That crazy cookie-making cycle
When my son was born 23 years ago, a friend came to visit, bringing baby clothes and Rice Krispie-marshmallow treats. The squares were stacked on the plate like a brick wall-a wall that I tore down, square by square, until there was nothing left on the plate but a bit of Krispie chaff.
Those first days of my baby’s life were a sleepy blur of changing and rocking and feeding; my memory attaches itself to the smell of his head and the sweet chewiness of those Rice Krispie treats.
When the first batch was gone, I made another, melting the marshmallows in a saucepan and pouring the goo into a bowl of the cereal and then wrestling the blob into a pan. The routine was part of every evening. I’d make the treats after the 11 p.m. feeding and they’d be ready to eat by the 2 a.m. feeding. I don’t remember how many pans I made and ate during those first days of his life, but it was a lot.
I’m thinking of this now, because I found myself in another goodie cycle over the Christmas holiday. The charming Rick Sebak, my fellow producer at WQED, had posted Facebook photos of the cowboy cookies he’d baked. They looked delicious – golden and lumpy and crispy.
There are dozens of recipes for the cookies, but it turns out they are a favorite of former First Lady Laura Bush, and her version doesn’t have raisins, which don’t belong in any cookie, so I chose hers.
Three sticks of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, chocolate chips, coconut, pecans, oatmeal – a cement mixer would have done a better job of combining it all – like concrete with extra gravel in it. The cookies baked up fast and huge. I stood over the cooling rack, blowing and waving to get them to cool down and crisp up so I could eat the first one.
It’s a really good cookie. I wouldn’t cross the street for a piece of chocolate, and I only put nuts in baked goods because the farmer tends to pout if I don’t, but something about those ingredients along with the coconut and a whole cow’s worth of butter just sits together in the dough in such a way that you want to eat the whole batch. And then get up in the middle of the night and make some more.
There are people who enjoy baking and who do it every week, and I’m not one of them. Before the Great Cowboy Cookie Caper of 2018, the only baking I did for many months was banana bread, and that’s only because I didn’t want to waste the brown bananas.
But just as people get pulled into TV shows, or listen to the same CD a hundred times in a row, or read the same book over and over, it’s possible to get into a loop with one kind of food. And the problem is contagious. After he ate four of the cowboy cookies at Christmas brunch, my son returned a few days later and went right to the kitchen, asking for more.
They were gone, but I made more for him. While I baked, I told him about the Rice Krispie treats that arrived with his birth. He said he liked those, too.
By year’s end, I’d baked four big batches of the cowboy cookies. My freezer is stuffed with them. You just can’t leave those things sitting around on the counter, because if you eat one, the whole cycle will start up again.
Don’t believe me? Google for a recipe and do some baking. But leave out the raisins.