The Cookie Recipe I’ll Be Baking Through The End Times

I don’t really have a “thing.” Some people do: I have a friend whose things are pottery and running, and a friend whose things are hiking and taking care of her one-eyed cat, and a friend whose thing is tending to her surprisingly bountiful pandemic garden. The closest I think I come to having a “thing” is maintaining an internet presence so interested parties can know I’m still alive, occasionally writing, and also baking. This blog post exists where those two activities intersect.

I’ve always been a baker. In college I had a short-lived cooking blog, an extension of my Tumblr, where I examined the possibilities of baking in a shitty on-campus apartment kitchen using an oven that allegedly heated up and had a door that only fell off once in the year I lived there. It felt good to come home from class and bake brownies, or make an elaborate cake for a friend’s birthday. I don’t think I need to over-explain why baking is rhythmically soothing and materially satisfying, a hundred people have already done it. But it is definitely, for me, both of those things.

The pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I bake are one of those recipes for which I started keeping the ingredients on hand at all times, regardless of what time of year it is. I don’t know when they became a “thing.” You can find alternatives to my recipe, or you can try, like the New York Times Cooking section did last week. But their recipe wasn’t quite right — the ratio was off and they add cream cheese for some reason. When you Google…