Happy Hour

June 4, 2025·1 hr 9 min·5 clips

Nicole Rucker explains how Jacques Torres's 2006 chocolate chip cookie created a cultural shift that changed baking forever.

Tax season barges in first. A TELUS Online Security read rolls straight into a Los Angeles live-stage plug with Bobby Moynihan, and then Recipe Club finally gets to the cookies. The room starts roasting almost right away. Rishi says the guest spot feels unfair, like being asked to dunk a basketball and then finding out Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins are in the contest. The table knows he is trapped. Chris calls him on it with the friendliest possible evidence: he has a newsletter called Accept Cookies, so the amateur defense is not going to fly. That turns into a bit fast. They keep kicking the title around, landing on the difference between accepting cookies and accepting everything except cookies. Rishi wants cookie packages. Somehow that becomes the cleanest fantasy in the room: cookie makers sending baked goods to the people who want to talk about them. Then the show gets more personal. Rishi ties his cookie standards to the Jacques Torres cookie, less as a recipe lecture than as the cookie that set the bar in his head. Touring becomes part of the method. He talks about asking people online for the best cookie in each city he visited, then using those answers to fill the time between soundcheck and the show. That is the useful bit. Cookies turn into a map of a city, a way to kill an afternoon, and a low-stakes way to build taste without making it feel like homework. The room stays loose. Even near the end, cookware and brown butter pull everyone back into the details, because this group cannot fully leave technique alone. Nicole, Jen, and Rishi get thanked. It plays like a cookie swap with professional heat and enough teasing to keep it from getting too precious.

As heard by us

A loose, funny cookie swap where expert bakers and one devoted fan turn dessert opinions into a map of taste and travel.

Recipe Club's Happy Hour plays like a cookie swap built around a useful mismatch: Chris Ying has professional bakers in the room, then brings in Rishi, whose authority is less technical than devotional. He knows he has been set up beside ringers, but that is part of the charm.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a cookie debate that gets oddly serious without losing the joke.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Recipe Club