mommy’s comfort food

To your average kid, milk and cookies is the ideal cure for the rainy day blues. Sinking one’s teeth into a chocolate chip-studded little number, washed down by a tall glass of ice-cold milk, can be just the thing to erase the pain of a forgotten library book or a silly spat with a friend. For grown-ups like me, my idea of comfort food at 3 p.m. doesn’t stray so far from the kid version, but I do like to think that my taste is a bit more refined than the store-bought variety (no offense, Keebler Elf). I admit that I’m not a tremendous connoisseur when it comes to cookies and other baked goods, so when I do choose to indulge, it needs to be the good stuff. Well, I think that I have finally found heaven in a bakery bag: homemade cookies from bakeshop. When I dove into a bag on this wet, dreary fall afternoon, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the packaging alone piqued my appetite. Freshly baked cookies beckoned at me through the see-through window of a brown bag tied with–what else–bakery string (I relish details!). As I waited for my tea kettle to boil, I perused the back of the bag containing lemon butter cookies: nothing but all-fresh ingredients and a stamped date to let me know when they had been baked (2 days ago! I’d better get snacking…). With a steaming mug of tea in hand, I was ready to experiment. Suffice it to say I don’t know which part of me loved these mouthwatering cookies more: my salivary glands or my very satisfied tummy. They are unbelievably delectable with just the right amount of sweetness. Because every bag of bakeshop cookies is handmade in small batches, they taste like they just came out of the oven.  On top of the lemon butter cookies, there are plenty of other varieties–from waffle cookies to whoopie pies–along with brownies, marshmallows and sea salt caramels. And don’t even get us started on the Cookie of the Month club. We may just have to send that one to ourselves…Take that, rainy day!

In a Nutshell: With goodies from bakeshop, you can now say the words “cookies” and “grown-up” in the same sentence. And, if your kids play nice, maybe you’ll even share some with them.