The Sandpoint Eater: In the chips

By Marcia Pilgeram
Reader Columnist

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to make cookies “better.” That was the baker in me — the professional caterer — tinkering with recipes, adding special ingredients, like perfectly browned Irish butter, filberts I gathered in Oregon, cracked and roasted just so, or adding contraband dark Cuban chocolate, finely chopped and folded in by hand. Clients and friends alike would marvel at my decadent creations, leading me to become even more creative in my next attempt.

Lately, as I’ve gotten older — and wiser — I find myself craving simplicity not just in baking, but in life. And nothing reminds me of that better than time in my kitchen. 

I have nine grandchildren, which still astounds me and leads me to great reflection. The oldest three are off to college, stepping out into the world with confidence and independence. I think of them living on ramen noodles, creating new friendships and finding their way to balance classes, part-time jobs and homesickness. It’s easy to recall the days their parents began similar journeys of independence and the myriad batches of cookies I baked for them, too. 

Back then, I was also baking for business and believed the best way to show my love (and show off my cookies) was through magazine-worthy specimens, browned just so, with perfectly rounded edges and finished with a slight dusting of sea salt. I’d complement my baking efforts with elegant packaging and color-coordinated ribbons. These days, I’m baking for comfort (mine and theirs), so I reach back into my mind for the familiar cookies baked by my Mama: her simple chocolate chip cookie.  

My mother wasn’t a professional baker. She didn’t fuss with precision when measuring ingredients and never owned a kitchen scale. She was not a demonstrative person, and words of affection rarely passed her lips. But now I know that she baked not only by hand — she baked by heart. When she baked, it was an entire day’s labor of love. Every surface in our sunny kitchen was covered with a week’s worth of newspapers, topped with dozens of cooling cookies. These cookies were her form of love language, delivered with a silent yet powerful message: “You are loved.”

When I bake for my grandchildren, I’m no longer fussing with two kinds of flour or single-origin chocolate. I’m reaching for the ever-familiar basics: all-purpose flour, sugars, butter, eggs, vanilla, semi-sweet chocolate chips, a sturdy wooden spoon and measuring cups that show 40 years of wear.  

While I’m stirring, I can almost see the faces of the young adults who will open the USPS Priority package on the other end, in their new surroundings, with hearts that might be a little tender for a taste of home. I hope that each cookie, whether shared openly with new friends or hoarded in their drawers for a late-night snack, will convey a generational message: “You are loved.” 

It’s funny how age shifts your perspective. In my younger years, I thought “special” meant grand gestures and great efforts. Today, I see it differently. It’s authenticity. A chocolate chip cookie is the same today as it was when I was a little girl, when I waited (impatiently), first to lick the bowl and spatula, and then for a bite of a still-warm, soft cookie oozing with chocolate chips. 

It’s the same cookie my Mama cooled and stored before wrapping them in a napkin she’d tuck into my metal lunch box. It’s the same cookie I send off in care packages, each one a small token of grandma-love. 

I still wrap them with care, so they don’t crumble along the way; but, mainly, I focus on the baking itself — measuring, mixing, scooping, baking — because that’s where my heart finds its purpose.   

I love the aroma of these cookies baking in the oven. The kitchen is filled with a familiar, buttery scent that cannot be duplicated. It makes me feel close to my mother, my children and theirs. And everyone who enters my home on a baking day agrees — there’s no better aroma in the world.

Chocolate chip cookies remind me that sometimes ordinary things carry the most significant weight. And whether you want to dress yours up or settle for Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House tradition of 1938, when she created the original recipe, no greater baking endeavor exists. 

Even the “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten, relies on Wakefield’s original recipe. However, she admits to doctoring it up a bit with additional vanilla, a touch more salt and some chunks of bittersweet chocolate.  Everyone seems to have their own recipe for success. I always use extra Tahitian vanilla (admitting I’m still a teensy bit of a baking snob), more brown sugar than white and the dough spends 24 hours in the refrigerator before I begin baking. 

I can’t recall my mom ever adding any special ingredients to her cookies, though they were considerably smaller than the ones my friends pulled out of their lunchboxes. When I started baking for my own children, Mama offered me this sage advice: “Make your cookies small because no matter what size you make, they [the greedy little children] will always ask for two. And if you make them too big, they won’t even finish the second one.” 

It turns out she was right, which is why this recipe yields a few extra dozen for my Mama (and maybe you)!

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Enhanced Toll House cookies recipe

Yield 4 dozen cookies (or 6 dozen for smaller cookies).  These cookies are chewy in the center, with a caramel flavor from the extra brown sugar, and a richer aroma from the extra vanilla. Don’t overbake!