Author unveils real story behind favorite cookies

By Tom Harte

Truly engrossing stories usually involve units of three. Consider "The Three Musketeers," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and the bestselling romance novel, "Three Nights of Sin."

The story I want to share here also relies on the impact of the number three. I call it "A Tale of Three Cookies." Each tale is drawn from Stella Parks' beautiful new cookbook, and candidate for the year's most clever cookbook title, "BraveTart."

In her book, Parks provides not only inspired recipes for classic cookies, but the stories behind them as well. In three cases these cookie biographies are not what you'd expect, and in one case the story behind the cookie is downright disheartening.

Disheartened is exactly how I felt when I read Parks' claim the chocolate chip cookie was not invented by accident in 1938 by Ruth Wakefield, proprietor of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. That's the official story that you'll find recounted in virtually every cookbook, including my own, and even in the presumably authoritative "Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets."

Ultimate oatmeal cookies, made with three kinds of oatmeal, shown here about to come out of the oven are not as ancient a treat as you might expect.TOM HARTE

But Parks makes a convincing case that people were routinely making chocolate chip cookies years before Wakefield was even born. I was devastated when I read that. My anguish was as great as when I learned that Betty Crocker is not real.

Alas, Parks makes it clear that my hero, Ruth Wakefield, was not the innovator I thought. She modified an early chocolate chip cookie recipe and with the help of the Nestle Company, who designed a special chocolate "morsel" for her, popularized it. However, buoyed by the plummeting cost of chocolate in the latter part of the 19th century, lots of folks beat Wakefield to the punch, using a recipe all but identical to hers.

Though not as disconcerting as the true story behind the chocolate chip cookie, Parks also tells the surprising tales of two other classic cookies: oatmeal and peanut butter.

In the case of the oatmeal cookie, it's not as old-fashioned as you might think. It doesn't go back to some ancient Scottish kitchen, but, rather, is the product of modern technology, namely the invention of rolled, as opposed to ground, oats around the turn of the 20th century, a development which enticed bakers to expand their oatmeal repertoire beyond porridge. Such experimentation was heavily encouraged by the Quaker Oats Company, and when the Sun-Maid raisin people got into the act, the rest, as they say, is history.

Similarly, you might be surprised by the story of the peanut butter cookie. It was not the immediate result of the invention of peanut butter, because when the spread was first introduced, it was not the cheap treat we know today, costing even more than butter itself. So original versions of the cookie, like the one offered by peanut proselytizer George Washington Carver, were made with finely minced peanuts instead.

A stack of three classic cookies, each with a tale to tell.TOM HARTE ~ photos@ semissourian.com

It would take another twenty years and the addition of hydrogenated oil to peanut butter, which became more economical, to make the peanut butter cookie a staple of the Depression and the iconic cookie we know today.

Thus ends my tale, or should I say, that's how these cookies crumbled.

Triple Oatmeal Cookies

This has to be the ultimate oatmeal cookie. After all, it has three kinds of oats in it: rolled, steel-cut and oat flour. The recipe is adapted from "BraveTart."

• 2/3 cup flour
• 3/4 cup oat flour
• 1 and 2/3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/4 cup steel-cut oats
• 1 and 1/4 cups pecans, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 2 sticks softened butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 egg

Combine flour, oat flour, rolled oats, steel-cut oats, pecans and cranberries. Beat butter with sugars, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla until fluffy. Beat in egg. Add dry ingredients and mix to form a stiff dough. Drop dough by two tablespoon portions onto parchment-lined cookie sheets, leaving 2 inches between each portion. Flatten slightly and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden around the edges but still pale in the middle. Cool for five minutes until set.