NOTE: Thank you to Anya and Lindsay requesting this from the Archives. Now I have to dig up the rough recipe and make some. . . .

When I was growing up, everyone in my family cooked or baked or did both equally well. We weren’t fancy cooks or bakers, just great comfort foods and family favorites. One of the most requested family faves was the ” Triple Chocolate Doodles” my Grandma invented. As I grew older, I realized it was actually a variation of the “Snickerdoodle”, a vanilla-flavored cookie dough, soft enough to drop from a teaspoon onto a cookie sheet. Snickerdoodles were good, but if your tummy had a craving for chocolate, then only this triple chocolate doodle filled the bill.

The problem was Grandma didn’t have a written recipe for this family favorite. It was made so often that the recipe was engraved on her brain. It wasn’t exactly a real recipe when Grandma demonstrated what she did. As her granddaughters avidly watched and made copious notes, Grandma would be saying, “Now a chunk of butter like this, a couple of large eggs, a dollop of vanilla, this much sugar, keep adding flour until the dough feels right. . . .” and as she was talking, my grandma would be beating the life out of the butter, sugar and eggs. Fry’s cocoa powder played a huge part in the recipe as well as lots of dark chocolate chips and dark chocolate chunks. When the cookies were hot out of the oven and cooling on the racks, Grandma would add her finishing touch by drizzling melted dark chocolate over each doodle.

Every time Grandma made these, they were melt-in-your-mouth delicious and absolutely fail-proof. It didn’t matter if you asked what precise measure would make a “chunk” or how much exactly was a “dollop?” Or even how much was a “smidge?” After all, it had to be the same every time because scientifically, a more or less difference in the chunks, dollops and smidges would produce a less than perfect triple chocolate doodle. Right? At least that was my logical reasoning. And another thing, when does the dough feel right?

Well, I just figured out the secret of the family recipe. Precise amounts of ingredients doesn’t work. Throw logic out the window. Go with the chunks, dollops and smidges. Triple Chocolate Doodles are still a winner and absolutely fail-proof when you use Grandma’s recipe with her own special measurements made with lots of love and heaping amounts of chocolate. After all, anything with plenty of chocolate will be fail proof and perfect every time. Grandma had that right!