Agatha Winners!

I am overjoyed to announce that Mystery Lover's Kitchen has not one, but two Agatha winners! At the award banquet on Saturday night, Avery Aames won the Agatha award for Best First Novel, and Mary Jane Maffini won the Agatha award for Best Short Story. We're so proud of you both!





Alas, none of us were present when Julie Hyzy won the Lovey award for the Reader's Choice for Best Traditional Mystery earlier this year, but we're excited and so proud of Julie, too!





After all that excitement, cookies are a bit of a snore!


For reasons that I haven't quite figured out, chocolate chip cookies are in great demand at my house. One reviewer said of The Diva Runs Out of Thyme that Sophie had a seemingly endless supply of chocolate chip cookies. That used to be the case for me. I always had a roll of homemade chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. I can't quite put my finger on the reason, but now I'm always out of them! Horrors!

Since I'm baking all these cookies of the same type, I have decided to make it fun -- Krista's Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie Quest. The Quadruple Chocolate Chip Cookies I made at Christmas will be hard to beat, but sometimes you don't want something quite so chocolatey. Last time I posted Bobby Flay's recipe, with the Kosher salt that turned out to be such a terrific addition. I liked Bobby's recipe a lot.

Is anyone else watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? What an eye-opener. I've been looking for his healthy version of chocolate chip cookies but haven't found it yet.

Today's recipe comes from the Food Network Kitchen's How to Boil Water and is apparently the recipe of someone named Meredith.

What struck me about this particular recipe is how much they taste like Chips Ahoy. Which brings me to my theory that we often want food to taste familiar. Okay, well, not if it was something we hated. But people are always saying something doesn't taste like it did when mom made it. I wonder if we develop taste preferences based on what we already know. It's fun to try something new, but maybe familiarity of flavor is the reason that one of us loves a certain recipe and another thinks it's not quite right.

Among taste testers who tried both the Bobby Flay recipe and this one, we're tied. It's an even split. I found the Bobby Flay cookies to be chewier and these to be more cakey.

Food Network Kitchen's Chocolate Chip Cookies by Meredith

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed dark sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon fine salt
1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips, or chunks


Preheat oven to 350.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Cream the butter with the sugars. Add the eggs and mix well. Slowly add the dry ingredients and the vanilla. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Bake 12 to 16 minutes.