Chocolate-Chip Drop Cookies

"These are the very first cookies I ever made," says Raul as he looks up from the Joy of Cooking that he has been reading. "I was just reading all your mom's notes in the margins and came across this. I must have been seven or eight and I borrowed the school's copy of the Joy of Cooking over the summer. Somewhere I found enough money for chocolate chips and we had the rest of the ingredients in the kitchen. I made them and ate them before anyone else got home that day."

"Just make sure you use real chocolate chips and not those chocolate-flavoured waxy ones," suggests Drew.

"Where do I find real chocolate chips?" asks Raul.

"If they don't have it at Food Basics," suggests Drew. "Just get a dark chocolate bar and I'll break into little chunks."

"Too much work," says Raul skeptically.

Fortunately Basics does carry real dark chocolate trips and no smashing and bashing is required. The only recipes Drew could find online were from the newer editions of the Joy of Cooking and they just are not the same. The edition that R&D have was Drew's mother's treasured copy that she gifted Drew when he was browsing the margin notes, they are fascinating and a mini-family history and they had a bonding nostalgic moment. Or perhaps she was just tired of answering phone calls about basic cooking questions - the original edition does really cover everything and in simple, plain language - the "what does one do with squash?" question being the breaking point.

In the absence of a link here is the recipe though Raul warns that although it states that it makes 45 cookies he was only able to stretch it to 43. Fortunately they are a delicious 43.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream:
1/2 cup butter
Add gradually and beat until creamy:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
Beat in:
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Sift and stir in:
1 cup and 2 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
 1/2 teaspoon soda
Drop the batter from a teaspoon (Raul uses the small ice cream scoop that he acquired to create photo-perfect mashed potato mounds), well apart, on a greased cookie sheet (Raul uses parchment paper to save on washing up). Bake for about 10 minutes.

The cookies - the ones that aren't eaten instantly - cool, and Raul gets to work on Drew's mother's classic oatmeal cookies which are a story for another entry.