My sister and I were born two years and five days apart. Growing up, people even mistook us for twins, which, honestly, is hilarious, because we fell pretty far apart on the appearance spectrum (blond haired, blue eyed, pale vs. brunette, brown eyed, and tan), and I don't think we were ever that close in size until we got older. Aesthetic differences aside, we tended to celebrate our birthdays as if we were, in fact, twins. My parents always made sure to get us essentially the same things, just in different colors, so that no one felt favored or left out.
I don't know if we fully appreciated the proximity of our birthdays at the time, but I really, really miss celebrating my birthday with her now that we're grown up and live apart. This year we'll be in Denver for our cousin's wedding a week after her birthday, so I imagine we'll attempt a belated celebration.
If we were home in NC, I'd totally make her/us these cookies.
I've had a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe since I was in middle school. In general, I'm very "no, this recipe is acceptable, decent or good, even, but I'm not going to branch out from the safety of its mediocrity." Analyze that as you wish. I'm busy eating my new recipe's cookies.
I'm not sure what convinced me to put my old recipe aside and take a new one for a spin. Maybe it was the effusiveness of the blogger's description of the cookies. It certainly wasn't the universe, which was clearly trying to tell me something the day I decided to make these suckers.
I had forgone my lovely bright pink rain boots that morning in favor of flip flops, deeming the 30% chance of rain negligible. A comically torrential downpour set in shortly after my detour from the metro to the grocery to get the last few ingredients, when I was about 2 blocks from my apartment, nearly safe and dry. In a mere two blocks, I was soaked up to my waist, even with an umbrella. It rained so hard so quickly that the rivers of running water were ankle-deep. I was so tempted to toss my umbrella aside, kick off my flip flops, and just splash around like a kid.
The two new bags of flour, cake and bread, that I had just spent $8 on to concoct these supposedly life changing cookies, were soaked. I had forgotten, again, to restock my toilet paper supply, and had to meet one of my Venice friends for dinner in two hours, but by God, I was going to make those dang cookies. Or rather the dough, for the recipe demands that you wait at least 24, but preferably 36 hours, to bake them.
You should check out the original blog post about the recipe. It lists all sorts of secrets to the success of the world's greatest cookies, all of which I attempted to adhere to strictly. I even followed the blogger's lead and tested the dough at various points in the process.
I can't lie, my go-to recipe will always hold a special place in my heart, and I'll always think of the cookies as the dessert that stoked my love for baking. But these newbies are pretty amazing. They're an awfully significant time commitment, and there's the whole need for two types of specialty flour, but they are awfully sinfully good. Sister birthday good, you might say.
I hope you have an occasion to give them a try, even if the universe does its best to dissuade you, too. In the meantime, happiest birthday to my beautiful sister. See you in a week!
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