I have a friend who doesn't like cookies.
Let me rephrase that: I know someone who would be a friend if she liked cookies, but she doesn't, so she can't be a viable candidate for friendship.
I'm not entirely certain she's human.
Cookies are the Platonic ideal of dessert. They're portable, they're small and you can eat several of them before you start to feel guilty about it.
For some unknown good thing that our ancestors must have done, the gods of baking looked kindly upon humans and decided to bestow upon us a great gift, the ability to combine flour, sugar and butter in such a way that raises us above other animals and brings meaning to our existence. It helps if you add a little vanilla, too.
This is an ode to Oreos, a paean to powdered sugar, a hymn to Hydrox, an anthem to almond cookies, a song to sugar, a psalm to, um, psnickerdoodles. Sing, Muse!
Not all cookies are created equal. The aforementioned Hydrox are obviously a cheap knockoff of Oreos, but I just now learned that they were actually invented four years before Oreos (1908, compared to 1912). And windmill cookies are just a poor man's version of speculaas cookies from Holland.
But here's the thing: I will eat windmill cookies, and with gusto. I like windmill cookies. I will even eat Hydrox, especially now that I know they were the progenitor of the chocolate sandwich cookie.
Oreos _ Oreo come latelies _ are as great as cookies get. They are one of the food items that absolutely, positively cannot be improved upon. And yet, the folks at Nabisco _ probably very nice people who are kind to puppies _ keep attempting to improve them by coming up with new flavors. Swedish Fish Oreos, Fruit Punch Oreos, Candy Corn Oreos. It's as if they knew their efforts were doomed, so they just stopped trying.
Toll House cookies are also the ultimate expression of cookiedom and cannot be improved upon. Other chocolate chip recipes come and go, and some will even be (very nearly) as good as the Toll House recipe. But the Toll House cookie was the very first chocolate chip cookie _ Ruth Graves Wakefield invented it in 1936 at her Toll House restaurant in Whitman, Mass. _ and it is still the best.
How many other foods can you say this about? How many others recipes can claim indisputable perfection?
Steak is great, but there is always another way to make it better. Ketchup can be tweaked and improved. Even Tater Tots can be given an upgrade. But Oreos and Toll House cookies are the Everest of the cookie world.
Even the humblest cookies are, in their own way, great. Those crumbly, nutty crescent cookies that get powdered sugar all over your sweater are wonderful. Ginger snaps are amazing. Coconut macaroons are chewy marvels.
According to one poll that admittedly looks to be extravagantly unscientific, 44 percent of people polled responded that their least favorite cookie is oatmeal-raisin. That only shows what too many cutbacks in education funding will get you, or perhaps that too few people have had my oatmeal-raisin cookies. Those things are amazing.
There is a reason that cookies are served at the most joyous time of the year. But perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way, maybe we have the chain of causation wrong.
We don't serve cookies now because the holidays are so festive. The holidays are festive because that's when we serve so many cookies.
