THE BEST
OF YOUR LIFE
INDULGE!
Christmas Miracles
PHOTOGRAPHY BYTKTKTKT
A favorite cookie makes a hard time sweeter BY KA TE MOSES PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON VARNEY
We’d planned a perfect Christmas in London. My
friend Emma, six months pregnant with her first
baby, and our two families would celebrate this
impending new life with Emma’s traditional Greek
feast, rounded out with my own Christmas specialties—cookies. Most were decidedly American, except
for the British concoction I’d recently discovered,
known as millionaire shortbread: buttery squares
topped with salty caramel and sweet chocolate.
Everything changed on Christmas Eve: In an
emergency delivery, Emma gave birth three months
early. Her son’s weight was calculated in grams rather than pounds, and it was unclear whether Emma or
her tiny baby would
survive. All I could
do was pack up a box
of cookies and send
them to the hospital.
Three years
later, Emma, her
son, Finn—now a
robust, talkative preschooler—and I were making cookies together, and
I’d laid out ingredients for the same shortbreads I had
baked a few days before Finn’s birth.
“I never told you what happened when I got your
box of cookies in the hospital,” Emma said. “I was so
scared, and to make it worse, it was Christmas. But I
saw your cookies, which had been my favorites since
I was a little girl. I thought, ‘Someone is watching
over us.’ It was the one sweet moment in that terrify-
ing time. It made me think we would make it.”
What makes Emma’s favorite cookie unforgettable
is that it reflects the complex layers of life: its
unexpected moments, the salt alongside the sweet-
ness. Tasting each makes you appreciate all the
flavors—and their memories—that much more.
“I saw your cookies,
which had been my favorites
since I was a little girl.
I thought, ‘Someone is
watching over us.’ ”
’TIS THE SEASON
TO BE YUMMY
