Cookie Cake -- Baking the Recipes We Think to Save in Time

Presidents' Day weekend brought a proper Vermont winter storm — fourteen inches over Saturday and Sunday, the heavy wet February snow that clings to the branches and transforms the property into something from a picture book. I spent Saturday morning clearing the drive and the path to the woodshed, which is the kind of physical work that feels earned rather than imposed at my age, good labor, the body functioning as designed. The afternoon I spent entirely indoors with a pot of black bean soup and the seed catalogs and the particular windowed quiet that a snowstorm produces.

I have been thinking about the first Helen notebook post in the new systematic series and decided to start with the earliest one — 1979, the year we were married, the recipes written in her early-married handwriting which is slightly more formal than her later hand, as if she was still presenting herself to the recipe and had not yet relaxed into it. The 1979 notebook begins with her mother's apple cake, which she wrote down from dictation because her mother cooked by feel and had no written version. That act of transcription, of saving the recipe against the eventual absence of the person who knew it, seems to me now a form of love that she practiced before she knew she was practicing it.

I drafted the first post of the series and published it Sunday — the apple cake, the story of the transcription, a photograph of the page in the notebook with her mother's name written in the margin. The response was larger than anything I have posted in months. By Monday morning I had forty-three comments, most of them from people who had their own version of this story: a parent or grandparent who cooked by feel, the recipe lost when they died, the grief of not having transcribed it in time. The loss of recipes is the loss of people, and people know this, and when you say it directly they respond directly.

One comment from a woman in New Hampshire said that reading the post made her call her mother that same evening and ask her to dictate three recipes. I thought about that for a while. Whatever this blog has become, that is the right kind of effect for it to have.

The response to that first Helen notebook post reminded me that food writing, at its best, is really just an argument for paying attention before the opportunity is gone — and it seemed right, after a weekend spent thinking about transcription and inheritance, to bake something generous enough to share. A cookie cake is the kind of recipe Helen would have written down for someone else without being asked, the sort of thing you bring to a neighbor or leave on a counter for no particular reason, and making it felt like the appropriate response to a Monday morning that had been, unexpectedly, a good one.

Cookie Cake

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups buttercream frosting (store-bought or homemade), for decorating

Instructions

1. Preheat and prepare. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 12-inch round pizza pan or a 9x13-inch baking pan with butter or non-stick spray and set aside.
2. Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars using a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 to 4 minutes. Do not rush this step — the texture of the finished cake depends on it.
4. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix until combined.
5. Combine wet and dry. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture, mixing just until no dry streaks remain. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.
6. Spread and bake. Press the dough evenly into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with lightly dampened fingers or the back of a spoon. Bake for 22 to 26 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the center is just set — it will firm up as it cools, so err on the side of pulling it a minute early.
7. Cool completely. Let the cookie cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before decorating. Frosting applied to a warm cake will melt and slide.
8. Decorate and serve. Pipe or spread buttercream frosting around the border or across the top as desired. Slice into wedges or squares and serve at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 485 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 24g | Carbs: 64g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 290mg