookies from the CIA, along with another favorite, from Dorie Greenspan’s monumental tome, “Baking, From My Home to Yours.” The brainchild of Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé, Greenspan calls them “World Peace Cookies,” because her neighbor is persuaded that a daily dose of Pierre’s cookies “is all that is needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness.”

Appropriate, we think, for considerations of cookies and the CIA.