deb's chocolate chip cookies

the best CCC of all time

they don’t look like anything special but give them a chance…

Last summer, all six beneficiaries of the coupons reunited at a wedding in downtown Seattle; I hadn’t seen some of them in 15 years, but they all remembered Deb’s cookies. Would I share the recipe? I sheepishly admitted that I never managed to glean the precise details from my mom. She died in 2019, taking any outstanding baking secrets with her. 

The coupons were actually just 3x5 lined notecards, stating in bold black Sharpie: ‘good for one batch of Deb’s cookies’. My mom had sent them to those six friends when we set off for university in 2007. I was embarrassed; my friends were thrilled. They all cashed in, and my mother would periodically visit the post office bearing heavy boxes bound for various corners of the United States. By ‘Deb’s cookies’ I mean my mom’s original chocolate chip cookie recipe: revered by childhood friends and neighbours, largely unknown to the rest of the world. 

Softened butter and brown sugar meet in a typical beginning to a ‘CCC’ recipe. As I whip the butter and mounds of brown sugar into a golden cream by hand, a familiar ache sets into my upper traps. She used less butter than a typical recipe calls for - initially a product of 1980’s beliefs about the evils of fat - and then guarded as one of the hallmarks of her recipe. Opening the iconic brown bottle of Nielsen Massey releases a cloud of deep, sweet vanilla. The added liquid improves the viscosity of the mixture as I continue stirring with renewed vigour. An egg helps a bit as well. 

Like any domestic maven with a recipe to protect, my mom never made any effort to measure ingredients, but it is not a complicated recipe. Flour. Oats. Semisweet chocolate chips. The most unusual ingredient is toasted pecans; ground to a coarse flour, they add a warmth and crumbliness that no one has ever successfully identified without being told. 

Barely cooked, the resulting consistency is very close to raw in the middle, with a gentle crunch on the outside. In appearance, they have been likened to meatballs more than once. Their iconic shape and size originally came from an orange-handled ice cream scoop, though I shape them into golf ball-sized blobs by hand. Their texture sets into a dense, fudgy glory if you let them cool and consume at room temperature. Biting into them, I am reminded of both my grandmother’s pecan pie, and a classic Tollhouse cookie. 

My cookies are never as good as hers, and they never will be. But that doesn’t stop me from returning to the recipe; in fact, I do so with increasing frequency of late. Because every time I make them, my own daughters perched on stools alongside me, I momentarily feel as if she is standing next to me. She peers over my shoulder, pokes me in the ribs playfully, and tells me that the butter and sugar are not quite the right consistency just yet. And that is a feeling I never get tired of.

Ingredients: 

• 57 grams (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature

• 167 grams (1 cup, packed) light brown sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (best quality vanilla you can find, I use Nielsen Massey)

• 1 egg

• 120 grams (1 cup) plain white flour

• ½ teaspoon baking soda

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 90 grams (1 cup) oats

• 100 grams (1 cup) pecans

• 170 grams (1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips (my mom always used Nestle-Toll House Semi Sweet Chocolate Morsels which are 47% cacao; as those are not widely available in the UK, I have had to find an alternative here but chocolate chips vary hugely in cacao percentage and quality; the closest alternative I have found to the classic Nestle version is Guittard’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Baking Chips which have 46% cacao)

  Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

2. Place pecans on a baking sheet and toast in oven for 4-5 minutes (check often and remove as soon as they take on colour). Allow to cool completely. 

3. Once pecans have cooled, place in food processor and grind to a coarse flour. Set aside.

4. Cream butter, light brown sugar and vanilla (either by hand, or using an electric beater or stand mixer if you have them). Continue until the mixture reaches a very light brown colour and fluffy consistency. Add the egg and mix well to combine. 

5. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and oats. Gently stir to combine. 

6. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir to combine. Add ground pecans and chocolate chips. Stir to combine; the dough will be quite crumbly, but try to incorporate all ingredients without stirring or mashing excessively so as not to overwork the dough.

7. Using an ice cream scoop or tablespoon, scoop dough into balls; I aim for the size of a golf ball. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. 

8. Place in oven and bake for 7-10 minutes. Check on cookies at 7 minutes and leave them in no longer than 10 minutes. They should retain the same shape they had when raw, and be just barely set into a golden crust on the edges. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

meatballs or cookies?