This one doesn’t need much of a prelude. I love sweets; always have. As a kid, I always wanted chocolate with every meal, even breakfast, nay, especially breakfast (chocolate chip waffles! chocolate chip muffins! chocolate Pop-Tarts, especially raw out of the wrapper!). I’d ask for “dessert” after every lunch and dinner, even if that was just a couple of Hershey Kisses or Oreos to dip in milk (chef’s kiss). Ah, the childlike innocence of enjoying chocolate without any fear of weight gain, back before your eating disorder moved in. We’ll never get that back.

Because of all that, I have had a complicated relationship with sweet treats for pretty much all of my adult life, as most women do I guess. But, the cool part is, all those years of going without any and all “bad foods” as a rule, gave me this cool ability to actually enjoy food more in theory than in practice, most of the time: I spent so much time ogling and lusting after forbidden foods, that it became a whole hobby, more deeply psychologically engaging and satisfying than simply eating those foods had ever been. It’s probably why I enjoy watching baking shows, looking at cookbooks and still lifes, and writing about food, so much to this day – much more than actually making or eating it, even now that I’m pretty well “recovered” and no longer afraid to eat a cookie or some fro-yo here and there, depending on my mental state and the time of day.

So, the following sweet treats are ones that I’ve imprinted in my memory so I can enjoy them in my brain any time I want:

11. The Pecan Pie on the special Thanksgiving menu at this lodge/hotel dining room in the mountains, where I sometimes went for weekend getaways with my family as a child. This was the first time I ever had pecan pie, which is the quintessential holiday pie, and it made quite the impression; I was at an age where I was getting slightly more adventurous with food, but hadn’t yet hit puberty and started to overanalyze it. Hence, I took a slice of pecan pie from the buffet. And, how perfect it was. I’ve only tried to make pecan pie once since, and it fell very short. This pie is the only thing that I remember about that Thanksgiving.

10. The Dairy Queen Moolatté, mocha flavor. There was a DQ in the town where I went to high school, and the absolute best moment of my weekday as a HS senior was leaving school, driving into town in my own car, and going to get a Moolatté with my own money. This was also during my first “revenge ugly” phase, so I was not only avoiding looking at calories, I was all but trying to gain weight. I spent way too much of my paycheck on those stupid Moolattés.

9. This boozy sundae at a fancy little downtown bar in the city where I went to college, a place that specialized in dessert cocktails. This ice cream sundae came in a chocolate bowl, and was soaked in like three or four different boozy sauces. I only went to this bar one time (it was not my typical style, I was more of a “$5 wine out of a Styrofoam cup alone in my parked car” type of girl), it was on a date, and I don’t remember much at all of the date or the guy, but I do remember the sundae and its chocolate bowl. I don’t drink alcohol anymore, but if I did, it just might be worth the eight-hour drive to get this sundae one more time.

8. The Subway chocolate chip cookie. Right?? This is just about a perfect, classic chocolate chip cookie, enough said.

7. The Coconut Macaroons at the bakery of the grocery store where I had my first job. This was a small boutique grocery specializing in imported/international foods, and they had an awesome deli and bakery. The almond macaroons were great, too, but the coconut ones stand out more in my memory. They were big and fat and round and dipped in dark chocolate; this was the first time I ever loved coconut.

6. Peanut Butter Cup Fudge, a recipe that made the rounds in my family long ago, which my cousin and I, who were the same age and good friends at the time, both loved. It had a layer of chocolate fudge and a layer of peanut butter fudge. Simple, but perfect. Peanut butter and chocolate is the undisputed best flavor combo of all time.

5. The chocolate chip cookie at Chick Fil A. Even better than the Subway one, because it’s thicker and holds its structure when you bite it. I’ve tried a couple of copycat recipes, and they were okay, but not the real deal. If anyone knows of a really good copycat recipe, send it my way, please and thank you. As a vegetarian, I don’t eat anything else off the CFA menu, except their Diet Lemonade, which I have been known to put away by the gallon.

4. The White Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia cookie at that same grocery store bakery as #7. This is such a perfect combination of flavors and textures: tart/chewy, sweet/buttery, and salty/crunchy all at once. A true masterpiece. It’s like a song. I’ve tried to make them at home over the years, but nothing rivals those big, chewy, bakery-fresh ones in my memory.

3. Sweet Frog. The key to Sweet Frog-maxxing is, you get both peanut butter and chocolate yogurts, then pile on pretty much all of the chocolate-themed and nut-themed toppings (especially the cookie dough bites and the chocolate caramel cups), and then whipped creme and chocolate sauce. My husband and I, before we had kids, used to live close enough to walk to Sweet Frog, and we did so fairly often, so, it’s a really lovely memory for me. And it tastes even better knowing that it’s a Christian company.

2. My Mom’s homemade fudge that she used to make when I was a kid. Just basic, simple chocolate fudge. My mom never added nuts (because when I was a kid I liked things plain and smooth, nothing crunchy – like, my favorite candy bar was a Hershey milk chocolate). For my 10th birthday, I brought a batch of this fudge to school, and for a day I was actually popular, and my teacher begged my mom for the recipe, which made me feel great.

And finally:

1. The brownie at this ice cream shop in my city growing up (coincidentally, right across the street from the little grocery store, the one with the awesome bakery, where I would eventually become a cashier). I was introduced to their brownie in what must have been 1998 or ‘99 by a friend of mine in elementary school who raved about it, and I didn’t believe it could really be all that great, until one day when she got a chance to prove it: I was hanging out at her house, and her parents took us to this place, which was near her Dad’s work, and bought us each one of the famous brownies. They came in these tall clear plastic cups and were served with a spoon, because they were absolutely swimming in hot fudge sauce, so the brownies got all soft and mushy, almost pudding-like. So rich, it was impossible to finish the whole thing in one go, but, what an unforgettable chocolate marvel that was. Tragically, the shop appears to have shut down during covid. “It exists now…only in my memory,” which, tbh is probably better anyway.