Though theatre and an in-common spelling of their first names drew them together when they first met as Northwestern University Cherubs in 2006, food has been the main theme of Katherine Biskupic and Katherine Walczak’s enduring friendship.
Cached photos trace their relationship through restaurants and home kitchens all over the country.
Gifted eaters and champions of a Chicago restaurant called Toast, they regularly take the Metra from Evanston to Wicker Park, where they split orders of stuffed french toast, pesto scrambler, and chicken apple gouda sausage, with sides of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and then walk five blocks over to another restaurant called Hot Chocolate, to celebrate that epicurean extravaganza with thick cups of gourmet hot chocolate.
Like most enthusiastic eaters, both Katherines know their way around a kitchen. Accomplished and competitive cooks, they send complete care packages and incomplete recipes back and forth from Chicago to LA, reasoning that if you leave a little something out of the recipe, you’ll ensure that your own efforts will always be the best.
In that somewhat shady way, a recipe for cookies so delicious Molly’s friends dubbed them “God Cookies” came into our possession.
We suggest you whip yourself up a batch of these beauties, turn on the CW’s The Flash, episode 13 “The Nuclear Man,” written by our own wit, Katherine Walczak, who is as brilliant a writer as she is an eater, and munch away.
You can thank us in the morning.
God Cookies
(Courtesy of Katherine Walczak, who may or may not have included all the ingredients.)
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened coca powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup salted butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups (12 oz.) miniature semisweet chocolate chips
8 oz. miniature marshmallows,frozen
Yield – 3-1/2 dozen
Directions
Preheat oven to 400F. Until you are ready to assemble the cookies just prior to baking, keep the marshmallows in the freezer- otherwise they will thaw too rapidly.
In medium bowl combine the flour, cocoa and baking soda. Set aside. Combine sugars in a large bowl. Using an electric mixer, blend in butter, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
Add the flour mixture and chocolate chips, and blend at low speed until combined. Batter will be very stiff.
Gather 3-4 frozen marshmallows in the palm of your hand and cover them with a heaping tablespoon of dough. Wrap the dough around the marshmallows, completely encasing them and forming a 2-inch diameter dough ball.
Place ball on ungreased baking sheets (I use parchment paper), 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on pan 2 minutes, then transfer to a cool, flat surface or wire rack.
These are the God Cookies and they are absolutely delicious.
These are the Katherines, enjoying a light snack at Toast.
Here they are as high school juniors, the summer they met. They bonded over their love of theatre, food and, fortunately, exercise. Here they are sad to have polished off their nightly pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate peanut butter ice cream.
And here’s a current picture of the lovely Katherines, who still enjoy food, friendship and fun in the crazy world of entertainment, even though the Katherine on the left is now based in L.A. and the Katherine on the right lives in Chicago.
