This story is dedicated to my Tahitian Uncle/Cousin Hanny, who taught me how to make Chocolate Chip Cookies, and to Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2, the greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe in the entire world.
Note on the text: I will be capitalizing the words “Chocolate Chip Cookie” because this dessert deserves the respect of being a proper noun.
In January 2010 Pinterest was created.
Before the time of Pinterest dinners were often followed by a slice of cherry pie, an apple crisp, or the old family brownie recipe.
But since the creation of Pinterest… there has been a serious increase in the uniqueness, variety, and INSANITY of everyday desserts.
A simple caramel, walnut, chocolate-dipped brownie cheesecake bar popsicle…is the new normal.
A cookie dough crust, Nutella, Reeses Pieces, sprinkled-filled brownie pie with both ice cream and whipped cream on the top is now expected to accompany dinner on a normal Wednesday night.
Despite this newfangled concept of combining all your favorite desserts into one mega dessert, there is one classic sweet… that will forever be unchanged by the pull of trends.
This treasured classic is the Chocolate. Chip. Cookie.
This cookie has had as much of an influence on my life as my own mother who raised and educated me.
This cookie has its own story that is as inspirational as the Wright brothers inventing the airplane.
If you don’t know the story, please take a moment to learn about how incredible things can come from accidental mistakes.
But I’m not here to tell the general story of the Chocolate Chip Cookie… but my own personal Chocolate Chip Cookie story.
It is a story filled with butter, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, flour, and chocolate chips…. oh also nostalgia, sorrow, and a 25-year sugar addiction.
I have an uncle from Tahiti.
Let me explain that sentence.
My aunt Amy went away to France to preach the Gospel and met another missionary from Tahiti. After seeing my aunt he fell madly in love and relentlessly pursued her until he ended up becoming my uncle. But here’s the thing… He is not in fact my uncle but my cousin. However, due to my mom being on the younger end of 10 siblings, the daughter of her oldest sister ended up being her same age which threw off the whole aunt/niece relationship and then the cousin’s relationship with her own children.
So my Tahitian Cousin is in fact too old to be considered a cousin and uncle fits much better.
His name is Teroo which nobody in the family could pronounce which is why when they found out his middle name was Hans everyone decided that his new American name would be Hanny.
I was not old enough to be a part of any of these decisions but I immensely benefited from it because I only learned how to pronounce Teroo when I was 17.
Hanny grew up eating vanilla beans, bananas, and rice which kept his stomach nice, healthy, and protected.
Then he fell in love with my cousin/aunt and exchanged the sparkling blue beaches of Tahiti for the freezing-in-the-winter-but-so-hot-in-the-summer desert of Utah.
In the United States, he was introduced to things like Crisco, cheese puffs, and fried oreos.
Though there are many unhealthy yet delicious American foods… he quickly realized the best one of all… the Chocolate Chip Cookie.
So when my parents left for date nights to escape their docile, beautiful, and charming daughters, Hanny was called on to babysit.
We had the best of times with cousin/uncle Hanny.
He was adjusting to the country, culture, and family that my sisters and I were all growing up in. We were all just learning English and American desserts at the same time. Together.
Pictured: Hanny teaching young Ari how to cook a rare healthy dish that wasn’t cookies circa 2001
Whenever Hanny came over we always did two things.
- Listen to ABBA
- Make Chocolate Chip Cookies.
And no we didn’t just make any random recipe off the back of some package of chocolate chips.
We always made Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2. The best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe in the world.
We NEVER EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE made Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 1 because that would be disgusting and illegal.
Truly some of my earliest memories are standing on a kitchen chair and getting an arm workout hand-mixing the butter and sugar together for the base of this cookie recipe.
Hanny was the perfect teacher always assisting from the side but letting us measure the baking soda and add in one (or five) extra handfuls of chocolate chips while tasting 1 (or five) small handfuls of cookie dough.
The cookies we always made were the best I have ever tasted. There is no comparison in all the world.
We did this month after month… and year after year until it became what people sometimes call a “tradition.”
Eventually, something really awful happened that people sometimes call “growing up.”
People moved, everyone got busy, we grew up and didn’t need babysitters… until it had been years since I had made or tasted Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2.
One day as a teenager I was struck by how many years had passed since those childhood days of making Chocolate Chip Cookies in the old kitchen.
I got out the well-loved recipe, covered in years of egg, vanilla, and sugar stains and I made Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2 for the first time in years.
As soon as I pulled them out of the oven I realized something was really really wrong.
The cookies didn’t flatten at all, they looked like rocks, and I felt like I had never tasted or seen anything like what I had made.
I tried not to freak out and made them 10 more times over the next few weeks trying to replicate the exact circumstances of my childhood baking days.
I tried mixing with only a wooden spoon instead of a mixer.
I tried making them standing on a kitchen chair which almost broke my back.
I tried using imitation vanilla instead of pure.
I even tried eating half of the cookie dough before it ever made it to the pan.
In each of these scenarios, they were never the same.
How could Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2 have let me down like that?
At this point I did freak out… no, I more than freaked out… I mourned like I had lost a loved one because that’s pretty much what happened.
In losing Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2, I had lost my entire childhood, including the old house on the corner I was born in, my favorite kitchen table, the stuffed animals my mom made me get rid of, and my bedroom with the hot pink walls.
I mourned the days when I read all day, made difficult decisions like which park to play at, got to eat corndogs without getting ill, and watched weird shows on TLC.
I mourned living close to Hanny and my cousins, my sparkly flare jeans from The Children’s Place, my Hannah Anderson clogs, and the massive bow headbands I had the confidence to wear for 5 years.
Hopefully, you get the point.
I was losing much more than a cookie recipe.
So what was I to do? Give up on the best dessert this world has ever seen and just embrace the brown butter, biscoff-filled, chocolate-dipped, blueberry-coated, donut-stacked cake?
No.
And also never.
I put Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2… and my childhood… Behind me forever.
I embraced what some people call “adulthood.”
I had a bank account, a job, money, and a new mission to guide me in the right direction.
I started tasting cookies everywhere I went in my new adult life. I tasted cookies in London, Paris, and Rome… I visited cookie shops all over NYC, various airports, and random Mexican restaurants that sold cookies on the side. I benefitted from the Utah cookie wars where cookie shops almost became more common than churches.
I eventually started trying new recipes, hunting for one that could bring the same peace to my life as Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2.
Things got better, the grief slowly started to go away, until one day I realized I could barely remember the look or taste of a Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2 Cookie.
I wish I could say this story has a happy ending… Oh wait I can because I guess it’s happy enough.
After hundreds of recipes and years of testing, I found a recipe.
Is it perfect? No
Does it work for now? Yes
Is it as good as the cookies of my childhood? No, and it’s disrespectful to even suggest that such a thing is possible.
I found a new Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe that I’ve used for the last 6 years and I’m satisfied with it for right now.
If you’re about to scroll to the end of this story to look for the recipe… you won’t find it because it is kind of a little bit secret. I wouldn’t say “Top Secret” because I do give it out occasionally… but it’s only for a really really good reason… like you run into me on the street and ask for it.
It is also the official cookie recipe of my cookie business Kindred Cookie which you can taste if you happen to be a patient at a Dentist or Orthodontist in Utah Valley.
I should also say that I have a lot of opinions about cookies… especially what the dough should look and feel like before baking. I’ve developed this kind of “inner sense” when it comes to Chocolate Chip Cookies. But… at the end of the day, a cookie is a cookie and I’ll pretty much eat it in any variation, from any recipe, baked by any person.
I’m weirdly picky… but also not picky at all when a Chocolate Chip Cookie is in front of my face.
Now let’s finally deal with the difficult crux of this story… Did Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2 really change?
Maybe? Possibly?
I suspect that between the years of 2006-2016, Costco might have changed its butter somehow? And maybe as a kid, we only used light brown sugar and now I’m using dark?
And maybe there was something in the plastic of that really old bowl we mixed things in?
And maybe each individual oven really is different and changes recipes dramatically?
And maybe there really was something about Hanny overseeing the whole process that actually changed the way the cookies turned out? (this one could actually be true)
But I think you and I both know that the only thing that really changed was me.
Mrs. Fields Cookies No. 2 never tasted the same because I wasn’t the same.
What a pathetically cheesy and insane conclusion to come to… but it’s the only one there is.
In case you got lost in this incredibly emotional, nostalgic, and long tale… Here are the takeaways.
- The Chocolate Chip Cookie is the greatest dessert in the world.
- Mrs. Fields Cookie No. 2 is the greatest Chocolate Chip recipe in the world… but it behaves in a Nanny McPhee kind of way… the recipe can only represent a specific moment in time to remind you of the past… so it only works sometimes.
- Get yourself a Tahitian uncle/cousin who supports your love of sugar and will teach you how to bake.
Finally, reader my hope for you and for every person in the world is that you will be able to taste a Chocolate Chip Cookie that brings to your mind everything you loved about being a kid and all the hope you have for the future… in one chocolatey bite.
Will that be my Kindred Cookie recipe?
I hope so.
Even if the only way that happens is for you to stalk me or become a patient at an orthodontist or dentist. in Utah Valley.
And would you look at that… There is a recipe at the bottom of this very long story… it’s just not the one that works anymore. But if you want to taste my childhood, feel free to make Mrs. Field’s Cookies No. 2…
*Mrs. Field’s Cookies No. 1 is included just so you can see how disgusting it looks.
