Angie's Chocolate Chip Cookies

My friend Angie was a high school classmate of my hubby’s, and we all try to get together once a year for a long fishing and cooking weekend. Angie makes the most addictive cookie dough that I’ve ever tasted. (She probably makes great cookies, too, but we’ve never let her near the oven with our dough.)

Angie brought frozen cookie dough to our first fishing trip – fully intending to bake it, I assume – but it became our favorite snack. After a day of fishing and swimming, we would come back to the cabin, play poker, and keep sneaking little drops of cookie dough bliss from the freezer.

I got the recipe from Angie, and I’ll be darned, they make great cookies, too.

The hubby actually requested his version of the perfect chocolate chip cookie for a few years before I figured out the secret formula. I knew what he was asking for, because what he described was the type of chocolate chip cookie we both grew up with – shortening instead of butter, brown sugar instead of white, and soft and puffy instead of thin and crispy. But I could not find the perfect forumla. Then one day I tried Angie’s recipe again, but I was halving it and I can’t do math. To make a long story short, I added a bit too much flour and, ta-da! We found the hubby’s version of the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

You can use any kind of baking chips with this recipe. We usually opt for semi-sweet, but today we used milk chocolate. We’re crazy that way.

Angie’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 2½ dozen

1½ c. brown sugar
1 c. butter-flavored shortening
1½ tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2-3 c. flour (more makes them a bit puffier)
1½ c. chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a mixing bowl, cream together brown sugar and shortening. Add vanilla and eggs, and mix well.

3. Combine baking soda, salt, and flour, and add to batter, a little at a time. Stir in chocolate chips.

4. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, and shape and flatten slightly.

5. Bake about 12 minutes, or until lightly brown. Cool at least 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack.