I made a jar of cookies, the kind you see in pretty little illustrations. A glass jar my son chose in a crockery store sits on the counter, and I often hear his little voice in my mind clamouring to fill it for him.
My cookies are usually really good. I make these exceptional ones using browned butter and all sorts of delicious mix-ins, resulting in a nutty, almost toffee-like taste with a hint of savoury from sea sat and a dash of hazelnut coffee. Mouthwatering, moreish – irresistible.
But lately my mind has been harboured on an island. The seas surrounding this island are stormy and tumultuous. No information or knowledge reaches me but that it has undergone the most ferocious of challenges, and when information does reach me, I find it hard to process, because the wind whips so at my face and tears pages from my hands, soaking them with rainwater and the foamy spray of the roaring sea. And oh, the sound. The wailings and screechings and thunderous groans of nature, so wholesome when you’re warm by the hearth, so tormenting when you’re stranded and loose for it to buffet at you as it pleases.
For these cookies, I was floating in a haze. I mixed flour and sugar with sweetenend condensed milk and almond slices, vanilla and old chocolate from the back of my cupboard and threw the lot into the oven. They took ages to bake, their bottoms browning severely but their tops as pale as clouds. And my husband, he who has the biggest sweet tooth I have ever seen in my life, took a bite and couldn’t eat any more. My kids have nibbled at these cookies, at best.
So they sit in this pretty glass cookie jar looking for all the world like a pile of deliciousness waiting to be grabbed at, but it’s an illusion.
I find myself searching on the internet now to see whether one can freeze freshly baked cookies, because let me tell you that batch isn’t going anywhere in any sort of hurry.
Ocean Bream 