My mother, who had diabetes, made only one kind of cookie, a spice cookie. She rolled each one into a perfectly round sphere the size of a walnut, then rolled the sphere in granulated sugar before baking. I remember having deep anxiety that these cookies would not be like other cookies--flat, that is--and I wanted to punch them down, but my mother promised they'd turn out fine.

And she was right. More than fine. These were stunningly round cookies, thick and chewy, dark as chocolate--only instead of chocolate, they had wide pungent flavors that heated up the tongue. The only thing I'd had that tasted remotely similar was pumpkin pie, which seemed a mere whisper compared to the operatic resonance of these wafers.

I liked so much about these cookies: I liked that they appeared to be chocolate but weren't. I knew about savory spiciness from eating Mexican food, but these cookies represented the sweet dimension of spiciness and that seemed mysterious, important and unspeakably exotic.

And I loved the way these cookies looked, which was directly connected to their taste and texture: The crackled, crusty top of the cookie glittered with granulated sugar, but there was a pattern of chasms where the dough pulled apart and provided a glimpse into the dark, moist depths. I don't know if I was born with a love of crackled surfaces or if these cookies engendered it in me, but I've had a lifelong appreciation for old paint, mud flats and certain raku glazes on ceramics.

My sister and I soon were old enough to help my mother in the manufacture of these wonders. I was frustrated because I couldn't produce the perfect spheres that the two of them could. Mine varied in size (from marbles to pingpong balls) and looked more like two-sided tops or like tiny worlds whose two poles pulled apart into sharp points. We made these cookies together for several years, then stopped, probably when my mother started working and had less time and inclination for recreational cooking.

As soon as I moved into my first apartment, I started trying to make the spice cookies. It had been a good 10 years since my mother and sister and I made our last batch together, and my mother was vague about the recipe--it might have been in the "Settlement Cookbook," or maybe someone had given it to her, she couldn't remember. In fact, she wasn't sure she remembered the cookies, at least not with the clarity of detail I did.