Emotional Support Cookies

When a cookie isn’t just a cookie

I picked up my chocolate chip cookie recipe at the first job where I felt true purpose in my work, a non-profit where we made real contributions to international relations but where we also fretted endlessly over the precise measurements of the margins we used for printed documents and considered with great intensity whether Georgia was too unserious a font to be used in a memo. It was here that we held snacky birthday parties for everyone, forcing all-staff meetings to put the birthday person on the spot. Sometimes there were mirror-glazed store-bought cakes from the Eataly downstairs. Hummus and crudité and pita chips and cut fruit for the less pastry-inclined. Other times, people brought in homemade goods.

It was one of my colleagues who introduced Dorie Greenspan’s chocolate chip cookie to us with a tweak of her own, subbing out a few tablespoons of butter with Crisco to make the cookies soft enough to sandwich a generous dollop of nutella. Everyone went nuts for them. I did too and made them this way for years and then, at some point, eating them began to feel like having a whole meal. I stopped making the sandwich versions and then found I liked them better full-butter, and with a little more salt than the original recipe called for (I use salted Kerrygold instead of unsalted butter). With this adjustment, this cookie has carried me for more than a decade, popping up in graduate school and at many a dinner party for support, celebration, just-because.

Last week, I made four batches of this cookie dough, around 130 cookies in all. I shaped them into little golf balls and lay them out across baking sheets with some space in between. Once flash frozen, I dumped them all in a ziploc and stuffed them back in the freezer. I’ll be pulling them out when I need them, next for Matthew’s birthday party this weekend and, after that, for the Thanksgiving dessert spread.

—

When Nathaniel was in the NICU, I’d bake them late at night after I put Matthew and Claire to bed. I would unload and re-load the dishwasher, spray down the kitchen island, and set out next to the butter that had already softened and the eggs that had already come to room temperature, everything else I needed: the sugars, the flour, the baking soda, the chocolate chips, the vanilla, the salt. These cookies began as stress cookies. I could not control what happened in the walls of the NICU or how Nathaniel’s body might respond to treatment, but I could make these cookies.

And then, as Nathaniel’s clinical condition improved and I could see a nebulous timeline for discharge — not home immediately, but at least reasonably on the way, with a long stay at a rehab facility before finally, at last, settling in his crib in our house by his first birthday — I brought in boxes and boxes of these cookies on a wave of optimism. I’d check in at the front desk at the children’s hospital and float my way in, rounding the corner of the gift shop, gliding along the path I had once trudged, leaden and sinking and wanting to slide-door my way into a different version of my life where my son wasn’t constantly at risk of dying. I remember thinking then, in that swell of hope: there is no one happier than me. It just wasn’t possible. Then, I had big plans for all the sweets I’d bring in as Nate convalesced: peanut butter sandies, a trusted Food + Wine carrot cake, maple bourbon pie with a salted graham cracker crust.

NICU cookies; second heavenly birthday cookies.

I regret I never got the chance.

Instead, I baked these chocolate chip cookies the morning of Nate’s service, so they could make an appearance at the reception after his memorial service. I don’t remember much of that day, except between curling my hair and putting on my makeup and helping Matthew and Claire get in their formal clothes and, perhaps, reserving a little wiggle room to have a breakdown, I must have woken up at 5AM to get it done, that’s how determined I was to have them out. These were also the same cookies I sent home with Nate’s nurses, the time they came over for dinner at our house months after he passed.

These weren’t just cookies. They were my stress cookies, the hope cookies, the when-he-was-alive cookies, the he-will-come-home cookies, the now-that-he’s-gone cookies, and today — they are the we-are-forever-connected cookies.

—

If you’d like to make Nate’s chocolate chip cookies, here is Dorie Greenspan’s recipe. Remember to use salted butter. Chill them overnight before baking. Think of our sweet boy as you make them and be sure to share the joy of these cookies with others.