Second Life for Cookies

One hot summer afternoon, I found the chocolate chip cookies I left uncovered overnight in an aluminum bowl on the dining table as hard as granite. Then I remembered an evening party chat a year ago. Helena, a grandma of two boys offered me her home-baked cookies and asked: “Joseph, guess how old those cookies are?”


I took a bite. It was soft, yummy, and tasted fresh. “Did you bake them this morning?”

“Nope, it has been three months,” said Helena with a wide grin only a grandmother can give.

“How did you do it?”

“I kept them in a tupperware box, covered with a single layer of sliced white bread, capped the box with its lid, and refrigerate. Every three weeks or so if the bread dries up, I replaced it with a fresh batch.” Helena replied.

So, back to my chip cookies. As a bachelor, I had no Tupperware or anything close to it. So I lazily opt for just covering the bowl of cookies with white bread. It wasn’t a perfect cloak, certainly not airtight, but it was an experiment.

Well, talking about the dead brought back to life, a similar miracle happened in my kitchen overnight. The cookies tasted like fresh out of a package or cooled from the oven – soft and yummy. Of course, for them to last longer, I have to do what Helena did.

I hear the bread technique can work on brown sugar that has caked. Any other ideas?