Just When One Feels Useless

I got a lift this morning. My son asked me for my chocolate chip cookie recipe. It is good to know that the kids liked my cookies.

Chocolate is good. Just think how good people would feel with a national day of chocolate.

Abe,


Great idea! Everyday sounds like a deal to me!

Can I have your chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Me too on the recipe? I got one from the Internet, but it still isn't perfect....

Dear Alice,

Long ago when I was first learning to cook, there was a recipe on the back of the Quaker Oats box for oatmeal cookies. I used that recipe and added chopped pecans, raisins, and chocolate chips. I do not think that recipe that I made up from their original recipe has ever been beaten in our family. I would like to know what your recipe is.

It is so nice when you know that what you cooked has pleased the children (now going on in years) and is remembered and coveted to pass along the generations.

What a small and lovely thing is a recipe passed down in families.

I am not the great cook that Ann or Joe are. Mostly, I cook and there it is. I do not do many desserts now because neither David nor I eat mush sugar. But I remember making the cakes, and cookies.

One of my children's favories was a yellow cake, cooked and cut in half horizontally. The filling was a can of cherry pie filling on top of whipped cream and the top was cherry pie filling topped with a circle of whipped cream around. I think I will do that for Thanksgiving just for the memory of it.

Love,

Betty

Betty, your cake reminds me of a German desert that was soooo easy. They sold a cake size yellow cake shapped for a filling (like ready-made strawberry shortcakes). Then it was filled with cherry pie filling and topped with real whipped cream with shaved chocolate and a few cherries for decoration. Mmmmm. Haven't had it since Germany.

One year long ago I had a big party and one friend was bringing desert. I had a small house and was a little nervous about everything being together for so many people. My friend came through the door with a white cake mix, two cans of bing cherries and two sticks of butter and a square pan. I was furious.

However, she put the cherries in the bottom of the pan, crumbled the white cake mix on top and spread out little pats of butter across the top. She put it in the oven for about 30 minutes. It was a marvelous, hot cobbler with little effort. I was sorry for my initial reaction and made it often after that. It's best immediately eaten completely.

Those bing cherries remind me of cherries jubilee. That one was easy and fun. I scooped the richest vanilla bean ice cream into beautiful glass bowls. I lit the cherry mixture in a carafe with liquor and scooped the flaming mixture on the ice cream with the lights dim.

Those days seem to be past. Now I order out even when I have company. I mostly eat salads and maybe a piece of tuna cooked at Publix. I seldom have much company like the days of suburbia when parties were often.

Dear Diane,

I imagine that part of the beauty of living is to make a 'to-do' about lighting the cherries on a lovely bowl of ice cream. Put a smile on my face, it would.

I wish we lived close to each other. We would go to dinner and just order flaming icecream for the fun of seeing it.

Me, I eat fruity cheerios at home and imagine. Not quite the same is it.

Love,

Betty

I don't think we live that awfully far apart. I drive to and from Michigan up through Florida. Who knows, maybe we can meet at a cracker barrel for oatmeal some day.

Thank you for asking.

Here it is as close as I can remember it:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 cups of butter or margarine softened
4 large eggs beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cream sugar butter add vanilla and eggs

Combine:
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
5 1/3 cups of All purpose baking flour
Add to first mixture

Throw in a lot of chocolate chips semi- sweet and chopped pecans if you wish.

Bake at 375 10 to 12 minutes--watch and do not over bake. Remove from pan immediately
and allow to cool on flat surface.

Hope I got it right.


Feel free to cut the recipe in half--this is for a family.

Thank you!

I'm with Abe. It should be a national holiday! The celebration of chocolate. Image all the chocolate sculptures, fountains, cakes, cookies, fudge, etc.

I'm really in the mood for sweets now.