Chapter 1: What is Cookie Week and why is it significant?
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Welcome, everyone, to the Sunday special. I'm Gilbert Cruz. The holidays are upon us, and that means so many people are doing a lot of cooking and baking and hosting parties, all of that fun stuff. Here at the New York Times, it's cookie week. We all love cookies. Cookies are great.
Chapter 2: What unique cookie flavors are featured this year?
Cookies are wonderful. I personally can only eat gluten-free ones, which is probably why... I just never realized what a big deal Cookie Week was around here, or frankly, even what it was. My guests today are two people who think a lot about cookies, of course, but also about how they're baking and cooking and entertaining. Because it's their job to do so. Melissa Clark and Vaughn Vreeland.
Melissa Clark has been writing about food for The Times for almost 20 years. She has a weekly column. She writes one of our cooking newsletters.
Chapter 3: How has Cookie Week evolved since its inception?
And is it true? I read this in your bio. Have you written 45 cookbooks?
That is true.
45?
Yeah. Cookbooks are a volume business.
Okay. Maybe we'll get to that. I didn't know that was possible.
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Chapter 4: What are the responsibilities of the emcee during Cookie Week?
Welcome, Melissa.
Thank you. So great to be here.
And Vaughn Vreeland writes the Bake Time newsletter. He is also the editor of a new cookbook just out this fall titled simply Cookies. Cookies. Vaughn, welcome. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I'm very excited for what we're going to do here, which is to talk about Cookie Week and also to eat some cookies.
Chapter 5: What innovative cookie themes are being explored this year?
So let's start with the basics. Tell us about Cookie Week.
Cookie week. Okay. So in 2020, we were kind of figuring out ways of bringing people together. And we were kind of thinking, you know, holidays, people might feel very isolated. How are we going to ultimately try to have something where people feel very engaged online? And we decided to host a virtual cookie exchange.
It was at first a small kind of handheld operation where everybody was just filming themselves in their apartments or their homes making cookies that meant a lot to them and then the next year we invited people back to our studio for year two and then it just kind of snowballed pardon the the awful pun but it and into this thing that was just bigger than itself
Chapter 6: How can cookies be creatively paired with drinks?
Yeah, well, I mean, cookies have always been part of our holiday coverage because you can't do the holidays without doing cookies. We've done cookie boxes. We've done cookie swaps. We have done reader cookies. But then in 2020, we decided to really codify it and make it a thing and a celebratory thing. And it's taken off.
And it's just so fun because it's something that people look forward to every year. What are the New York Times cookies going to be for Cookie Week?
And while we celebrate all the cookies that we have in our database, we also have seven specific cookies, one that we highlight every single day.
And you, Vaughn, are like the organizer, the emcee of this all?
Chapter 7: What are some tips for baking cookies during the holidays?
Like, what is that?
Yeah, I would say now I'm more so the emcee.
What are your responsibilities as emcee?
Well, we have some live events that we do. Apart from that, kind of the planning phases, trying to figure out, you know, is there a theme this year? Like, who do we want to be involved in this? It's a lot of, I feel like I'm the emcee in Cabaret, where I'm just like, I'm behind the scenes pulling the strings.
But you have your own number. Yes, that's true. You do have your own number.
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Chapter 8: What are some entertaining ideas for holiday gatherings?
And I'm causing chaos, of course. But yeah, so I think that that's kind of that's my job is just to like, you know, be a be a purveyor of fun. That's what baking is. That's what cookies are. They're fun.
The cabaret emcee is very creepy. I'm not getting creepy vibes from you. Well, it depends on who's playing it. That is true.
That is true.
So was there a theme for the cookies this year? Yes. This year, our theme was, but make it a cookie. So we, the last two years have been just kind of trying to like identify themes that have really jumped out at us for what cookies are popular with people. It seems like a lot of times we have these flavor profiles that people might not necessarily associate with the cookie, right?
Like a drink turned into a cookie.
Yeah.
And you've done a lot of that.
Yeah. So I think not to toot my own horn or anything like that, but I think that those cookies, a lot of times people, they're like, oh, I didn't realize that we could have a gingerbread latte, but as a cookie. So this year we kind of ran with that theme.
Yeah. And it's a good way. It's also a good way to get people. I mean, you know, we're using the same flavors. You know, there's only a limited number of flavors you can really use in a cookie, but we're spinning it a little different. And that makes it more fun, I think, because it's like a gingerbread latte cookie. So it's adding a little bit of coffee to a gingerbread. Right.
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