If Loving These Cookies is Wrong

then I don’t want to be right

Meet Glen.

Glen is married to my first cousin, Kim, who is more like my sister than my cousin. They are some of our best friends and we love when they come to visit…all the way from South Louisiana.

Except, well, Glen has an addiction. When I ask him if I could share it with my readers, he was a little reluctant. After a little coaxing, I finally persuaded him to let me write about his very sensitive and troublesome dependence.

So for starters, thank you, Glen, for your willingness to help others and I will try to be as sensitive as possible when I share you story.

Glen’s addiction: my chocolate chip cookies.

You read it right, he eats one and it sets off a chain reaction that causes him to eat one after another after ten after twenty.

This, readers, is a problem.

Yes, these cookies are wildly popular among my tribe members. I may get ask for my salsa recipe the most often, but I get ask to actually make these cookies even more.

In fact, I’ve made so many over the years that my mixer just “knows” what’s about to go down when I drag her out of the cabinet.

She’s like…“I know it’s time…time for the cookies.”

So with that little back story, it probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you to know that when Kim (Aunt Bunny) and Glen come to visit, I always welcome them at the door with some freshly made chocolate chip cookies, affectionately known in my family as the “BACs.”

You might be wondering what BAC stands for, but I can’t tell you on my blog, because it might have an inappropriate word in it.

To be clear, I didn’t name them, but I do subscribe to the handle quite frequently, because, well, they are in fact BACs.

Wait. I’ll give you a hint…

B is for BIG.

A…is for well, the best I can do because this is a G-rated column is give you a rhyme hint, and it rhymes with SASS.

C is for cookie.

Hence the name…BAC (Big (rhymes with Sass) Cookie).

You with me? I love Jesus but sometimes I cuss a little.

My other first cousin, Jeff, appropriately named these cookies several years ago sitting around the domino table.

The domino table…the site of many family disagreements (that’s putting it mildly) and temper tantrums. It’s silly really, to get yourself all in an uproar over a blocked move, or failing to start someone a train in what should be a family friendly game of Mexican Train.

However, we do come from a long line of competitive ancestors.

Aunt Toni? She’d make your favorite pound cake in one breath and cut you at the domino table the next.

Ya’ll still with me? I’ll eventually get back to the cookie story.

So a few years back my cousins came to visit and, in keeping with tradition, I made some BACs. In fact, I made two batches throughout the course of the weekend and sent my cousins down the road with a large Ziplock bag FULL of BACs.

To enjoy when they got home. For the next week.

And by a large bag, I mean, a gallon large.

Big.

To match the cookies, right?

All the way back to South Louisiana Cousin Kim thought about those cookies, but she was busy driving safely and getting herself home so she could get back to work saving lives, and failed to eat a cookie.

During her entire shift, all she thought about was getting home to that gallon bag FULL of cookies…warmed ever so slightly in the microwave, and chased with a glass of cold milk.

I don’t know who I feel sorrier for…Kim, who just wanted a cookie after her long hard shift…

or Glen, after Kim realized he had eaten the entire bag, I mean gallon bag, while she was at work.

Poor Glen and his addiction.

So the moral of the story is if you don’t want to sleep on the couch, don’t eat a gallon bag full of BACs.

Simple.

Now, what is so magical about these cookies? In a few words…they are everything.

As with most recipes for me, I generally take the original and “tweak” it a bit. Tweak sometimes means a complete overhaul.

In this case, I just modified a few ingredients from the original Tollhouse cookie recipe and those modifications have resulted in my delicious chocolate chip cookie.

So let’s get started by preheating your oven to 375.

Next, cream together 2 sticks of butter, one cup of sugar, one cup of brown sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla.

Here’s a helpful hint, if you have time, let your butter reach room temperature.

You can soften it in the microwave a few seconds at a time until it gets soft, but the best result is just leaving it out for a few hours before you make the cookies and letting the butter soften on its own.

Usually while my eggs are joining the party, I sift 2 ¼ cups of plain flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of salt. Listen, sifting is very important to the density of these cookies, so don’t leave out this step.

I feel very Laura Ingalls Wilder with it, like I want to churn some butter or something.

After you sift your dry ingredients, you want to get them incorporated into your wet ones, so I turn off my mixer (you laugh, but I have been known to add my flour mixture while the beater was going…it would have been easier to move out of my house rather than clean up the mess), and add about ¼ of the flour.

Repeat this a couple of times until you get all the flour in.

Now you are ready for the star of the show…the milk chocolate chips.

I like to fold my chocolate chips in with a wooden spoon, instead of mixing them in with the mixer. If you don’t have nut allergies and want to really enhance the flavor of the cookies, next add your chopped pecans.

I am a little OCD about things. No, that’s a lie…I’m a lot OCD. And I like my cookies all about the same size.

So, I use a medium scoop (mine is from Pampered Chef) for six cookies at a time. I think you could roll them into balls and they would probably be about the same size, too.

Finally, bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes (depending on your oven) until the outsides are dark. I like to let them sit on the baking sheets for about five minutes after I take them out of the oven so they will continue to cook a little longer.

I always let them finish cooling on a wire rack while the next ones are baking.

At this point, you might want to consider joining the cookie addiction recovery group with Cousin Glen.

Question: What is your family’s favorite cookie?