Cookie love.

In the third or fourth grade, I helped my mom make dinner for a family who was sick.  We made spaghetti.  I remember because spaghetti was my favorite thing to make.  I had even written a recipe for it that included draining the spaghetti “in a green bowl with holes in it,” which is what I called our colander.

As a thank you gift, the mom of the family we made dinner for gave me a blank recipe book to write down all my recipes in.  It had a red and white checkered cover with red plastic ring binding.  Over the years, I wrote all my favorite recipes in it.  All my mom’s recipes that I loved, recipes from friends, recipes from my favorite cookbooks and magazines.  I filled it up when I was a freshman in college.

Then, over the next five years or so, the binding began to break.  And one year for Christmas, one of my friends removed the binding and put each page in a plastic cover in a notebook.  The pages are all stained with learning, mistakes, experiments and love.  Some of the recipes have been used and spilled on so much that they are barely legible.  Those are the ones I have memorized. Like this recipe for my mom’s chocolate chip cookies. I think she got the recipe from a Betty Crocker book, but I’m not sure.  All I know is that these are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had.  Chewy and soft and delectable.

Trader Joe’s has these mini peanut butter cups that melt delightfully in cookies.  I use those instead of chocolate chips, and then I grind a little pink Himalayan salt over the top of each one, right before I put them in the oven.  They are greasy, sugary and there is no substitute for these.

My Mom’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

2/3 cup butter

2/3 cup shortening

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 c. chocolate chips (or mini peanut butter cups)

Preheat oven to 350.  Cream the butter, shortening and both sugars in a mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.  Add the flour, soda, and salt.  Mix until combined.  Stir in the chocolate chips.  Use a tablespoon to form round balls of dough.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet at least 1 inch apart.  Bake at 350 for 9 minutes, or until the edges are light brown.  Cool slightly before eating.

Photos and words © Elizabeth Fuss.