The Snow Day Cookies

I don’t know about you but it’s already the end of January and I feel like I disappeared into a vortex sometime after New Year’s Eve. Yesterday I was folding my Christmas tablecloth and today I’m looking at an upending – and yet unplanned – February break.

In the meantime, there have been three Mondays without school – yes, three -, a snowstorm, an ongoing and worsening political storm, and, as usual, a lot of procrastination on some supposedly important projects.

That urge some of us felt after the holidays, to purge the house of all unnecessary items, turned out to be just that. An urge, that went as quickly as it came. Thank God the school organized a clothing drive, otherwise my good intentions would have stopped at putting away the Christmas decorations. I can at least tell myself that two  Fresh Direct bags full of children’s clothes made their way safely to Vietnam.

As for the cluttered and haphazardly organized kitchen cabinets, their careful rationalizing will have to wait. After all, what is Spring cleaning for? We need to save some fun activities for when we emerge from the polar vortex that has set over the city, with no intention to lift off.

I will not even mention the pictures I wanted to add to this website, and the mindful editing of all posts published since 2021, which was supposed to take place by the end of the month. This resolution might have been made by a different person entirely.

I blame the Mondays. And the current leadership of the United States. When is anyone supposed to get anything done, when the country is on a slippery slope that is becoming scarier by the day? When three out of four weeks in the month only have four working days? And the only functional week decides to bring a stomach bug that hits three out of six people in the household – including the mother, of course.

First the children went back to school one day after everyone, on the first Tuesday in January. Do not ask me why. All I know is that after two weeks spent at home waiting for our eldest to complete his college applications, I was running out of ideas in the fun department with my boys. I guess that’s how we ended up in an empty movie theater on the Upper East Side, watching the Sponge Bob movie. Which I didn’t realize was really geared towards toddlers? Whatever happened in my mind, it was a big mistake. We did, however, discover a great Mexican restaurant we didn’t know that day, and the movie’s unwatchability (is that even a word?) gave me the opportunity to take a much-needed nap. A mother’s silver lining, I guess.

Then there was MLK Day, for which I had to be creative again. I aimed higher and for obscure reasons I cannot fully explain to myself, we ended up at the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side. Which, contrary to Sponge Bob, turned out to be great and appreciated by all. We also tried a place that had been on our list for a while, the Russ & Daughter’s café. We know Russ and Daughters thanks to my benevolent mother-in-law, who sends goodies every year on people’s birthdays. But we had never sat there for lunch, except when they had an outpost at the Jewish Museum – a sorely missed outpost for Uptown people, I might say.

I do recommend the original location, however. The food is what you would expect, not overly copious but very well prepared. And the polished 1950’s diner ambiance is what you want for brunch.

I also discovered the lovely Essex Market across the street. After months of complaining about food shopping in New York, it’s good to know that that kind of European covered-market vibe can be found in some far-off pockets of the city. Most stands were closed when we went, but I’m sure that on a weekday it’s a wonderful place to hang out and get lunch.OK, so we’re down to one Monday with no school. And it was this week’s snow day, of course. My parents spent the weekend texting me to be safe, so I guess the big U.S. snowstorm made it to the news outside our borders. Things are so crazy right now, I guess media crews are on high alert for anything big and small that happens in our loony place.      

I must say, I was quite upset when that day was announced.

I already had my share of Mondays at home, thank you very much. Why now, when snowdays haven’t happened in a good ten years in New York? And why the accompanying frigid and Vermont-esque temperatures, that my iPhone stubbornly keeps showing me for the next week or so? Don’t people have things to do?

As far as I’m concerned, my inspiration has run dry when it comes to keeping my children occupied, and my teenagers out of their screens – or beds (not sure which is worse at this point, except a combination of the two).    

Which is where, I have to say, baking comes in handy.          

Like I told you, I have been undergoing a renaissance of sorts in the kitchen.

What a strange sentence coming from someone who is trying to find meaning and purpose outside of her family life.    

But I do not have time for these kinds of considerations. My boys need to be picked up in forty-five minutes.                 

All I mean is cooking, and baking, have been providing solace lately. I talked about that last week already. When the outside world seems out of control, when gaslighting and random violence keep coming from those supposed to protect us, kneading a ball of dough with bare hands is very helpful.

First and foremost because while your hands are sticky and buttery and covered in flour, you cannot really use your phone. That has been the main purpose of all my cooking and baking lately, if I’m being perfectly honest.Getting away from the news, and soothe a flailing brain, give respite to an exhausted imagination that cannot come up with one more thing to do with the children.       

When you’re baking, you’re not thinking. But you’re also making something tangible, that does not disappear into the ether of your WIFI connection. AND the children are occupied for an hour or so, which is not unsignificant these days. Occupied, and satisfied.

Even the teenagers will come out of their rooms for a few seconds. Enough time to grab a cookie and a glass of milk. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a grunt, and a quick look will be exchanged.

We’re not talking of gratitude, of thank-you-mom-for-making-these-most-delicious-and-otherwordly-delicacies. No, we are grown-ups and know what not to expect from certain people in our households – the 13-to-18 age bracket, if we want to name names. But when your child seems to have decided to spend the rest of the winter hibernating in their room and will be away for good within the next nine months, you cannot be picky and will take whatever grunt comes your way.    

So, there you go. A batch of easy, more-than-good-enough cookies. That I overbaked, again, after flattening the dough too much, again. But they were still very good and have the potential to be delicious if you do a better job than I did.           

I didn’t have to look far for those. I just typed “best chocolate chip cookies” in my browser, because yes, it’s true, I do not have a go-to recipe. I do not bake cookies every weekend, and in fact I believe it had been a few years since I last made any. There is no equivalent for American brown sugar in France, and it kept me from trying while I lived in there.

If I don’t make cookies regularly, I guess one could say that I definitely do not qualify as a tradwife? This recipe comes from a mother of six, however, so I’m probably not quite out of the woods yet.     Also, who am I to complain about overwhelm with only four children?

But we are not talking of long-term identities today. Only about emergency measures when a blizzard hits or a country goes mad.

Go ahead and just make yourself some cookies, or whatever brings you comfort these days. You need it, and you deserve it.

Perfect Snow Day Cookies

Adapted from Joy Food Sunshine by Laura.

Ingredients

For 12 large cookies   (the recipe says 36 cookies, but I guess it would be for really small ones? I made 12 largeish cookies with these measurements. They were gone in minutes.)

• 1 cup / 225 grams salted butter, softened

• 1 cup /225 grams granulated sugar 

• 1 cup / 225 grams light brown sugar, packed

• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

• 2 large eggs 

• 3 cups /410 grams all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda 

• ½ teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon sea salt 

• 2 cups / 400 grams chocolate chips or broken chocolate pieces (12 oz)

Instructions 

1.              Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Line three baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats and set aside.

2.              In a medium bowl mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

3.              Cream together butter and sugars until combined. A stand mixer works really well for this and makes the job easier, but if you don’t have one, a traditional egg beater will do.

4.              Beat in eggs and vanilla until light (about 1 minute).

5.              Mix in the dry ingredients until combined.

6.              Add chocolate chips and mix well.

7.              Roll 2-3 Tablespoons (depending on how large you like your cookies) of dough at a time into balls and place them evenly spaced on your prepared cookie sheets. This is where I flattened the balls of dough, which resulted in flat cookies. Do not do this if you like your cookies plump and chewy.

8.              Bake in preheated oven for approximately 8-10 minutes. Take them out when they are just barely starting to turn brown. This is key. Mine looked very lightly brown and I think it was already too late. They were nice and soft right out of the oven, but an hour later they were hard already.

9.              Let them sit on the baking pan for 5 minutes before removing to cooling rack.