Bill Clinton to go head-to-head with Melania Trump in bake-off


It is the first major vote of the 2016 election: Which presidential candidate's spouse makes better cookies?
The competition has been held every election season since a Hillary Clinton gaffe in 1992, when she told the press that "I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life." Making lemonade out of a controversial lemon, the resulting bake-off, published by Family Circle magazine, pitted the potential First Lady's culinary abilities against each other (Clinton's oatmeal cookies beat Barbara Bush's chocolate chip cookies that year).
Of course, things are a little different in 2016 because there is only one potential First Lady, competing against a potential First Dude. Bill Clinton submitted a modified version of his wife's prize-winning oatmeal cookies, the "Clinton Family's Chocolate Chip Cookies." The sweets are up against Melania Trump's Star Cookies, which Family Circle food director Regina Ragone called a "very simple" and "traditionally Eastern European" recipe.
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Voting in the "poll" (it's no longer called a bake-off, alas) begins today, and you can get the recipes for both Bill Clinton and Melania's cookies over at NPR.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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