This Cookie Cured My Self-Doubt

I'm not even kidding

Brooklyn’s Radio Bakery is known for a lot of things. Its small footprint. The line of cheerful customers that extends onto the sidewalk on the weekends. Ridiculous laminated pastries. And this Chocolate Chunk Cookie. It’s a stupendous cookie. I recommend you make it.

If you want to know why I am kicking off January—a month of broken promises, pleasure prison, and culinary neglect—with the recipe for a gigantic cookie well, I’ll tell you. Back in October, Eliza Weinreband I headed over to Radio Bakery and spent a very delicious-smelling hour with Kelly Mencin, Radio’s co-owner and pastry chef. After the bakery door’s were closed for the day, she generously led us through the proper way to make her Chocolate Chunk Cookie. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with Mencin’s recipe, putting it through several rounds of cross-tests to ensure that the written version I share with you lives up to the version she sells in her bakery every day. It’s her recipe, but adapted so you all get great results at home. The more I got to know this cookie, the more its attributes and origin story helped inform how I am thinking about my work and what I want to deliver for you right now. I know! All that from a cookie!!

First off, Mencin is an unapologetic, Type A perfectionist. Justice for perfectionists! She describes herself as a “very classic person” and has no hesitations, no reservations, and no insecurities about putting a known entity like a Chocolate Chunk Cookie on her menu alongside other mind-blowing creations like the Maple Breakfast Sausage Croissants and Cheesy Pretzel Bearclaws (you’re going to want a to-go box). Despite all the chocolate chunk cookies in NYC, Brooklyn, and the world, Mencin felt confident about “reaching into the memory vault of flavors” to create her perfect CCC, and she was right. It sells out daily.

Crisp-chew-goo.

As a creative person in the food world, the pressure to innovate or invent new dishes is constant. I have struggled with this relentlessly over the years, measuring myself against my coworkers, peers, and the chefs who I feel do have the gift to come up with new flavor pairings, new plating styles, and new dishes. That’s not my strength. At times, knowing that has made me feel boring and basic. Spending time with Kelly and her joy-inducing cookie reminded me that there is no reason to feel bad about loving the familiar. When not in doubt, I too love the familiar.

It’s not like all these CCCs are the same. Kelly Frankensteined the ingredients and method so that her cookie has everything she loves, including a gooey center, crisp edges, distinctly chewy texture, and dizzying caramel aroma. Just because there’s a lot of CCCs out there doesn’t mean Mencin couldn’t find a way to show off. This cookie is a dreamboat. When I feel less-than for not being able to mastermind a new taste, I’m going to think about this cookie and how happy it makes people daily. And then I’ll make a pot of spaghetti aglio e olio and go about my business.

Cookie Life Lesson: Take pleasure in the familiar. You’re not boring, you’re timeless!

If you simply scan the ingredients, you might wonder what’s so special about Mencin’s recipe. Flour. Butter. Sugar. Chocolate. Eggs. Leavener. Salt. How different could the outcome be, really? Very! It all comes down to choices. The flour is bread flour, preferably from a local mill. The high protein content is key to the cookie’s chew, and the freshness equals flavor. The butter is European-style and high in fat, which provides elasticity and sweet dairy goodness. The sugar ratio favors dark brown to granulated, and you’ll detect rich smoky notes from the molasses. There’s not one chocolate, but two: the semisweet equivalent of tone-on-tone outfits. Finally, a generous sprinkle of flaky salt pushes this into savory territory, which I have decided is why I can eat an entire 3 1/2 inch cookie without getting overwhelmed by sweetness. (Yeah, that must be the reason.)

Cookie Life Lesson: Fat is good. Say it again.

As you move into the recipe method, there are more revelations. Mencin creams the butter, sugars, and salts on fairly low speed for a very long time. Ten minutes! If I hadn’t seen the results myself, I would have been tempted to shave off a few minutes. This step in the process is so key. The gentle creaming method thoroughly dissolves the sugar, which lends to chewiness. Minimizing aeration builds a thick cookie. When you cream on high speed, you work a lot of air into the mixture; when the batter meets the oven’s heat, the air expands and pushes the batter into a big puffy dome, which then collapses when the cookie cools. That creates a thinner cookie that might be brittle. Kelly likes her cookies THICK without being dense or tough.

You thought the lesson was going to be about embracing our body’s thick bits, didn’t you? But no (I mean, yes, but that’s not the lesson).

She’s not done until she’s done.

While the butter and sugar is creaming on low speed, the best thing you could possibly do is watch the transformation happen. Smell the smells—really stick your nose in the bowl. The aroma of whipped butter and sugar is up there with olive oil and onions, the center of a warm baguette, sizzling ginger and scallion. Observe the dough transition from sandy and wet, to beige and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl halfway through, and you’ll feel the sugar crystals gritty against your spatula. At the end of the process, when you rub the mixture between your fingers, it will be as satiny and cushiony, with a smidge of fine sand. You have to wait, you have to trust, you have to let it unfold. You have to believe the expert (Kelly is the expert)!!

Cookie Life Lesson: Eating is great, but cooking is magic.

I have had moments over the past several months when I wondered what the hell I was doing with my life and with my work. Does the world need another recipe? Does the world need another video? No. In addition to having to BE in my videos, I watch each of them at least twice in post-production to share notes before they’re uploaded. The review process can be truly horrific—if you don’t have self-loathing to begin with, you sure will when it’s over! On my cloudiest days, I indulged in a lot of “what is the point?” feelings.

Then I met Kelly, and this cookie. It didn’t matter to her that a lot of people had already done the thing. The way she does the thing is the part that matters. If it’s objectively delectable or simply enlightening from a methodological perspective, it’s worth doing and making. If a recipe makes one day have one moment of pleasure for one person, it’s the best. I truly believe that. This is why I want to keep cooking and eating and sharing, and I am grateful for everyone else who loves doing those things, too.

Happy New Year.

xoCLM

P.S.

If you’re in N.Y.C., go to Radio Bakery. Until then, make the CCC at home.

P.P.S.

My first word was cookie.