I suffered a loss of innocence last night. I had been planning to write a post about how I feel like I’m a marionette, Orangette’s marionette, because I do whatever she says. She says to put chickpeas with chard, so I put chickpeas with chard. She says to mash up a cucumber and lime and add vodka and salt, and I do it. I love her recipes and her writing, but I especially love that she’s not afraid of butter and cream and chocolate and sugar. I feel a deep affection for anybody who is not afraid to cook with butter and sugar.

So when she told me to make chocolate chip cookies, I did. And now I’m no longer her marionette.

I was so excited for those cookies, too. I followed her recipe to a tee. I even used a scales to do the measuring (because she said to, of course). Mr. Handsome had to stop at the grocery store on his way home from work to dig the last bag of Ghiradelli 60% chocolate chips from the bottom of the bin. A lot of positive feeling and excitement went into those cookies.

And they were dreadful. Like freeze-them-and-forget-them dreadful. Like only-to-be-pulled-out-to-feed-children-and-company-you-don’t-like dreadful. Like not-finish-your-cookie-and-throw-the-rest-of-it-in-the-compost dreadful. Crumbly and dry and flavorless. I obsessively kept tasting them to see if they would get better—hot, warm, room temperature, room temperature two hours later. Nothing.

I felt horrible. How could I possibly disagree with Orangette? I adore the lady, so what a crushing disappointment to discover that she liked mediocre chocolate chip cookies. What a betrayal. What a loss of innocence. What a… Okay, I’ll stop.

I skimmed the 103 comments that she had on her post, and to add insult to injury, everyone was raving about the cookies. I was stunned. There was only one thing to do: Bake up a batch of my chocolate chip cookies, photograph them, type up the recipe, and send my offering out into the world, a dark, dark world, in dire need of chocolate chip cookie salvation. Please, people, please, make these cookies. And then share the recipe with everyone you know. We’ve got to spread the word, I mean, the recipe.

Salvation’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
I got the recipe from my mother, who in turn got it from my Cousin Karen

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cups oatmeal, measured and then blended in a blender to a fine powder
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus another handful, for good measure

In a big mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugars for a little bit, till well-whipped. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix some more. Slowly mix in the dry ingredients, saving the chocolate chips for last. Shape the dough into good-sized lumps, placing about twelve on each greased baking sheet. Press the dough down in the middle so that the middle part is lower than the edges.

You do this so the cookie doesn’t rise too high and so the edges don’t burn before the middle is baked. Bake them at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cookie. The key is to under-bake them; they should still be light-colored and a little moist in the middle.

Roughly set the tray down on the cooling rack, so the air poofs out, giving you a more dense, chewier cookie. Let the cookies sit on the hot tray for five minutes, allowing them to firm up and bake just a tad bit more, before transferring them to the cooling rack.

Devour, pausing between bites to admire the gorgeous crumb, the melting chocolate—your spectacular handiwork.

Freeze any that are leftover; they are delicious freshly-thawed (in fact, that is Mr. Handsome’s favorite way to eat them.)

Ps. I’ve started to see Orangette’s betrayal in a new light. Just because she doesn’t make the best chocolate chip cookie doesn’t mean that she’s not any good. Even she has written about her falling out with Nigella Lawson, so I guess this can just be a temporary thing—just a little rift in our (one-sided) relationship.

Here’s what I made the other night for supper.

In case you can’t read my chicken scratch, it’s a recipe for Alfredo sauce.

For some reason I’m a little nervous talking about Alfredo sauce. I have a feeling that chefs and real cooks are particular about sauces and that there is a very particular way in which they make an Alfredo sauce. And I don’t know the right way. I’m probably doing it all wrong, and when a chef sees this recipe, he’ll gasp and start hyperventilating because I neglected to mention that you have to add freshly-cracked black pepper. Or something. So that’s why I’m kind of anxious about sharing this recipe.

But now that I made that little disclaimer, I’ll shrug off all my inhibitions and tell you how it’s done. “Here’s how you make Alfredo sauce, people! It’s my way, or the highway!”

Whew! That’s better.

Alfredo Sauce
I got the recipe from my recipe box and I haven’t a clue how it got there. (I mean, I put it there, but I don’t know where I got the recipe from which I copied mine.)

My recipe calls for 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese and 1/4 cup Romano cheese, but I just do all Parmesan and then throw in some more for good measure. You can add other cheeses, too, but Parmesan is really, really good. I have also added creme fraiche before, with good results.

This recipe is supposed to be enough for one pound of cooked pasta, but I often double the recipe because some leftover sauce is great: add it to macaroni and cheese, put it on pizza, serve it over baked potatoes, spoon it into a lasagna, dish it over cooked, chopped-up, chicken, or serve it all up at once and make your one-pound of pasta swim in it.

3 tablespoons butter
8 ounces (1 cup) cream
salt
nutmeg
½ to 1 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1 egg yolk, beaten
More grated cheese for sprinkling over top, if you wish

Skim the cream from a jar of milk, or buy cream from the store. I don’t know if it matters if you use the heavy whipping cream or regular cream or half and half (just don’t use milk, unless you want to be a cheapskate), so experiment and see what you get. (Yes, I used the extra quarter cup of cream. I’m not very exact with my measurements, and I do love cream.)

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

Add the cream and whisk well. Heat it over medium-low heat, or medium heat—you just don’t want to boil it.

Add a pinch of salt and the nutmeg. I like to grate mine fresh; it’s simple and fun to do, so don’t be intimidated.

I add about this much (maybe 1/4 teaspoon?):

Now stir in the cheese.

In a separate bowl, temper the egg yolk with some of the hot cream mixture, by adding a little of the cream mixture to the beaten egg and whisking it well. Then dump the tempered yolk into the cream mixture and stir well.

At this point, your sauce is done, but I added a couple basil cubes (last summer I whirled basil and olive oil together in the blender and froze the paste in ice cube trays), because I love basil.

Serve over hot fettuccine noodles. Or anything else that will hold still long enough for you to dump the sauce on top of it.

Eat with gusto.

(I hope that picture didn’t spoil your appetite. I just wanted to drive home the point that we really like the sauce.)

My Balding Bro and his Gentle Wife and Darling Daughter are moving to our neck of the woods in a couple weeks. (Yippee!) They are in the thros of packing and getting rid of stuff. They gave each of our kids a bag of doo-dads (excuse me, treasures), and Mr. Handsome and I even received our own little bag. We got: a can of Spam, a huge Rubbermaid spatula, a stale, giant-size marshmallow burger, and a can of Coke from Iraq. I was pretty excited about the Coke. Just the night before, while weeding the beans, I was fussing to Mr. Handsome about how I craved a Coke and Doritos. We even lightly toyed with the idea of running over to The Glen to the little store there.

My Balding Bro did not go to Iraq to get the Coke. I believe it came from one of his students whose father is in Iraq. Anyway, I was very intrigued by it.

Look how small it is. I think we would all be better off if they sold sodas in such small cans.

Here, you wanna see the nutrition label?

Mid-afternoon, after chilling the Coke for a couple hours, I decided it was time to imbibe. When I tried to open it, there was an exploding sound and the tab popped off. The Coke would only drip out.

So I took my rolling pin to it.

The can flipped over and a bunch of Coke fizzed down the drain.

It still only came out in a slow trickle.

But it sure was refreshing.