A Tale of Two Cookies

Last weekend we spent the entire Saturday afternoon baking cookies. The husband's grandfather turned 91 the week before, and we wanted to take him a special birthday treat. I decided to make 2 different types of cookies - both were new recipes for me so it was dual purpose...variety if they both turned out and a back-up if one of them didn't. Oh, who am I kidding? It was a great excuse to try 2 new cookie recipes! I also used the excuse that Sunday was Father's Day so I could take a platter of cookies to the cookout that my side of the family was having. See? Just tons of reasons to spend 4 hours in the kitchen baking on a beautiful Saturday.

The first selection was a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe found on another food blog - see the recipe for Flat-and-Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies at Laura Rebecca's Kitchen. These were really good. I used the Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate chips and I added toasted walnuts, but I think next time I will try toasted pecans. I may like them a bit better. But these cookies were yummy - everyone seemed to enjoy them and they do indeed give Tollhouse a run for the money. Definitely one I will make again and I'm thrilled to have found the recipe by perusing the web!

The second choice was Emeril Lagasse's Kicked Up Oatmeal Cookies. These were okay, but not a wow for me or anyone else who tried them. If I make them again, I will cut out the white "chocolate" chips and maybe cut back on the sugar - they were a bit too sweet and the white chips were nauseating to me.

So here is how it went down, along with my feeble attempts at improving my culinary picture-taking skills.

First, the chocolate chip cookies - aren't they lovely? I can almost smell them all over again...



And then the oatmeal cookies. I swear they look better than they tasted. Shhh...don't tell Emeril.

And after a long day in the kitchen, we had...................a whole lot of cookies!!!

I put together a nice little gift package for his grandfather with stuff I had on hand, nothing too fancy.

And voila! I sure hope he enjoyed them....at least one of the choices anyway. Let's just say, even though the oatmeal cookies were not a complete disaster by any means - at the end of the day I felt quite justified with having a back-up. Yes, it was a great reinforcement for my already anal personality. (Oops, did that flowery language just kill the mood?!)