The $250 Cookie Recipe

Have you heard of the Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe? It's an email that has been forwarded through emails for over a year now. It tells of a lady who ate at a Neiman-Marcus restaurant, and after ordering a salad, they enjoyed a chocolate chip cookie. They loved the cookies so much, they asked for the recipe. Their waitress told them that the recipe was two-fifty. She agreed to pay it, and they added it to her bill. A month later, she received her credit card bill in the mail and saw that the recipe was not $2.50, but $250. She was floored and decided to call the store to argue the amount. In the end she lost, had to pay the $250, but thought she could get back at the store by emailing the recipe out asking for everyone to circulate it around.


I looked the email up on urbanlegends.com and found out that the story is, of course, false. It actually dates back to 1948, when the same story was told with a recipe of red velvet fudge cake. Interesting. You can read the whole story here. My sister received the email and then forwarded it on to me and my mom a few weeks ago, and after looking at the recipe, mom and I thought we would give it a try. At the time, we didn't know it was false, and thought, 'Hey, if it's that good, we better try it!'

So it's a good thing we halved the recipe. The dough was so thick, but nothing my new mixer couldn't handle!

I rolled them into balls to put on the cookie sheet. It made 56 cookies, so it was a good thing we only did half! They weren't hard to make at all. I had never blended oatmeal, but it wasn't hard at all - just put it in the blender. The hardest part was grating the King size Hershey bar.

And here they are! How were they? Mom said, "I wouldn't pay $250 for them." Baylen ate the majority of one with no complaints while Cash passed on one to throw his bouncy ball around the house. As for me, I thought they were great, a little chocolate-y for me, but I loved the chopped nuts and blended oatmeal effect. If you decide to try it out, let me know what you think.