I made the Epstein cookies

Is it wrong to bake cookies from a recipe addressed to a pedophile and sex trafficker? When I found the recipe for chocolate chip cookies on page 169 of Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book, I read and re-read it expecting there to be some sinister inside joke, perhaps a hidden dash of adrenochrome or instructions to “massage” the dough. The surrounding page contains a woman’s redacted photograph and references Epstein’s “mentorship,” while the other 237 feel like a cross between various expressions of human depravity: part ransom letter, part porn magazine and part teenage girl’s diary. Where does an innocent cookie recipe fit in among this?

It is a prodigious recipe which makes about four times the amount of dough a sensible home baker should attempt, unless you happen to have a commercial grade stand mixer – the writer estimates between 60 and 80 cookies, depending on size. I managed somewhere around 100, enough to feed a small private island or all your “best pals.”

They’re actually quite good. The addition of five cups of ground oatmeal tempers the sweetness of the cookies and gives them a more substantial chewiness than your standard flour base. A half-cup of cocoa powder is a bit cosmetic, turning the cookies dark instead of their usual light brown, but adds a very slight bitter edge enhance the semi-sweet chocolate (I recommend a mix of chips and chunks). The recipe also instructs the baker to “mix all ingredients together in a large bowl,” but you should really cream your sugars and butter first to aerate and lift the dough. 

The recipe appears to be taken from an urban legend passed around via chain mail in the 90s. “This is not a joke – this is a true story,” insists the tale of the Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe. It is a revenge story at its heart, about a customer wanting to get back at a waitress who sells him the recipe for “two-fifty” and adds a $250.00 charge to the tab. When the department store refuses to refund him, he sends the recipe to everyone he knows: “I’m sorry but this is the only way I feel I could get even, and I will.” It reads unnervingly like something out of the birthday book.

Perhaps all it means is that Epstein had a sweet tooth. His receipts from the jail commissary during his sentence in 2008 to 2009 seem to indicate he did. He purchased all sorts of sickening things, Business Insider reported: “Baby Ruths, Hershey’s bars with almonds, peanut M&M’s, Kit Kats, Almond Joys, Jolly Ranchers, PayDays, Milky Ways, Root Beer Barrels, and a Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar… chocolate cupcakes, chocolate cream cookies, fudge brownies, Oreos, Pop-Tarts, butterscotch drops, lemon drops, cinnamon graham crackers, bear-claw pastries, honey buns, apple-cider mix, and peanut-butter squeezers.” A grown man with a grocery list like this must be shamelessly perverse.

Despite knowing the recipe’s annoying but harmless origins, I feel the need to issue a disclaimer about the Epstein ties to everyone I offer them to. I told my roommates as they were mid-bite, as if I’d poisoned them and suddenly lost the courage to follow through with it. I wonder if I should leave it in a note by the plate for the workmen at my house: “Jeffrey Epstein cookies, take some.”

Still, it wouldn’t feel quite fair to say these cookies are spoiled by association. Hang on… isn’t this all just a horribly glib metaphor for the innocuousness of certain entries in the birthday book? Not exactly. Many of the innuendo-loaded letters from friends, girlfriends and “assistants” – who were instrumental in recruiting underage girls for sex work – do complicate things. The book raises questions about how much, exactly, the contributors knew about Epstein’s life, and whether they were aware of his crimes. Leave the cookies out of it.

The birthday book “Chocolate Chip Cookies”:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups butter
• 2 ½ cups sugar
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbl vanilla
• 4 cups flour
• 5 cups oatmeal (before grinding)
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• ½ cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 24oz bag chocolate chips (semi-sweet)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Grind 5 cups oatmeal in blender (will reduce to approx 4 cups ground). Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Drop dough in rounded spoonfuls onto non-stick cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes. (makes approx 60-80 cookies depending on size)