how chocolate chip cookies have influenced my life

You know how interviewers sometimes ask you who has been the most influential person in your life? Well, I have had many great, influential people in my life but the chocolate chip cookie has had a huge influence on who I am. I'm not very good at recalling memories from my childhood, but when I do the memories almost always contain chocolate chip cookies.
When I got married I set out on a journey to find the perfect cc cookie recipe. I decided that if I had the perfect recipe then that would automatically make me the best mom. {I realize deep down in my heart that the best moms have more going for them than their cookie recipes, but just go with me here.}

My mom, bless her heart, likes her cc cookies flat and crispy. I on the other hand like mine a little doughy and big and fluffy. I will not hold this against her and she is a great mom.

My earliest memories of cc cookies would be with my aunt. I got my love of eating raw dough from her. She used to always make two batches--one for baking and one for eating the dough. For some reason I could never convince my mom to go for this.
My great grandma always had Soft Batch cc cookies in her house. I have always thought they are the best store bought cc cookies ever! I still buy them to this day at the gas stations in the 4 pack when I am on work road trips. Love em!

In middle school and high school I attended the same church camp every summer. In the camp "grocery" store they sold pillsbury cookie dough. My friends and I would buy the dough and eat it raw. It was sooooo good!

I grew up with the same close, knit group of friends since pre-school. One of the girl's mom made the best chocolate chip cookies. I was always so excited when her mom baked cookies.

My MIL always has cc cookies at her house. They are tasty little cookies and I have picked up a couple of good tips from her.
When I got married I made sure I had all the essential cc cookie baking tools: the pans (must be dark pans and not shiny ones), the baking racks and the perfect spatula. The mini spatula from Pampered Chef. (My mom always uses this when she bakes cookies and she bought me one.)

Ty and Chesley became my guinea pigs on this quest for the perfect recipe. I made tons of cookies our first year of marriage. I also ate more than my fair share of cookie dough and may have made myself sick a few times by eating too much of it! During the great ice storm of 2007, I had made a batch of cookie dough a couple of hours before the power went out. I made it up and stuck it in the fridge to bake later. Well that never happened due to the power outage. Ty and I moved in with my aunt and uncle for 5 days, because they had power. I took a bunch of food with me in order to save some of it. You better believe that one of those items was the cookie dough. My little cousins and I keep sneaking spoonfuls of cookie dough all week.

My cookies are the only thing that Ty ever requests that I make. Side note: The man does not care about food as much as me. As long as the food tastes decent he will eat it and never cares what we are eating. So the fact that he requests these cookies makes me oh so happy!
Nuts also loves it when I bake cookies. He comes and sits right at my feet waiting for any dough to fly out due to the mixing.

Sunday afternoons seem to be my baking days so I baked some cookies a couple of days ago. I decided to add a few extra ingredients. One of the ingredients was nutmeg. Ty walked through the kitchen and tasted a little bit of dough and was not pleased. He wanted to know why I was messing with a good thing. haha! I guess I will not be adding nutmeg anymore. It was an overwhelming taste, but they still turned out good.

I am still perfecting the recipe, but I do have a good base recipe down. Now I just need to work on tweaking it. And I am going to be a real meanie and not share the recipe. I think everyone should have a secret recipe and cc cookies will be mine. Besides what if we end up living next door to each other one day? We can't both be the mom with the best cc cookies! haha!
{the cc cookie pictures are not mine. I wish they were because they are great pics, but they aren't.}