Breakfast Cookie Turned Anytime Treat

The cookie I could never resist...

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I made a lot of cookies during my time working in the test kitchen at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. The first book I ever worked on was Martha Stewart Cookies— 175 cookie recipes photographed by the incredible Victor Schrager. Victor wanted to shoot each cookie either standing on its edge in a heroic portrait or as multiples in an impossible towering stack. Consequently, for each photo, I needed many batches baked off to ensure I had the perfect specimen for the hero shots as well as plenty of back ups for the inevitable crash that happens when you try and perch cookies on their side or lean them one against another in a teetering house of cards. It was weeks of endless cookies.

I was at the magazine for 14 Christmases which means 14 years of holiday cookie-palooza. Every December issue usually had a cookie feature (what new idea could we eke out this year?) and often a cover with cookies on it (here’s a nice collection of MSL holiday covers). 2007 featured a cake surrounded by gingerbread townhouses. I was given print outs of houses in Prague to inspire my decorating and the crafts department made copper cookie cutters for me after I initially spent way too long tracing individual gingerbread townhouses with cardboard cut outs— that was a relief! At some point, maybe 20 versions in, I was asked if I could make two different colored gingerbread so that we could alternate the cookie colors around the cake and feature dark windows on light cookies and vice versa. Sure! No problem.

2008 was the cookie box cover. I remember rolling a 7-foot-tall rack filled with cookies down to the photo studio. On my way there, I ran into Martha who was leading a tour group through our offices. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I stood there silently watching them help themselves to samples from my trays then nearly dissolved in tears when I got to the studio. Luckily, I was a trained fanatic, so of course there were still plenty of cookies left for the shoot. Lastly, I’ll never forget a pretty cover from December 2013. It featured decorated sugar cookies with a little girl in a red bonnet right in the middle. I was tortured by that girl. I made at least 100 versions of her in different color combinations ensuring that her face was sweet, not creepy (there’s a fine line).

Needless to say, at a certain point, I had either developed, made, or tried every cookie in the Martha recipe library and yet there was one cookie that always kept me coming back for more.