A reader from Canada sent me this c. 1970 recipe, not from a handwritten recipe card, but annotated by her mother and a family favorite nonetheless.
Caroline wrote: My mom and dad are in their late 80s now, and mom doesn't bake much anymore, but I remember when my sisters and I were young, she'd have chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven as we were walking up the driveway coming home from school. Ahhhh, now that and a glass of cold milk was bliss to a little kid!
I doubt taste memory gets any better than that. And the nice thing about these cookies is that they are both crispy and chewy, so the texture satisfies all.
These chocolate chip cookies are similar to the Toll House Cookies that took this country by storm in the 1930s, but the proportions are different. I'd say these are a bit more modest in ingredients (slightly less sugar, fewer chocolate chips, only one egg) but certainly not more modest in taste.
Start by blending the butter and sugars.
Add the egg, followed by the dry ingredients.
It's best to blend the chocolate chips in by hand, i.e., not in the stand mixer.
I always use a small ice cream scoop to portion out the dough, because it's quicker, easier and less messy, but a regular spoon works fine too.
Bake, cool (if you can wait) and enjoy.
One suggestion: Add more chocolate chips, maybe double the amount listed! Mrs. Tilden did.
I followed Mrs. Tilden's notes, using all-purpose flour and setting the oven temperature at 350 instead of 375.
Below is Mrs. Tilden's cookbook that contains the recipe.
Peter and his girlfriend Alyssa with a plate of cold cookies. The temperature didn't prevent them from eating many and departing with a doggy bag of cookies.
As I was looking at the pictures of the cookies, I thought they didn't look as full of chips as when my mom made them.
ReplyDeleteI asked her if she added extra chips and she said no, that they had so many chips that she actually wondered if she should cut back on them.
I suspect that 6 oz the recipe calls for might have been a typo. I don't recall ever seeing 6 oz bags. My mom always used Hershey's® Chipits®* Pure Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, which come in a 350 gram size, which equals 12.35 oz.
So, anyone who wants to make this may want to make sure they are NOT using only 6 oz of chocolate chips. It probably won't be enough.
Caroline is right, the more chips the better. Because I buy in bulk and weigh most ingredients -- and try to follow the recipes exactly -- I used just six ounces of chocolate chips. The cookies were wonderful, but they'd be even more so with more chocolate (like most things in life).
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