Cookie Monster Lives

Cookies have to be the world's most perfect food. After all, they're just as good raw as they are cooked, warm as they are cool, plain as they are dressed up. You can eat them any time of day with any kind of beverage. You can keep them, share them, or give them as a gift. They can be quick and simple or complicated and impressive. They are for holidays and every day, for family and friends, for eating at home or taking to a social function.

My family's favorite cookie is a classic - chocolate chip. I have tried a myriad of recipes and nearly every brand of chip on the market in search of the best. Interestingly enough, our top pick for chips is not made from Godiva chocolate or in a package emblazoned with Ghirardelli. We like the Kroger Private Selection (yes, generic) milk chocolate chips, plus the best recipe we've tried is on the back of the bag. Go figure. Sunday night I ventured into the realm of cookiedom once again at the behest of my nearly 15-year-old son. What can I say? He uses the puppy dog face well. Of course I don't actually bake all of the cookies, because large spoonfuls of raw dough tend to not-so-mysteriously disappear from the bowl. And why not? I can't resist licking the beaters, or the spatula, or any random spoon that gets "dropped" into the batter, or the bowl itself, for that matter.

While the batter is scrumptious, it's the aroma of baking cookies - ripe with overtones of real butter, brown sugar, and vanilla - that really gets to me. Someday, I'm going to stand before the pearly gates and say, "Hey Pete, is that homemade chocolate chip cookies I smell?" because heaven just has to be perfumed with the scent of baked goods.

Another cookie I love in any form is the traditional ginger cookie. I bake these every year at Christmas, but they're not always reserved for that holiday. Often on Valentine's Day the smell of dark, rich molasses coupled with the spicy tang of ginger wafts through our house as I pull sheet pans filled with cut out hearts, lips, and cupids from the oven. I have actually amassed quite a collection of cookie cutters for an array of holidays including Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Easter. There are also other, more general, shapes of fruit and animals. (I bought the fish and kitty cutters to make homemade cat treats, which - of course - my finicky furry friends merely smelled of with disdain before frolicking away.) So you see, I'm armed with cookie cutters for every occasion, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Another baking great is the tried and true peanut butter cookie. My mom made these often when I was a kid, probably because they're my dad's perennial pick. I remember carefully dipping the fork tines in a small pile of sugar and then pressing them onto the balls of cookie dough in a criss-cross pattern. More often than not, though, Mom baked them while my brother and I were in school. (I'm sure it was a good deal easier to make the cookies without grabby little hands wanting to eat heaps of dough before it ever made it to the oven.) At the end of the day, we'd come tumbling through the door pulled in by the smell of those cookies - brown sugary sweet and peanutty delicious. Before we ever had a bite we knew they would be perfectly done - soft and chewy with just a hint of crunchy, caramelized sugar around the edges.

Most people have memories like these - a favorite cookie, the aroma filling the house, the anticipation of that first (and every successive) bite. But somehow I like to think my memories are better because they span so many decades, so many shapes and kinds, and so many flavors. But that's just how the cookie crumbles at my house.