Most people don't believe me when I tell them my mom baked cookies every day, or every other day, depending on how long a batch lasted, but the fact remains that I had a home-baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookie available to me every day of my childhood. And even better, she let us eat the dough as she was making it. That's right, no bowl-licking for us, because we were allowed to pinch two spoonfuls of dough before the rest of it got rolled into balls and baked.
I make those cookies myself now, the exact same recipe my mother used, only I let them come out of the oven slightly underbaked, so they're gloriously soft, and I use bigger chocolate chips (milk chocolate, even though my mom insists on using semi-sweet), but at their core they're the same cookies I had as a kid. Optimistic., who loves all things peanut butter, didn't know I had this cookie recipe up my sleeve when he married me, and he claims it is the best surprise of his life.
Well, I certainly don't make these cookies every day, seeing as how there's just the two of us, but every few months or so I whip up a big double batch to put in the cookie jar. Months back I was making a batch, and, remembering how much I loved stealing spoonfuls of dough, I thought Optimistic. might like to lick the spoon I'd used to measure out the peanut butter. He was is the office watching sports, just a few feet from the kitchen, so I called out, "Want to lick the peanut butter spoon?" Spoon in hand I peeked into the office to see him with his mouth gaping wide, awaiting a spoonful of peanut-buttery goodness, so I walked up and stuck the spoon in his mouth. He immediately gagged and spluttered, and pulling the spoon from his mouth asked "Why did you do that?!" Turns out he hadn't heard me ask if he wanted to lick the spoon at all, and his mouth was coincidentally agape due to having just witnessed some sort of amazing sports play.
