Senator Clinton’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe, which calls for vegetable shortening in place of butter, can now be found on a National Archives Website. That recipe was published in a 1992 issue of Family Circle magazine — Mrs. Clinton’s mea culpa of sorts, following a now-infamous interview that year in which she said she “could have stayed home and baked cookies” but chose to pursue a career; it was a comment that many stay-at-home mothers said was condescending. Now that she is a candidate for the presidency, few are asking the former first lady, or her husband, for that matter, about baking; but in the 2008 race for president, the wives of many candidates are once again touting their cooking skills — posting a bevy of recipes on their campaigns’ respective Web sites and taking part in a “cooking primary.” Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, has even begun hosting cooking demonstrations on the campaign trail; and Senator Edwards’s wife, Elizabeth, appears in a YouTube video, soliciting campaign contributions in exchange for the “secret” pecan pie recipe devised by Mr. Edwards’s mother, Catherine “Bobbie” Edwards.

RELATED: Recipes by Cindy McCain, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton

Why all the focus on kitchen credentials? Simply put: Our nation is obsessed with gender roles, power … and dessert.

Frankly, I’m a little obsessed by the dessert part, too, so I decided to try some of the recipes. Having searched campaign Web sites and Yankee magazine — Governor Richardson and his wife Barbara’s Mexican-style sugar cookies won the magazine’s New Hampshire Cookie Primary, though a poor showing in the state’s real primary forced Mr. Richardson to abandon his campaign — I settled on two recipes: an apple cobbler from Senator Obama’s wife, Michelle, and a passion fruit mousse from Senator McCain’s wife, Cindy.

Mrs. Obama’s cobbler recipe, published in Yankee magazine, seems geared toward busy parents looking for culinary shortcuts; it calls for ready-made pie-crust and suggests “a bag of frozen peeled apples” for those without the time or inclination to peel and chop eight Granny Smiths. Except for the frozen apples, I found everything I needed for it in the aisles and refrigerator cases of my local supermarket. I’m guessing the phrase “easy as pie” refers to eating the all-American dessert — not making it, which can be quite cumbersome. But thanks to the ready-made crust and the short list of familiar ingredients, Mrs. Obama’s cobbler wasn’t the least bit intimidating. The two hardest parts of this recipe were peeling and chopping the apples (in lieu of the elusive frozen variety) — and waiting, nearly three hours, for it to finish baking, all the while its sweet aroma filled my apartment.

The resulting cobbler had a crispy crust, through which a dark brown, gooey filling oozed. I gave some to one of my colleagues, who raved about the toothsome dessert — finishing off two slices, before asking what type of fruit was inside; apparently, the brown-sugar coating had overwhelmed the Granny Smith tartness. Others who sampled the cobbler commented on the flakiness of the not-too-sweet crust. They were surprised when I told them it was courtesy of Pillsbury.

Preparing Mrs. McCain’s passion fruit mousse, which is posted alongside six other gourmet-sounding recipes on Mr. McCain’s campaign Web site, was more challenging. While the recipe itself doesn’t require more than 20 minutes of active time, a key ingredient — passion fruit purée — is decidedly hard to come by in New York City. (I can’t imagine it’s any easier to find in Phoenix, Ariz., where the McCains reside.) I had to visit three markets before finding at Whole Foods the small, purple Australian variety of the exotic fruit. Only after returning home with the produce did I learn, via an Internet search, that puréeing seed-heavy passion fruits should not be left to amateurs such as me.

Undeterred, I found an online specialty store, L’Epicerie, which sells passion fruit purée, imported from France. A day later, a small, well-insulated tub of the bright orange purée arrived at my door. With that ingredient in hand, preparing the mousse was surprisingly easy — involving heating four ingredients in a saucepan for about five minutes, and then folding three cups of whipped heavy cream into it.

I spooned the pudding-like mixture into six small espresso cups, and stored them in the refrigerator overnight. The following morning, I placed banana slices (coated in coarse sugar) under the broiler — since I don’t own a blowtorch, which Mrs. McCain suggests for caramelizing the mousse’s fruit topping — and sliced up a kiwi for garnish.

As it turns out, the tangy mousse is so deceptively light that it’s easy to finish off several portions if you are able to ignore the fact that you’re essentially downing flavored heavy cream. Without exception, friends and colleagues who tried the mousse lauded it. Some qualified their praise with complaints that the dessert became increasingly soupy the longer it was out of the refrigerator. (Placing the finished product in the freezer for about 20 minutes prior to serving it helps the mousse keep its shape.)

After a few days of capping off meals with fruity desserts, I was craving chocolate. That’s when I decided to try Mrs. Clinton’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The butter-free recipe yielded five-dozen exceptionally chewy cookies. For this recipe, there were no shortcuts to be taken; no exotic ingredients to track down; but in the end, it proved to be the best of the bunch — National Archives-worthy, indeed.

That Mrs. Clinton’s cookie recipe, an entry in the recent Yankee magazine contest, has followed her from Family Circle to her presidential run is a sign of more than just a good dessert, a Miami University of Ohio professor who studies food and gender, Sherrie Inness, said. “We still have a culture in which home cooking is associated with the woman — not the man,” Ms. Inness, the author of “Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture” (University of Iowa Press), said. “You don’t see Bill Clinton out there talking about his favorite recipes; if he did, it would seem more like a joke.”

But the author of the 2003 self-published book “Presidential Cookies,” Beverly Young, said Mr. Clinton shouldn’t underestimate how seriously Americans take their cookies. “They’re a link between Americans and our leaders,” Ms. Young, whose book explores presidential dessert recipes throughout history, said. “We want to see them doing and enjoying the same things we do. Certainly, if Hillary is going to be the candidate, Bill better be looking for a cookie recipe — so as not to disappoint people. It’s a good election strategy.”