The $250 Neiman Marcus Mrs. Fields Cookie Recipe

chocolate chip cookies

I have a thing for chocolate chips. It’s a big joke around here that I get nervous when I discover that I’ve run out of them.

Actually, it’s no joke.

My go-to recipes when I feel like baking are chocolate chip banana bread and chocolate chip cookies.
I was raised on chocolate chip pancakes, and I raised my kids on chocolate chip pancakes.
Homemade chocolate chip ice cream? Yum. Adding chocolate chips to store-bought vanilla ice cream? Nearly as good because chocolate chips.
After dinner I’ll occasionally grab a little handful of chocolate chips to satisfy a sweet tooth.
One of my favorite episodes of “Friends”? The one where Monica tries to figure out Phoebe’s grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.

via GIPHY

I have spent twenty six bajillion dollars on about forty nine million bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips. At least.

When it’s cookie time, I don’t exclusively make the Nestle Toll House cookie recipe. I have a recipe that’s a little more involved that’s been hanging out in my cookbook since around 1987. The title I wrote in was “Mrs. Fields’ Cookies”, but that’s not entirely accurate.

Back in the 80s there was a rumor that Mrs. Fields had sold her recipe for $250. The rumor was so rampant that her stores had a notice posted publicly, to deny it. Around that time the rumor changed a bit, to a story about how someone asked for a cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus and she was charged $250 for it. The whole urban legend can be found on Snopes.

I don’t remember exactly where I acquired the recipe, and whether it’s Mrs. Fields’ or Neiman Marcus’ or someone else’s recipe isn’t as important as its deliciousness. If your family enjoys chocolate chip cookies, you need to make these. Instant superhero status.

Speaking of superheroes, start pumping iron a few weeks before making these cookies. I nearly broke an arm mixing all the chocolate into the dough. Another note? A hand mixer is not ideal for this recipe; I’m not sure I’d try it without a stand mixer.

chocolate chip cookie dough

Now that I’ve issued the warnings, are you ready to take this recipe on? Do it. It’s a game-changer.

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4 Comments

  • Laurel Regan

    I still have a tattered copy of a copy of a copy of that recipe and story in my recipe files, passed on to me by a co-worker back in the 80s (long before any of us had e-mail addresses). Even then I was pretty sure it an urban legend, but it sounds like an amazing recipe nonetheless!

  • Elizabeth @ Guilty Chocoholic Mama

    I love it…someone else who gets nervous when her chocolate-chip supply runs low! 🙂 We joke in our family that, much as the military uses DEFCON “levels” to assess states of alertness, we use chocolate chip levels in our house: if we get down to only one bag, we’re at DEFCON 1. Thanks for sharing on BlogHer!