Chocolate Chip Woes

I love chocolate chip cookies. When I was little my grandma would always have some ready for us whenever we'd go over to see her - she used the basic Toll House recipe from the chocolate chip bag. They were soft and chocolatey and always cooked perfectly in her old 1930's oven. When I was in college, she would send me a couple dozen cookies packed in an old metal Hostess fruitcake tin. (I still have a couple of the tins, I keep my sewing supplies in one of them.)

But every single time I try to make chocolate chip cookies, they turn out wrong, even if I do exactly what the recipe says. The first batch is always too brown and crispy, so my husband won't eat any of them (he only likes chewy cookies). So I take the cookie sheets out sooner and the next batch is better, but I've never managed to make them like Grandma did.

I've tried using butter, margarine (she always used margarine), half butter/half Crisco, you name it. I switched from artificial vanilla to the good stuff. I've sifted/not sifted the flour. Tried different brown sugars. No matter what I do, they are never right. And it frustrates the heck out of me. The only thing I haven't tried is cooking them in a 1930's oven.

I think I'm finally getting around to accepting that they may not ever be as good as Grandma's. But I'll keep trying. (And I will still eat them.)