Last week, I listened to local baker and The Vanilla Bean Blog writer Sarah Kieffer tell this tale at the Cherry Bombe panel. It struck me as something very important concerning this digital world of food that might just eat us alive. She gave me her story to share with you:
Last September, I was pleasantly surprised to find a recipe from my cookbook, The Vanilla Bean Baking Book, make its way into the New York Times. The article, An Instagram Cookie Worth Baking in Real Life, highlighted my recipe for a chocolate chip cookie that uses a technique now known as “pan-banging"—you may have heard of it? The baking sheet is tapped or banged in the oven while the cookies are baking, creating ridges and crinkles around the edges of the cookies. Being in the New York Times Food section was a bucket list item I never thought would happen, and I was ecstatic. A few days later Fox News picked up the story, highlighting my cookie on all its local news outlets, and nationally online. My pan-banging cookie had officially gone viral, and I like to point out that if both the Times and Fox are reporting on the same story, it just can't be fake news.
I started getting emails and messages from people all over, my Instagram was full of people pan-banging their cookies and tagging me in photos. Local TV stations came to my house and filmed me making cookies, newspapers called asking questions, and I was flown out to New York to make cookies at an event. It was a whirlwind of a month, and I found myself, as one does on social media, addicted to the mentions, hearts, hashtags, and positive feedback.
Many people began asking me, how do I get a recipe to go viral? and I didn't have a good answer for anyone. There wasn't any formula or secret that I somehow cracked, and I liked to think (and hoped!) that it was because I had worked hard on making a cookie worth baking. But there was one surprising element that kept it trending: for as many people who loved this cookie and raved about it, there were also plenty of people who absolutely hated this cookie and thought it was ridiculous it had ever been invented. The Times comment section is filled with note after note from people angry that the cookies even exist: they are too greasy, and too buttery, and too big, and too sweet. And they are furious about the pan-banging: it's too time consuming, it's not worth it, and my favorite complaint . . . it's just too loud.
So while I had some good press and saw my Instagram follower count increase rapidly over the month that my cookies went viral, I also had to process and accept that there were piles of people out there who hated what I was doing, and maybe hated me for doing it.
As someone who avoids conflict, has wrestled being a people-pleaser most my life, and has been diagnosed with anxiety and OCD, this set off a string of emotions. I could accept that my recipe wasn't for everyone, and wasn't offended that someone wanted something different in a cookie. I always say, there is room for all the cookie recipes in the world. But it was hard to accept that people could write off my whole career and hard work over one cookie, or that they assumed something of me because they didn't like even the picture of my cookie.
I also had to deal with how the press was representing me. While I was flattered and so thankful to be included in the New York Times, I didn't see many sales for my book due to the article, mainly because the recipe was available for free, but also because my Instagram account was highlighted over my career and cookbook. The local news had a headline that read “Twin Cities Mom Creates Instagram Famous Pan-Banging Cookie". That also skips over my career, and basically shouts “if this mom can get into the New York Times, you can too!”
I was conflicted and frustrated that I couldn't control the narrative of my own recipe and story. I wanted to bake the cookies for everyone, proving they were good enough, proving that I could bake and wasn’t just some hack influencer who lucked out, proving that I knew what I was doing.
I found myself obsessing about a cookie. I stopped reading comments on the news articles and on my blog, stopped answering questions about them in my messages and emails. I started actually regretting the cookies and their technique, anxiously analyzing how people viewed me through these cookies. Bloggers started posting their own versions of them—changing just a few tiny ingredient measurements, or sprinkling them with salt and calling them their own. Others tried to make the same cookie without “all the fuss of pan banging." These new recipes were born from my original, but they weren't mine anymore—I had no control over where they went. I started believing all the misconceptions I was worried about—I wasn't really a baker, these cookies are clickbait, and I'm just a local mom who lucked out.
It was in the act of parenting that I finally got over that weird spiral. My daughter was doing a report at school, and she needed to pretend to interview someone famous. As she was looking through list of possible options, I slyly mentioned to her “Well, your Mom was in the New York Times, maybe you could interview her?” She didn't even look up from the paper she was reading and said, “Well, you weren't really in the New York Times, your cookies were. Maybe I could interview them?”
I found myself laughing as I heard my ego crack in half. Oh my god! I am worrying about cookies. Yes, they are buttery and sugary and delicious as hell, but they can't bring clean water to Flint, or stop the next school shooting. They won't give women equal pay, or take the stigmatism away from mental health issues, or remove the injustice of racism. They won't bring peace, and only temporarily bring happiness. They can't even do the simple task of keeping people civil in the comment section of a newspaper article.
I thanked my daughter for her honesty: I apparently needed a good dose of it. After that, I found myself pleasantly at peace with my cookies. They really aren't mine anymore; they belong to the pan-bangers of the world, and I am thankful for each and every one of them. I still make them often. They are our house cookie, and each time I pick up the edge of my baking sheet and drop it 4 inches in my oven, I watch a ripple form around the edge of my cookies and know that those crispy edges and gooey, chocolatey centers will give me a moment of joy, but they do not define me.
For it is only a cookie.
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