Grandma's Chocolate Chip recipe

The other day on Facebook, I commented that my daughter and I had made Snickerdoodles using my Grandma Wood's recipe. Almost immediately, a few cousins sent me a message wanting the recipe and any others that I had from her - most importantly her chocolate chip recipe.

Grandma Wood had a special talent when baking cookies. As my cousin Eric stated, " I can't seem to keep them from spreading out. Grandma's always seemed fluffy and perfectly baked. I hear Tammy can make them just like she did. She told me she followed the recipe on the Toll House bag, but I'm calling stink on that. Mine have NEVER turned out like hers, but then again she was special and probably had magical powers???????”

I normally have the same problem – flat, crispy cookies – nothing like grandmas!

The recipe I have is called "Tollhouse Cookies" mainly because grandma always used Tollhouse semi-sweet chocolate chips and never substituted (at least not that I can remember). When you compare the two recipes, my recipe looks almost exactly like the recipe that you will find on the back of a Tollhouse package but doubled. There are a few exceptions: the sugar is not doubled nor is the salt.

Below is the recipe with a few tricks that grandma always used and they work. Enjoy!

Cream together: 1 cup butter and 1 cup Crisco
Add to this mixture and cream: 1 cup sugar and 1 cup light brown sugar – blend this mixture until creamy – you want to make sure that the sugar starts to dissolve.
Add 4 eggs and cream (you can beat the eggs first prior to adding them to your mixture)
Sift together 4 ½ cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking soda – sifting was always a must
Add 2 cups of the dry ingredients to your creamed mixture and blend together slowly with your mixer– nothing worse than a white cloud of flour in your kitchen

When the 2 cups of the dry mixture are just incorporated, add the remaining portion of the dry ingredients by hand – literally – use your hands and mix the cookie dough together until just incorporated. Do not over mix the mixture, flour does not like to be played with.

Add a bag of semi-sweet Tollhouse chips and 2 tsp vanilla to your dough mixture again using your hands.

Bake on greased sheet 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

TIPS: Never bake a cookie thoroughly unless you want a crispy cookie. For a fluffy chewy cookie, bake the cookie until the middle is just a little gooey.

Always use Crisco. When Crisco came out with the butter Crisco, grandma started using it. Both the original and butter work well with this recipe.

Sift your dry ingredients together. If you do not have a sifter, use a colander.

Snickerdoodles will be another day.