crystal . carrot orange madeleines

or how Grandma Eunice’s “soft cookies” lived on

Crystal arrives at my apartment with a silicone Madeleine pan and a jar of powdered sugar.

At the bakery where we work, clocking in at 4 A.M. together opens up a sacred space. Outside at that time are quiet streets and coastal breezes, homeless huddled behind dumpsters, the occasional rumble of delivery and garbage trucks. Inside we’re turning on ovens and flat tops, swerving around the cleaning crew on their opposite schedule. If you looked through the floor to ceiling windows, as an early morning wanderer sometimes does, you’d see three women hustling like we’re being timed by an invisible taskmaster. It’s countdown to 8 AM and doors open. But the hard work is not without joviality. Because while we’re shaping and egg washing and mixing, we’re having the same kind of late night talks partiers might be having over the dregs of warm beer.

All of this is to say that I was familiar with some of the stories surrounding the carrot and orange “soft cookies” that Crystal’s grandmother Eunice used to make, and was looking forward to the insight I knew Crystal would bring as we brought the cookies to life in my kitchen.

Crystal — a creative and daring kitchen experimenter — had a vision to update Grandma Eunice's carrot and orange soft cookies into a more modern dessert. 

“I don’t think it’s something that people would actually like," she says of the original. "Like if they tried it for the first time I think they’d think it was weird, but I grew up with it. We had them every Christmas, so it’s our favorite cookie, but I never saw them anywhere else.”

Today we’re attempting to recreate the cookies as carrot madeleines with an orange glaze, so we print off an Ina Garten madeleine recipe to use as a guide, and get to improvising.

We grate the carrots, and Crystal tells me more about Christmases with her grandma. Since her own parents were followers of a religious cult that didn’t celebrate holidays, Christmas at Grandma Eunice’s was a reprieve from her parents’ rules, a chance to feel normal. But when Crystal’s family moved from Idaho to Oregon, she and her grandma naturally grew apart. 

“And then she got dementia,” Crystal says. As someone who also has a grandparent with dementia, we talk about the strange, depressing progression of the disease. How benign situations like watching a favorite movie (Gone With The Wind for Grandma Eunice) can spiral into confusion and accompanying terror. "She didn't remember the movie...so she was really upset that [Scarlett and Rhett] might get hurt." 

Another thing she forgot: “She didn’t remember these cookies!”

Grandma Eunice had never written the recipe down. For years Crystal and her cousins assumed the cookies were a treat of the past. Then like a missing earring you find in a back pocket, Crystal stumbled upon them at a friend’s annual chili potluck.

“I took a bite and it was the cookie. I was like ‘Oh my God’ and had tears in my eyes, so I tracked down the girl who had brought them.”

She explained the situation to her fellow potlucker, how these carrot orange soft cookies were her family’s favorite dessert, a recipe they assumed was forever gone after her grandma passed away.

“She was like, ‘I couldn’t possible give you the recipe. This is a secret family recipe,’” Crystal says with a put-upon posh accent. Crystal tried a new approach. “I was like, ‘Oh my God we’re related! I have a new cousin! Give me the fucking recipe.’ And she just would not.”

Perhaps the girl was planning on entering this recipe in a country fair, perhaps she had sworn secrecy to her own dementia-raddled grandmother. Whatever the reason, this one random potluck attendee was standing in the way of the lost cookies.

“I promised her, like I won’t share it with anyone. I’ll take this to my grave. It’s just my cousins and I have talked about this cookie for years and please we’d love to have it back in our lives, and she just would not bend.”

The incident re-inspired a hunt for the recipe, and by this time the internet was omnipresent and well-stocked. “I found a bunch of recipes for it," Crystal says. “[It was] just like a weird, Southern, carrot orange cookie.”

That year, Crystal baked batches of the cookies and packaged them the same way her grandma had, slipping handwritten recipe cards into each box. She gave them to her cousins, who couldn’t believe it.

“It was pretty cool.”

We move on to the next step of Ina’s recipe: “Beat the eggs, vanilla, and sugar on medium speed for three minutes.”

“You were never grossed out as a kid by carrot and orange in your dessert?” I ask.

“Strangely no,” Crystal answers as the mixer beats away. “I was fanatical for sweets as a kid cause my mom never let us have them. And so I would eat anything, even if it was gross.”

Like the age-old trope, grandma’s house was the place to indulge.  For a brief stint in their retirement, her grandparents owned a vending machine company. And when your leftover inventory is boxes of candy, your house becomes a hit with the kids. Crystal’s mother, dedicated to “hearty bread and saltless lentil soup,” either let the secret sugar escapades slide or didn’t know about them. 

Even as a firm believer in simple, flavorless food, Crystal’s mom didn’t have the time to cook when she divorced Crystal’s dad and started working outside the home.

“Suddenly we were on food stamps, and we started eating all this processed food with all these sugars and these additives in them. And that’s why I went from being a normal kid to being like a fat kid. Cause I started eating all this stuff that I never even had access to and it tasted really good. It was a complete change from absolute controlled meals to kind of eating whatever I wanted. And it was bad.”

Crystal scoops little mounds of batter into the Madeleine pan while I zest an orange for the glaze. The addition of zest is another update Crystal is making to the recipe. “[Grandma Eunice] probably just made some like frozen orange juice concentrate and then mixed it with powdered sugar,” she says.

“Now I feel like in my life I try to find the balance between those two or something?” She ponders. “Like I want to reshape the heritage that everything has and I want to know where stuff is coming from and be like conscious of my food choices, but I also love Taco Bell. You know?”

“Right, which is fun,” I say. “It’s a joy in life too.”
"I’ve always liked the high and low of everything,” she says. 

We put the pans in the oven without a timer, and I pull out the old school Juice-O-Mat that my mom salvaged for me from a restaurant going out of business. Crystal juices the skinned orange while I measure out powdered sugar.

“I often wonder what would have become of me had I never moved away from Idaho [after the divorce],” Crystal says.

“You still probably would have that spirit in you,” I say.

“I hope so. To like make more of yourself, or do more. I hope so. It’s so hard to say,” she says. “Like the difference between Idaho and Oregon was so big. And I went from being a happy person to being a sad person all of the time. And we went from being comfortable to being like really super poor. And I went from like having tons of friends and family to having no friends and family. And it was really hard for me to navigate those waters. And I honestly think I might have just blithely sailed along being like stupidly happy and never having my thoughts challenged.”

Crystal’s baker’s sense tells her to check on the madeleines. “Look at these little cuties, Sophie!” she exclaims as she pulls them out of the oven. And they really are adorable - shell shaped, perfectly risen. We pull them out and bustle around the kitchen preparing for the next steps. I say “behind,” like we’re at work.

As the madeleines cool, we whip up the glaze, keeping it thinner than the thick swoop of frosting Grandma Eunice used. Crystal spoons glaze on each Madeleine and the effect is oddly luxurious, like each one is getting treated to a sugar and citrus bath. We coo over the madeleines like they’re newborns.

“I love this. I mean I just can’t believe they even turned out.”
“They look beautiful.”
“They do. You’re right. I don’t know why I’m so shocked that we professional bakers made something that worked. I guess I’ve just always heard a lot of Madeleine horror stories.”

“Mmhmm. My experiences have been rough.”

With shouts of praise to Ina and Grandma Euince, we dig in to Crystal’s creations. They’re soft and sweetened with a hint of carrot. The glaze has hardened just enough to create that satisfying crunch before giving in to softness. 

“How does it feel to taste one? Does it bring you back at all?” I ask.

“They’re reminiscent of the orig,” Crystal says, abbreviating. She takes another bite of the cookie. “Yep. That’s them.”

Crystal smiles. “I’m so happy right now I’m gonna cry. I feel like I cry every time I eat these damn cookies….They don’t make me sad especially, but just nostalgic. I’m gonna totally text this to my cousins and blow their little minds.” She snaps a photo and sends it off to her family. Without thinking, I line an empty shirt box with wax paper and pack the cookies up for Crystal, the same way Grandma Eunice did so many years before.