Today, May 15, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. I don’t usually pay attention to these made-up food holidays but I will take any excuse to write about, or make, chocolate chip cookies. I think homemade chocolate chip cookies are just about the best dessert in the world. Willpower and restraint go out the window when I am presented with a warm, soft, gooey chocolate chip cookie. I’ll take three, please. My dad, who was the world’s most disciplined eater, had a similar affliction and was famous for trading in his undressed salad for a chocolate chip cookie when the occasion arose.

I have written before about my approach to making chocolate chip cookies. My top two tips are 1) chill the dough before baking and 2) use high quality, semi-sweet chocolate chips. If you are looking for a straightforward chocolate chip cookie recipe, I recommend that you look at that earlier post. Today, I am going to get fancy. Today, I am going to give you the recipe for my all-time favorite cookie: the halfway cookie.

I have also written about halfway cookies before but it has been a while and my old photographs don’t even come close to doing justice to these over-the-top goodies. So, I am revisiting this old family recipe. In case you have never heard of them, halfway cookies are a bar cookie in three layers. The bottom layer is a rich, buttery cookie dough. The middle layer is chocolate chips. And the top layer is brown sugar meringue. Just take a moment to think about that. They are achingly sweet. They are incredibly rich. They are, perhaps, the best bar cookies in the world.

My recipe for Halfway Cookies comes from my maternal grandmother, Dolly Kern. She was a woman of many talents: she could sew and knit. She knew the name of every shell on the beach and every wildflower in the field. And she was wonderful with children. She was not, I gather, much of a cook. But she did like to bake and we have her to thank for our family gingersnap recipe and, of course, for halfway cookies. 

My mother has my grandmother’s hand-written recipe for halfway cookies.  For a sign of a Depression-era mentality, how about the fact that the recipe calls for not butter, not margarine, but a cup of Oleo? Oleo! I had to ask my mother what that was. (For the record, it is an old-fashioned way to say margarine.) Well, as you might have guessed, I now make the recipe with butter. And there’s nothing Depression-era about these cookies. They are indulgent to say the least. In fact, they are a bit of a showstopper. Just take some to a bake sale and see what happens.

A few cooking notes for these bars. First, let me assure you that they are an easy, kid-friendly project. I started making halfway cookies by myself as soon I was allowed to use the oven because my mother just wasn’t making them enough for my taste. It is important, however, to make sure that the eggs are separated well. If there is any traces of yolk in the egg whites, the meringue won’t whip up. So if you are doing this project with kids, you may want to separate the eggs yourself.

The only drag about making halfway cookies is that if you use a standing mixer, you have to make the cookie dough and then wash and dry the bowl of the mixer before making the meringue. That’s actually not a bad thing in that it ensures that your bowl is very clean before beating the egg whites, which will help them whip up into a nice meringue. If you really hate this chore though, consider buying a second bowl for your standing mixer. Ina Garten of The Barefoot Contessa recommended doing so in one of her cookbooks and I thought that was good advice. I keep meaning to do it myself.

So, if you are looking for a fitting way to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, let me humbly suggest that you change up your cookie routine and give these halfway cookies a try.