Cookie Monday: or gamifying baked goods and ennui

I have done quite a bit to be proud of in my brief career as a game designer; I love every game I’ve made. So when I was sitting next to Brenda at the Loot Drop Christmas party and she was somewhat facetiously lecturing me about not knowing how to make a Tres Leches cake (“I know you have the fucking Internet! It’s not like horchata cupcakes are SO COMMON! Go find a recipe!”), and I said, “You know, I think Cookie Monday may be my greatest achievement as a game designer.” She looked at me like I was crazy.

Cookie Monday is not a game, and it is a partial misnomer. It began on one Monday not long after I started working at Loot Drop; I’d made a giant batch of brown-butter chocolate chip cookies (as you might be able to tell, I love to cook, and I have recently learned to love to bake). Chris, our Technical Director, also brought in these AMAZING snickerdoodles made by his partner. It was total coincidence, but the change in the mood in the office was palpable. The work day at our offices skews toward starting late and ending late, so there are few people there early in the morning— usually me, a couple programmers, and an artist or two. There are even fewer people in early on Mondays, and the office is sleepy and quiet. With the appearance of cookies, however, everyone was upbeat! Someone said “Hooray for Cookie Monday!”

This was interesting to me, so I decided to continue making baked goods to bring in on Mondays. After a parade of oatmeal-cherry cookies with cracked black pepper, chocolate chip brownies, chili-spiked gingersnaps, 7-layer bars and more brownies (everyone loves brownies), it seems like people are happier, and occasionally some even come in earlier to ensure they don’t miss out on the baked goods. Plus it’s a good excuse for me to find new recipes, and as boring as it sounds, few things beat a quiet Sunday night with my stand mixer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if the dough for my cinnamon-sugar pull apart bread has doubled in size yet.