I have a bittersweet memory attached with home-baked chocochip cookies.
My ex-partner loved my home-baked cookies. And I loved baking them for him. Didn’t know then that he would split with me because his father did not approve of me and continue to tell me he loves me. Now this man is in love with another girl! I hate him.
I will bake alongside you when you bake. We’ll have a cookie baking party. It’ll be khup fun!
My experience baking cookies
- I have been feeling isolated, in my mind and room, while being constantly surrounded by people and voices. It’s a new flavor of isolation, which makes me feel suffocated. In the middle of this, I baked cookies with Nivedita. By that, I mean that we decided to start baking at 11 am the following day and we shared photos and insights while we did.
- She was being fed breakfast by her mother while she baked. I was baking with babyR, who spoke to pigeons in the window when she wasn’t stealing chocolate chunks from the batter.
- The recipe asked for us to chill the batter. We decided 15 minutes would do. In these 15 minutes, we fell into a mutual appreciation for each other. We told each told, in what words we had that we appreciate the existence of the other. I struggle to believe that I have neither met nor known this person before.
You can’t relive your past but you can cleanse the memories.
I started this project to change my association of food with violence, to write over childhood memories with these consciously created ones. In doing this, I became a part of the mosaic of writings and over-writings that Nivedita’s association with chocolate-chip cookies is.
Recipe
Servings: 12
Ingredients
½ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar, packed (I used regular sugar)
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
4 ounces milk or semi-sweet chocolate chunks 4 ounces dark chocolate chunks (or your preference)
Preperation
- Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the sugars, salt, and butter until a paste has formed with no lumps. Whisk in the egg and vanilla, beating until light ribbons fall off the whisk. Sift in the flour and baking soda, then fold the mixture with a spatula, being careful not to over mix. This will cause the gluten in the flour to toughen which will result in cakier cookies.
- Fold in the chocolate chunks evenly, then chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.
For a more intense toffee-like flavor and deeper color, chill the dough overnight. The longer the dough rests, the more complex its flavor will be. - Scoop the dough with an ice-cream scoop onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, leaving at least 4 inches of space between cookies and 2 inches of space from the edges of the pan so that the cookies can spread evenly.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the edges have started to barely brown.
- Cool completely, and enjoy!