Scrump

My favorite cookie is shortbread. Butter--and I do mean butter, with all its glorious fat and flavor--sugar, flour. What else does a cookie need? Oh, a pinch of salt. It's velvet on the tongue, filling on both a physical and emotional level, and pairs well with coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate, red wine. Perfection.

The best I've ever had is, quite frankly, mine. I make it every Christmas. I've been known to hide it, in direct opposition to the season of giving.

Choosing a favorite cookie is like choosing a favorite child, if I were to have multiple children. I have a very hard time doing it. I will say that one of my favorite cookies is one that I haven't had in years because I haven't been able to find them. Leaf cookies: those green and pink cookies, in the shape of a leaf, covered in chocolate on the bottom half. They used to serve them all the time at temple. Now that I think about it, I think all the cookies they used to serve at temple (and probably still do serve... maybe I should start return to religion) are probably my favorite. They're the kind you get at a kosher bakery, and they almost always involve sprinkles and ends dipped in chocolate. I ALSO LOVE SMILEY FACE COOKIES!

I love cookies. I specifically love chocolate chip cookies. I can't imagine bothering with any other variety.
The ideal chocolate chip cookie would be on the bready side and have a noticeable amount of salt in it, not too many chips and less sugar than the recipe calls for. OH, and it's vegan. So, basically- I have my own favorite recipe, but the closest match besides the ones I bake at home, are Uncle Eddie's cookies. You get them in a bag of 15 or so, they're soft and salty and it's always justifiable to eat the whole bag with a friend.

My favorite type of cookie is an 'almond butter cookie.' NOT like a peanut butter cookie with almond butter instead, no no no -- this is just a simple butter cookie that uses almond extract instead of vanilla. The recipe my mom made when I was little was from Betty Crocker's Cooky Book, my favorite book in the entire universe for many years, with it's bright red cover and spiralbound pages, and my mom's notes in the margins (usually involving substituting egg whites, or just "Mitchell and Summer love this!" or "Mitchell loves these!"). It has about seven ingredients, so it was the first cookie I learned how to make at her side. My favorite part was stamping the little balls -- now when I make them I just use the bottom of a cup, but my mom had these fancy stamps that would imprint different designs on the top of the cookies -- leaves or hearts or what not. We coated them with butter and then sugar before stamping each cookie down. When I got a little older (10 or 11?) I would sneak into the kitchen at night and make the dough just so I could eat big unbaked pieces of it. I'd always get found out in the morning because I could never bother to actually clean my dishes afterwards.

Oatmeal cookies!!
I love oatmeal cookies with a fiery passion. It may earn me some enemies, but I should clarify that while I tolerate a dense, chewy oatmeal cookie, I prefer a crisp one. It doesn't have to be brittle, per se, but to at least have some bite to it. Not too sweet. Raisins are eh, chocolate is better, plain is the best.
And that's all I have to say on the matter.

No one's said peanut butter yet? I'll call peanut butter. My favorite are the big, cakey kind. As a kid, I liked learning that peanut butter cookies had that tic-tac-toe standard design, so I could spot them from across a room. It's a cookie with design standards! My favorite, by far, are the ones once made in the best ice cream sandwiches I've ever had, eaten in the sun.

CHOCOLATE CHIP. My mother and grandmother only ever made chocolate chip cookies when I was a kid. And they made them a lot. Every time we would go to Michigan my grandmother had chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. They're SOOO good after they've been frozen. And her's are definitely the best. My mom's are second. Trader Joe's makes a mean one too. Mine are aight. Chocolate chip cookie dough is also pretty tops. I had a pretty amazing flourless peanut butter cookie the other day at First Slice. And I usually don't really like peanut butter cookies. But I love peanut butter. What's up here? I also really love any cookie shaped like a dick. I guess because I just really like dicks.

Wow, Carrie, thanks for that. If you murder someone tonight, I can easily prove your insanity in court by reading this aloud. It very clearly demonstrates a healthy person losing their mind over the course of a few sentences.

I want all of the cookies described by all of you, as soon as possible. Oh, and Carolyn--I eat those all the time! I like the peanut butter chocolate chip ones. Every time I buy them, I have to force myself not to eat the entire bag in one sitting. The first time I tried them was when Margaret came over to my apartment off East Riverside one time, to make Valentines I think--probably around this time of year. She brought a bag of Uncle Eddie's and my vegan dessert prejudice was permanently overturned.

I'm a resolute peanut butter cookie lover. Peanut butter in general is pretty impeccable, and when you combine that with such glories as butter, sugar, vanilla, and a hot oven, the result is close to food perfection. What's not to love? And, despite all odds, they're extremely versatile. They're good with chocolate in any variety and quantity, with chunky OR smooth peanut butter, with jam and banana and apple and probably even bacon, and I don't eat or like bacon. Fucking incredible.

I make a mean peanut butter cookie.