2016—Who Wants To Lick The Beater?

I am a chocolate chip cookie purist.  That is to say, my preferred chocolate chip cookie, and the only kind I bake, is the Nestle’s Tollhouse Cookie recipe.  I grew up eating them, watching my mom bake them (dipping my finger in the dough when she wasn’t looking) and, once I learned how, I baked them myself.   The recipe that was originally printed on the bag called for half butter and half Crisco but years ago, the recipe changed to all butter…a decided improvement over an already sublime thing.   On a visit home, years after I moved away, I ran across a food diary I had kept when I was about 15 and in need of dropping a few pounds.  The diary contained only a single day’s food entries and that day’s log stopped before dinner.  It read:

Breakfast:  1 poached egg; 1 slice unbuttered toast; 1/2 grapefruit.
Lunch:  1/2 cup cottage cheese; sliced tomatoes; Ry-Krisp.
Snack:  13 chocolate chip cookies

I don’t remember keeping the diary (for it’s short lifespan) but at least then I recognized the futility of dieting in the face of a new batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I suppose there may be a correlation between my love of Nestle’s Toll House Cookies and my constant need to lose a few pounds but I haven’t baked any in years so for now, at least, something else is obviously to blame.  I volunteered to bring treats to the April meeting of the Placer Camera Club.  I found a recipe for Toll House Cookies made in a half sheet pan so that all the cookies are baked at once saving lots of time.   The recipe called for different kinds of chips so I added semi-sweet and white chocolate and butterscotch chips.  The jury is still out on whether this recipe will hold a candle to the original.   Now that they’re baked, I wish I’d put in all semi-sweet chocolate chips but I’m going to try not eating any so I’m telling myself it doesn’t matter.  I didn’t even sample the dough.

I did think to take some photographs, though, but not until I had finished mixing the dough.  I thought it might be a good idea to mix things up a little on my blog so readers won’t have to look at hummingbirds every day. And, with all my photography travels, I have taken thousands of photos, and my supply of blog-worthy photos is immense so I haven’t been relying on my daily Flickr challenge group for blog post ideas.   In fact, I have neglected that group so long they unceremoniously removed me for lack of participation. But while my focus of late has been on wildlife and nature,  I still enjoy other kinds of photography.  Don’t get me wrong.  These are not great photographs and I didn’t spend the time I should have to “style” the food.  But I think it’s a nice change of pace.  The finished cookie bar looks a bit darker than the usual chocolate chip cookie perhaps because I baked them a bit longer and I used dark brown sugar.  They smell good.  I hope they taste as good as they smell.