In an attempt to have at least one article for every category here at PlanetPOv, I present this post/love letter about my favorite snack. The cookie. Many who know me from my time on HP may remember that I am not shy about expressing my love for the cookie. In my opinion, the best snack ever. So let’s take a look at the history of the cookie and what has made it such a successful treat.
Cookies derived from an item called a wafer. A flat, dry, biscuit served since baking was first recorded. The first true wafer like snacks that could be called “cookies” appeared around the 7th century in parts of Persia, after sugar had become a regular food staple in the area. With the Muslim invasion of Spain, the start of the Crusades, and the emerging spice trade, the cookie recipes of Persia quickly spread through Europe.
By the 15th century, the cookie had become not just a popular snack but the preferred foodstuff of travelers across Europe. World travelers and explorers loved the cookie’s longevity. It could last weeks if not months at a time. Guaranteeing fresh provisions for even the longest voyage. Quality control for these products was conducted by guilds. To truly become a baker you had to pass through a guild. A process usually taking 3 to 4 years. It allowed them to keep a tight control on quality and kind of goods.
The ingredients for a cookie remained largely unchanged til the Industrial Revolution. Bakers became independent and able to produce, by themselves, their own recipes and varieties of cookies. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a veritable explosion in the variety of cookies. Producing the most well known and most purchased of all cookies, chocolate chip. Cookie sales skyrocketed due to the relatively cheap production costs versus cakes and other sweets, and small companies like Nabisco rose to national leaders by the 20th century. Today cookies account for almost half of all snack food sales in America. Still the most popular snack among children and anyone with a glass of milk.
My favorite cookie is most definitely chocolate chip. An oldie but a goody. It is my one real vice as far as sweets go. I don’t eat cake or pie or partake in too many doughnuts. Just give me a few cookies every now and then, and I’ll be fine. But I would like to hear from you as well. Do you have a favorite cookie? Are you a dunker? Do you share my love of the delicious, not quite nutritious, cookie? Lemme know in the comments below.
My daughter and I crack each other up reading the copy on the side of Pepperidge Farm cookies. They are so over the top! Something like:
Experience the meticulous craftsmanship, and whimsical wizardry (not to mention saucy sorcery!) that goes into a heavenly Milano cookie! Your taste buds will spontaneously erupt into the Hallelujah Chorus and send you a dozen roses! You’ll transcend the human plain and merge with Brahma! Try it!
Stuff like that.
I don’t care for tea, but I always got a kick out of Celestial Seasons tea boxes. Great art, and terrific copy.
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PW, Celestial Seasons? Do you know anything about the owner thereof? CS is out of Boulder Colorado, I live in Denver, but went to school in Boulder.
I am saying nothing ill of that owner, but get crossed between lines of religion and belief. Have you ever heard of or read of the “Book of Urantia???”
Nope, just like the packages. They always seemed very ’60s to me. As a retreaded hippie…. well, you get my point, I’m sure.
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PW, If you get a chance I am sure you can find that book online. I started reading it in 2000 after a Brain Injury rocked my world. I was amazed at what I read.
I wonder if they have it in an e-edition… I’ve turned into an iPad fanatic when it comes to books. MUCH easier to lug around LOL I’m a lazy bastard,
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PW, Please let me know of your findings. BTW I posted to your second article of business and still awaiting your permission.
See my response. I haven’t checked posts in those other two articles since early this morning, I think. Sorry for not getting back…
My bad!
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PW No Worries I am sure we will talk again, Have a Great Nights Rest. 😎
I may be odd. I like the part of the chocolate chip cookie that doesn’t contain the chip but holds the promise of the chip. I’m all about anticipation.
So would a cookie with just chocolate chip shaped holes be satisfying?
Or do the chocolate chips actually have to be there?
:–)
The chips have to be there. I think they perfume the air and leach into the brown sugar, butter, flour, sugar, vanilla and eggs.
OMG, I need one.
lol!
Hey Q, this could be a good place for thou and moi to riff on Pepperidge Farm package copy!
Exactly! You can go first and I’ll do the bass line which consists of that “soupcon of liqueur which will make you think of a Persian courtyard at night as you recline atop carpets perfumed with the blossoms of blood oranges”.
My grandmother used to make the world’s geatest oatmeal cookies. We had an enormous pecan tree in our backyard and she would send me out back to collect the pecans. I was about 8 – 10 years old.
Then while she was watching Lawrence Welk (Ha!), she would sit and shell the pecans. A great childhood memory and terrific cookies!
Interestingly, I now live underneath TWO enormous pecan trees. I’ve never really taken the time to collect the pecans, leaving them instead for what can only be described as a herd of squirrels. I think this thread will inspire me not only to collect them but to see if I can find my grandmother’s recipe and do some baking!
The key ingredient I bet was “love” 🙂
Yes! The best ingredient. And one that can’t be bought in stores.
My husband always says when one of my dinners doesn’t come out the way I wanted to, “You didn’t put enough love into it.”
Ha!
Oatmeal and pecans are like a Bach Canon. Yes, cookies can verge on the fourth dimension.
Spoken like a true connoisseur!
Depending on what part of the country you live in (and assuming that it’s the right time of year), there are services that can come to your house and hook up a portable shaker device to your trees so you can collect them all at once (that’s how they harvest them on farms because it’s fast and doesn’t harm the trees). My grandfather had two huge pecan trees in his front yard in northern Alabama, and he’d have them shaken out every year, producing lawn bags full of the best tasting pecans I’ve had to this day. We’d shell and freeze the halves for use year round (and eat several pounds of them in the process!). Check into it — you’ll be surprised at how popular a few pounds of fresh pecans can make you to friends and family.
A “shaker device”! I had no idea there was such a thing. Thanks for the info.
My dear wife bakes an oatmeal chocolate cookie which makes it dang near impossible to maintain my svelte muscular physique.
She’s damn near dying of laughter as she reads this.
Of I could learn how to make Girl Scout Thin Mints I might never leave the house, or would that be I couldn’t get through the door?
I order about four boxes every year just for myself, they last maybe a week….I have been know to eat them for breakfast.
We get six, freeze three and I parcel them out two cookies at a time like I’m running a methadone clinic. The kids hell, they are 19 and 22 – come running and stand there with their tongues hanging out. I’m glad and humbled they are still children a couple of times a year.
Sometimes–and thank god, very rarely–I make what I call White Trash donuts.
I take one of those cardboard cans of Pillsbury dinner rolls and thwack it against the counter until it goes PUHFF–which is the most fun part of the whole experience. Then I take the rolls apart and make a hole in each one with my finger until it vaguely resembles a donut, and deep fry them. Then I dust them with powdered sugar and eat them hot.
I’m not proud of that.
Cher
I just ran that by my son, the living embodiment of cookies and a serious donut expert – at least at eating them. We are on our way to the grocery, I’ll keep you posted.
You’ll love them!
Cher We just did them and they actually put aside the Girl Scout cookies. Awesome and FASTER than real donuts. Did powdered sugar in a brown bag and shook them thick with it. Hot and dusty we are. Thanks again, new treats
OMG, that sound wonderful, wonder what they would taste like if you used the Pillsbury Cinnamon Pasty dough….
Ooh, there’s a thought!
I was thinking it’s more of a flakey pastry as opposed to a doughy one, plus it has cinnamon and sugar rolled into the pastry…I heard that cinnamon is good for you.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/herbal-remedies/cinnamon-herbal-remedies.htm
Here ya go! All kinds of spices have medicinal properties, BTW…
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BDM they should be great, but you need a yeast dough is all.
Confession is good for the soul, Cher.
Well done!
Dawg– First step towards recovery, right? 🙂
Ha!
You are higher powered, Cher.
Cher: We once had a going away party for a friend that was “White Trash Food” themed. We made pigs in the blanket w/ VIGHanna sausages, jello mold w/ fruit cocktail, spam on a paper plate and the best – vegetable soup without one fresh vegetable (all canned). I have a great photo from that venture, if I can find it. Course, the gals all dressed up Suggin (aka White Trash)
There. So now you aren’t alone. Strength in numbers and Egypt and all that.
AB, that must have been hilarious! 😆
Can I assume that y’all drank Mountain Dew & Shine or maybe RC Cola & bourban, or was it Boons Farms out of a box?
How big was the hair? Because that makes all the difference when your Suggin! Tain’t right if your hair is not done just so….with lots of “Product”
(ps: my mother is from the south and she used to fry up spam for us for dinner, not for nothing I really liked it!)
(pss: Oh, and you should have had white gravy on it)
Girl! :My hair was not real, so it was HUGE! Of course, I was with a professionally trained Suggin, and she once “fissed me up” with a blonde wig (jealous, AdLib? See, I can be “blonde”, too!) that looked like Marie Antoinette ran headfirst into Dolly Parton. It was SO big that I had to tilt my head, just to fit inside my pickemup truck. I wore it at the Trashy Woman contest, along with red and black striped spandex unitard and red fish scale jacket, fishnet hose w/ 4″ red pumps. My husband’s boss (at Microsoft) talked me into gluing my fake fingernails on (I have German working hands, thus no nails to speak of). Damn if that Super Glue did not work as advertised, and I had a hell of a time with it coming off!
Bennie Weenie
[img]http://i51.tinypic.com/15dlxzt.jpg[/img]
Big, chewey oatmeal raisin cookies… Sometimes with walnuts.
Hey, it’s nutrition! Oatmeal (with the fiber and all), natural sugars with the raisins, and walnuts… well, just cuz!
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That’s just way too healthy for me. 😆
Now, putting oatmeal into chocolate chip cookies? Win.
What did Bill Cosby say about chocolate cake when his wife caught him serving it to the kids for breakfast?
“Same as cereal… flour, sugar, butter, milk… Nutrition!”
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A piece of trivia I’m embarrassed to admit I know…
Tony Orlando, as in Tony Orlando and Dawn, blew up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon because he was addicted to Oreo Cookies. He couldn’t eat one or two, he would have the whole package sitting in front of the tee-vee.
Hydrox. I was raised on them, never ate an Oreo until my beloved Droxies went away. We got them last year for a month. We must have eaten a bag every other day. Then they were gone. So sad 🙁
There’s nothing better than a deep fried Mars bar.
I know they’re mostly butter, but I’ve gotta say that Scottish Shortbread is like the crack of the cookie world.
I was just thinking about that, Khirad. Scottish shortbread cookies are so addicting! They melt in your mouth. Mmmmmm–butter!
My mother had the best recipe for them, 10 lbs. of butter was used…
My favorite cookie is the one in my hand.
I had the good sense to ask my Mom for a “Cookie of the Month” from her as a Christmas present.It was a brilliant move.
Wow, you certainly learned to think ahead early on! 😆
Actually it has been going on for two years now.; )
I wouldn’t be surprised if these are the descendants of those wafers.
Now, venture into any Persian enclave of a city (most notably Tehrangeles) and you will encounter these:
Persian ice cream sandwiches
[img]http://www.savorcalifornia.com/images/usrupload/PistachioIceCream_20051126084905.jpg[/img]
Those look pretty good to me!
I just made another batch of the ice cream part.
The wafer? Haven’t figured out how to do that part yet.
You make homemade pistachio ice cream? I’m coming over!
I think he has pictures of his latest creation.
My Lebananese relatives make something that looks very similar to those, sometimes with rose icecream, sometimes apricot. they are pretty tasty.
Yeah, this kind of ice cream is primarily rose water flavored, with saffron for undertones and color.
Cher also turned me onto Turkish ice cream which I’ve totally got to figure out how to make.
I’d be interested to try that Apricot version, too.
In LA Mashti Malones makes lavender ice cream in addition to this kind, as well.
Now, that sounds even more intriguing than the curry ice cream I had in Berkeley.
Hey, El!!! I was hoping you’d light somewhere good besides HP- and you know how I feel about cookies, too. Good article- I have never given a thought to the origin of cookies. {{big hugs}} for all the cookies you’ve given me on HP. I still have some of them. Here some for Valentine’s day- I would like to share them with you and the other good people on this blog!
[img]http://www.naturalcandystore.com/category/natural-baking-projects[/img]
Hey msb! I am very glad to see your smiling countenance here in the land of free expression! Welcome aboard!
No kidding, his gems were too ephemeral at HP. This format suits the Yahweh so much better.
Welcome to The Planet msbadger!
***EDIT*** However, I do remember you from my former HP days — anything prior to when I departed for The Planet December 2009.
BADGER! How the hell ARE you?
There is nothing more comforting than a snickerdoodle.
I’m not sure if that sounds obscene or embarrassing…
…Possibly both?
😆 😆 Nobody gits between me and my snickerdoodle!
Totally, especially fresh out of the oven. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.