C is for Conniving

or "Melting Motives"



I am cookie monster, not a cookie master. That is to say cookies are my one of my favorites dessert, but I have never learned how to make them properly. Which is kind of strange because otherwise I know my way around a kitchen fairly well. I started to learn how to cook when I turned 18 and realized I could not live off of boxed meals. Over the years I have learned to master various dishes from kung pao chicken, egg rolls, homemade tortillas, chili con carne, and even recently, sushi. If I have a recipe, generally I can make it. Except for cookies. Actually, I don’t know how to make most desserts, but I am especially incompetent at cookies.

Part of it is intentional, but most of it is not. I never wanted to learn how to make sweets or desserts because I thought what good would it do to be able to make cookies. Nothing good comes from having 5 dozen cookies in in the house. Think about it. So, for most of my adult life I have never even attempted or looked at any cookie recipes. Why bother?

It wasn’t until this last year that I began to turn my thinking around. There are actually some really tantalizing things about making cookies. Just look at the cost/benefit analysis of cookies.

For starters, most ingredients in cookies are fairly inexpensive. I am no stranger to the way things are in this economy. I don’t have the disposable income that I imagined that I would have at this age. The good news is that for around six, maybe seven bucks, you can easily churn out over five dozen cookies. Sugar cookies you could get even get away with at five dollars. You can feed a decent amount of people for the fewest amount of duckets.

Second, cookies hold a lot of credibility. Lately it seems, I have been accused several times of being selfish, unthoughtful, and ungenerous of my time and energy. If I had I had been holding a plateful of warm homemade cookies…I doubt those things would have been said to me. It is almost impossible to insult someone who has just baked you chocolate chip cookies. Any person who has made five dozen cookies is immediately thought of as kind, warm, giving and an inspiration to humanity. I want to be that person. Especially only for six bucks.

We have an event coming up for children with special needs who can only make it to a doctor once a month. Many of these kids are low income and are in need of some cheer due to their often painful and sometimes terminal illnesses. I can make some cookies for these kids. I throw the cookie ingredients in a bowl, put my mixer in, and hit high. With the dough being made, I scoop them into little balls, place them on the tray and put them in the oven. Ten minutes later, I am ready to showcase and I open the oven to discover….uncooked cookie balls.

My cookies never melted down in luscious cookie circles. They are in the exact shape of the cookie dough that I put them in. “Hmm…that’s weird,” I think, and prep another batch for the oven, convinced the first batch is a fluke. Ten minutes later, the same results. I am starting to panic a little. I need to make those cookies for those flipping kids tomorrow but I don’t want to make their lives more miserable than they already are with my substandard cookies. I place the cookie dough balls on the baking sheet, only this time I squish them down with my hand to make them look flat. Ten minutes later, much flatter cookies arrive. The only minor problem is that my finger and handprints are visible in everyone.

Several more events crop up during the year and I find myself back at the cookie helm, trying my best to come out with cookies that melt wonderfully flat and look like every other cookie I have seen in my life. Six more attempts and six more failures. I start asking my cook friends and they all give me different advice. Am I using enough butter? Am I using too much egg? Is my oven hot enough?. I take all of their advice and come out with the same result. I start getting paranoid and have feelings of cookie inadequacy . I have a dream where I go to the supermarket and I am telling the master baker there about my problems. Just as they are about to give me their advice, I wake up. I finally ask my aunt, who can cook anything in the world, for some advice.

“They are just cookies,” she says, “what’s so hard about it?”

I look at my recipe again, this time really determined to get it right. As I am reading, I notice that no electric mixer is ever mentioned. Everything in the recipe refers to slowly mixing, slowing adding, mixing slowly by hand. I can’t even mix in the chocolate chips, but I have to “stir them in gently”. It sounds sort of frustrating to me, because I am highly impatient. I don’t have time to stand there and gently stir anything. When I make jalapeno cheese bread, I throw the ingredients in the bowl, slap it around, and let it do all the rising by itself. Gentleness is not required in bread making.

But, I am determined, so I give it go. I start stirring slowly. I crack one egg slowly. I fold it in the dough. I start to get into this rhythm trance. My hand just moving in careful meditative circles around the bowl. “You know,” I hear my inner voice say “maybe we had all of the right ingredients all along. Perhaps we were trying to move things along too fast.”

“I do have a tendency to move things too fast,” I think in agreement. “Sometimes I just have all right ingredients, but I am just moving too fast.” My mind starts to branch off in other directions while I stir slowly. “You know,” I begin to think, “Sometimes I do the same things with friendships as well. I try to move things along too fast. I find people with all the right ingredients of friendship and then I want to be best friends overnight. Most of my current good friends, it took awhile to get to know. There is no need to rush. Why do I rush things? I need to patient with friendships with in the future.”

I look down at the cookie dough. This dough look different than the others that I made. It glistens. It looks frosty and smooth. It looks very….meltable. I can feel it. I put it the oven. Ten minutes later, we are golden. The cookies come out round and inviting. These were the cookies I was waiting for. It made me start to think. Why did I keep myself from learning the art of cookie making all of these years. There was never a reason to fear cookies or cookie making. Cookie making could be a gateway for finding universal peace and internal enlightenment. Or it could also be a very cheap way to manipulate others into thinking you are a kind, generous and thoughtful person. Whichever.