The Clown Delivers

One of my problems is that I tend to give away everything I bake before it occurs to me to eat it myself. Take yesterday. After trimming myself a couple of slices of that rosemary pound cake for breakfast, I passed both cakes (yes, I made two of them) plus the orange blossom honey to the wife to take to school. The faculty enjoyed them, which was gratifying, however come dinner time the cake box was correspondingly empty. As it happened it was Wednesday (amazing how often that seems to occur), which is Daddy Day Care night, as the missus teaches her night class. I picked the girls up from day care and headed to the Mickey D’s drive-thru, which is par for the course when I’m outnumbered and alone. So I’m getting set to order little Josephine her McNugget Happy Meal when I happen to glance up and see a big picture of chocolate chip cookies, backlit alluringly on a sheet of duratrans, priced three for a buck. Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, my favorite late night sweet — and I mean ever — is a couple of frozen chocolate chip cookies in a bowl next to some home-canned peaches, just out of the fridge. Something about the chilly peaches and the brown sugar, punctuated by the odd crunch of frozen chocolate chips…I don’t know why but I can’t get enough of it. Anyway, I had fantasies of ending a long evening in just that way as I sat there by the order kiosk, a 3-year-old and a 9-month old caterwauling in the background. So what the hey I went for it. And you know what? They were good. Not great, but for a mass-produced cookie they were very, very good. Just the ticket after a long evening — and oh my brothers and sisters it was a long one — of wrestling the Pastry kids. Of course for an old cookie hand like me (I used to mix and scoop them by the thousands) it’s no great effort to make a batch of tollhouse. However the next time I’m caught at a disadvantage and needing a little cheap comfort, I know exactly where I’m going.