The Magic of Chocolate Chip Cookies

Butter. Flour. Sugar.

No, wait. Brown sugar.

Both?

Yes. That’s it.

Don’t cry. Don’t do it.

The tattered recipe card, sepia tones creeping in from the crumbling edges, sat propped against the toaster. The fading scrawl crawling across the face of the card contained the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe - or so legend had it. Forget Neiman Marcus and Tollhouse. Amateurs. This recipe was The One.

Why did she use pencil?

After 60-odd years, the pencil markings on the card had been worn thin, rubbed to a pale grey by decades of fingertips. Innumerable times she had begged Nana to let her put the recipes on the computer. She could even print them out, bind them together as a sweet little book, Nana's Kitchen Magic. No. Nana always said no. She wouldn’t even let her laminate the cards to keep them from falling apart.

No. To touch these cards was to hold the hands of all those who had touched them before. That was what Nana had told her, that soft voice gliding over her like a gentle breeze whispering through the trees. “You, your mother, your sisters,” Nana would say. “Your aunties. Even my own mother. All the women who came before you have touched these cards and they are your link to the past, your tether. Don’t let it go.”

Combine the flour and cornstarch and salt.

Mix together the butter, brown sugar, white sugar.

Add the egg, the bold yellow of the yolk screaming its vibrancy from the pale sugars, the gooey white sliming its way into the creamy batter blend.

Whisk whisk whisk. What a funny word.

Fold in the chocolate. Introduce the darkness into the light that would make for a perfect combination of deliciousness.

Now, for the secret. The sacred magic that Nana insisted would always make the best cookies. Put the batter in the fridge for three hours. Three was the magic number. Not two, not four. Three. Three hours in which to shower and dress. Then she could pop the cookies in the oven, then set them to cool on the counter for a bit before packing them up into their Tupperware transport.

Baking cookies had followed her through her life, changing all along the way. A fun and tasty mess to the rambunctious five year old, an expression of creativity to the wizened ten year old, a ball and chain to the snarky 15 year old, something to be rushed through or ignored to the busy 20 year old.

To the 25 year old they were a link to the past. A tether to all the women who had come before her. This batch of cookies, the secret magic of her grandmother’s recipe filling the air with the scents of butter and sugar and chocolate, this batch would be her tribute. The ultimate chocolate chip cookie. She would bring this tribute to her grandmother’s bedside, in hopes that this smell, this taste, would trigger those memories and bring her beloved Nana back to her, even if only for one magical moment.

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