There’s a moment in every American life when you decide, for nostalgia’s sake, to revisit some of the processed food you loved as a kid. And then you realize after the first couple of bites that it’s . . . not that good. The lovely stuff of dreams has somehow become a chemical nightmare.
Part of the fun of BraveTart, though, is all the research Parks has done on the origins of our most beloved national desserts. Did you know, for instance, the Oreos are ripoffs of Hydrox, not the other way around? The reason we believe otherwise is entirely due to marketing: excellent in the case of Nabisco, and very poor in the case of Sunshine, manufacturers of Hydrox. (This was just one battle in the turn-of-the-20th-century biscuit war that also gave us Animal Crackers, Nilla Wafers, and Honey Grahams. Yes, people—or newspapers anyway—really did refer to it as a biscuit war.) Parks also investigates the origin of the chocolate brownie, which probably happened in Chicago, though at the 1893 World’s Fair, not the Palmer House Hotel.
My very favorite recipe, though, is the Homemade Oreo Cookies. (So far anyway.) I have made them twice because it has been a terrible summer, and when things are terrible, spending time in the kitchen helps me feel better. Both times I truly intended to bring the cookies to the office, but my boyfriend and I ended up eating them all ourselves. No store-bought Oreo has ever tasted as good as these Oreos do, even in my imagination. And I like Oreos! Even if everything else in BraveTart sucked, I would recommend it just for that Oreo recipe.
