Cookie Collection 2005

A contender for Cookie Collection 2005.

I hope my heart-tugging story of cookies healing a homesick heart will win out of the more imaginative and superior recipes.

So this comes completely off the top of my head because it's burned into my brain. This chocolate chip cookie recipe is the first evidence of my foodie status. I was studying abroad in Lancaster, England and I was feeling mighty homesick. It's hard for a perky SoCal boy to break into the more reserved (until they have a few pints in them) British social circles. Everyone in my building were these totally fratty rugby players. That day I went on a trip to Edinburgh with the other American Junior Year Abroad students. It was there I met what would become my two oldest and closest friends in the world - Lord and Lady Lancaster. They were a couple from UT Austin and we actually had a friend in common (a high school friend of Lady Lancaster). We all ended up having a bout of homesickness and felt the deep seated need for a burrito. We spent hours roaming the streets of Edinburgh searching for a burrito. We were all despondent over not having found a single burrito in the whole city of Edinburgh. On the bus ride home, I suggested that we could make chocolate chip cookies to address our homesickness. this was the days before the internet where you could just look up a chocolate chip cookie recipe. We decided to test our memory and just make up the recipe based on what we could remember. Through the course of the cookie making I met everyone on the Lancasters' floor and they became my close circle of friends. Wayne spent the rest of the year saying, "COOKIES" whever he'd see me. I am still friends with them to this day and Lancasters live a 15 minute walk from me and J on capitol Hill. As it turns out J knows mutual friends of theirs. Small world.

Anyway, this is what we came up with. As it turns out we were right on the money and it is exactly what's on the back of a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips.

2 sticks of butter
3/4 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 chocolate bars chopped finely (chocolate chips didn't exist in England when I was there) In one version we made in England, there was a run on regular choclate bars and we used chopped up frozen Mars bars.

Cream butter and sugar together. In England we did this by hand, taking turns until it was done. Unless you are wanting and intense forearm workout, use a mixer. Add the vanilla and eggs and mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Mix wet and dry ingredients together. Fold in the chocolate chunks. Drop by the tablespoonful onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Contributed by one of the boys at DC Food Blog.

"Votes" will be accepted from 1159pm, December 26, 2005 until 1159pm, December 31, 2005.