Failure Is My Favorite Cookie

Bittersweet, every time.

It’s been a dark and stormy few days in New York City. As this gothic fall atmosphere settles into the city with a thunderous bang, it only felt right to lean into the moodiness of the season with this piece on how failure can feed our souls.

I feast on failure. I make a real meal out of it. If not for failure, I dare say we might not have some of our best inventions, our finest pieces of art. Chances are some of your favorite dishes are likely a result of someone's epic failure. If not for Ruth Wakefield’s failed attempt to make chocolate cookies by mixing chocolate bar pieces into her dough hoping they would melt in the oven, Ruth, owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, would never have invented chocolate chip cookies. The result wasn’t what she wanted, but she created an empire of baking chocolate and an era of chocolate morsels. (Coincidentally, through my own baking failure, I accidentally made the melted chocolate cookies Ruth was trying to make on that first attempt and will include the process below.)

Failure creates ideal conditions for an artist to thrive in. Here in a stormy, hostile environment, humid with self-doubt and fear, the artist must use their creativity to navigate out of the storm for survival. If it weren’t for the choppy waters of failure, an artist would sit idly, cushioned from creation and floating by on their ideals and whimsy. I can’t imagine, Ruth Wakefield, business owner, baker, and creative, making just one batch of accidental chocolate chip cookies and calling it a day. I picture that after she made her discovery, she tested and tweaked her now-famous Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe into what it is today. It was that initial failure that got her started in her baking dynasty.  

As it turns out, failure is what I strive for, it’s what I seem to live for. I am drawn to it like a moth frantically flapping its wings as fast as it can toward its epic burnout in the sun. But when it all inevitably fails, I pick up my pieces and pour myself into what I love each and every time to make something new. It’s painful, this picking up the pieces bit, but a part of the artist's process I suppose. The reality is, that there’s really nothing else one can do but pick up the pieces of their failures and keep trying and hoping for the best. The other option would be to not try at all, and what kind of life would that be? 

Oh look, here’s one of my pieces freshly dusted off from its recent decent. It’s the “I tried my best” piece. My best is rarely good enough. It has been that way my whole life. At best, my best has always been mediocre, maybe. This is why I put so much effort and gritty energy into the passions I follow because I know it’s what I have to do in order to have a fighting chance of not failing. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough. Most times, in fact, my best isn’t good enough, but it’s all I can give, and all that I have. So I’ll clean off my best, and get it ready for the next time. 

Here’s another of my pieces, my “vision". Artists have vision. They see where they want to be, what they want to make, what they have in their mind’s eye as to where they are going, their artistic final destination. Their vision is what can slow down the revolving door of failure long enough to step out of the endless cycle, if at least for just a fleeting moment. I didn’t always have a vision of what was on the other side of that door, but I do now. After each failure, I got a glimpse of what I don’t want to make, of someone I don’t want to become, of a style that isn’t the right fit for me. Each failure cleared the fog a little more, sharpening my focus.

The last piece I’m left with is the one I know the best. It’s the one that I've held onto the longest, and therefore has grown the heaviest to pick up again and the hardest to carry. It’s my resilience. I hate my resilience. I am sick of needing my resilience like a crunch.  It’s always the first thing I want to lose, and the hardest to pick up again when I need to. I can’t seem to go anywhere without it. It’s my heavy anchor that keeps me from going over the unreturnable abyss. I hook myself to it, drowning, but still gulping for air, clinging to my resilience as if my life depended on it. Like the rings on a tree, each failure makes my resilience bigger, older, stronger. Even though I disdain it, I'm grateful for my resilience, I cling to it — my liferaft. Maybe one day it won’t be such an effort to carry around? Some days it’s hard to tell if my failure is crushing me, or my resilience, but I know I have both of them in abundance, so what’s the difference really? 

My Fuck Ups Are Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies

Admittedly, these were “jar cookies” I made for a party one time. The ingredients were given to me in a mason jar, and the measurements of each ingredient were unlisted, but it was a mix for chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. For the purpose of this recipe, we’ll use THIS Nestle Tollhouse recipe for inspiration. I decided a 4th of July party was the perfect time to finally bake them. Where my critical, and ultimately fortuitous fuck up started was with the butter. You see, this recipe, and the recipe on the mason jar, only called for one stick of butter. This felt instinctively wrong to me because some of my favorite cookie recipes have two, sometimes three sticks of butter and surely I knew better. 

And so, I proceeded with using two sticks of butter. The error of my ways was quickly discovered within the first two minutes of baking when all the cookie batter started melting off the chocolate chips. I quickly pulled the par-melted cookies and remixed them with the remaining unbaked batter. I then added a cup-ish more flour to thicken up the dough to hold up to the baking temperature. Because half the batter had been partially baked, melting the chocolate morsels, the heat from the melted chocolate and dough then melted all the chocolate within the batter. When the cookie dough was re-scooped out onto the baking sheet, it was fudgy, chocolatey globs that looked a lot like poop emojis without the happy face. They didn’t look much better after they were baked, but I dusted them with powdered sugar and headed to the party. 

Let’s just say despite their appearance, they were a hit! Melting the chocolate first, then mixing it into the dough made for an almost brownie-like, chewy consistency, rich in chocolaty flavor, but as light and airy as a cookie. They were so well loved, no one seemed to care that they looked like actual shit, and I went home with an empty cookie plate. 

I recommend sticking to the recipe and only using 1 stick of butter to avoid the chaos of melting cookies and having to add more flour at a later phase in the recipe like me. 

INGREDIENTS: 

All purpose flour -- 8 oz.

Baking soda -- 1 tsp.

Brown sugar -- 8 oz.

Butter, salted, softened -- 8 oz.

Granulated sugar -- 4 oz.

Eggs, 2 eggs -- 3 oz.

Milk -- 1 oz.

Vanilla extract -- 2 tsp.

Oats, quick oatmeal -- 16 oz.

Nestlé Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels Standard Size Bulk 25 pound - 900 count -- 12 oz.

Nuts, almonds, chopped, optional -- 6 oz. 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1 - Preheat conventional oven to 375° F.

2 - Combine flour and baking soda in small bowl.

3 - Beat brown sugar, butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl until creamy.

4 - Beat in eggs, milk and vanilla extract.

5 - Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in oats, Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels and nuts (if desired); mix well.

6 - Drop by ½ of the dough into rounded tablespoons onto ungreased sheet pans.

7 - BAKE FOR 2 MINUTES. THEN REMOVE THE PAR-BAKED COOKIES AND REMIX THEM BACK WITH THE REMAINING COOKIE DOUGH UNTIL CHOCOLATE IS MELTED.

8 - Create dough balls into rounded tablespoon onto ungreased sheet pan 

9 - Bake for 9 - 10 minutes for chewy cookies or 12 to 13 minutes for crispy cookies. Cool on sheet pan for 1 minute; remove to wire racks to cool completely.