Happy Birthday Week, Day 1: Merry, Merry Take a Cherry

In recognition of what would be Mother's 97th birthday, I'm going to celebrate this entire week by honoring the gifts and talents she passed on to me.

She began teaching me how to cook when I was in her Brownie Troop 612. So, tonight I'm baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies -- but this isn't entirely her recipe. I've tweaked it just a tad to make the cookies a little thicker than hers used to come out. And - have you seen the new Nestle Toll House Delightfulls chips? I accidentally came upon them, not at the grocery store, but at one of my favorite bargain stores - Big Lots. They had four flavors, and the one I'm using tonight is their dark chocolate morsels with cherry filling.

Mom loved chocolate covered cherries, and Santa put a box of them in her stocking every year that I can remember. But here's what set my mom apart from all other moms: I like chocolate covered cherries, too, but not the cherry. I'd let the chocolate melt in my mouth, then I'd suck away the cherry syrup, then -- I'd spit out the cherry. But it wouldn't go to waste. In fact, nothing ever went to waste in our home. What would become of that cherry? Mother would eat it. She would take it right from my fingers and into her mouth. She did that my whole life. Would your mother do that?

Chocolate Chip Cookies
What you'll need:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour          3/4 cup sugar          12-oz. of chocolate chips
1 tsp. baking soda                         3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. salt                                       1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup softened butter                     2 eggs
1/2 cup 1-minute oat meal flakes

Set your oven to 350-degrees and grease a cookie sheet.
This recipe makes about three dozen 4-inch round cookies.

Combine the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, salt and oat meal - in a small bowl. (Notice, there is a 1/4 cup more flour in my recipe than in others, and note the addition of oat meal. These two ingredients help make the cookies just a little thicker, but you don't taste the oat meal in the finished cookies.)
Beat the butter, both sugars and vanilla in a large mixer bowl until creamy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Gradually beat in the flour mixture.

Okay, can I just say that we could stop right here and I'd be happy. This bowl of cookie dough could be my dinner. Is that wrong?

When combined, add the chocolate chips. The new Delightfulls only come in 9-ounce bags, so that's what I used. (Truth be told: You may have noticed that the bag of chocolate chips was already open. I couldn't help myself. Mom never would have done that; she always exercised complete self-control. I get my sweet tooth from my dad, who always wanted to start dinner with desert.)

Of course, you can add 1 cup of chopped nuts, if you'd like. Mother couldn't eat them, so I never added them, and didn't tonight.

Mom always, always let us lick the mixing beaters.

Nothing's changed there. Yummy!

Using an ice cream scoop, put balls of cookie dough onto your prepared cookie sheet. My baking sheet is a 21-year old, well seasoned, Pampered Chef stone. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Bake the cookies at 350-degrees for about 15-minutes. Keep and eye on them, because you want them to be light in color.

To begin our week of celebrating my mother, Julia Ethel (Steele) Jackson, we'll be having Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies for desert (and maybe a scoop of ice cream, too.)

“When I sound the fairy call, gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall, cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry, take a cherry, mine are sounder, mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter for the eater, when the dews fall, and you'll be fairies all.” ― Emily Dickinson

Happy birthday week, Ma!