It occurs to me usually.
We’re at a stunning restaurant. We’ve loved a terrific meal, generally even an adventurous one. After which the dessert menu or dessert cart comes alongside.
I examine it hopefully, searching for only one factor. I let my eyes wander previous the elegant crème brûlée, the wealthy darkish chocolate cake, the pecan pie and the beautiful éclairs. However that one factor I search, a cookie selection, will not be there.
I like cookies. I like them with a form of longing most individuals reserve for a very good steak, a spectacular fish dish or a high quality wine. I’ve liked cookies with fats dollops of chocolate chips, with raisins embedded in oatmeal and with the chunk of ginger.
From the time I used to be a toddler, and realized that magic phrase that I’m advised I may pronounce very early, I’ve yearned for that crumbly, crunchy little mound of dough that signifies that each one’s proper with the world.
On winter days when it snows, I really feel an urgency to bake cookies. On summer season days when the birds sing exterior the kitchen window and the solar smiles down, I pop a baking sheet within the oven loaded with the cookie ardour of the second.
I’ll fortunately eat burnt cookies, underdone cookies, cookie items and, in a pinch, a dollop of the uncooked dough that I at all times forbade my youngsters to eat.
When every of our daughters married, I urged them to contemplate cookies as a dessert different. No one purchased into the concept.
I nonetheless want I may persuade the pastry cooks on the most interesting eating places to incorporate them on the menu. I believe that they’d have a “home specialty” in a blink.
So, what’s it about cookies that makes them such objects of need? Simplicity? Recollections of the milk-and-cookies kindergarten break? An opportunity to foil the meals police and easily indulge?
Why is it that cookie-lovers like me will endlessly tear by means of cookbooks searching for terrific recipes for this final consolation meals, particularly so when served heat, and with a chilly glass of milk?
My Moosewood cookbook, one which got here into vogue within the late 1970’s when a wildly well-liked restaurant in Ithaca, New York landed on the nationwide radar, dissatisfied me. I knew it was all about wholesome, nutritious meals, however the dessert part nonetheless had date nut muffins, orange muffins, rice pudding, bread pudding, apple custard pie, however nary a recipe for plain outdated cookies.
My fancier cookbooks failed me, too. Some, purchased as a result of they’d grow to be fashionable, dropped in an occasional cookie recipe that required 12 elements and 14 steps.
I lastly turned to my late mom’s Settlement Cook dinner E book and I struck gold. An entire chapter was dedicated to “Small Truffles and Cookies,” and there have been recipe treasures together with chocolate pecan cookies, ginger wafers, ginger snaps, sugar cookies, butter cookies and Scottish shortbread, which briefly grew to become my habit. Not even the half-pound of butter or pound of flour required may deter me. I’d discovered Nirvana.
I bear in mind the times when sure resort chains and airways have been providing cookies as a goodwill gesture to arriving company and passengers. The DoubleTree, I bear in mind, was handing out two-ounce cookies to any visitor, 24/7. Midwest Airways was doing the identical for passengers who flew any time after 10 a.m. I assume the notion of cookies for breakfast simply appeared too indulgent.
A New York Occasions story within the enterprise part described how these have been sensible enterprise choices, designed to create a “significant distinction” among the many sea of services provided to overwhelmed shoppers. And generally, apparently, the gesture of a proffered cookie may instill loyalty. I’m into it.
Looks like Sesame Road’s Cookie Monster was on to one thing large.
Sally Friedman is a contract author. Contact her at pinegander@aol.com.
