Tasty Bakery

Back between Thanksgiving and Christmas I went back home to NC to pay a visit to my folks. The trip went well. And by well, I mean I got to return to the bakery that started it all.

I mean proto-soup kinda stuff. First scrawls on the tabla rasa. Mental imprinting.

Seriously. What I’m about to tell you about is the first bakery-bought cookie I can remember. And it’s the cookie I always get when I go home. It’s the cookie I bring back with me to share with others. It’s the cookie I’ve not even tried to make at home not because it’s a tough recipe, but because this cookie is supposed to come from Tasty Bakery exclusively.

Thomas W says you can never recapture your youth and I say so what. As long as you can recapture the treats why go through puberty again?

Tasty Bakery was a small bakery not a mile away from my home. While the company is still around, that particular storefront is sadly long gone; I think you can get wigs there now. Now they’re at the courthouse circle

The cookies go by two names depending on who made the sign in the display case: the more obvious “Thumbprint Cookies” or the mysterious and much more engaging “Bachelor Buttons.”

It’s a butter / shortbread cookie with a depression made, on good authority, by someone’s thumb and, in Tasty Bakery’s version, filled with simple icing that turns almost solid at room temperature.

There’s a flowering plant nicknamed a Bachelor Button but the cookies don’t really look like the flower. Then there’s the recipes that have either a dollop of jam or ½ a Maraschino cherry in the center of the cookie which makes them shiny and ornamental like a button you might find on a men’s coat. I suppose the icing is a “poor man’s” version of the cherry, but between you and me, I think the icing is a significant improvement over a cloyingly sweet cherry.

And I don’t have a clue as to how bachelor got in the name. Perhaps married men have to give up their buttons at the alter along with all their other bad habits.

I can’t really give an honest review of the cookies because I love ‘em liked I loved Lisa Kerr in 3rd grade: unconditionally (Note: I’ve no idea what happened to Lisa. Yes, I’ve tried facebook.)

But I will tell you that when I bring them back to Portland and share them with my pals, I typically get the “they’re-okay-but-I-don’t-know-what-the-big-deal-is” look. Which is perfect, cause that means more for me.