Chocolate Chip Cookie #4 and a Month of Letters

Let me just say--The PERFECT chocolate chip cookie is relative.    There really is no right or wrong chocolate chip cookie--we all have different tastes and different nostalgic feelings and memories about chocolate chip cookies.  It's all okay. Your favorite cookie is just perfect!    (there are some people out there who take their chocolate chip cookie way too serious.)

Take for instance the flatter chocolate chip cookie--some people think it's just not how a chocolate chip cookie should be...but that's how my mom's was.  Flatter, but not spread out and greasy--it was crispy and chewy.  Like when you bit into it, there was the teeniest tiniest resistance and a very very quiet crunch, and then the inside was soft and chewy.

(I borrowed this picture below from pinterest.  It's a chart of cookies.  I think the original pin came from this website... a great one...it's called  "the perfect chocolate chip cookie",   (they have some awesome stuff on there--it isn't that I don't like their site and recipes.  I do.  I just think that...)   and everything they say makes perfect sense to me. 
Until....I go home and smell my mom's cookies fresh out of the oven and take that first bite.  HEAVEN!   Like I said,  it's all relative.)

My mom's cookies looked like number 9.  I don't know if they tasted like this one,  but they looked like it.  With that crackle on top.  That little bit of crackle was the  resistance, revealing the chewy inside.   But critics say that that cookies was cooked in an oven set to a too low temperature.

Cookies being relative brings me to Chocolate Chip Cookie #4.  It looks to be similar to #3 in the chart/photo above, which was said to have too much flour.
The dough was very stiff when I made these.
It's not from the book, but from a recipe I've had in my collection for well over 20 years.

(cookies compared---Ch. chip cookie #3--from MY recipes--not the chart above-- and Ch. chip cookie #4)

Let me back track a bit--when my 3 sons were in elementary school, and I was the school librarian,  I would  baby-sit  3 other boys in the neighborhood during the summer.  They all played together all day long anyway, so it was really no problem.   Their mom would even pack their lunch to bring to my house.  She used to send these chocolate chip cookies--they were small and poofy and soft.  I asked her for the recipe, because they were good and my boys liked them too...but I don't remember ever making them.  
One day last week, I was  going thru my cookie notebook, pulling out every chocolate chip cookie recipe I own and  this recipe was one of them, so  I decided to make it right away and add to my   cookie search project.

They're a fine cookie --not my mom's tho.

When my son came over and saw them he said-- "THESE ARE MY FAVORITE COOKIE!!  I never thought I'd see them again!"
I said, 'you like them better than the ones last week?"
He said,  "like 100x better."
(see?  It's all relative)

Those  3 boys moved away, but in high school my son was friends with their cousin and he went to his house  (the cousin's) one day and there were the same cookies!    He was so excited... just as he was when he walked in my house the other day and there they were on the counter cooling.
It must be an old family recipe.




They are not my favorite, but The Handyman and my son LOVED them.
They are soft and poofy and small.    And very good.   Just not 'my' favorite.
(they don't even look like they've been cooked to me--they look just like when I put them on the cookie sheet )

Chocolate Chip Cookie #4
source:  The Maynick Family (exactly as it was written for me)

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
Beat butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat again. Add soda and salt.

1 tsp vanilla
beat in vanilla

3 eggs
3 cups sifted flour
alternately beat in eggs and flour.  It may be difficult to beat with the mixer by the time you get to the last cup of flour.

1 12oz package of mini chocolate chips
mix in by hand

Drop by spoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for about  10 minutes.

If you made it thru all that---well,  GOOD FOR YOU!   Stick  with me now and I'll ramble about  "a month of letters".    (hey--my mom finds my posts very interesting. )

Day #1
I wrote a letter to my friend Dorothy Minor.
But her letter is addressed to   "Mrs.  Dick Gootman Schmenkminor"  (a joke between friends--too boring for you)

Day #2
a birthday card and letter to my oldest son.  He'll be surprised as I never have written him a letter.

and now...day  #3
let me pull a letter  out of my bag, which needs to be answered by me.  And the winner is....
My friend Sally in Pennsylvania!!!

Letter writing is nothing new for me as you know...so this challenge is not hard. Well, to be honest, the  EVERY DAY part is challenging, but writing a letter is not.

I always think it strange when people say they have nothing to write about.
Just sit down and WRITE!
Write about things you did,  things you saw,  food you ate,  the weird lady at the grocery store, write about the Ottoman Empire (it's in a book I'm reading) ...seriously  YOU CAN write a good letter.   Try it!