high-bar baking

This is it. We’re going out the same way we came in: Miss Kelli’s Cookies. 

This was not technically the first baked good I brought into the office, not by a long shot. I’d dipped my toe in the water for a long time by this point — when the engineering department baking competition was announced, my whole team separately forwarded me the sign-up email. I had a reputation. But this was the recipe that put me on the map. 

I entered three different baked goods in the competition. Pumpkin bars in the cakes category, chocolate babka in the breads, and these cookies under cookies. Chocolate babka took second place overall but didn’t win breads. This recipe won cookies…. By default. No one else entered. I still count it!

Winning (“winning”) gave me a reputation outside of my team, even if it was just my team being able to pitch my skills a little more vocally. And I can’t say much ever came from it, but it was nice piece of bragging rights to have. 

Now it’s a couple of years later, and I’m leaving that team for a different one. I stuck around for too long; it wasn’t a good fit for me. I don’t know if they’ll miss me-me, but I know they’ll miss baked-goods me. So I’m bringing one last hurrah. The place where it started. Feels right that way. 

I will grant you, these are not actually Miss Kelli’s Cookies. I only had a picture and a description to go off of, but I did my best. They’re my interpretation, and boy they are just as worth raving about as the originals. I took this Preppy Kitchen Cookies and Cream Cookies recipe and adapted it how I wanted it. I make it without the white chocolate chips, both because they’re not in the original and because they are bad. And then I scoop the dough into 1/4 cup balls. Yes, you’ll want them to be that big too. This time around, because I was trying to make as many as I could, I did not do that, but I still think it’s the ideal form factor. I want a little bit of crunch on the outside but a cookie that’s deeply underdone in the center. To achieve that, I also freeze the dough balls before I bake them. This time I rested them in the fridge for 24 hours before, and I thought that was quite nice as well. I want them to spread as little as possible, and I’m willing to play with temperatures to cheat that. 

I always double this recipe when I bake it. Four ounces of cream cheese is a ridiculous amount of cream cheese to call for. Blocks come in eight ounces, and cream cheese rots in a New York minute. You simply cannot keep it. So I use the whole block at once in a doubled recipe, and doubling it also means that the exact number of Oreos I need matches the number of Oreos that come in a regular-sized Double Stuf package: 28. I want to use up all of the Oreos and not leave myself any for late-night, bad-ideas snacking. 

Now it’s time to exit stage left. So long, and thanks for all the fish.