Nieman Marcus Cookie

[SusanT]

I'm sure most people have seen the "Nieman-Marcus cookie" urban legend which has been circulating for years. You know the one about the woman who asks for their cookie recipe and is charged $250 for it when she thought she would be charged $2.50.

Has anyone made the cookie recipe associated with the story? It's a chocolate chip cookie with ground oatmeal added and looks like a pretty good recipe.

[ebobbitt]

I have made these several times and although I usually don't want to take the time to make cookies, I thought they were really good. I also really like the chocolate chip cookies made from the recipe that Mrs. Bush submitted to the cookie contest before the presidential election.

[claire797]

The Neiman Marcus cookie is pretty good, but I have to admit -- my favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies is the good old Tollhouse recipe. I'm always trying new chocolate chip recipes and I always go back to Tollhouse. One recipe I haven't tried but that's supposed to be really, really good is the Doubletree Hotel Chocolate Chip Cookie. Here's the recipe. I may give these a try.

1 1/2 C. butter -- softened
1 1/2 C. granulated sugar
3/4 C. firmly packed brown sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 tsp. lemon juice
3 C. all-purpose flour
3/4 C. old-fashioned oatmeal -- uncooked
3/4 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. Salt
1/4 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
3 C. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips -- Ghirardelli
1 1/2 C. chopped walnuts



Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the butter in a large bowl and cream lightly with an electric mixer. Add the sugars and beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and lemon juice and mix well. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, oatmeal, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add to the creamed butter mixture and stir well to blend. Add chocolate chips and walnuts and stir to combine. Using a 1/4 cup measure or a 2-oz ice cream scoop, drop the batter on the parchment-lined pans, leaving 2 -3 inches between each cookie. Bake for 13 - 15 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Remove from parchment and cool on wire racks.

[laurenc]

ebobbitt can you post Mrs. Bush's recipe?
Thansk!

[beejayw1]

I've stayed at their hotels several times for business travel and I am always given a cookie. Please don't drum me out of U. S citizenship for this, but I found their cookies way too rich, with the chopped nuts and too much chocolate.

I think Toll House really is the best.

[SusanT]

There's such a thing as too much chocolate?!

[beejayw1]

Try eating a Doubletree cookie and see what you think. (It'll give you your week's quota of grease, too!)

For that matter, if Bennigan is still making Death By Chocolate, try one of them. (Bring a chain saw to break through the solidified chocolate syrup.)

[ebobbitt]

TEXAS GOVERNOR’S MANSION COWBOY COOKIES


3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 ½ cups packed light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
2 cups (8 oz) chopped pecans

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl.

In an 8-quart bowl, beat butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 1 minute. Gradually beat in sugars; beat to combine, 2 minutes.

Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Add chocolate chips, oats, coconut and pecans and mix well.

For each cookie, drop ¼ cup dough onto ungreased baking sheet, spacing 3 inches apart. Bake for 17-20 minutes, until edges are lightly browned; rotate sheets halfway through. Remove cookies to rack to cool.

NOTE: for 6 dozen small cookies, use 2 tablespoons dough for each, bake 15-20 minutes.

[laurenc]

thanks ebobbitt! They look great.

[MaryH]

I make the Neiman Marcus cookies every year and have to say that the recipe as written makes almost 100 cookies. And IMHO, grinding the oatmeal is not a big deal, it is the grated chocolate (although time consuming), that makes the cookie.

[Peeps]

I've been making the Niemen Marcus cookies for years and its fabulous! I always smile when I pull out the recipe, my original print out of the email from nearly 10 years ago totally spattered and stained, and see that it calls for 4 cups of "flower." That typo seems to appear on every copy of the recipe that I see.
Anyway, I always halve it and I'm usually too lazy to bother with the grated chocolate, though most of the time I do grind the oatmeal (though they are fine with regular oatmeal as is too). I think the ground oatmeal gives them a great texture. I've also seen them before with butterscotch chips and white chocolate instead of the regular chocolate.

[SusanT]

Is the cookie usually soft or crisp?

[katygirl]

If I remember correctly they are more chewy than soft or crisp. But it has been a long time since I have made them. I remember liking them a lot.

[laughsandlaughs]

The Neiman Marcus cookie is far and away the best Chocolate Chip Cookie I've ever eaten!! Just blend the oatmeal in the blender to grind and it's no problem. If you're going to make CC Cookies, this is the one!!

[AD]

The "real" Neiman-Marcus recipe (on their own website) is nothing like that huge recipe with oats. It has coffee and no oats, and I really liked it. It's actually lower in fat than many popular chocolate chip cookie recipes. I don't know where that oat recipe came from.

[Curleytop]

Here is a chocolate chip cookie from the RED MILL Muesli label.
It hasn't as much butter in it as the other Chocl.chip cookies.
I just made them today!

* Exported from MasterCook *

CHOCOLATE CHIP MUESLI COOKIES

Recipe By :Bob's Red Mill
Serving Size : 50 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Cookies Low Fat


Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
3/4 Cup Unbleached flour -- Sifted
1/2 Teaspoon Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Cup Butter (1 stick) -- Soft
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Large Egg
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla
1/4 Teaspoon Water (optional)
6 Ounces Chocolate Chips (1 Cup)
1 Cup Bob's Muesli

Heat oven to 375° (350° convection).

Sift flour, soda, and salt together and set aside.

Blend butter, sugar, vanilla and water. Beat in egg. Add flour mixture, mix. Stir in Muesli and chocolate chips.
Drop by teaspoonsful on lightly greased cookie sheet.
Bake for 3 minutes switch pans and bake 3 minutes more. Watch closely, they burn easily.
PS: I don't add the water!

Yield:
"2 "

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 16 Calories; trace Fat (5.0% calories from fat); trace Protein; 3g Carbohydrate; 0g Dietary Fiber; 4mg Cholesterol; 23mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 0 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.


Nutr. Assoc. : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

[akairo]

My sister makes a version of this cookie, but she starts with the Tollhouse recipe, adds ground oatmeal, cuts chocolate pieces from a bar of semi-sweet chocolate, and instead of nut pieces, she grinds walnuts and pecans. Far and away the best I have ever tasted.

Tamara

[Laura B]

TEXAS GOVERNOR’S MANSION COWBOY COOKIES recipe looks a lot like my favorite recipe, which is an oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookie that my mom always makes. The recipe has been posted on the board a few times.

[ashiboo]

I have never made the Nieman Marcus cookies, however the receipt looks just like the one I have for Mrs. Field's cookies, and the story about being charged $250.00 is EXACTLY the same! Tollhouse cookies are always a favorite, however, if you want to try a simple cc/oatmeal cookie, try the one for Clementine's on the package of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips--makes a great cookie and depending on how long you allow it to bake, can be either chewy or crisp---I am going to try Mrs. Bush's cookies this weekend--they look awesome!
Lynda
(and in my opinion, there really is no such thing as too much chocolate!)

[msbeehavn]

I made the Nieman Marcus recipe, and if I remember right I wasn't overly impressed with them. Alot of extra work and I think my own cookie recipe is better. I think I remember these as coming out on the dry side and I prefer a much chewier cookie. It was a long time ago I made them so don't quote me on that..

[tanastaplo]

I've been considering making a half-batch of the Nieman Marcus cookies, but I have a question for someone who has made the recipe. The recipe calls for "5 cups blended oatmeal." Do you measure the 5 cups, and then blend, or do you measure 5 cups of the flour-like result? It looks like it's PROBABLY the former, but I'm not positive. I have made oat flour by blending oatmeal before, and I recall that 1 cup makes something like 3/4 cup of "flour," so I think the method you follow would affect the recipe quite a bit!

Thanks for any tips. For those who don't know what recipe this thread refers to, I've pasted it below.

Teddy

NEIMAN-MARCUS COOKIES (Recipe may be halved)

2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal
24 oz. Chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 8-oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)

*Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
*Cream the butter and both sugars
*Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with flour,
oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda.
*Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts.
*Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.
*Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies.

[ebobbitt]

Don't know if I'm doing it right but I measure and then put it in the food processor. I never measure it when I take it out so I don't know how much the "whirled up" stuff measures out to.

[Peeps]

Me too - measure first, then blend. That's what I've always done and it seems to work fine that way.

(Seems like it would be a pain to blend, measure, have to blend some more...measure again, etc.!)

[tanastaplo]

Thank you both! I agree with you, Peeps, that it would be a pain to do it the other way, but when it says "5 cups blended oatmeal" it's unclear -- I'd say, "5 cups oatmeal, blended" instead. Sigh. Perhaps we should start a thread sometime griping about unclear cooking instructions. Top of my list would be instructions that tell me to spoon out cookies onto a "cookie sheet coated with cooking spray." No. Tell me to spray the cookie sheet FIRST. Describing the cookie sheet that way, as the last clause of the instruction, is NOT helpful!

Anyway, thank you again for your quick replies!

Teddy

[Beth]

Originally posted by AD
The "real" Neiman-Marcus recipe (on their own website) is nothing like that huge recipe with oats. It has coffee and no oats, and I really liked it. It's actually lower in fat than many popular chocolate chip cookie recipes. I don't know where that oat recipe came from.

I think the one that has been circulated (the oat one that was in newspapers before the internet days) is the recipe Neiman's baked and sold about 15-20 years ago (I lived in Dallas and worked downtown back then -- as a mere child, of course), but they probably changed it -- whether to make it lower in fat, to modernize it and bring it into the coffee craze, or just to make it different from the one they got so much criticism for charging $250 for is open for debate.

[AD]

I found a website that tells about the two different versions of the recipe and where they may have originated. Although the recipe without oats may actually be from Neiman Marcus, it seems the "mythical" recipe (with the oats) came out first. Whatever the case, the story about the $250 is completely untrue.

http://www.pubrats.com/~nic/recipes/...sChocChip.html

[katygirl]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by AD
I found a website that tells about the two different versions of Whatever the case, the story about the $250 is completely untrue.


I kind of assumed the story was untrue. But the cookies (the ones with the oats) are soooooooooo good!

[JKS]

I've tried many other recipes, and I love these. I have only bothered to grate the milk choc. twice--I usually just add a couple extra cups of choc. chips--YUM!! DD is allergic to eggs, though, and 'Ener-G' egg replacer doesn't quite do it for this recipe

[Beth]

AD, I looked at that site and the note below the recipe. The claim that they only recently created a cookie recipe doesn't ring true with me, but then there is no date on that note. I bought a chocolate chip/oatmeal cookie in their bakery just off the restaurant in the downtown Dallas store at least 15 years ago and not too long before I saw the oat recipe in the newspaper for the first time. That's the only thing I know for sure.