The Way The Cookie Crumbles

“I miss you this holiday,” my daughter confided when she called me on Christmas Eve from her home in the Houston area.

“I miss you too, but remember, next year will be more like our regular holidays,” I assured her.

“Well, I got homesick this week and even made my special cookies,” she admitted.

Memories of her infamous baking made me laugh. Who would have ever guessed that a festive mishap could become so deliciously memorable?

As my daughter relayed the details of her holiday cooking, I couldn’t help but remember the December of her senior year in high school. Bitten by a baking bug, she found a recipe on Pinterest that year and begged me to let her try it.

“It’s fine with me if you want to bake some cookies,” I told her. “In fact, we are having our neighbors over tonight and we could use one more plate of goodies for the table.”

My daughter diligently went to work while I started cleaning the downstairs and preparing the dining room table for our company. After an hour, a wonderful aroma from the kitchen filled the entire house. I looked up from my dusting as my distraught daughter entered the living room.

“Mom,” she said ready to sob. “My cookies have a problem.”

I followed her into the kitchen where she showed me what appeared to be perfect circles of shortbread. She grabbed one of her confections and turned to me in tears.

“We were almost out of all-purpose flour, so I just used self-rising flour in the recipe. They look great, but the taste is wrong.”

I bit into the edge of the cookie that she handed to me. The texture was wonderful, but the flavor lacked sweetness. A hint of salt came through in the dough.

My daughter put her hands on the counter, ready to cry. I looked at the clock and the four dozen savory goodies that filled my dirty kitchen. The afternoon was slipping by and we clearly had a mess on our hands. In an instant, a flash of culinary madness filled my mind and I pointed to the edge of the counter.

“Open that drawer,” I told my daughter. “See what you find.”

“There is nothing in here except old Halloween candy,” she said holding up a bag of Hershey’s kisses.

“Perfect. Melt them slowly on the stove and let’s drip half of each cookie into the chocolate.”

My daughter started the melting and dipping process while I began to clean every surface. Within an hour, the kitchen sparkled, and the cookies were finished and artfully arranged on a platter.

Proud of our creativity, my daughter and I placed our redeemed delicacies on the dining room table and stood back. In unison, we both frowned. Her cookies looked oddly out of place. Instead of looking like Christmas treats, they resembled something akin to small lunar eclipse circles. Before we could think of any way to embellish them, the doorbell rang, and our neighbors appeared. For the rest of the evening, we laughed with our friends and forgot about our afternoon difficulties. At the end of the evening, I glanced at the empty serving plates and realized that all the sweets had been eaten.

“Those shortbread cookies,” my neighbor exclaimed as she put on her coat to leave, “those were the best things I’ve tasted! Most baked goods are too sugary, but those were the perfect blend of saltiness with sweet. I couldn’t stay out of them.”

“They were my daughter’s special recipe,” I said with a smile. “She created it just for the holidays.”

“Well, keep that one,” she said. “Cookies like that should be famous.”

I shut the door that night and our family howled with laughter. Who knew that a baking accident could turn out so well?

Now on the phone, I had to know if my daughter told her husband the whole truth about the recipe. “So, what did your husband think about the story behind those cookies?” I asked.

“Oh, he laughed,” she said. “Then he ate an entire batch and told me that he hoped that all my mistakes would always be so wonderfully edible.”