Hermit cookies

The house is cold in the mornings now, and I want to give you the cookie that New England has been arguing about for a hundred and fifty years.

Hermits, dark, soft, heavy with spice and raisins, and better on the second day than the first, which is the whole point of them.

I say arguing, and I mean it.

I went looking for the one true hermit, and there is no such thing, and the record of that is unusually clear.

Two is my compromise, and I will defend it as a compromise and not a fact.

And the shape.

Homemade Hermits were dropped from a spoon and flattened or rolled and cut in rounds.

The bar, baked in a sheet about half an inch thick and cut into oblongs while still warm, came out of commercial bakeries, and it is the bar that most people now picture when you say the word.