My mom makes the best cookies. Whether it’s a batch of simple sugar cookies or traditional chocolate chips (a staple cookie that transcends all holiday affiliations) her dough is always creamy and rich with tantalizing ripples on the surface left behind from the metal beaters that have been expertly cleaned by yours truly since 1995. Her cookies, specifically her chocolate chips, are famous in my family. When she bakes a batch to bring to family gatherings, it’s impossible to just eat one. All my relatives simultaneously praise, condemn, and question her for bringing a cookie so impeccably addictive into this world every year.
“Sylv, I don’t know how you get your chocolate chips to taste like this, but they’re always so good,” they’ve said in awe, melted chocolate collecting at the corners of their mouths.
My mom modesty replies, “Well, I just follow the recipe on the back of the package.”
It’s the truth (kind of). She doesn’t have any baking tricks up her sleeve, secret recipes, or special ingredients – or so I thought. My mom quite literally follows the standard chocolate chip recipe found on the back of any package of Nestle chocolate chips. No substitutions. No extra pinches of anything. No whisking or uncalled for refrigeration. By all appearances, she follows that standard recipe to the letter. What’s even more outrageous about her cookie success is the unreliability of her oven. It doesn’t stay a consistent temperature. She could set it at 350 and discover the thermometer reads 375 fifteen minutes later. The odds of her runaway cookie success are stacked against her! Yet she manages to prevail every single time.
Many of my fondest childhood holiday memories are helping my mom bake in the kitchen. I can picture the whole counter landscape: two sticks of butter and two eggs nestled behind the canister that holds our Lipton tea bags, the empty measuring cup ready to be filled, and the package of chocolate chips recipe side up on next to the mixer. I recall mashing down the brown sugar to get an accurate measurement and licking the granules stuck to my knuckles afterwards. I remember taking a hit of the vanilla before she measured a careful teaspoon.
There is one part of this ritual that I’ve been remembering wrong for all of my adult life, and I just figured out what it was last week.
What could it be, you ask? Katie, how could you not be intimately familiar with the recipe after watching her make cookies dozens of times throughout your life?
The trouble began when I started making my mom’s famous cookies on my own. A couple years ago, I started making some of my own baked goods. I had been mooching off of her cookies for too long, and it was time to secure my baking independence. After a few batches, it became clear I had not inherited my mom’s baking finesse. The cookies weren’t bad, but they weren’t as good as my mom’s. Like my exasperated relatives, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I followed the recipe! I set the oven at the right temperature! There were empirical differences between my cookies and my mom’s cookies that convinced me there was more to my failure than the fact tat moms are always the best cookie makers. My chocolate chip cookie dough was good – what chocolate chip cookie dough isn’t? – but it wasn’t as good as hers. There were no ripples on the surface of my dough. My sugar cookies were flat and crispy instead of thick and chewy. Something just wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Are you letting the butter get to room temperature, or are you melting it in the microwave?”
“I let it sit out until it gets soft enough to mix.”
“Okay, that’s not it, then. When you cook them, do you put foil on the pans?”
“I’ve baked them with foil, straight on the pan, and on parchment paper, and they still never turn out right.”
“It has to be the oven then. I can’t think of what else it could possibly be.”
This year I was determined to get to the bottom of this. I had to know what was causing my Christmas sugar cookies to spread out so much. I made a batch of sugar cookies and brought them home to show my mom how they turned out. She said they were right, but they weren’t like hers.
“We’ll test it. I’ll make a batch here following the recipe exactly, and we’ll find out if it’s his oven.”
My mom made a control batch as promised. The dough was chilling in the refrigerator (a step I had also followed!), and we were having tea together and watching Property Brothers.
“So you followed the recipe exactly right? The two sticks of butter, sugar, whatever?”
“Yes, I made it how I’ve always made them: two sticks of margarine…”
“Wait. Margarine? Why did use margarine? The recipe says butter.”
“I always use margarine instead of butter.”
“… Then why does the recipe say butter?!”
“I just assumed you knew that I meant margarine.”
“WHY WOULD I ASSUME THAT?! Why would you use a code name for margarine that just happens to be the name of another leavening agent???”
“You’ve been watching me make them all these years! I thought you knew.”
I didn’t know. I saw two sticks on the counter. I know butter can be made into a spread, but in my mind, sticks symbolize butter whereas margarine is found in a tub. That’s just how I’ve organized shortening options in my mind since childhood. If I tried to keep track of the many butters, margarines, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butters any other way, I wouldn’t have any room in my brain for new song lyrics.
“So do you use margarine to make the chocolate chips, too!?”
“Yes! Margarine for everything.”
We’re laughing hysterically at this point, because in my 24 years of life, I had no idea she was using margarine instead of butter.
“That’s why no one can make your cookies right! You keep telling them you follow the package recipe exactly, but the package says butter!”
I had uncovered a conspiracy in my family, and I needed to get a better sense of the scope of this cover-up. Who else was involved? This recipe neglect no doubt began with my grandmother, who took her custard recipe to the grave when she assured my mom that my aunt had the recipe. (She didn’t. My aunt claimed she’s never even made custard.) My mom sent the following email to her sister:
When you make chocolate chip cookies, do you use real butter or Imperial? I always use Imperial so maybe that’s why they think mine are different. Katie didn’t know if it called for butter, I used Imperial.
Note from Katie: I feel like some grand conspiracy has just come to light. All the recipes say butter! I always wondered how her dough came out so creamy.
Sent from my iPad
In a shocking twist, it turns out my aunt is using one stick of margarine and one stick of butter. BUT NONE OF THIS IS WRITTEN DOWN ANYWHERE!
This is how recipes die in families. It’s because we’re too busy with our new fangled technology to properly record the things we’re baking during the holiday season every year. Please, this year, if you don’t do anything else, tell the truth about your recipes. Omissions lead to flat cookies and diminished baking self-esteem. Don’t assume anyone knows anything because they’ve seen you do it a hundred times. Some of us need details! Specific instructions! WE NEED THE TRUTH!
Do me a favor today? Open a Microsoft Word document and type up painstakingly specific instructions about something delicious you cook/bake. That’s truly the gift that keeps on giving.
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