My Favorite Thing

Some foods are good. Some foods are great. Some foods are life changing.
My mother's chocolate chip cookies are life changing.

My chocolate chip cookies

When Holland posted about her experience teaching the members of our blog group to make chocolate chip cookies, it reminded me of my experience learning to make chocolate chip cookies. As one of the few recipes I have memorized, chocolate chip cookies have come to mean more to me than simply being calorie-loaded, guilt-enducing, waiste-line-ruining, sugar vessels. To me, chocolate chip cookies mean memories. They mean people. They mean tradition.

Originally, chocolate chip cookies served as a substitute for "Butter Drop Do" cookies, in which baking chocolate was used. As Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Restaurant in Massachusetts, was baking these "Butter Drop Do" cookies, she ran out of the necessary ingredient of baker's chocolate. With only a bar of semi-sweet chocolate on hand, Ruth decided to chop the chocolate and add it to the dough as a substitute, thinking it would melt and distribute throughout each cookie. Much to her surprise, the chocolate in the resulting cookies retained its shape, and the chocolate chip cookie was born (History of Cookies). Today, as one of America's favorite cookies, the chocolate chip cookie has become an icon. The subject of playground debates and even legal proceedings, chocolate chip cookies are an integral part of everday life.

On a more personal level, chocolate chip cookies are the food that connect me to my mother. Few cooking lessons have allowed my mother to use the mother tongue so flawlessly (Bryn Mawr Commencement Address). They were first dessert she taught me to make, and they'll be the first dessert I'll teach my children to make. Throughout my high school years, chocolate chip cookies were the recipe I'd turn to when I wanted to make something with my friends.

A failed chocolate chip cookie experiment

Occasionally, the results were disastorous, as you can see by the picture on the right. During one cookie-baking adventure, my friend, Jonathan, thought it would be a good idea to add blue food dye to the dough. The resulting cookies became a teal-ish colored slop. While these cookies were edible, we decided from then on to leave our cookies food dye free.

As with several beloved recipes, my mother's chocolate chip cookies became a form of tradition. Since the recipe yields so many cookies (70+), it is nearly impossible to be selfish about eating these cookies. They have to be shared. Over years of baking chocolate chip cookies, I have developed my own personal tradition of delivering at least half of each batch to a friend. Sometimes I do this anonymously by leaving the cookies on a door step and sometimes I deliver them in person.

Regardless of how I deliver them though, the tradition of making cookies to share cookies has given me a way to reach out to others. The giving of a cookie is the giving of myself. Because I took the time to bake them cookies, it shows others just how much I care. And that goes beyond mere baked goods. It deepens friendships, unites us as people, and gives us just a little more compassion, a little more humanity, a little more love. That's my favorite thing.