from the fridge to the frying pan: The Emotional Support Cookies of West 38th Street
In 1938, Ruth Wakefield and Sue Brides developed the chocolate chip cookie at the Toll House Inn. They wanted an alternative to a nut cookie they already served for dessert. Somewhere between then and now, the story evolved. Ruth Wakefield created the buttery, brown sugary cookies — filled with chunks of melty chocolate — by accident. The story I grew up hearing was that the cookies were supposed to be chocolate all the way through, but Ruth Wakefield chopped the chocolate instead of melting it properly to save time.
My mother and I are deeply divided on the right way to make chocolate chip cookies. She likes them crispy with very little chocolate mixed in, but maybe some nuts. I like them thin and crisp around the edges, rippling and chewy in the middle. I want a strong caramel note alongside the chocolate. Nuts can go to hell. I mix in chopped Heath bars when I bake at home, even though I swear by that original Toll House recipe — the one true cookie — which already includes brown sugar.
Two sticks of butter creamed with white and brown sugar. Eggs. A dash of cinnamon that’s not in the written recipe. More vanilla than you’d expect. Flour, salt, baking powder. Chopped toffee and dark chocolate chips. A generous sprinkling of kosher salt before baking.
When I say I love to bake, what I mean is that I love to make cookies. Specifically, these cookies, with their golden edges and forever chewy centers. I love them more than every brownie and birthday cake and holiday dessert that’s ever left my kitchen. I love them fresh out of the oven, almost too hot and soft to handle. I love them bagged and frozen for future snacking because cookie emergencies are real and it’s best to be prepared.
And if I make them to share with you, it’s because I love you but don’t say it out loud.
New York is home to many famous things, including, naturally, a good number of chocolate chip cookies. You have the Levain cookie, which looks like a pillowy muffin top. The Insomnia cookie, which can arrive at your door at all hours — fitting for a city that supposedly never sleeps. The vaguely peanut butter-flavored vegan cookie from the coffee shop by my favorite yarn store. And so many others I haven’t tried and don’t need to, all because of one: the Culture Espresso cookie.
Like any good city romance, this one starts in a Midtown office. I started my first full-time job a few weeks after my 30th birthday, about a year and a half and an infinite number of applications after finishing grad school. It felt like the universe had finally hit “play” on my life after a long pause, and there was so much to take in. I was happy to be back with my school friends but also unsettled, struggling to figure out how to create my own life instead of tagging along for the ride in someone else’s. After so much time apart from them, I didn’t want to stray too far afield yet, but it was becoming clear just how much they’d built for themselves in the meantime.
You learn a lot in the first few weeks of a new job, but there’s nothing like that first exposure to a team ritual. The Culture run — more accurately phrased as a simple question: Culture run? — meant everything and one thing. Some days, it was a celebration. Maybe a birthday or a work anniversary or the welcome of a new team member. Some days, it was a pick-me-up on a slow day, when we just needed to get away from our desks. And some days, it was a sympathetic acknowledgment that someone was going through it.
Whatever the reason, seeing that question pop up in the team chat was the highlight of the day. A reminder that being an adult with your own money meant you can have cookies whenever the mood strikes. And that you’re finally in a place where people want to bring you along for something fun.
The Culture cookie is always generously portioned, about the width of an oversized mug. Always crackly on top where the dough puffed in the oven and collapsed on itself, the sugar caramelizing to contain the chewy, buttery — but never dense — center and puddles of melted chocolate.
Walking into the shop stops time. The air always smells thick and sweet, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get in line right as they bring a fresh tray out of the kitchen. Even if your timing is a little off, the cookies are warm enough to be comforting. You can’t help but clutch the bag against your chest like the gift it is.
Biting into the Culture cookie floods your senses. The warmth and whiff of sugar fills your nose, and the butter starts to slip against your fingertips. Rich, chewy dough and puddles of chocolate throw a comforting blanket over everything, coating your tongue and teeth long after you’ve swallowed. Crumbs and chocolate cling to the corners of your lips, and you don’t even care. It’s the taste and sensation of being in the right place at the right time with the right people, even if you slipped out of the office by yourself.
What first drew me to baking was the time it takes and the fact that you get a clear answer at the end. A long, precise process that demands your full attention with a defined outcome, a delicious reward for your perseverance. So unlike the rest of life. As a teenager, I baked the most when I felt the least control. But there’s nothing like watching butter and sugar cream together and create a blank canvas to smooth out the day’s rough edges. The unexpected bite of dark chocolate and salt to ground you, hold you in a moment where you’re safe and untouchable.
When things first went off the rails in March 2020, my office shut down as a two-week precaution. Every few months, the company sent out emails saying they’d re-evaluate in a few months. One more entry on a long list of ever-moving targets. If it felt like my pre-New York life was existing on a gentle pause, then this was like letting go of an untied balloon and watching it deflate and skitter away.
I used to fill my time with weekday commutes during the week and long walks and shopping trips and museum visits on the weekends. My calendar felt full and taut, then suddenly went slack. I put on a brave face for my team and my family, one less thing for them to worry about when it seemed like all there was to do was worry. I took pride in my self-control and independence. I could be surrounded by people I enjoyed without needing. I could build myself a career and reputation. Excel Monday through Friday and tire myself out to the extent that I didn’t feel too bad about not having any social plans when the weekend rolled around. Consider myself so “peopled out” that being alone felt restful.
It’s no surprise people turned to baking when we were all under lockdown. But in an unexpected twist, I found myself unable to do the same. After years of baking for office holiday potlucks and surprise treats, staring down a cooling rack full of sweets was the saddest thing I could imagine. Baking for its own sake didn’t make sense. It wasn’t about the familiarity, the process, the control. It was about a room full of people falling silent, eyes closed, brows raised in appreciation. No comments about guilt and diets, just the pleasure of a shared, yet deeply personal experience.
Given the news and constant advice to be aware of strange symptoms, I fixated on this new feeling that crept in after every video brunch with the girls I considered my hard-won squad, the cluster of scrappy, ambitious young women who held each other up. It started as a pang just below my ribs, a nudge from the inside out, and began radiating through my body like a humiliated flush I couldn’t control.
I missed my friends, but being on opposite sides of a computer screen was stilted and unnatural, like a performance I hadn’t rehearsed for. Instead of being able to dash out the door to catch a train for someplace fun, all there was to do was sit in the silence and watch the monitor go black. Almost like brunch had never happened. Like we only existed as long as we were visible to each other.
It didn’t take long for my alone time to feel like too much of a good thing. Without the buffer of an activity, even one I was doing on my own, the difference between independence and loneliness became breathtakingly clear. And the thing that occupied my mind was impossible to talk about. As much as my friends and I held each other up, I wasn’t sure they — in their relentless positivity — were equipped to catch me as I fell.
Spring in New York is notoriously short and fickle. Summer is usually vibrant and busy, but uncertainty still hung over our heads. I took comfort in long, early morning walks before work and evening fantasies about all the things I wanted to do when we could put this whole thing behind us. For the better part of a year, I daydreamed about walking through that glass door into the dimly lit coffee shop and queueing up for a cookie with the people who made my days better. A taste of something normal, a chance to laugh about the nightmare we’d all been through.
Over time, the daydream simplified, and I would have given anything to walk in there under any circumstances. We all knew Midtown was struggling without the office workers and could only imagine what it would look like, our go-to bagel places and sandwich spots and salad purveyors falling like dominos. But the only thing we wondered out loud was whether Culture would survive without us. Our team had grown rapidly in a few short years, and we liked to believe that our fondness for cookies kept them afloat.
When the two-week precaution finally ended, a little more than a year after it began, my daydream came true. Even though my life had felt frozen, the city wasn’t exactly how I’d left it. The storefronts around the office were darker and emptier. Anything that was open still discouraged lingering. But some things were the same: the soft lighting over worn wood floors and industrial-style tables, the crinkle of a paper bag, the marriage of sugar and butter and chocolate. The feeling of being in the right place at the right time with the right people, even though you’re sitting alone in the park on a sunny day.
Ruth Wakefield and Sue Brides were looking for something new. An alternative to something people already loved and could grow to love the same way. Whether it was a deliberate choice as their own cookbook says or a happy accident as culinary folklore would have it, what they made transcends space and time and experimentation. What they made tastes like peace. Like home. Like love.
The Emotional Support Cookies of West 38th Street was originally published in ANMLY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.