For this year’s Cookies for Kids’ Cancer “Chefs for Kids’ Cancer” benefit Thursday, Christina Tosi gathered together some 15 pastry chefs to compile cookie jars, each with a signature specialty cookie. Some of the hot names? Lincoln Ristorante’s Richard Capizzi, Samantha Eichenberg “The Dessertist,” Dorie Greenspan, Pichet Ong, Karen Tack, Alan Richardson and Karlie Kloss’s Karlie’s Kookies were in the line up.
This wasn’t just a giant baking party, however. With 350 jars to fill with each of the 14 types of cookies, plus an extra 500 more to lay out for the party (and all cookies individually wrapped and stickered), the prep work was slightly more pedestrian than the flour-dusted dreams of Instagram. Each chef had to bag and sticker their own cookie prior to Tuesday, which meant all the cookies were baked and delivered to Milk Bar’s commissary kitchen by Monday. Then, several chefs stopped by to stuff the 350 cookie jars for a solid two hours.
Of course when you get a bunch of pastry chefs together, talk tends to turn to sweets — “Ice cream is my desert food,” we overheard one conversation go. We dropped by during the second round of cookie stuffing to capture the scene, where the pastry chefs present (Karen Tack, Alan Richardson, Samantha Mittler, Pichet Ong and Karen DeMasco) were assembly-lining the cookie jar stuffing process, all while discussing how to get the perfect lemon meringue, and whether ice cream is acceptable dinner (consensus: yes).
