If a Mom Thinks About a Cookie

If a mom thinks about a cookie, and thinking leads to procuring, and being unsatisfied with procurement leads to baking cookies, which inevitably leads to the most important question there is, soft or crisp? I am a crisp cookie person, my daughter prefers hers soft. When I bake cookies I often resolve this by pulling one batch from the oven a little early and letting the other stay in longer. This technique works well with our beloved corn cookies but sometimes you need to make a choice.

When it comes to cookies I am recipe dependent. I have neither the patience nor training to come up with new cookie recipes, and they are so easy to find. I did learn the basic 1-2-3 cookie recipe in culinary school which consists of 1 part sugar, 2 parts butter and 3 parts flour (see below). This is a recipe that works by weight not volume. You can find weight to volume equivalents here. It is also so basic that you need to add other things to the dough, such as flavorings.

I am partial to shortbread cookies. They are the perfect mix of tender and crisp, and you can taste the butter. Years ago I had a friend who was a baker, and when we got into a conversation about our our favorite foods, hers were sugar and butter. The other day I made the pecan sandies from Smitten Kitchen which are my perfect cookie. They aren’t too sweet, have the depth of flavor you can only get from nuts toasted to the edge of burning, and they are so tiny you can eat a million. Shortbread cookies are a great base for add-ins, even matcha. 

Thanksgiving is the kick off of cookie season. There will be online cookie recipe swaps, and magazines covers will be festooned with them. I read most of them, but I rarely see a recipe that I want to bake. For some bakers cookies are a canvas on (and in) which they express their creative impulses adding more and more stuff until the dough can barely hold the jellybeans, coconut, dried fruit and nuts together. I’d rather have the plate of assorted cookies my former co-worker Rose would give everyone each year; chocolate dipped butter cookies, Mexican wedding cakes (another favorite), lace cookies, and delicate chocolate chip cookies. I miss that plate of cookies every year. Rose is a cookie genius.

What about you? Do you prefer a soft or crisp cookies, and what is your favorite cookie?

1-2-3 Recipe for two pounds of cookie dough  (about 32 cookies).

1. 5.5 ounces sugar
2. 2 1/2 sticks of butter
3. 1 lb flour
4. 1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, add vanilla. Add flour and mix just until blended. Add any flavorings you like such as chocolate chips, lemon zest, dried cranberries and white chocolate, you get the idea.