The Signature Cookie and Jack!e

Quite frankly, I am not sure when my Christmas cookie traditions began. I know that when I was a child, Mom would bring home the bags of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips and she would inform me that I was responsible for baking the chocolate chip cookies. I was always excited and proud to bake them. I actually think I was a baker one year for Halloween and borrowed clothes from the restaurant my grandmother worked in so my costume could be very realistic. Somewhere along the way, my interest in cooking and baking faded. Of course, this was probably during the times when I couldn't afford much in the way of ingredients and had to resort to boxes of macaroni and cheese or ramen noodles. During the holidays, I would attempt a few cookie recipes, but nothing over the top.

When I moved to Santa Fe and had the first spacious kitchen in my life, I began to take more of an interest in cooking again. My first Christmas in Santa Fe, I had planned to bake several different kinds of cookies and didn't really know what I was going to do with them. I remember baking biscochitos and thinking that I was pretty cool for cutting them into the shape of New Mexico with a cookie cutter I had ordered online. I also baked red chile cinnamon cookies, obviously influenced by my surroundings. Soon, I had amassed so many cookies and had to start coming up with a plan to distribute them- mainly because I couldn't eat them all and I didn't want them to go to waste. I ordered some gold boxes with my initials on them from Williams-Sonoma. In retrospect, I find them slightly pretentious. I had those boxes for a few years after that because I had to order so many to have them personalized.

I began delivering cookies to all of my clients and friends. Anyone who dropped by, came to dinner or even the mailman got a box. After Christmas, I received a few thank you notes, but I didn't really understand the impact of my cookies until the following Thanksgiving. I started receiving e-mails and phone calls asking if they would be receiving my cookies again. So this is when I started being a little more mathematical about my cookie baking. After a few years had gone by, my cookie list had gotten so long and I had to calculate how many cookies I could physically handle baking and when I had to begin. Baking the cookies was the easy part- it was the preparation that was the difficult part. I had to plan which doughs would freeze best, how long each cookie would stay fresh, what I was going to box them in and how they would be delivered. I used to ship cookies after sending a "test box" to a close friend or two a couple of weeks before to see if the cookies would arrive crumbled or not. Many times they did and I just chose not to ever ship cookies again.

When I started to work for Macy's, I remembered thinking that I would have to leave my cookie days behind me when I was barely able to function outside of retail during November and December. Fortunately, this was not the case. During my first season with Macy's, I remembered overhearing another manager mention they were wrapping gifts for all of their sales associates. I went into a full panic and started wondering how I would afford gifts for several dozen associates. Then I remembered the cookies. I went into a last minute baking sprint and stopped at the Dollar Store for a few packs of holiday-themed goodie bags. I passed out the cookies with little response, and again, I did not know the impact of the cookies until the following year when I started getting requests again.

When I moved to Vegas, I used to bake with my friend Lisa, who I rarely refer to as Lisa, but Jack!e. You can read up on how she got that name in a previous post- but we actually call each other Jack!e and it must be with the exclamation point and not with an "i." This is how we determine whether we are talking about each other or someone actually named Jackie. We coordinated our days off together to bake (even though our boss had asked us not to be friends anymore since Lisa was promoted to a higher position than me and he thought it would look bad in front of the other managers. I will never forget how I was expected to ditch my good friend of several years because of a promotion). I had purchased a box of vintage cooking magazines from e-Bay, which I am known to do, and one of the magazines featured recipes from every First Lady in American history. I was intrigued by many of them, but not intrigued enough to try Rosalynn Carter's meatloaf aspic (I am totally making that up, but this was the caliber of recipes in the magazine). I found the very last page to be Hillary Clinton's Chocolate Chip Cookies. A very modest recipe compared to the other ladies' choices, but there was a little paragraph about how she chose to use shortening instead of butter, add oatmeal and increase the salt. I wanted to try them.

So I baked a batch on my own and could not stop eating them. John can tell you that I was addicted to the cookie and continued baking them at least once a week for a month. I did not bake them that Christmas, but did make about 20 dozen to take to our overnight inventory at Macy's. I put them in the break room when I got there and by the time we took a lunch break, I saw they were all gone. I figured I had a hit on my hands. Jack!e asked me for the recipe. I was reluctant to give it to her, because I knew I had the best chocolate chip cookie and was afraid that she would steal my thunder. Well, turns out, the following Christmas, we lived in separate states, so I figured that I could allow her to have the recipe, since our audience would not overlap. Jack!e continues to use this as her sole chocolate chip cookie recipe, as I do. No offense to Nestle, but I do not follow the directions on the back of the package after Hillary has shared her secrets with me!

I brought the recipe all the way to Sacramento and now, back home to New Mexico. While in Sacramento, I still had my personalized gold boxes and started creating a few more elaborate cookies to include. The boxes were fairly large and it took a lot of cookies to fill them. I knew that I could not bake this many cookies before Christmas and had to decide on only including a few in my "cookie circle." The sales associates would only receive a small snack bag of chocolate chip cookies. The VIP Cookie Circle would receive the full assortment.

While I was preparing cookies in Sacramento, I remember John feeling really proud to see what I was producing in our kitchen. He said the boxes looked so beautiful, like those boxes of chocolates you would get for Valentine's Day. He said that he always liked how there would be a list of what the chocolates were in the box and volunteered to create a menu for the VIP Cookie Circle boxes. It really made all of the difference in the presentation. John decided to start the menu with the always-included Hillary Clinton's Chocolate Chip Cookie, naming it my "Signature Cookie." After handing out the boxes, I received so many calls saying how they thought it was so cool that I had a "Signature Cookie." The chocolate chip cookie has remained my signature, although this is the year I decided to change it to the Jack!e Chocolate Chip Cookie. With a slight adjustment in the recipe, and the fact that Hillary hardly has the time to bake nowadays, I thought it was a valid adjustment in the cookie menu.

I had to take a couple of Christmases off from baking, once promoted to the MTM position at Macy's, but this year I decided to pick up where I left off. If you got the box, you are VIP Cookie Circle. If not, I am sorry and hope that I can bake even more next year. Keep in mind, I am just getting started again, so my list was quite small. I will have better planning next year, I promise. I actually have dreams about cookies, too. I had a dream one time that I was named the Patron Saint of Cookies. My favorite, though, is a dream where I have so much demand for my Christmas cookie boxes that I have to begin using a lottery process to determine who gets them every year.

This year's VIP Cookie Box menu (that John made for me):

The Signature Cookie: Jack!e Chocolate Chips
Checkerboard Cookies
Lemon Poppy Seed Crisps
Gingerbread Snowflakes
Lemon Shortbread
Orange-Cardamom Madeleines
Cranberry Coins
Rum Raisin Shortbread (in extra-special, limited boxes)