As food editors in the early ’90s, we met Gretchen when she came by our test kitchens to introduce us to the newest kitchen gadgets. When we became the best of friends, we discovered that Gretchen was just one more thing we had in common. In 2007, we were working together as the food editors at Parents creating recipes for families when we got the news that Liam had cancer. It’s hard to explain how, during the course of reading an email, time stops and moves into warp speed simultaneously. Our focus was helping Gretchen and her family in any way we could, which at that time became a mix of cooking food to bring to the hospital, showering Liam’s sister Ella with oodles of attention, and baking, baking, baking. Every trip to the hospital began with a package of cookies for the staff labeled “Baked for you with love from the friends of Liam.” We, along with a few other amazing women, became “the aunties,” women Gretchen knew she could call on with any request. We held hands through surgeries, procedures, clinical trials, and chemo—all of it. Friends and family would ask, “How can you go there, how can you handle being on the pediatric cancer floor?” Our answer was always the same: “How can we not?” So when the request for cookie help came, there we were, in the trenches with the original 96,000 cookies.
Fast-forward to today. When Gretchen mentioned this book was in the making, we jumped on the idea of contributing to it, actually begging her to let us create the recipes in these pages. With 168 sticks of butter, 62 pounds of flour, 43 pounds of sugar, 19 dozen eggs, vats of chocolate, heaping bowls of nuts, and just enough vanilla and spice to make each recipe delicious and unique, we’ve baked 320 dozen cookies.
Every cookie in this book also has a secret ingredient: LOVE. It’s obvious to us when we are at Cookies for Kids’ Cancer bake sales that it’s everyone else’s secret ingredient too. We know you’re going to love these cookies, and we’re certain when you bake them you too will be making them with love.
—JACKIE and FRAYA
