Tough Cookie

Cake Zine is an independent print magazine exploring history, pop culture, literature, and art through sweets. The fourth issue, Tough Cookie, presents a hearty batch of trials and triumphs all in the context of cookies. It's ninety-six pages of recipes, essays, illustrations, poems, fiction, and photographs, including: A wartime dispatch from the Ukrainian bakery keeping the ovens alight and the frontline stocked with snacks by Felicity Spector An interview with a Times Square Cookie Monster mascot trading selfies for tips by Katie Way Sweet and surreal fiction by Catherine Lacey, Hillary Leichter, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva An admiring salute to the cookiecutter shark by Sabrina Imbler A feature on the coalition of international workers staffing the Canadian Oreo factory assembly line by Soobin Kim Recipes for cookies tough in texture, technique, or tone by Abi Balingit, Briana Holt, Caroline Schiff, Chloe Rose Crabtree, Paola Velez, and Yesenia Castañon An ode to the psychic pleasures of wearing gourmand perfumes by Tracy Wan Plus a dishy reflection on being the head chef at a powerful Wall Street bank in the ’80s, a eulogy for the end of the browser cookie, using Lorna Doones as currency in the psych ward, and much more.