The Cooking Critic

When Adam told me about the local Atwater Village Cookie Contest, I thought, Cookies? I know cookies. And yes, I do know cookies, but clearly I don’t know people since the cookies I made were deemed by one judge, and I quote: “Definitely not the best cookie overall.” Sigh. My cookies are so misunderstood.

For this contest, I picked a family cookie recipe that I have tentatively named Citrus Clouds–I’ve never seen these cookies elsewhere before, not the grocery store or the cookie stand or in someone else’s repertoire. This is why I decided to enter them in a contest. When I told a friend I was making Citrus Clouds, he said, You don’t expect to win with those, do you? My response, Why, because there’s no chocolate in them? Him: Exactly. But I thought originality was key (I have since realized, it is not), so I stuck with my plan.

The day of the contest, I hastily made the cookies, which are intended to be iced, but instead I thinned out the icing to a glaze and dunked the cookies in it head first. I didn’t bother with finishing touches, no zest curls, no sprigs of thyme. So basically, I completely ignored the “best-looking” component of the competition, even though I know better—people prefer their cookies to be good-looking. Basically, I’m a bad mother to Citrus Cloud (she sounds like she’s related to the Phoenix family: Joaquin Phoenix, Summer Phoenix, River Phoenix, Rain Phoenix, Citrus Cloud Phoenix). The judges might have taken note of her if I had dressed her up in a decent coat of icing—it’s the equivalent of hip clothing. Instead, I send her out in the world in a sheer coat of barely discernable glaze. I just hope she doesn’t grow up and write a book about me….

At least I had the foresight to rename the cookie, referred to as Orange Cookies in my family (though even the renamed name keeps changing, from Citrus Clouds, to Citrus Pillows, to Airy Citrus Cookies—preferences, anyone?) The name change occurred because I’ve discovered that many people think they don’t like orange desserts—I use the word citrus to trick them because then they assume the cookies are lemon-flavored and generally don’t seem to notice the lack of lemon when they taste them. The orange juice in the batter gives just the faintest sweet citrus hint to the cookies, and everybody likes that, whether they know it or not.

So I didn’t win the cookie contest. Instead a peanut butter thumbprint cookie won with a Hershey Kiss pressed into it (why are people such chocolate freaks?), and sadly, the girl who won wasn’t even prancing around in a bikini, so I can’t complain about that.

Still, I beseech you to try these cookies despite their loser status. Think of the cookie contest as a popularity contest where the cutest girl won. My cookie is delicate and unassuming with a light, cakey texture similar to a madeleine. Citrus Cloud is a wallflower who could be hot if she were just a little more socially inclined, and really, we’re lucky she’s not all-out awkward due to her goofy, inept mother.

Vote for Citrus Cloud!