Bourbon Chocolate Chip Cookies

October arrives, and the anniversary of Joy's move to Magnolia House passes without ceremony — one year of Joy in her purple room with her paints and her garden view, one year of Saturday visits and peach cobbler and the question "When are you coming?" answered with "Saturday" and the answer being true and the truth being enough. The year has been good for Joy. The year has been the proof that the decision was right, and the rightness is a relief I carry like a stone I have finally set down.

Mama's Alzheimer's has entered what Dr. Okonkwo calls the "middle stage" — the stage where the language becomes more fragmented, the recognition more intermittent, the physical symptoms more pronounced. The word "stage" implies a performance, and the performance is this: Mama on the stage of her own kitchen, performing the role of herself with diminishing accuracy, the script disappearing line by line while the audience of one (me) watches from the wings and prompts when she forgets.

Robert presented the writing desk on Saturday morning. He led me to the front room — the room with the bay window, the room where the morning light is best — and there it was: walnut, hand-joined, with drawers that slid on runners he made himself and a surface smooth enough to write on and deep enough to hold the journal and a cup of coffee and all the words I have been waiting to write. I sat at the desk and I ran my hands over the surface and I said nothing for a long time because the nothing was the everything — the gratitude too large for words, the love too specific for a sentence, the gift too perfect for a thank-you. Robert stood in the doorway and watched me not speak and he understood the not-speaking, because Robert Blackwood has been married to me for twenty-three years and he knows that my silences are louder than my sentences.

I made pecan pie — the October pie, the fall pie, the pie that Mama makes with dark corn syrup and bourbon and the fearless sweetness that she has brought to every recipe and every relationship and every day of a life that is now dimming but that was, in its brightness, magnificent.

The pecan pie was already in the oven by the time I sat back down at my new desk and understood what the morning had given me — a place to write, a year of Saturdays that held, and a recipe that carries Mama’s voice more clearly than almost anything else I know how to make. I didn’t have dark corn syrup on hand that day, but I had bourbon, and I had butter, and I had the same impulse Mama always had: make something sweet enough to mean something. These Bourbon Chocolate Chip Cookies aren’t her pecan pie, but they share its spirit — that fearless sweetness she brought to everything — and on a morning like that one, that was exactly what I needed to bake.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tbsp bourbon
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt until evenly combined. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter with the granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed for 2–3 minutes, until light and fluffy.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Add the bourbon and vanilla extract and mix until just combined. The batter may look slightly curdled — that’s fine.
Combine. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula or wooden spoon.
Scoop and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. They will firm up as they cool.
Cool. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. The bourbon flavor deepens as they cool completely.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bourbon Chocolate Chip Cookies — Baked with the Same Fearless Sweetness Mama Always Brought