Lemon Cool Whip Cookies

Week 484, and the tomatoes ripening, the corn arriving, the garden in full production, the heat in the kitchen. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Four rugelach deliveries; back-to-school challah; 36th year of tradition. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made rugelach and challah this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

The rugelach and challah were already spoken for this week — four deliveries, the back-to-school loaves, the containers lined up by the door — and still the kitchen called for one more thing, something bright and simple, something that could tuck into a bag alongside everything else without fuss. These Lemon Cool Whip Cookies are exactly that: three ingredients, powdered sugar rolled between the palms, a tray in the oven before the coffee is even finished. They are not the challah, not the rugelach, but they belong to the same impulse — the impulse to make something sweet and carry it toward the people you love, because that is what the kitchen is for, and the kitchen is always mine.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 22 minutes | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 box (15.25 oz) lemon cake mix
1 container (8 oz) Cool Whip whipped topping, fully thawed
1 large egg
1/2 cup powdered sugar, for rolling

Instructions

Preheat. Heat your oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Mix the dough. In a large bowl, stir together the lemon cake mix, thawed Cool Whip, and egg until a soft, sticky dough forms. Do not overmix — stir just until no dry streaks remain. The dough will be looser than a traditional cookie dough.
Chill briefly. If the dough feels too soft to handle, cover the bowl and refrigerate for 15 minutes. This makes rolling much easier.
Roll in powdered sugar. Place the powdered sugar in a shallow bowl. Using a tablespoon or small cookie scoop, drop rounded portions of dough into the sugar and roll gently to coat all sides. The sugar coating creates the classic crinkled appearance as the cookies bake.
Bake. Arrange the coated dough balls about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops are set and the edges are just barely golden. The centers will look slightly underdone — that is correct.
Cool. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They firm up as they cool and become pillowy and tender throughout.
Store or deliver. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days, or refrigerate for up to a week. They travel well stacked between layers of parchment.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lemon Cool Whip Cookies — The Chain Doesn’t Break, One Sweet at a Time