Cookie break

I have a fundamental weakness in character… I can’t stay away from cookies if I see them. I go into a shop for ONLY a cup of tea, dedicated not to have a cookie… and what happens? I used to love to read to my daughter, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. I’ve illustrated some of my favorite cookies in Seattle, and a few tidbits to tell why I love cookies.

The one on the left is a sour cherry swirl by Tom Douglas, always nicely stacked in a basket at his shop called the Dahlia Bakery. The flower cookie with royal icing is from Seattle’s favorite Macrina Bakery. You see these in the shop in the Spring.

This dainty green tea cookie is from Fresh Flours Bakery in our own Phinney Ridge neighborhood. This is where Sharon writes her stories. The very brown cookie is a chocolate–peanut butter creme sandwich also from the Dahlia Bakery, slow down it’s too good.

Still lov’em. The ginger snap story is below. The cookie on the right which looks like it had an industrial screen pressed into the top, probably did. It’s a factory shortbread cookie from the chain-baker Panera Bread.

These tiny-bite lavender shortbread cookies are from my favorite tea haven, Remedy Tea. And finally I have Lena’s delicious chocolate chip cookie. What more can be said, if you give a father a cookie”.

My cookie attraction started as a youth… boxes of Nabisco Ginger Snaps. I remember the distinctive striped box and I was intrigues with the Nabisco logo… always a designer. I rarely chewed them. I sucked them to savor the ginger spice, and to wear out my tongue I guess.

A couple of year’s ago our dear San Francisco friend Abbe, great baker, sent us a box of her Christmas cookie wonders, all sorts, in a FedEx box, improperly cushioned. There wasn’t a single unbroken morsel. But they were the best cookies ever. It was like an archaeological dig piecing them together… they were pretty, and ambitious, and more flavorful than a cookie deserves to be.

Would you tell me your favorite cookie? Link us to a recipe, or to a baker.