Jay zoo Christo!!!
Off the diet for a very good reason. Last night my husband and I were entertaining a gent from somewhere in Florida and rumor had it that he was a big guy with a sweet tooth. I bellied up to our granite kitchen counter and started making my famous chocolate chip cookies for desert. If our business deal hadn't closed by the time the main course was served then my cookies would take care of things.
Back to baking basics...... Barely reachable, up high on the top spice shelf I pushed the bottles of hot sauce, toothpicks, kosher salt and stray bags of NutraSweet out of the way. Eureka! I found the bottle of vanilla that my mother-in-law, Bea gave me last month while we were visiting in Ecuador (our visit took place when Quito was having record cold and rain-that's another story). I vaguely remembered Bea saying not to use the full amount that U.S. recipes called for because the stuff was the real deal, no imitation watered down U.S. vanilla. The bottle read, "Esencia de Vainilla", LOS ANDES Producto de Calidad, P.V.P., Puyo-Ecuador. I always put the vanilla in last because then you can taste the flavor in the cookies. I put in the required amount, and I actually measured it out, normally I just fill the lid and splash it in the dough.
There really is nothing like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, especially when you are breaking a diet. That first warm, sweet perfectly balanced concoction of eggs, flour, brown sugar, salt, sugar, a hint of vanilla and that gooey chocolate.......dahhhh, to die for. I took a bite......."Jay Zoo CHRISTO!!" I screamed. All I could taste was the Esencia de Vainilla. The diet breaking cookies were packed with chocolate chips and I couldn't even taste them.
In the end, the deal closed and we all had so much wine by the time we got to the cookies that none of us tasted the over powering esencia de vainilla.
Note: Pay attention to Bea when she is speaking and buy more wine.
Back to baking basics...... Barely reachable, up high on the top spice shelf I pushed the bottles of hot sauce, toothpicks, kosher salt and stray bags of NutraSweet out of the way. Eureka! I found the bottle of vanilla that my mother-in-law, Bea gave me last month while we were visiting in Ecuador (our visit took place when Quito was having record cold and rain-that's another story). I vaguely remembered Bea saying not to use the full amount that U.S. recipes called for because the stuff was the real deal, no imitation watered down U.S. vanilla. The bottle read, "Esencia de Vainilla", LOS ANDES Producto de Calidad, P.V.P., Puyo-Ecuador. I always put the vanilla in last because then you can taste the flavor in the cookies. I put in the required amount, and I actually measured it out, normally I just fill the lid and splash it in the dough.
There really is nothing like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, especially when you are breaking a diet. That first warm, sweet perfectly balanced concoction of eggs, flour, brown sugar, salt, sugar, a hint of vanilla and that gooey chocolate.......dahhhh, to die for. I took a bite......."Jay Zoo CHRISTO!!" I screamed. All I could taste was the Esencia de Vainilla. The diet breaking cookies were packed with chocolate chips and I couldn't even taste them.
In the end, the deal closed and we all had so much wine by the time we got to the cookies that none of us tasted the over powering esencia de vainilla.
Note: Pay attention to Bea when she is speaking and buy more wine.
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