Ask, and you shall receive: recipe!
Before baking: from http://dearlaurenlovemom.blogspot.com/2012/06/neiman-marcus-cookies.html)
I came across this recipe (or a variation thereof — notes on that below) when I was in graduate school and email was not yet html-enabled. It all arrived in one font, looking somewhat like the screens in WarGames. As you can imagine, this made all content seem very reliable and trust-worthy, even chain e-mails like the one that delivered this recipe to me.
The story went something like this (deep liberties taken with style, please note):
Please distribute this story and recipe as far and wide as you can, to get back at the Man. I went to Neiman Marcus and ate a delicious, scrumptious cookie. When I asked whether I could buy the recipe, they replied, “sure, for two-fifty.” I thought that sounded like a great price and I asked them to put it on my Neiman Marcus account. But when I got my bill, I saw that they had charged me $250, not $2.50! Well, the nerve! I told them they could have their recipe back, but please refund me my money, and they refused. In retaliation, I am letting everyone I know have this recipe.
Best urban legend ever, right? Sweet cookies with a side of finger-licking revenge.
Here’s what I find fascinating: the urban legend seems to be a fairly stable artifact (the details don’t change that much) but the cookie recipe does have some SIGNIFICANT variations. (Um, well, I think they’re significant.) Most notably, in the top link above you’ll notice that it’s all about the chips. But in the recipe as I grew to love it in grad school, it was important to get that 8 oz Hershey chocolate bar and grate it. Super important, even. Grating the chocolate makes the dough so chocolatey, but without adding the dryness (and having to adjust for that) of cocoa powder.
Also, I generally don’t add nuts. Because that would be nuts when you have a good chocolate-centered recipe like this one.
Beauty and Race: AMST 225 