penfield | So you can have that cookie

"If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks."
- Leo Burnett

Each year, in conjunction with my office's holiday luncheon and gift exchange, we also have our annual Cookie Exchange & Contest. Each person is expected to make, bake or otherwise acquire and proffer two dozen cookies, which are adjudicated by outside affiliates and then promptly consumed.

Not only is it an enjoyable bit of fluff for most of my socially malnourished colleagues, it also provides the sugar rush necessary to propel us through the post-legislative December malaise and toward the five o'clock whistle.

As holiday traditions go, it is not my least favorite. But I still have some problems with it.

I am a traditionalist when it comes to cookies -- and, for that matter, desserts. Chocolate chip. Shortbread. Peanut butter. Occasionally, when I'm feeling unusually zesty, a snickerdoodle. When people want to show off their baking skills, they tend to get all ambitious and create these elaborate, ostentatious confections using decidedly non-traditional components like cranberries, rum and Asian noodles. Desserts should have one single purpose: to batter your taste buds into exhausted submission; they are a blunt instrument, not a flowery potion. I, for one, cannot and will not abide the irresponsible and unnatural fancification of cookies. Would Cookie Monster eat a Coconut Macadamia Tartlet? No. Next.

Also, the whole "contest" angle makes it very difficult for me to enjoy the proceedings because I am both irrationally competitive and obsessed with the fundamental notions of Justice. Each year, not only do I have to come up with a cookie recipe that I will like -- since I'm goddamn for sure not eating a Coconut Macadamia Tartlet -- but I have to make it interesting in a really creative way in order to garner any attention from the judges. Of course, the stupid judges are suckers for the rudderless insouciance of things like the Coconut Macadamia Tartlet, so I get stuck with stupid runner-up awards like "Best Use of Butter." I'm never going to win, no matter how hard I try, which bugs me. It bugs me even more that I have to participate in this charade. And what bugs me most is the fact that it bugs me so much.

Last year, I gave it my best shot. I went to a cookie cookbook and whipped up some Tiger Striped Chocolate Chunk Cookies, a basic yet exotic taste treat. They turned out pretty well, I think, even if the tiger stripes sort of smooshed together with the cookie batter, giving each cookie a generally brownish-gray hue. As part of my presentation, I thought I would use this nondescript color to my marketing advantage:

The label for my 2007 entry, the Choco-Briquettes, complete with nutritional information. (Click photo for a larger view.)

Of course, I got totally ripped off in the awards ceremony, settling for "Most Sugary," while some fool who built a whole gingerbread house won first prize. Stupid gingerbread house. No way could it serve as even a modest studio apartment for the average gingerbread man. Also, it tasted like the vinyl siding it was intended to mimic.

For this year, I had intended to mail it in. I've got enough shit going on right now that I don't need to slave over an oven all day for the sake of a bunch of prissy tartlet eaters.

I really got into the marketing effort, though:

The label for my 2008 entry, or "Fun with Fonts." (Click photo for a larger view.)

And in the container: three dozen Keebler Fudge Stripes. Incidentally, these cookies taste great when mashed up with vanilla ice cream.

But alas, still no award. (I was given the "Best Store-Bought Cookie" prize, those distrustful pricks.) But hey, at least the stripes came out okay. And I had plenty leftover to take home.