Cookie Quest: The Beginning
Pan-Banging Chocolate Chip Cookies, recipe from Sarah Kieffer
I have a lot of opinions about cookies. One of them is that they are a perfect food. This is quite the claim, I know. “Cookie” is actually an umbrella term for a vast family of diverse crunchy, crispy, cakey, chewy, crumbly, or melt-in-your-mouth sweets that come in practically any size or shape one could imagine. So it’s not really fair for me to say cookies are a perfect food, because I am not being very specific. But that’s what’s so great about them. Cookies only last several bites, but the potential for flavorful and textural nuances captured in those few bites is the same you’d find in any entree or appetizer at a restaurant. From nuts, to fats, to sweeteners, to flours, the possibilities to build flavors in a cookie are endless. Take a chocolate chip cookie. Bake it using only AP flour and it will taste wildly different from one with only rye flour. The same goes for sugars: if you bake a cookie solely using brown sugar, it’ll be texturally very different from one made with only granulated sugar. It’s super exciting.
Cookies are great for sharing, too. One of my earliest food memories is eating my grammy’s chocolate-chocolate chip cookies whenever my family would visit her. She made them for us each time, and subconsciously I came to understand sharing cookies as a way to express care for others. I can see this reflected throughout my life- mailing care packages of cookies to friends, surprising my family with a spontaneous batch of sea salt chocolate chip cookies, decorating them at a party during the holidays, or staying up late with friends eating too much dough.
To listen to other cookie lovers share their opinions on cookies, this podcast episode with Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway is delightful.
Okay, so I’ve provided sufficient justification for why cookies are perfect. This enthusiasm inspired a new project that I’ve named, “Cookie Quest.” Generally speaking, the goal of this project, or quest, is to make a lot of cookies. I’ve combed through cookbooks, bookmarked recipes, and blogs, and assembled a list of 30 cookie recipes that I will make. I haven’t given myself a time limit, because I hope this project inspires more cookie confidence and subsequent experimentation in baking along the way. If I get an idea to try a variation of a cookie recipe from the list, I want the freedom to explore that! The list of cookies encapsulates many different textures, flavor profiles, and flours and were picked based on my own curiosity about the ingredients or techniques used. I have to admit, the recipes skew heavily towards those found in cookbooks I own or recipe hubs I have access to, like NYT, so there are definitely some blind spots. I see this Cookie Quest as only the beginning of a long cookie education that will grow, transform, and expand simultaneously with my baking knowledge. I’m hoping that exposing myself to these diverse ingredients and baking philosophies will develop my cookie expertise and maybe even inspire a recipe or two of my own.
I’m really excited! And I’m looking forward to sharing this Cookie Quest with y’all.