Bakers indulge in presidential cookies despite no contest this year

It’s been a brutal election year, made a tiny bit tougher by the lack of one of the usual sources of levity and sweetness traditional to the presidential race. The cookie contest that pitted the spouses of the presidential candidates in a contest to determine the better cookie baker won’t be held this year.

The contest came to an end not because it seemed outdated or absurd to expect potential first ladies or gentlemen to be judged for their cookie making instead of their actual careers, but simply because the magazine sponsoring the contest, Family Circle, folded recently. (Whether Family Circle folded because it clung to outdated and absurd stereotypes is anybody’s guess.)