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Couple of months ago, I showed up at a family dinner with not one, but two kinds of cookies: a beautiful plate of graybeh, which is normally gobbled up, and another beautiful plate of white chocolate-dipped molasses, which was new to our people, gorgeous and chewy and delectable.
What happened took Aunt Maureen aback. When it was cookie time, and I said so loud and clear, my niece squealed: YOU MADE BROOKIES?!!!!!
The others heard her and came a-running. I unwrapped my plates of goodness, and I tell you, faces dropped. Dropped. I heard someone say, โthose arenโt the ones.โ
The ones what?, I asked.
The blondie brownie cookies Aunt Peg makes. With caramel shards.
Oooooookaaaaaaay. Wow. Owie.
You have to understand. Aunt Maureen shows up with Baked Alaska and lights the darn thing on fire. She throws downย smooth hummus in the blink of an eye for these people and feeds them like little baby birds in her nest. She makes huge tunjuras of vanilla buttercream for their cakes.ย Come fall, itโs her chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin bars, and on and on.ย
Here now, with my time- and love-invested plates of cookies (did I say I made not one, but two types?) my people reached for my cookies to taste them . . . out of obligation. Their dad, my brother, made them do it, after Victoria described how she loves Aunt Pegโs blondies so much that sheโs dubbed them โbrookies,โ and they are the centerpiece of her list of treats she will be offering in her some-day bakery.
I showed no hurt. I promise. Or at least I tried, even as that little stinker went into the FREEZER to find a frosted sugar cookie leftover from some other century that sheโd rather have eaten than my fresh plates of disappointment.
Peg says this was simply sweet justice for the time she took Sitto grocery shopping and the whole time she was running the aisles for Sittoโs list, Sitto was saying things like: I LIVE for that Maureen. That MAUREEN is my habibti.
At least I can say that the brookies come from a book I gave to Peggy, the Violet Bakery Cookbook of royal wedding cake fame. (Note that we got after that fabulous book loooong before Megan Markle was a twinkle in Harryโs eyeโฆ.)
Peggy in her great taste, latched on to the blondies when she first got the book, and now that theyโve made her famous and prompted Brookie-joy among her fans at home, I had to give them a whirl.
But not without working a little Maureenie-twistโa little tahini here, a little orange blossom there, and OH. MY. HEAVEN!
Hereโs a chewy bar that is going along with you to every party, every pot luck, every picnic you meet this summer and then to every holiday cookie bake after that. Claire of The Violet Bakery Cookbook says in her recipe headnote that โguys really loveโ her blondies. Iโll add to that every child, and their aunts too.
