Baking Addictions + Unrequited Love

Go-To Cookies + The Go-Between

Read

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, pub. 1953
Buy: Bookshop.org or your local bookstore

In a continuation on the theme “books that play with darkness but don’t fully delve into the deep,” I bring you The Go-Between: a slow burn, Edwardian society-style. The story begins with our narrator, Leo Colston, now in his 60s, who discovers an old journal from 1900, the year he turned 13 and spent the summer at Brandham Hall, the estate of a prep school friend, Marcus Maudsley. Leo is middle class (if you’re at all familiar with Britain’s obsession with the class system, this is considered very bad). In school, he’s teased for writing in his journal, where he casts spells and exhibits a fascination with the Zodiac. One spell “works” and he’s temporarily lifted in social status. Shortly after, Marcus invites Leo to visit Brandham Hall, where he and his upper class family spend summers. Leo begs his mother, who, despite her loneliness (Leo’s father died when he was quite young), agrees and sends him off with strict orders not to get too hot. 

Brandham Hall is much like prep school, with the adults acting snobbish instead of the children: twelve servants, rolling grounds and an endless rotation of high society visitors. We have Marian, Marcus’s sister, whose beautiful, hawkish face bounces between levity and wickedness; Mrs. Maudsley, Marcus’s controlling mother, and Mr. Maudsley, his pale, impish father; Ted Burgess, a lowly farmer who lives and works on the adjacent land, and Lord Trimingham, a monied Viscount deformed in the war, whom Marian is supposed to marry. Though this sounds like the setup of a traditional British class story, I was happy to discover it’s a deeper tale of a loss of innocence that takes place largely within Leo’s inner world. 

After only a few days of Leo fumbling his way through meals, teatimes and boyish excursions, Marcus falls ill and is quarantined: Leo must now fend for himself. One day, after injuring himself trespassing on Ted’s farm, Ted asks him if he’ll carry a letter back to Marian. Leo obliges, and so begins the secretive back-and-forth which forms the backbone of the book. 

When Leo asks about the content of the letters, he’s told it’s a matter of business, which he believes until he wises up. Despite the slowly growing knowledge that he’s involved in something not quite right, and not fully understanding the gravity of the situation, he feels compelled to carry on. Throughout, his emotions swing between feeling chuffed for being trusted with such a duty, to immense guilt and confusion, as he quite enjoys Lord Trimingham’s company and feels he’s betraying him. Marian uses her beauty (and her knowledge that Leo is crushin’) to keep Leo close, continuously pushing him into difficult situations in order to get her letters through. The bulk of the book details Leo’s clandestine letter carrying, edging closer and closer to a climax that, as a reader, you know is coming. The ending really got me, and I felt brokenhearted for everyone, but mostly for Leo, who was a pawn in a game he should never have been a part of. This was a true, tender representation of teenage boyhood (and just teenage-hood generally), and fun / sad to read it with 120-plus years’ perspective.

Eat

I love chocolate and eat it daily (shout-out to homies Pump Street 100% and Montezuma’s Absolute Black), but I’ve never really been a sweets person. That is, until a cookie recipe came to me via my friend Kerrilyn (who says the recipe originally hails from a local bakery called Sweet Laurel) and I started making it religiously. First for Aaron, and then, after some tweaks, for myself. I now make these cookies weekly, have tried multiple iterations and settled on a couple to share with you below. What’s amazing is that they’re vegan and gluten-free, and are sweetened only with maple syrup. Plus, they’re endlessly versatile. I’ve swapped out flours (almond, hazelnut, oat, chickpea, buckwheat), add-ins (coconut, nuts, cacao nibs, chocolate, dates) and spices (cardamom, vanilla, cinnamon) – every version works. Just remember your ratios and you can play with the recipe til the cows come home. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Coconut and Cardamom
Makes about 9 ¼-cup-sized scooped cookies

1 cup hazelnut flour (Warning: Hazelnut flour is prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately it’s also fucking delicious. Feel free to sub another flour (see above) or just double the almond flour if you don’t want to go broke making dessert.)
1 cup almond flour
¼ cup unsweetened desiccated coconut 
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
¼ cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon water
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ bar dark chocolate, chopped into chip-like bits
Kosher salt
Maldon salt

Line a baking sheet with parchment and preheat your oven to 350F. Add the flours, coconut, coconut oil, maple syrup, water, cardamom, chocolate and a pinch of Kosher salt to a bowl and mix well. Scoop the cookies onto your baking sheet (I use a ¼-cup ice cream scoop) and sprinkle with Maldon. Bake for 18 minutes, rotating halfway through. These will keep up to a week in a well-sealed container. 

The Chocolate Buckwheat Version
Makes about 10 ¼-cup-sized scooped cookies

Note: These are just barely sweet – the intensity of the chocolate takes over (in a good way, imo, but then again, I eat 100% chocolate for fun, so maybe I’m not the best focus group). To make them a touch sweeter, up the maple syrup by 2 tablespoons and take the water down to 1 tablespoon. If the batter is too dry, add another tablespoon of water.

1 cup almond flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
3 tablespoons cacao powder (I love Valrhona — it’s super dark and chocolatey — but use what you have)
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
¼ cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons water
1 vanilla bean, split, paste removed, or ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ bar dark chocolate, chopped into chip-like bits
Kosher salt
Maldon salt

Line a baking sheet with parchment and preheat your oven to 350F. Add the flours, coconut, cacao powder, coconut oil, maple syrup, water, vanilla paste or extract, dark chocolate and a pinch of Kosher salt to a bowl and mix well. Scoop the cookies onto your baking sheet (I use a ¼-cup ice cream scoop) and sprinkle with Maldon. Bake for 14 minutes, rotating halfway. These will keep up to a week in a well-sealed container.