Repair, Not Rescue
Permission to intervene...
Recipe- Cherry Macadamia Cookies
Resistance confronts me in the kitchen, even when the project is one I chose to work on. Before it was my job, I consumed and devoured all I could about pastry and baking. That passion got me pretty far, but it did not always get my body into the kitchen.
I first came across a version of this cookie in Cooking Light. In its effort to be “lighter”, there was no butter, only macadamia butter. Nutty and aromatic even without the butter, it was better than it should have been. The old recipe was in volume measurements, so the first job was to translate it into grams. Nuts into the blender and processed until smooth.
Early on I first suspected something was off. Nut butter isn’t going to cream the same way as butter does, but it seemed like a lot of sugar in ratio to the nut butter. I had made this recipe so many times, I swore it was how it should be. I carried on, but took note.
The egg went in and everything started coming together, and looking better, until the dry ingredients were added. What was crumbly before, was now dusty, the flour refusing to collaborate. It became obvious that this was never going to hold together as a cookie. I couldn’t avoid it any longer. It was time to try to fix it, or toss it out and let it go. I had fought the resistance to motivate, but the thought of a redo made me want to run away.
But I don’t hide; I live in so much truth it hurts. I wasn’t going to quit this time either. The entire point of this cookie was to be butter free, but now, it wasn’t about what it was meant to be, but what it was becoming.
I just needed something with fat and moisture to hold it all together. I spotted the butter keeper on my shelf. With a chef’s knife, I scooped out about 2 tablespoons and threw it into the dust standing in for dough. This was repair, not rescue. With the butter mixed in, the dough looked more like it should and when formed, it finally held its shape.
With a pinch of ground clove and dried cherries, the dough was done. While it chilled, I took a second look at the recipe and noticed that I had left out about 1/3 cup of macadamias. My instincts were right; the dough was talking to me. I baked this new version with curiosity, becoming the creator, the repairer of these cookies, and I was rewarded with something special.
What knowledge are you already holding that you’re ignoring for the sake of following a recipe? Repair, rather than restart, and learn from it. Resistance can be a collaborator it the kitchen.
One day I hope to have just a fraction of your intuition so I know both when and how to intervene.