Hoax chocolate chip cookies

Sometimes urban myths can be delicious. I've tried baking one with great results yesterday. The urban myth I'm referring to is the one about the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe. In case you don't know the story, a few years ago an (hoax) e-mail started circulating claiming someone had been charged (more or less unknowingly) 250 dollars for this recipe and decide, as a sort of revenge, to send it through the web. As a result Neiman Marcus was bombarded by e-mails, they denied (and still do) the story. Still to stop the rumours they published their recipe openly on their own web page. Another version of the story claims that the chocolate chip cookie recipe was developed after the whole e-mail hoax case exploded.

Whichever is true (I like the second story better) one can't help noticing that the two recipes are quite different (for examples the e-mail one has oats which don't appear in the official one). I had received the famous mail and I think I still have the recipe saved somewhere on my old iMac. What brought the story back to mind was a page about it in Leite's Culinaria and since the comments to the recipe where so enthusiastic I decided to try it out.
I'm not going to give the recipe as you can find it clicking here. The whole preparation is very easy and quick and the cookies... oh boy, the best I've had. The cookies are full of chocolate chips (yes!), sweet but not too sweet, chewy and the addition of the small amount of coffee gives a great aroma. My only problem with them is that German chocolate chips don't seem to be that temperature resistant, they melt a bit. On the other hand that means that if you press the cookies before they completely "expand" you can get cool psychedelic chocolate patterns on your cookies.... groovy!

Comments

[ladygoat]

I think this Neiman-Marcus recipe thing has been going on for much longer, since I remember my mom getting from a coworker a ditto-machine copy (remember those?) of the recipe, along with the indignant story, way way back when I was a kid, way before email. They were good cookies though.

[albiston]

Wow, had no clue. Probably e-mails only made the spreading of such hoaxes exponential. Thanks for the info.

[Lee]

This recipe and story has been around LONG before email and the internet. My mother had it when I was in high school in the mid 80s.

[Faith]

I've been reading and enjoying your site. I agree with you on your purist idea of chocolate. I think that the only chocolate should be dark. Tastes better, healther for you and did I say tastes better, cooks better, well you understand. I just this past week made a Black Forest cake for my husband's birthday and he went crazy. I went crazy trying to assemble the thing. What is the deal with splitting layers, should be so simple, but I always end up with some cockeyed layers. My husband says to use dental floss. Worked on another cake. Who knew? Also, I grew up on candied orange peel, and even better candied grapefruit peel. I make it quite often. You don't need to put it into an oven to dry, simply place it on a cooling rack in a dry area and leave it alone for a couple of hours. Works every time. I think that my grandmother had the some cookie recipe and it was way before email because I was still in high school, and that was in the late 60s.

[Mom's Recipe Site]

Here is a great cookie recipe we found the other day. Delicious - it's a raison cookie recipe. Try it, you'll love it.