My mother has a great recipe for chocolate chip cookies. In a fit of nostalgia, I asked her to send it to me (again, as it turns out...the ol' memory ain't what it used to be). Oddly enough, I found that there are some new instructions that need to be added, so I've done so.
Mom's Recipe:
"Cream: 2 c butter, 2c sugar, 2c brown sugar.
Add 4 eggs, 2tsp vanilla.
Mix: 5c oats that have been measured and then ground into flour, 4c flour, 1 tsp salt, 2tsp each baking powder and baking soda. (I have been known to skip the baking soda.)
Mix all together and then fold in 24 oz chocolate chips and 3 c chopped nuts.
350 degrees, 8-10 minutes for medium-sized cookies. Note that the ground oats in the dough, being a little coarser than actual oat flour, help make it easy to pry off a little frozen cookie dough with a fork and bake just one or two at a time so that you can limit your caloric exposure at any one time if you want."
Mom's Recipe with Edits:
Reason that new instructions are required. |
Mom's Recipe:
"Cream: 2 c butter, 2c sugar, 2c brown sugar.
Add 4 eggs, 2tsp vanilla.
Mix: 5c oats that have been measured and then ground into flour, 4c flour, 1 tsp salt, 2tsp each baking powder and baking soda. (I have been known to skip the baking soda.)
Mix all together and then fold in 24 oz chocolate chips and 3 c chopped nuts.
350 degrees, 8-10 minutes for medium-sized cookies. Note that the ground oats in the dough, being a little coarser than actual oat flour, help make it easy to pry off a little frozen cookie dough with a fork and bake just one or two at a time so that you can limit your caloric exposure at any one time if you want."
Mom's Recipe with Edits:
- Remember how much cookie dough this recipe makes. Look at freezer. Ascertain that there is no way in **** you'll fit it into your freezer. Consider that, while you absolutely could polish off the whole recipe in a brief period of time, that is no way to lose the baby weight. Halve recipe.
- Realize that you need ground oats. Put baby down to nap, then carefully measure out oats and grind them.
- Look for mixing bowl. Find it in the dishwasher because you just made dog treats. Set aside ground oats. Get text from husband that he forgot his work tools. Pack up baby. Drive tools over to work site. Realize husband wants to show off baby for his buddies at the next break. Drive baby around until break time, because there's no way the baby is going to sit happily in a carseat that isn't moving.
- Return home. Get newly cleaned mixing bowl out of dishwasher.
- Wait for baby to fall asleep again. Put dog outside.
- Look at recipe again. Decrease sugar and brown sugar by 1/3 because you and your husband prefer cookies that aren't tooth-achingly sweet.
- Remember that you can't eat dairy because the baby has a dairy allergy (possibly), and the pediatrician has you on a dairy elimination diet. Pull out Earth Balance (a non-hydrogenated butter alternative)
- Cream sugar and butter/Earth Balance.
- Add eggs and vanilla.
- Add salt, baking soda, baking powder, and flour.
- Add ground oats.
- Realize that all of your chocolate chips have milk in them. Grab Trader Joe's pound plus bar that your mother brought you from California, and whack off a good sized chunk. Start chopping, realize that nobody has time for that, then throw the rest of it in a food processor.
- Chop chocolate in food processor.
- Look at recipe again. Remember that your husband doesn't like the texture of nuts. Decide that you like nuts, so nuts to him (see what I did there?). Look in freezer. Remember that you threw the pecans in the deep freeze because you rarely use them. (See "husband doesn't like nuts"). Find about a cup of spiced pecans that you froze down over the holidays seven months ago. Decide that'll do. Throw them in food processor with chocolate and roughly chop.
- Congratulate yourself on teaching your baby to sleep through food processor noise. Hear baby crying. Swear. Run over to baby and replace his binky, which has fallen out of his mouth. Hope that this "self-soothing" skill you've heard so much about kicks in soon.
- Return to kitchen. Throw chocolate and nuts into dough. Mix in.
- Hear baby cry again. Realize he's got a ways to go before he figures out "self-soothing." Wonder if it's a myth. Return to baby, replace binky.
- Return to kitchen, decide that you've gotten as far as you're going to for now, and throw cookie dough into container to stick in fridge.
- Start to give bowl to dog to lick clean. Remember dogs can be killed by dark chocolate. Consider pros/cons. Remember that you're no longer pregnant, and can eat raw eggs without endangering anyone but yourself. Decide to lick bowl clean yourself.
- Plan on rolling cookie dough into individual cookies for freezing. Remember that your oven is on the fritz, and that it can be 25-75 degrees (F) off at any given time. Cross self and hope that the cookies will someday be successfully baked.
In short, my recipe:
1 C butter/Earth Balance
2/3 C brown sugar
2/3 C white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2-1 tsp salt
2 C flour
2.5 C oats, measured, then pulverized
1 whacked off piece of a dark chocolate Pound Plus bar
1 C (approx) pecans or spiced pecans, roughly chopped.