“I’m about to have a sugar rush, yo,” Tiffany Haddish said.
On a silver-gray Sunday morning, Ms. Haddish, the irrepressible star of the movie “Girls Trip” and an audacious stand-up comedian (“She Ready”), had click-clacked into the back entrance of the International Culinary Center in downtown Manhattan.
She rode a jerky freight elevator four flights up to the industrial kitchen where Jansen Chan, the director of pastry operations at the center, was waiting. A talented home chef (“I cooks good,” Ms. Haddish said, stretching out the double vowels like pulled taffy), she likes to fit in a cooking class whenever she can. “I buy Groupons for them,” she said.
Though she lives in Los Angeles, she made time for a New York lesson. She was in between filming episodes of the television comedy “The Last O.G.” and promoting her upcoming movie “Like a Boss,” in which she plays a beauty entrepreneur, alongside Rose Byrne and Salma Hayek, and her recent comedy special, “Black Mitzvah.”
That special was released on the day of her actual bat mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony that she began preparing for after discovering her Jewish ethnicity.
She doesn’t bake often. “I have to watch my figure,” Ms. Haddish, 40, said. “I ain’t had no cookies in a while.” But with Mr. Chan’s guidance, she would bake and decorate holiday cookies, some of which she could use as ornaments.
Not that she is big on trees. “There’s a whole lot of vacuuming,” she said. But she hangs ornaments on her trophies. She also keeps a menorah.
In the kitchen, a large fluorescent-lit room filled with refrigerators, freezers, burners and a marble counter, Mr. Chan had measured the ingredients and placed them in silver bowls.
He instructed Ms. Haddish, who had traded her high heels for furry boots, to wash her hands, and then gave her the choice of a half or full apron. Ms. Haddish has an uncanny ability to turn even the most innocuous phrase sexual and chose a full one.
“I don’t want to put half a condom on, I want the whole thing,” she said, tying the apron over her color-blocked blazer and diamond-studded Star of David, a bat mitzvah gift from Barbra Streisand.
Mr. Chan, immaculate in a white chef’s coat, told her that they would begin with a technique called “creaming.” “It’s exactly what it sounds like,” he said.
Ms. Haddish thought it sounded like something else. “You don’t know nothing about the woman’s body, do you?” she said to Mr. Chan, teasingly.
She tried to make it up to him by offering her womb to Mr. Chan and his boyfriend, Ted Uotani, who sat at the back of the room, shaking with laughter. “You got a baby mama between y’all?” she said. “I got a uterus.” She even pledged to pay child support. “I think it’s a good plan,” she said. “That way I could still do my career. Y’all could have your kid.”
Mr. Chan tried to bring her attention back to the dry ingredients. “I’m not going to sexually harass you no more,” she said.
With the dry ingredients combined, she cracked an egg into the bowl with the butter and sugar, then added molasses. “Molasses is good for you, good for keeping your hair black,” she said.
Mr. Chan showed her how to pour the dry ingredients onto a square of parchment paper, then roll the paper up. “Like when you roll a joint,” Ms. Haddish said.
“I have no idea what that means,” Mr. Chan said.
He then had her fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones.
They spread the dough onto silicon mats, covered it in parchment paper and began to roll it smooth with wooden dowels. When Ms. Haddish observed that it looked like a soiled diaper, Mr. Chan reminded her about proper kitchen etiquette.
“Oh damn,” she said. “Behavior-wise, I fail. But the final product is going to be fantastic. Because I’m making it with joy.
“Love helps,” Mr. Chan said.
“No, you don’t need love,” she said. “You need joy. Love can be hurtful, love can be painful.”
The dough went into the freezer to set, and Mr. Chan began to prepare a stiff royal icing. He divided it into smaller bowls and asked Ms. Haddish to add food coloring before spooning the contents into a paper cone.
She licked her fingers as she spooned. “If it gets on my fingers, it means it wants to get in my mouth,” she said.
While the dough firmed up, Mr. Chan brought out some pre-baked cookies: small gingerbread people, large gingerbread people, circles that could be strung as ball ornaments. Ms. Haddish decorated enthusiastically, piping abstract designs, smiles and outfits, some of them Hanukkah inspired. “Sweet ’fro,” she said, dusting some iced hair with sanding sugar.
After 20 minutes, they took the dough out of the freezer and cut it into more gingerbread people and circles. After baking them for eight minutes, she and Mr. Chan decorated those too. “We’re making cookies like a boss!” she said, eating a leg.
When she noticed that she and Mr. Chan had both made gingerbread women in white, she held an impromptu lesbian wedding.
She told Mr. Chan about her bat mitzvah, about her Torah portion (Genesis 28: 12-17), about dating in Los Angeles. “I met a guy at the gas station the other day, didn’t have a clue who I was, he just wanted to holler,” she said.
An hour later, she and Mr. Chan had decorated about two dozen cookies, hers messier than his: baubles ornamented with swirls and dots, gingerbread people in bow ties and jaunty yellow pants.
Mr. Chan carefully arranged them in a cardboard box. Ms. Haddish, licking a finger, looked satisfied. “I feel like I can start a factory now,” she said. “She Ready Cookies.”
