I’ve been on the prowl for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe for the last three decades. There was a bakery restaurant in Glenwood Springs called The Daily Bread. It was THE place to go for breakfast and lunch and I’ve spent countless hours lingering over Terry’s Eggs Benedict or my favorite salad that was served in something akin to a wash tub. I’d order mine with extra turkey, avocado, and no croutons. As soon as the server took my order to the back, I’d hear John call out…”Ginny’s here!!!” I loved that place.

And, as much as I loved all the wonderful dishes they served, their signature was a huge chocolate chip cookie. It was a good four inches around and nearly 3/4 of an inch thick. It was dense and chewy and rich…the perfect balance of buttery goodness, deep dark chocolate, and chunks of pecans. Oh…they were divine. And, try as I might, I could neither pry the recipe out of Terry or deconstruct the cookie myself to recreate it. Nothing I ever made came close…until this week.

One of my little guilty pleasures the last few months has been watching cooking videos on Facebook. Cooking with Brenda Gant and Emmymade are my very favorites. Emmy is bright and young and spunky and she always tastes her creations and gives a solid critique which makes you almost taste what she’s made. Brenda, with her grey ponytail and her southern drawn and her praise for Jesus mixed in makes her recipes for things like her Buttermilk Biscuits and Sawmill Gravy seem like something I absolutely HAVE to try.

I also enjoy watching Kaleb share recipes from the kitchen of The Grey Boxwood Farm where he lives in his grandma’s house. Sound familiar? When I saw his recipe for the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie, I knew right then, I needed to try it. This recipe uses a couple of ingredients you don’t usually see…molasses and malted milk powder. The former I had in my pantry, but malted milk powder was nowhere to be found in our semi-rural area…not even over at the Belpre Kroger store, which is a darned close comparison to the grocers I was used to in Colorado. You can find a much wider variety of hard to find items there, but alas…no malted milk powder. I had to order it from the internet.

Baking, for me, is something I must be in the right frame of mind in order to do it well. Much like writing, if I’m not in the right headspace, you can just about guarantee the results will not be worth the time and effort put in. I saved the video in my Facebook files to look at when the mood struck me to bake them. That happened this week when we were snowed in. Like I told you the other day, when I bake cookies, I really want to mix, bake, and eat them in relative short order. These cookies are more involved and the dough really should chill in the fridge for twenty-four hours to get the best flavor.

It was all I could do to resist baking even one pan full of cookies before that time was up. But I resisted and I have to say, the results were surprisingly good. Still not the Daily Bread chocolate chip cookie my memory carries, but maybe I’ve just built them up so much in my mind that I’m remembering something bigger and better than they really were…I don’t know. But these are really, really good. Crispy golden around the edges, thick and chewy in the center, with a depth of flavor you don’t normally find in a Tollhouse Cookie recipe. I attribute that to the malted milk powder and molasses. Just enough difference to make you sit up and take notice.

I was so engrossed in mixing and baking these and staying present in the moment, I didn’t take any photos, so I lifted a screenshot from the video itself. I can’t take credit, but those are exactly what my cookies looked like. We dropped off a container at the former Mrs. FixIt’s house yesterday when we went to town for birdseed and prescriptions and ham hocks for my sweetheart’s Split Pea Soup. (That soup is NOT my thing, but I love him.) We are slowly polishing off the rest of the cookies, even though I packaged them in six-to-a-bag ziplocks for the freezer. (No…they never made it downstairs. Sue me.)

If you want to try a really great chocolate chip cookie, check out the Wyse Guide Facebook page HERE. If you make them, come back and let me know what you think.

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“But don’t forget to help others and to share your possessions with them. This too is like offering a sacrifice that pleases God.”

Hebrews 13:16 CEV