Kayden Kross Official Blog: The Search for the Perfect Cookie @ Kayden Kross's Official Site

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Search for the Perfect Cookie

My favorite cookies are chocolate chip, without the chocolate chips. I like things that are the raw material for perfect, meaning they have the potential for perfection if I can just make them my own. I decided at one point that the reason we think there is no such thing as perfect is because perfect is individualized.

Chocolate chips cookies should be worked over and picked through. They are no good as baked dough without the chips and they are no good with the chips left in once baked. This paradox tormented me in Home Ec as I tried to perfect the chocolate chipless chocolate chip cookie in the oven. I finally decided that the chip flavor needed to rub off on the dough without being a part of the actual dining experience. The perfect chocolate chip cookie was one with a relatively low ratio of chip to dough for easy consumption, but not so low that surrounding dough was not properly affected. I created a math formula that was only as advanced as I was. If I remember correctly I involved the Pythagorean Theorem. I was devoted to the issue.

In middle school we'd sit at the long cafeteria tables at lunch and talk about boys and unfair parents but when I got to the cookie I'd drop out of the conversation and one by one my friends would go quiet too as they tuned into my strange cookie ritual, as I broke it into pieces and worked each bit down to the chocolate, turning it over and over with the edges of my front teeth and then putting it aside. When it was done I'd ball up the napkin with the melted waste and reapply my frosty 7th grade lip gloss, taking special care to make sure there were no crumbs left and then sucking the last bit of chocolate off of my fingertips and suddenly I'd remember that I was supposed to be a part of the conversation about the parents who just don't get it and the boys that we just didn't get. I'd pick at my fingernail polish and worry about homework with my meditative cookie experience already completely forgotten while my friends gave me strange looks and continued to dwell on it until their giggles turned to shrieks and they had to stop for air. It was known that I just really liked chocolate chip cookies, except without the chocolate chips.

Sometime between 7th grade and today I must have dropped the habit. I don't know when or how but on the way out of Trader Joe's tonight I picked up a bag of my favorite cookies on a whim and opened them on the drive home. They didn't taste right. I bit in again and still they weren't the small bits of baked heaven as I'd expected. I bit around a chocolate chip, then again and again until I had a pile of melting chocolate in my lap and I tossed it out the window. It was perfect. Now I'm wondering what other wisdom I've lost along the way.

posted by Kayden Kross on 10:02 PM :: 7 comments

7 Comments:

Speaking bout perfection, I can think of someone who is as close to perfect as possible; natural, unmistakable beauty, brains, and sweet personality, that delicious chocolate chip of a woman, Kayden Kross!! Yummy!

By Sdlakersfan, at January 17, 2010 10:31 AM

Kayden's posts are always so creative, thoughtful, and funny. She is so real and smart, I look forward to reading everything she writes.

By richar9277, at January 17, 2010 6:08 PM

My guests devour Newman's Own Organic O's - Mint Creme Filled Chocolate Cookies. If I don't have them they cry.

By Glenn, at January 17, 2010 9:56 PM

You are the perfect cookie. And reading this gave me a flashback... Thanks!

By Robert, at January 18, 2010 7:51 AM

I am the opposite. I'd prefer the chocolate chips with just a bit of dough but that is too much work so I just eat the entire cookie as is.

By Nick, at January 18, 2010 10:16 AM

Anyone who can write such enthralling content about a cookie is just brewing to be published. Invite me to your book signing. :-D

By Meeshee, at January 19, 2010 12:56 AM

I like what you say about perfection being individualized but i think that is what is so perfect about the chipless cookie for you, that it isn't conventionally perfect, it individualizes you.

By Glasgow, at January 20, 2010 10:04 AM