Grandma Lena’s cookies for the woeful

**TRIGGER WARNING: Fiction containing gore, death, macabre, self harm**

Grandma Lena’s cookies for the woeful

A culinary heirloom, as written down by Lena D. – grandmother, mother, daughter and, above all, wife.

Ingredients

400 grams flour, type 000

300 grams white chocolate

270 grams cemetery soil

250 grams butter, room temperature

250 grams sugar, white

7 grams baking powder

3 eggs

1 candle, yellow, beeswax – in emergencies, can be replaced with nutmeg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lemon extract

zest from one lemon and one orange

one red skirt suit, wool

one gold ring, ruby stone – must be worn while completing all the steps of the recipe

one pinch of salt

Preliminary steps

Adornment

Acquire your skirt suit. It must be wool, and it must be new. It doesn’t have to fit your figure perfectly, but if it does, Grandma Lena guarantees your success with this recipe. Especially if you’re baking these cookies for someone you have loved greatly.

There is something about the smell of freshly woven, red wool that entices the senses and awakens the spirits, grandma says.

Lena has always worn skirt suits, ever since she came into the city and met her soon-to-be husband. His blue eyes always glisten with elation whenever he tastes Lena’s cookies, and it seems that they only became more and more divine as the years went by. Even if his eyes aren’t what they used to be. And especially since her seamstress tailored her one last suit. A red skirt suit. Woven in wool.

Anchoring

The eggs, butter, and flour should be bought from a local store, that sources the produce from a proper farm.

Someplace where quaint farmers wake up with the sun, and tend to their chickens with high-pitched songs of hope and lost love.

Someplace where their suffering hands grow the grains, and cut them down, and grind them into fine powders in the refreshing breeze of coal infused evenings.

Someplace where the butter has a slight aftertaste of spring water. And a top note of sweet, self-inflicted pain.

Undoubtedly, these ingredients will make a difference in the taste and texture of the cookies!

Devotion

Wake up early on a Sunday morning. Part your hair in exactly 3 braids. Twist them in a bun at the nape. Wear something modest. Take a quiet saunter to the closest Orthodox church. Walk slow enough that you will reach the church just as the morning service concludes. Bring a spatula and your least favorite Tupperware.

Grandma Lena recommends you to avoid the church store – fresh candles don’t bring the same piquant flavor as the ones from the candle racks outside do. And we do want piquant. Because these cookies are tastier than life itself, and life always needs a little surprise to keep you going.

Ever since she became a grandmother, Lena goes to church every Sunday. She grew up in a very religious family, but she understood the solemn walk to the village’s church as soon as she became a grandmother. Her mother, her aunt and her grandmother sauntering hand in hand, braided hair covered by washed out flowery shawls, tied underneath their chins. She was too young to partake – until ten years ago.

The orthodox church from her village always two candle racks, each one hand painted with one singular white word: “Dead” and “Living”. The tradition is that people light candles to bring the living luck and health, but also to offer their dead peace and light, wherever they dwell in the afterlife.

You are to scrape all the wax and burned down candles into your Tupperware, but be careful to gather everything only from the “Dead” side of the candle rack. Grandma Lena only failed this cookie recipe once – when she used the wax from the “Living” side. Could be the excess of rosiness in the cheeks, or the hearts that are beating too strongly.

In her defense, that was coincidentally the first time she baked these cookies. Just as her husband’s eyesight began to vitiate.

Respect

Make sure to buy untreated lemons and oranges. They are more expensive, but their zest is not treated with chemicals that hurt your insides.

Inheritance

If you don’t have a family heirloom gold ring with a ruby, like Lena is lucky to have, store bought is just fine, though you'll need to adjust the instructions slightly.

On the day Lena got married, her mother offered her something that she has been dreaming of since she was just a little girl. A gold ring with a lustrous oval shaped ruby stone.

Grandma Lena first noticed it on the hand of her grandmother. Then in pictures of other women in the family, long gone. One day, perhaps after her father died? – Lena’s memory isn’t what it used to be – she spotted it on her mother’s right hand.

It wasn’t until seven years ago when she understood the true purpose of the ring.

Procurement

Get a shovel. And some gardening gloves, but make sure you buy the right size for your hands, otherwise they will be unusable. Make sure they fit you with your ruby ring on! Also, don’t forget your Tupperware!

Lena prefers shovels with short handles. They fit easier into a purse, and they are more manageable.

Dress modestly, but not in black. The dead don’t like it. Grandma Lena always wears her red skirt suit to the cemetery, and she encourages you to do the same. It will ensure your safe passage.

It doesn’t have to be fully dark, albeit the darkness of the night offers great protection. Especially to those in mourning.

Any cemetery will do, as long as the graves are not covered with marble. The earth needs to breathe. It would be best if the grave is freshly dug, somewhere between one and ten days after a burial. This way it binds better with the other ingredients.

Baking instructions

1. Start by dressing yourself in the red skirt suit. The wool will be a tad warm. The warmth helps the suit shine its red hue even brighter, towards the spirit you’re trying to bring back.

2. Combine the sugar and the butter in a big bowl. You should work them together with a mixer, not by hand. Your body temperature can influence your dough, and your cookie dough will come out too soft. Of course, you can ask your dearly departed to help. As long as you hurried to bake these cookies as soon as they… well, departed. Lena didn’t.

Soon after she became a grandmother, each of her two sons giving her grandchildren, Lena’s husband died. Suddenly. As suddenly as you would draw a breath – only he didn’t. Not anymore.

Grandma Lena’s mother was no longer with her, by the time she lost her husband. Therefore, she knew nothing of the cookie recipe of her family. She buried him in the orthodox tradition, ten years ago, in Lena’s village, that he adored greatly. She went to his grave and lit incense for the next seven days. The women in the village were carrying water for the dead, so they carried water to her husband’s grave too – to keep him from going thirsty in the afterlife. And he was grateful. Six feet under, but grateful.

Lena mourned deeply for one year. Woe filled her heart so much that it spilled over, until she couldn’t walk, or talk, or bake anymore. And then her mother and grandmother came to her in a dream. Perhaps not even a dream. Perhaps Lena went to visit them in the afterlife, to ask for guidance, for the wisdom that should have been passed down to her.

She woke up in a hospital bed, what was left of her family besides her.

She moved back to the village, leaving the city life to the young. This was the second year after her husband’s death.

In the third year, while cleaning the attic of the family home, she found an old dossier. No title, just some dark splatters on it. She couldn’t tell if they were black or red. Lena almost tossed it aside, but her ruby ring became tighter on her finger. Like it was trying to guide her. And she then remembered the dream.

In the dossier she found tens of sheets of paper, each wearing the same words, but in different handwritings. Each paper was in a different state of degradation. Lena has found the cookie recipe that the women in her family crafter thousands of years ago.

A recipe that brings back the joy of life into a body, keeping the recently departed ones a little bit closer. As long as they have freshly baked cookies every three days, with no delay, otherwise the decaying process resumes its grotesque dance.

Lena got down from the attic with her bones weighing her down, thinking how she lost the last 3 years in despair and grief. She stumbled to the shed, picked up the biggest shovel she could carry, her wheelbarrow and some trash bags. With the full moon’s silver blades as her guide, she headed straight for her husband’s grave.

3. After the sugar and the butter are fully mixed in a fluffy paste, you will prepare the wet mixture. Crack your eggs in a clean bowl and microwave them for 30 seconds. Melt your wax – the one you got from the church, that carries the whispers of the dead – and add it to the eggs. Whip them on high speed, until the mixture becomes lighter in color and doubles in size.

Candle wax reminds the dead that they are still dead – thus keeping them docile, but without impairing their personality or senses. It even gives the cookies a nice spicey taste. As stated above, in an emergency the candle wax can be substituted with some nutmeg – but only if the corpse was fed candle wax at least once before.

4. Add the egg and wax mixture to the sugar and butter, and combine them well.

Then you add your extracts, and the lemon and orange zest.

This is what gives the cookies that “Home” feeling the hearts are yearning – both those of the dead, as well as those of the living. If grandma Lena is to be honest, the citrus flavor, and the vanilla smell also help with dealing with the vessels of the spirits that haven’t been called back from beyond the grave as soon as they should have been. Just like her husband. He still looks like her husband, with his strong jaw, and tall stature. It’s the constant dripping of fluids and the occasional literal jaw drop that happens when he is eating her cookies that annoy her just a smidge.

5. Choose a bigger bowl. You will now sift your flour, baking powder, one pinch of salt and the cemetery soil together. Sifting the dry ingredients prevent clumping – of the dough, as well as the soul.

Reading through her family’s dossier, grandma Lena decided her cookies recipe should follow every step.

Even if her great-grandmother omitted to sift the cemetery dirt with the flour, thus welcoming back into her house a botched, leaky soul that could never quite keep itself tied to the body of her lover.

Even if her mother always added too much blood from her ruby ring, thus obtaining an overly excited corpse, that lost a limb at least once a day.

Cemetery soil helps the deceased cross the path between the afterlife and their former lives. Depending on the circumstances of one’s passing, some might need more soil to be fully brought back.

6. After sifting the dry ingredients into a separate bowl, you will sift them again. But this time, adding them to the rest of your ingredients, the wet ones. At this point you should stop using a mixer, and grab a wooden spoon or a Maryse spatula – depending on how modern your kitchen utensils are – and slowly combine the ingredients together. Grandma Lena’s secret is to use a circular motion, from bottom to top. You can stop mixing once the dough starts forming a tight ball, that doesn’t stick to the bowl anymore.

7. Here is where your ruby ring shines! At first, this step might be a bit difficult for you, but in time, grandma Lena promises you will master it gracefully. Take your ring off, keep it above the bowl, and then let a few drops of your blood fall on the stone, and down into the bowl.

The ruby allows the blood to activate itself. Makes it more potent. So potent that it can breathe life back into the corpse of your recently deceased loved one. Without this step, you will have a corpse, and you will get a soul inside of that corpse, but they will not be able to function together.

Grandma Lena’s secret is keeping a stash of your own blood handy. This is awfully easy, especially since you can order phlebotomy supplies straight to your door. Lena almost prematurely joined her dear husband the first time she tried to draw her own blood, fainting in a pool of ruby liquid next to the decaying corpse that couldn’t to anything to help, but moan loudly every once in a while. She also forgot to feed him the cookies after three days, that one time…

A heirloom ring is more powerful than a new one, but the recipe will succeed nevertheless. But just imagine all the generations that came before you. All the woeful hearts of women with grieving eyes. All the blood flowing through their veins, and their clumsy hands while trying to bring back their lovers, now just stiff clumps of meat and muscle. A worm here and there, an exposed mandible, or a missing eye – but, at the end of the day, still their lovers of many years.

8. After mixing in your blood, carefully clean the sides of the bowl, and gather all your dough in the middle. Place some cling film directly on the dough, so it doesn’t dry out, and chill it in the fridge for one or two hours. If you are really in a hurry, or just impatient, just like Lena was when she first made these cookies, you can place them in the freezer for 30 minutes. It’s important for the dough to be cold, so you can shape the cookies.

9. Pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. During this time, take little pieces of dough and shape them with your hands into moderate balls. Place them on a baking tray, leaving space between them, because they will spread as they bake.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, then let them cool completely on the counter.

10. In a small bowl break up your white chocolate tablets. Melt them in the microwave, in short bursts of 30 seconds. Mix the chocolate between the bursts, so it doesn’t burn.

Dip your cookies in the melted chocolate. You can then decorate them with some citrus zest, or even with ground down candle wax or fresh cemetery soil. It all depends on what your dearly beloved corpse needs.

Of course, if you want to share the pleasure of an afternoon tea with your recently-not-really-departed, you can just omit the ritualistic ingredients, and whip yourself a batch of cookies too!

Lena will not pass down the ring. She only gave birth to two sons. Alas, no daughters! Two gold vines wrapping themselves around the ring finger of her left hand, each ending in one hexagonal sapphire, contrasting the ruby deeply. Oh, how woefully she glances at her ring, her two sons, and her husband’s blue eyes… or what is left of them. Just a glimmer of color here and there, under the milky white web of death.

Ergo, she is now teaching women of every age how to pour their hearts into their rings. How to insert the needles into the right vein. How to gather every last drop of life force. Teaching them how to hide the pungent odor of the rotting flesh with freshly baked cookies and heavy vanilla scented perfumes.

And now, you can also be part of this great community, where woeful souls gather together not to mourn their dead – but their own lives.

Grandma Lena will be more than pleased to initiate you in the arts of baking too. You’ll know when you’re ready. After all, cookies are easier to keep warm than bodies.