$250 Cookies

We've all heard this story: A mother and her daughter have lunch at Neiman Marcus where they order the chocolate chip cookies for dessert. The mother likes it so much that she asks to buy the recipe. The server tells her it costs "two fifty." Thinking it was only $2.50, the mother tells the server to put it on her tab. When she got her credit card bill, she noticed that she had actually been charged $250.00. As revenge, she circulated the infamous cookie recipe all over the Internet:

2 cups butter
2 tsp. soda
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure & blend to a fine powder)
2 cups brown sugar
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
24 oz. chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
4 eggs
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies (recipe may be halved).

Apparently, this story is totally bogus. According to About.com, the story was associated with Mrs. Fields in the 1980s and is "a variant of a popular tale that Jan Brunvand has traced as far back as 1948, when the overpriced recipe yielded a red velvet fudge cake and the amount allegedly charged was $25. " Snopes.com tells of other versions of this urban legend. They also explain that Neiman Marcus didn't even sell a cookie then; they only do now as a response to the legend, and that recipe is available on their website (it looks like a basic chocolate chip cookie with espresso powder added).

Ok, so, I decided to make those infamous $250 cookies and see if they are really that good (even if they are not really from Neiman Marcus). It's a cool day and I have nothing to do...what better than to bake up some comfort food!

It's a pretty step-intensive process for cookies with the blending the oatmeal, then the chocolate bars. It makes a fairly dense dough, which I'll admit is pretty tasty raw...very oatmeally and chocolatey.

The first batch burned on the bottom (though a few were salvaged and tasted pretty good warm from the oven...a hearty, melty texture with all the stuff in there). And because I rolled the dough into balls, the cookies didn't spread much. So, for the second batch, I lowered the oven temp to 350, spooned the dough onto the pan like you normally would for chocolate chip cookies, and cooked them for 9 minutes. They looked alot better--perfect actually--only lightly browned on the edges and bottoms.

All in all, I give this recipe two YUMS up! (I know, I know, gimme a break...all I've consumed today is caffeine and cookies!)

I baked the cookies a dozen at a time, and I have to say that spending an afternoon baking and drinking cups of tea has been very relaxing. Soul nourshing, in fact. I feel accomplished.

Now...what the fuck am I going to do with all these cookies?

I am going to get showered & dressed then deliver a couple dozen to my friend's father who came home from the hospital yesterday after having cancer removed. I'll save the rest for my girlfriends who are coming over tomorrow to hang by the pool with me.

And that feels soul nourshing as well.