Why Use Blended Oatmeal In Chocolate Chip Cookies
Blended oatmeal is the key to the delightful texture of the original Neiman Marcus cookies. Its the secret ingredient that the store left out of their published recipe.
It only takes just a couple of minutes to make blended oatmeal in your kitchen. Simply add oats to a blender and pulse into a coarse powder.
While oat flour is also a form of oats ground into powder, its not a great substitute for the oats in this recipe. Oat flour is much more finely ground than you will achieve in your home blender. It also may change the texture of your cookies.
When choosing oats for these cookies, I always opt for old-fashioned oats, but you can substitute quick-cooking oats if needed. Do not use Instant Oats.
According To Legend A Woman Sought Sweet Revenge After Being Charged $250 By Neiman Marcus For A Cookie Recipe
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What we have here is a golden oldie of an urban legend, the ultimate “strike a blow for the little guy” tale, and in that aspect lies its appeal: by forwarding it on, we can be armchair heroes.
Though its present incarnation casts the Neiman Marcus chain of department stores as the bad guy, this legend has been around for at least 70 years or so, and it’s been told of various companies during its long history.Examples:
Here’s a fine example from a 1948 cookbook, Massachusetts Cooking Rules, Old and New, which lists not only the recipe for “$25 Fudge Cake” but also gives the following explanation for the name:
This friend had to pay $25 upon the receipt of the recipe from the chef of one of the railroads. She had asked for the recipe while eating on a train. The chef gladly sent it to her, together with a bill for $25, which her attorney said she had to pay. She then gave the recipe to all her friends, hoping they would get some pleasure from it.
Sound disturbingly familiar?
The 1960s saw this tale mutate into a villainization of New York’s famed Waldorf-Astoria hotel over a dessert known as “Red Velvet Cake.” A woman who’d dined at the hotel later wrote to ask for the recipe. The recipe arrived … along with a bill for $350, a bill her lawyer assured her she had to pay. Her way of getting even was you guessed it to distribute the recipe far and wide.
FOAFTale News. “More Cookie Bills and Recipes.” December 1995 .
$250 Urban Legend Cookie Recipe
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Do you know about the infamous $250 cookie recipe? I recently came across an old copy of this recipe in my Moms recipe box. Along with the ingredients and procedure, it basically says Mrs. Fields Cookies$250.00 recipe give to everyone.
Even though I had never seen this recipe before, I was pretty confident that I had NOT hit the Motherload for Mrs. Fields secret recipe. Since this was my first encounter with the recipe, I did a quick internet search, and found that this is very popular recipe hoax, an urban legend that has been around for a very long time.
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Be Sure To Check Out All Of My Recipes On The Dixie Crystals Website
These cookies are the subject of a longstanding urban myth that goes something like this
A woman and her daughter ate lunch at the Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas and decided to have a small dessert after their salads. They ordered the chocolate chip cookies and loved them so much that they begged to have the recipe.
Their waitress told them that the recipe wasn’t available to customers. The woman asked if she could purchase the recipe. The waitress told her that she could buy the recipe for two fifty, and the customer asked to have the amount added to her tab.
30 days later, the woman received her bill for that day $289! She scanned the statement looking for the cause of the outrageous total and found at the bottom, Cookie Recipe $250. The woman was understandably upset and contacted the billing department at Neiman-Marcus. They informed her that the charge was correct and would stand, because they wanted to establish the value of their cookie recipe. They said they wanted it to be something that couldn’t be afforded by all.
Outraged, the woman swore to spread this recipe to as many people as possible, so that no one else would ever be tricked into paying $250 for the cookie recipe ever again.
How To Freeze Cookie Dough
You dont have to bake all 96 cookies on the same day! Just store the rest of the cookie dough balls in the freezer for another day.
Heres how you do it:
No need to defrost the balls beforehand, either! Just add 1 to 2 minutes to the baking time and youre good.
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The Batter Wasn’t Too Difficult To Make But It Was More Involved Than A Standard Recipe
My usual chocolate-chip cookies only take a few minutes of prep and 10 minutes to bake, with no special steps like grinding oat flour or shaving down a chocolate bar.
I had high expectations that these famous cookies would be incredibly yummy with all the extra effort.
Shaving the chocolate bar took the most time, but once that was out of the way, the rest of the process was standard. I creamed the butter and sugars together, added the egg and vanilla extract, and mixed in the dry ingredients.
After adding both the all-purpose and oat flours, the batter looked dry, so I was concerned about how the texture of the cookies would turn out.
Finally, I added the chocolate shavings, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts.
I put the cookies in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, as instructed, and I could smell the chocolate baking after just a couple of minutes.
After 10 minutes, I checked on the cookies. The outsides looked a bit dry, but when I lightly touched one, it was still very undercooked in the center.
I put them back in the oven for a couple of minutes, but the bottom edges were starting to look overdone.
I pulled the cookies out again, and they held up to a light tough.
They didn’t spread much, which was good, but they definitely looked dry on the outside.
The $250 Cookie Recipe
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Almost everybody has heard the one about the woman lunching at the Neiman Marcus Cafe in Dallas, who enjoyed the chocolate chip cookies so much that she asked for the recipe. For “only two-fifty,” the waitress said, it was hers. But when the credit card bill arrived, the woman found the total near $300. Turns out the recipe cost $250, the story goes. In 1997, after years of enduring the myth, Neiman Marcus came up with a recipe and gave it out for free. It’s a delicious variation on chocolate chip cookies, using ground oatmeal, nuts and adding extra chocolate with a grated Hershey bar .
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More Great Cookie Recipes:
- Preheat oven to 375 degree F.
- Add the oatmeal to a blender and blend into a course flour or powder.
- In a medium bowl, mix together flour, blended oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars, on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until well blended, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add flour mixture mix just until blended. Stir in chocolate chips, grated chocolate, and nuts.
- Roll into balls and place two inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
- Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet before transferring cookies to racks to cool completely.
Two: Prepare Cookie Dough
Once your nuts, oats, and chocolate are prepared, it is time to prepare the cookie dough.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, blended oats, and blended nuts until well combined.
- Add the chocolate to the dry ingredients and toss to coat. . This will coat the chocolate in the flour mixture, which will help to keep the chocolate suspended throughout the cookie batter, instead of sinking to the bottom of the cookie.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars together.
- Add in eggs and vanilla extract and beat until creamy.
- Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, being careful to not over-mix or overwork the dough. You just want the flour mixture to be just mixed into the batter.
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The Neiman Marcus Cookie Urban Legend
A lady and her daughter went into the Neiman Marcus cafe for lunch, bought 2 salads and had a cookie. Well, the cookies were so good the mama asked for the recipe, which he replied “It’ll cost ‘two-fifty’.” and brought it to her written out on a napkin.
Well when she asked for the check, she noticed lunch was $270!
“Why would my lunch cost so much? I only bought two salads!”
The waiter told her, “Well, you asked for the recipe for our cookies, which costs $250.”
And because she already saw the recipe, her money could not be returned. So when she came home, angrier than hot grease and water, she emailed everyone she knew the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe, so no one could be jipped of $250 by Neiman’s again.
What Are Neiman Marcus Cookies
There are numerous versions of the infamous Neiman Marcus Cookie urban legend from the 1990s, but the basic story is that a woman visited the cafe in Dallas and after dinner had a delicious chocolate chip cookie. She asked for the recipe, the employee declined, so she offered to pay for the recipe.
The employee said it would cost two-fifty. Instead of $2.50, it was actually $250 as she found out on her credit card bill, making it the most expensive chocolate chip cookie ever.
Supposedly she published the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe online out of revenge, but whatever the story is, we now have ourselves a delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe that was never actually even served in a Neiman Marcus cafe. However, Neiman Marcus has helped to debunk this myth and published the recipe on their site. The recipe they publish is slightly different from the one my Grandma gave me years ago, but I wanted to share the one I know and love.
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Why This Recipe Works
Ill tell you more about the story below, but what you really need to know is how amazing these special chocolate chip cookies are. Chocolate chips, chocolate candy bars, oats, nuts, and more make up these beauties.
They taste great on their own, but they are even more fun when you tell the story about why everyone calls them the $250 cookie.
The Story Behind The Mrs Fields Neiman Marcus $250 Urban Legend
Maybe you know of the $250 cookie recipe already, but just in case you live in a cookie jar like me heres the scoop
Based on some research, it seems there are several versions of this urban legend.
The original version, seems to have evolved from a secret chocolate cake recipe about 50 years ago. Each version over the years has similar undertones.
Most of the tales involve a corporate conglomerate ripping off or duping some innocent patron whos only request was asking for a recipe. In all accounts, the requests were granted but not without asking for an unreasonable amount of money in exchange.
Feeling scathed in way or another, the innocent patron gets revenge by recanting their tale of whoa, sharing the recipe and then asking others to do the same.
The most current and probably, the most known version of this story is the Neiman Marcus, $ 250 cookie recipe.
In this version a woman and her daughter were having lunch at Neiman Marcus and ordered a chocolate chip cookie for dessert.
The story goes that they loved the cookie so much, that the woman asked the waitress for the recipe. The waitress agreed and said it would cost two fifty. Thinking the cost was $2.50, the woman requested to have the recipe put on her neiman marcus account.
In turn, to spite the department store, the woman shared the chocolate chip recipe in a chain letter. In the letter she shared her experience and urged anyone who received the letter, to pass it on.
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Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie Legend
The Neiman Marcus legend goes something like this. Supposedly a woman was eating lunch at the Neiman Marcus cafe and quite enjoyed the cookies. So she asked for the recipe. She was told that the cost was two fifty and assumed that meant $2.50.
Then later on a bill, or charge on her card, shows up for $250 for the recipe. She then shares it with the world, and here we are.
Except, at least according to Snopes, thats all false.
Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
The cafes signature cookie has an oat-based dough flavored with grated chocolate, mixed with all kinds of chocolate chips and chopped nuts.
According to legend, one woman loved them so much, she asked her waitress for the recipe.
The waitress agreed to share it for two-fifty.
But to the customers surprise, her credit card was charged $250 for the recipe! Apparently, she was so mad, she shared the recipe with everyone she met out of spite.
Years later, Neiman Marcus debunked the myth and shared the recipe for free.
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The Recipe Called For A Lot Of Chocolate And Homemade Oat Flour
The recipe, reported by Snopes, yields 112 cookies, so I started by cutting it down to a fourth of the original for 28 cookies. I would’ve cut it even further if possible, but that would’ve required figuring out a way to use less than one egg.
I was instantly intrigued by how much chocolate was in this recipe. Not only did it include chocolate chips, but it also called for a Hershey bar grated into chocolate shavings.
I filled a large mixing bowl with the shavings, so I expected this to be a pretty chocolaty cookie.
It also said you can add optional chopped nuts. I went with walnuts because I had some on hand and thought they’d taste pretty good.
The rest of the recipe called for the usual ingredients: butter, brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla, salt, an egg, baking powder and soda, and all-purpose flour.
The unique touch here was the addition of oats, which I had to blend into a fine powder.
The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie
Is there another way???the recipe that accompanies this story is NOT the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe at all!publish the recipeI have a fondness for Neiman Marcus…despite the fact that the only purchases I’ve ever made there are chocolate-covered potato chips. ) A girl can dream.espresso powderTHE Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookieespresso powder2-tablespoon scoop *post contains amazon affiliate links. thank you!*
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You Gotta Love Revenge But Is It True
The legendary story went viral and probably passed through your email stream a couple of times back in the day, but has since been disputed. Head to Neiman’s website, and the tale is there along with the recipe. Free of charge. ”We would never, ever charge for a recipe,” said Kellie Patrick, the media relations manager for Neiman Marcus. ”We gladly give our recipes away for the asking.”
There’s also the fact that Neiman’s has never had a “Neiman Marcus Cafe” and if they did have one, we highly doubt the department store would sell you two saladsfor a total of $9.95.
How To Make The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie
A chocolate chip cookie is just a simple drop cookie recipe that originated in the United States and is studded with chocolate chips that melt into the dough when baked.
To make them, youll start by making the dough. Simply whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside. Then, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add the remaining wet ingredients to combine.
Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Shape your chocolate chip cookie dough into 6 large balls and arrange on a baking sheet. Bake. Cool. Eat. So easy!
I like to add espresso powder to my cookie dough because it enhances the flavor of the chocolate chips. You can totally leave it out if you cant find it easily but you can .
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Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe
The famous Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe!
Blended oatmeal in the cookie dough is the secret ingredient that gives these cookies just a little more texture and body. A batch of homemade Neiman Marcus cookies, full of chocolate chips and nuts, is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser any time of day.
How To Store Neiman Marcus Cookies
This recipe makes a HUGE batch so no matter how addictive they are, leftovers are inevitable.
Store cooled cookies in an airtight container and leave them at room temperature for up to 3 days.
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You can also refrigerate the cookies for up to 7 days, and then just microwave them for 10 seconds and itll be like they were freshly baked.
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