Crisp Sunflower Cookies

I drove to Grinnell Saturday. Roger was in the garden — the garden that is his whole world now, the 81-year-old man who tends six tomato plants and twelve sunflowers with the same care he once gave four hundred acres. He's slower but he's still Roger. He still watches the crop reports. He still calls Jack on Wednesdays.

The recipe this week: cinnamon rolls extra frosting. Standing at the stove, Marlene's wooden spoon in my hand (the cracked one, the one that will outlast us all), the recipe either from the card box or from my own expanding collection, both equally real, both equally mine. The kitchen holds all of it — the old recipes and the new ones, the teacher's food and the student's food, the grief and the joy and the cinnamon. All of it. Always.

The garden is waking up. The garlic that overwintered is pushing green shoots through the soil, the annual proof that buried things come back. Jack's seedlings are hardening off in the greenhouse. The Marlene cherry tomato — generation 4 now — ready for transplanting. Every spring the planting is the memorial. Every spring the name goes back in the ground.

Roger’s twelve sunflowers were maybe two inches tall when I visited Saturday — small and certain, the way he is — and I couldn’t stop thinking about them on the drive home. I wanted to do something with that image, something that brought his garden into my kitchen the way his memory already lives there. These cookies are what came of it: crisp and golden, built around the same seeds he’ll watch grow all summer, simple enough to make on a quiet Sunday afternoon with a cracked wooden spoon and no particular agenda except to feel close to someone you love.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine salt
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 cups roasted, hulled sunflower seeds (salted or unsalted)

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat softened butter with granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add vanilla extract and mix until fully combined.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add to the butter mixture, mixing on low just until no dry streaks remain.
Fold in oats and seeds. Stir in the rolled oats and sunflower seeds by hand until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Portion and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are golden and the centers look just set.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They will crisp as they cool.

Nutrition (per serving)

Crisp Sunflower Cookies — Baked for the Man Who Tends Twelve