Well, that I have found out is easy – a chocolate chip is not a chocolate chip when it is the no name brand from Sobeys…that’s when.

And I found this out – how you may ask? I will gladly share with you this very important piece of chocolate chip purchasing detail.

Last weekend I was coming home from a friends house late at night and realized that I had wanted to make cookies for a friend of mine…so, where do you go – Sobeys open 24 hours. All I have to say is they compensate for their staff’s 24 hour a day wages by the prices that they charge in that store. WOW!

I normally ONLY by either PC decadent brand semi sweet or Chipits semi sweet chocolate chips. I had already seen the Chipits at No Frills earlier that day for $7.19 for the largest bag they had. Forgot to add it to my cart and realized I didn’t buy them half way to my friends house.

The SAME bag of Chipits was $9.99 at Sobeys. Really? I couldn’t pay it….but in retrospect should have paid it, because I bought this bag of no name chips for $2.49 and then of course, had to buy the good stuff for $7.19 so I paid almost the $9.99 to get what I wanted. I digress….

I opened the bag last week….and tasted the chips….really, were these even real chocolate? I had already thrown out the bag and put them in my choco chip jar (yes I have a jar for my chips) so I can’t tell you what these were made of, but I can tell you that I dumped the whole jar in the garbage. They were NASTY!

So, now I have my chipits (the PC ones were sold out) and the holiday baking can begin. I know that I have a few houses I am invited to over the holidays and I was hoping to get a jump start to holiday baking. It hasn’t happened yet, and I am out of the town this weekend…so next week it is.

Here is a fool proof Chocolate Chip cookie reciepe:

2/3 cup of soft butter or margarine (do NOT use becel)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar (packed)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla

1 and 1/2 cup of flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
6 oz pkg of chocolate chips
1/2 c chopped nuts if desired.

Method:
Blend butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and stir into batter.
Stir in chocolate chips and optional nuts.
Drop from teaspoon onto an ungreased baking sheet about 2″ apart.  (I use a spray for the tray).
Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes
cool slightly before removing from tray

Additional Notes:
– for softer chewier cookies, bake shorter amount of time – my oven works out to about 7 1/2 minutes.
– you can make the dough and add all kinds of different things into the cookies to change them up – I have done white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries, skor bits, raisins and pecans.
– you can also melt chocolate and at it to the blended wet ingredients before adding the dry.

Enjoy….oh yeah, btw…the freeze well and are VERY GOOD to eat frozen! Seriously, don’t knock it ’til you try it….

Sweet dreams y’all…………….