Chunkers: a recipe + a few try-agains

How I came to have my first job in a kitchen, and what happened next

Hello! Hello!

Remember the Whoppers, the Maida Heatter recipe that was the inspiration for cookies I made at the SoHo Charcuterie? (The story and recipe are here.) Well, here’s the prequel, the saga of how I got into that kitchen in the first place. Also a recipe that will always make me think of that time.

Chunkers from DORIE’S COOKIES // Photos by Davide Luciano // Get on Amazon or Bookshop.org

Getting the job as an apprentice pastry cook at the SoHo Charcuterie was a very big deal for me. It was the beginning of what I hoped would be my new life and it was also the end of a dispiriting search that had started months before.

It was decades ago. I’d left my job as a grant writer for a nonprofit early in my pregnancy and I’d made no plans for a return. I’d decided that I was never going to finish my dissertation — no regrets there. And Michael was encouraging me to follow my heart, which was leading me into a kitchen. Never mind that I had no experience or skills, no confidence and no ide…