Cookie Love

Photo by The Curated Feast

Have cookie, will travel.

Here’s a little food history story to kick off your week. Imagine the scent of these gooey yummy cookies wafting through a bright kitchen... well it’s kind of ironic, but the creation of the treat that most inspires feelings of coziness and home actually happened in — and because of — an age of global travel.

The origin of the cookie actually begins with a less sweet version; a kind of hard wafer that has probably been around since the advent of baking. Cookies as we would recognize them appear to have their origins in 7th century Persia, shortly after the use of sugar became common in the region. Persia (now Iran) was actually one of the first countries to cultivate sugar.

And with global travel becoming widespread at that time, notably including the spice routes and the Muslim expansion into Spain, cookies made a natural travel companion. They were small, portable, and able to stay fresh if they were bundled up. Plus, once people tasted sugar, they wanted to have it around, so cookies were prized in trade.

Much later, the cookie came to America through the Dutch in New Amsterdam, and the Dutch word "koekje" (meaning ‘little cake’) was Anglicized to "cookie" as we know it today!

And thank you to my creative bf @therealkilojones who got into baking recently, and used a batch of @traderjoes peanut butter cups to press into the chocolate chip cookie batter. These molten treats didn’t get to travel very far after all!