Midaregami

Alright, I’m going to tell it straight, here. I do a lot of blustering and pontificating here, a lot of what might be reasonably termed exaggeration. At times, my hyperbole has, within it, nested layers of sub-hyperbole, which in turn have—well, you see, it is meant to suggest a pattern not unlike Signeur Mandelbrot’s exquisite creations.

What I’m getting at is that I understand if it all starts to blur together after a while—I understand that—but what I’m about to share, and the terms I am about to couch it in, exist outside such high-flown discourse. When I speak of absolutes, in this case, I truly mean them as absolutes, writ in the ebb and flow of space and time, inviolable and true as humans can only begin to comprehend.

I speak of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies ever fashioned by god or mortal. I speak, you see, of the Cowboy Cookie.

When my great-grandmother, Laura Hardes, was but a young girl, a tall, thin man in black, passing through the Pennsylvania wilderness, stopped at her cabin and begged to stay the night. She put the pale stranger up, hid him from the hollow-eyed Authority that inquired as to his whereabouts, and gave him some potato soup to chase away the winter chill. When his color improved slightly from its haggard pale, he thanked her for her kindness, and began to tell her a story—a story of infinite beings with commensurate hubris, of demons and of angels, and of a dread secret being kept from creation. He entrusted the secret to her, the secret of a confection so delicious and hearty, it could unite all humanity in a shared experience of pure scrumptiousness, and told her to pass it on to her children.

She did so.

And now, dear readers, dear, sweet readers, I give it to you: The most delicious chocolate chip cookie that exists in this world or any other.

The Cowboy Cookie.

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate ships (1 12 oz pkg)
• 2 cups quick rolled oats

Cream together shortening, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla. Sift in flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Mix well. Add rolled oats and chocolate chips. Drop spoonfuls on cookie sheet. Bake aprox. 10 minutes at 225-250 degrees. You will have to adjust time and temperature according to your oven.

Tips:

• You can replace half of the shortening with applesauce for marginally less-unhealthy cookies. This changes the consistence of the dough subtly, and makes for cookies that stay softer longer.
• When mixing, add the chocolate chips gradually. The final dough is fairly stiff, and combining the sizeable mass of chocolate with the stiff dough all at once is tough. I typically add a half-cup at a time, making sure the chips are thoroughly combined before adding more
• A roughly tablespoon-sized lump of dough makes a pretty big cookie. Size yours accordingly.

Now, one might be fooled, upon first inspection, into thinking these mere oatmeal cookies—not so. The oatmeal is there, yes, provides heartiness, oh yes, but does not change the identity of this cookie. I assure you, it is all about the chips.

Moreover, if one were to perhaps search the inter-nets for other “Cowboy Cookies,” one might see charlatans using such dross as cinnamon, walnuts, or coconut to mask their fundamental flaws. I will not engage in pettifoggery here, for such false cookies as these do not deserve the effort. But do not be swayed—stay the path—for this will lead you to your chocolatey reward.

The secret of the Cowboy Cookie is that its batter exists only as an (admittedly delicious) glue, a soft, chewy matrix that binds together, in each cookie, a fortune in semisweet chocolate. To mine this treasure you need only a functioning set of taste buds and a love of the cacao bean. Now the truth is known. On to enlightenment! Excelsior!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.