Holt-Witt Gretchen - Cookies for kids cancer: just the cookies

Copyright 2013 by Gretchen Holt-Witt. All rights reserved.

Photography copyright 2013 by Lucy Schaeffer

Food styling by Cyd McDowell

Prop styling by Michelle Rotman Jassem

Cover image: Lucy Schaeffer

Cover design: Suzanne Sunwoo

Interior design by Cassandra J. Pappas

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, New York

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York, 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holt-Witt, Gretchen, 1967

Cookies for kids cancer: all the good cookies / Gretchen Holt-Witt; with Fraya Berg and Jackie Plant; photography by Lucy Schaeffer.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-118-32952-8 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-544-18597-5 (ebk)

1. Cookies. 2. Cancer in childrenPsychological aspects. I. Berg, Fraya. II. Plant, Jackie. III. Title.

TX772.W5486 2013

641.8654dc23 2012023279

v1.0513

To Liam

Our sweet pumpkin and master chef
who taught us how to live, love, and laugh.
We miss you in everything we do,
but everything we do is to honor you.
Love,
Mommy, Daddy, and Ella

The first time his laughter unfurled its wings
in the wind, we knew that the world
would never be the same.
Brian Andreas

M any of us have experienced or will experience the bad thing at some point in life. The needle scratches across the record with the news; forward movement stops with the phone call, the diagnosis. It is particularly painful when the bad thing happens to a child. And yet, while Gretchen and her family were battling back stage 4 cancer with their beloved son, she chose to do an extraordinary thing. Watching Liams journey and that of the other families on the cancer ward, Gretchen decided to do what she could to ensure that others would not have to walk that same devastating path. She organized an army of devoted friends and admirers to mix, bake, package, and distribute thousands of cookies that offered a sweet promise for finding a cure.

I met Gretchen more than twenty years ago in Richmond, Virginia. In those early years I dont think either of us could have imagined what life had in store for us, good and bad. We each had one anothers back as I nursed my husband through his critical wounds during the Iraq war and then just a year later she got the devastating news about Liam. I can still remember exactly where I was standing and how the sunlight knifed across my kitchen floor when she called to tell me.

Liam was a beloved little boy. And he loved life right back. He was an old soul, wise and patient and thoughtful. But he was also like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all there was to learn, know, enjoy, and share in the world. And when he became ill, Gretchens job was to shelter him from the reality of his disease so that he could live his life to the fullest. It is a testament to them both that Liam never knew he had cancer. Despite the pain and discomfort he suffered at times, Liam looked forward to the things that made him happy: scootering on the New York sidewalks, playing with his adoring sister Ella, watching every cooking show he could find, and visiting the local fire station. Cookies for Kids Cancer was an extension of the weekend hobby he loved: baking. For Liam, baking, being together, and Cookies were all one big way to help other kids and to share his love.

This book is not only a wonderful collection of yummy recipes, but a road map that outlines how you can do something to help, right in your own kitchen. Holding a bake sale in your neighborhood, school, or community brings us all one step closer to funding a cure. Anyone can get involved in Cookies, at any age, to help make a difference in the lives of children, to protect those we love most, and to give a voice to those who dont have one. In the end, thats really what Cookies is all aboutan act of love and kindness.

LEE WOODRUFF, author of Those We Love Most

A s food editors in the early 90s, we met Gretchen when she came by our test kitchens to introduce us to the newest kitchen gadgets. When we became the best of friends, we discovered that Gretchen was just one more thing we had in common. In 2007, we were working together as the food editors at Parents creating recipes for families when we got the news that Liam had cancer. Its hard to explain how, during the course of reading an email, time stops and moves into warp speed simultaneously. Our focus was helping Gretchen and her family in any way we could, which at that time became a mix of cooking food to bring to the hospital, showering Liams sister Ella with oodles of attention, and baking, baking, baking. Every trip to the hospital began with a package of cookies for the staff labeled Baked for you with love from the friends of Liam. We, along with a few other amazing women, became the aunties, women Gretchen knew she could call on with any request. We held hands through surgeries, procedures, clinical trials, and chemoall of it. Friends and family would ask, How can you go there, how can you handle being on the pediatric cancer floor? Our answer was always the same: How can we not? So when the request for cookie help came, there we were, in the trenches with the original 96,000 cookies.

Fast-forward to today. When Gretchen mentioned this book was in the making, we jumped on the idea of contributing to it, actually begging her to let us create the recipes in these pages. With 168 sticks of butter, 62 pounds of flour, 43 pounds of sugar, 19 dozen eggs, vats of chocolate, heaping bowls of nuts, and just enough vanilla and spice to make each recipe delicious and unique, weve baked 320 dozen cookies.

Every cookie in this book also has a secret ingredient: LOVE. Its obvious to us when we are at Cookies for Kids Cancer bake sales that its everyone elses secret ingredient too. We know youre going to love these cookies, and were certain when you bake them you too will be making them with love.

JACKIE and FRAYA