"When I was a baker at a conference centre on Star Island, 12 miles off the coast of New Hampshire, I learned to make this kind of cookie from one of the best bakers I know, Mandy Lamb. She would put different ingredients in the cookie each day or each week and have people try and guess what the random secret ingredients were.
"Because we were on an island in New England, when storms blew in, we were trapped. No one travelled to the island, and, more important, no boats with food on them came our way, either. We had to get creative and use what we had on hand. We might not have had enough chocolate chips to make chocolate chip cookies, but if we threw in other mix-ins as well, the 700-some guests would never notice the shortage of one ingredient - and the cookies would always feel brand new, because they were different every time. I found after many batches that my favourite compost cookies had my favourite snacks in them: chocolate and butterscotch chips, potato crisps, pretzels, Graham crackers and coffee."