Neiman Marcus Cookies

When most people think of Neiman Marcus, they think of fashion, class and handbags. When I think of Neiman Marcus, I think of my daughter Lauren and her 2-year old self in a royal blue fringed bikini I bought on sale at Neiman's. That and cookies.

If you were an adult in the 90's, I bet you remember Neiman Marcus Cookies. You recall the story, don’t you? A shopper was having lunch at Neiman’s, fell in love with a certain cookie and asked the staff for the recipe which they promptly supplied to her? Then she received her statement and found that they charged her $250 for it? She was so enraged she made it her mission to share the recipe with the world via email. Apparently this cookie recipe urban legend has been around for more than 50 years and has been attached to various sources and companies including old cookbooks, the Waldorf-Astoria, and Mrs. Fields and has been passed on via chain mail (I hated those!), email and the Internet! Regardless of the source, these are some pretty great cookies. And I made half a batch today.

Neiman Marcus Cookies

2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups brown sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender to a fine powder)
24 oz. chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey bar (I used Callebaut milk chocolate.)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups chopped nuts (I used cashews.)
2 tsp. vanilla

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 or use a scoop like I did and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies. Have Fun!!!

Now if you read this recipe and said, hey now, this is not the Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe I have, you are on to something. There are two floating out there on the Internet. And Neiman's actually has a link to one of them. My friend Louise loves the this one the best and she makes them regularly for her customers (she is a caterer).

One thing we both agree on, it's a great idea to freeze this dough in scoops for future use. You can grab a cookie or two out of the freezer and bake it and have a fresh one any time. This recipe makes plenty to bake and plenty to freeze from the same batch.

I simply scoop the dough and place it on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and freeze the dough, uncovered, for two hours. Then I take the frozen dough balls and wrap them in parchment paper and bag in a Ziploc with a label that includes the name of the cookies and baking instructions (I add a baking time-range to include the original baking time up to 5 minutes beyond that to allow it to fully bake since the dough is frozen). Freezing this dough has always proven to be a huge hit in my house! And with my neighbors! My neighbor Megan is coming to pick up a bag of frozen dough today!