Crazy About Cookies

From your email, please click on the title to view the photos and comment online. On the Website, you can read past blogs, search for recipes, and browse.

Are we about to be gripped by a cookie frenzy? This past week, The Los Angeles Times headlined that the City of Angels is in the midst of a cookie craze, buttressed by a host of new cookie-shop openings and a buzz similar to the cupcake craze of two decades ago. The owner of a featured cookie shop attributed the fervor to our post-pandemic “collective anxiety” as well as our desire for comfort.

A recipe for nostalgia

There’s something about a cookie that shouts nostalgia. I’m sure almost all of us remember this American comfort food as our first sweet treat. At the very least, we all tore open a box of animal crackers for school lunch. As for me, one of the first things I made in the kitchen were peanut butter cookies. Though my memory about those early 1950s is hazy, I’m sure my mother supervised and helped with measurements and mixing. I still have a clear memory of pressing down the round dough balls with a dinner fork before dispatching them to the oven.

My favorite cookie time of the year comes with the winter holidays. My mother would create trays and trays of various Christmas cookies. There were thumbprint cookies filled with raspberry jam, frosted cookie-cutter shapes sprinkled with colored sugar, spritzes dotted with cinnamon red-hots, and round powder-sugar-covered nut butter balls, just to name a few. Of course, our household also has a cookie jar.

Cookies as we know them are only a few hundred years old. Sure, the Romans celebrated weddings and fertility rites with small cakes made with honey and rye flour and studded with nuts and dried fruit. And the Greeks had their honey and flour cakes called boen (from which we got the word bun). But the word cookie doesn’t appear until an 18^th-century dictionary reference to the Dutch “koekje” or little cake. Dutch settlers in America baked these little cakes in ovens or on a griddle. About the same time, the French developed their petits fours. What allowed the first cookie frenzy was the development of iron stoves in the 19^th century that made cookie baking accessible for home cooks.

The current most-popular cookie, the chocolate chip, was invented here in Massachusetts in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield who operated the Toll House Inn in Whitman. This drop cookie is the essence of the basic treat rich in butter and sugar mixed with flour and leavened by eggs. Plus, the older fig newton is supposedly named after the Massachusetts city of Newton. Despite what’s happening in L.A., I haven’t seen any current activity that would constitute a cookie frenzy here … yet.

Why we all love cookies

What I don’t understand is why cookies don’t get any respect as a dessert. They get pooh-poohed off when we get to the dessert portion of a meal. I’m here to tell all those fancy restaurant dessert chefs that cookies deserve more attention. First, fresh-made cookies have exceptional and simple ingredients: whether vanilla, chocolate, nuts, fruit, jam, or another creative twist. And a cookie has all the elements that make for a great dessert thanks to the multitude of flavor and variety of combinations that provide a sweet, chewy, crunchy, flavorful result. The second advantage is their portability. You can take them away from the table to a more comfortable place to enjoy dessert; you can transport them as a treat for a special occasion; and you can put them in a lunch box, not to mention chomping on one while hiking. The third advantage is size. They provide excellent portion control (you can eat one or a half dozen) unless it’s one of those pizza-sized chocolate-chip bombs. Last but not least, there’s the multitude of shapes, colors, and sizes that enable you to fashion into edible art — a dessert suitable for any occasion.

In short, cookies are fun! Maybe they should be front and center as a dessert at your next dinner party. What’s your favorite?

Please click on the headline to view the blog on the website. You can log in and comment at the end of the blog to share your thoughts and start a discussion, or suggest a topic for Farmboy in the Kitchen.

If you’d like to share the blog, click on the Facebook icon or one of the others. Thanks!