Oopsy-Daisy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today was one of those beautiful days in which I did not have much planned. I decided early on I would bake some cookies. I asked if the kids wanted to help bake something, but they were happily doing their own thing. "Perfect!" I thought. Some uninterrupted baking time seems like a little luxury.

I was debating between a Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae {again from my cook crush Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman} or a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe from Discover Oklahoma Cookin', a great Oklahoma 4-H cookbook that I helped market many moons ago. Upon studying them both, I realized I didn't have the instant coffee that The Pioneer Woman was suggesting, so I started on the 4-H version. I placed the other recipe at the opposite end of the counter and went across the kitchen to grab my mixer and its glass bowls.

As soon as I had the awkward thing in my arms heading toward the counter, I heard whining and running. Underneath the heavy mixer and bowls, there were two little arms gripping my legs and a little face in my crotch. {All of you who have entered the toddler stage at one point or another should know exactly what I'm talking about. A friend of mine says it is like they are trying to crawl back in from whence they came.}

I tried as calmly as I could to let her know Mommy needed her to let go because I was carrying something heavy, and I didn't want to drop it. Didn't phase her. Next, I made the mistake of dropping the word "cookie." This single word launched phase two of her frontal assault, which entailed a death grip to my jeans as she tugged and clamored up my legs to scale Mount Mommy who surely must be withholding cookies at her summit.

Being "between sizes" {for at least the last three years}, my jeans started inching downward with each tug. I had no choice but to do the slow-but-effective Mommy Shuffle toward the counter: toddler wrapped around my legs, pants wandering dangerously below my buttocks, balancing two large glass bowls and a mixer.

I made it to the counter, but my baby barnacle was still attached. I crouched down {I actually pulled my pants up first} gave a hug and tried to get to the bottom of her rant. Whatever the original concern was, we will never know. Now she was just fixed on the one word that ends all words.

"Mommy is making cookies. Want to help?"

"No! Cookieeeeees!"

"Mommy has to mix them up first. Why don't you go play and when you're done, Mommy will be done with the . . . "

"Cooooookieeees!

She refused to help and refused to leave my leg.  I decided the best course of action was to carry on, start throwing the ingredients together.

I was so distracted that I didn't realize until midway through that I had been working from both of the recipes. I truly have no idea how or why, but I did.

I had combined the butter from the 4-H recipe with the sugar, egg and vanilla measurements from the Pioneer Woman recipe. Then I remembered I wasn't doing the Pioneer Woman recipe and went back to the other recipe to add the whole wheat flour. However, I did go ahead and add two different types of chocolate chips as Pioneer Woman suggests. Then, as I was about to add the pecans from the 4-H recipe, my son begged me not to. I ended up going out on a limb and adding tofee bits instead. I wasn't sure how the mixture would go.


Let me just say here that I seriously don't understand baking. While I am very confident in my cooking after many years of practice, baking still seems to me a mysterious venture of trial and error. Someone please explain to me how one can follow a recipe to the letter and end up failing miserably, and then the next time, you could leave things out and add things you are not supposed to and come up with the best thing ever.

This proves my point by being the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made! So, here it is, preserved for posterity, and hopefully I won't be so distracted next time so that I can do the exact same thing. {Although it might not work as well without an angry toddler around my legs.}


Saskmom's Oopsy-Daisy Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup toffee pieces

Cream the first three ingredients with your mixer. Crack in two eggs. Turn the mixer down and add in the vanilla so you don't spatter it on your walls like I did. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and add it slowly to the mixer. Fold in the last three goodies. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes or until brown.

This recipe made two dozen cookies for today and another 24 that I placed on waxed paper and flash froze for baking on another day that doesn't quite go as planned.