Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig howtocookthings.com. NS
Answer
howtocookthings.com. 5 NS ns-211.awsdns-26.com.
howtocookthings.com. 5 NS ns-33.awsdns-04.com.
howtocookthings.com. 5 NS ns-1.awsdns-00.com.
howtocookthings.com. 5 NS ns-11.awsdns-01.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0