A Recipe from Florence Jones’ Recipe Box (1983)

About the Recipe

I woke up this morning with the feeling that it was time to look in Grandma’s recipe box again. In truth, I went looking for a chicken recipe (and Grandma made a lot of chicken). But sifting through the green box, I found this clipping tucked in. It’s covered in little spatters and stains, which means it got used and probably more than once. I ran to the store for some peanut butter chips.

Reader – these cookies might be one of the best I’ve ever made. I don’t like chocolate. I could eat the whole 4 dozen.

A few quick notes:

• I ran out of cocoa in the middle of making this and didn’t feel like running to the store. I used Penzey’s hot chocolate mix for the last maybe 1/8 of the cocoa needed. It worked fine. If you need to go this route, just make sure you cut the sugar back a little bit.
• The recipe says one bag of chips. Shrink-flation is real, so make sure you have 2 cups or 12 oz, which means you may need to buy 2 bags.
• Sadly, I don’t have a teaspoon cookie scoop, so I used my tablespoon scoop instead. I still got 4 dozen cookies out of it, but I did need to bake them for about 11-12 minutes.
• They are super soft when they come out of the oven, as the recipe says. Give them a minute or two before removing them from the cookie sheet. Trust that they’ll solidify well enough as they cool.

It occurred to me as I was nibbling one – these are kind of perfect for a Kosher household (which my Grandma and Zayde kept). Making them with margarine and cocoa powder meant they were pareve and could be used for any type of meal. Granted, they seem to be best dunked into a giant glass of cold milk.

For more recipes from my family recipe box, check out my Recipes from Grandma page.

About the Clipping

I can’t resist a note on this little clipping and the year it was published. The Hershey’s Easy Does It Recipes were published in the 1980’s in magazines and on the tins and bags of Hershey products. Designed for the ’80’s career woman, the goal was to make baking easy and accessible. I’m not sure that this recipe actually takes “5 minutes to mix!” but it certainly didn’t take long.

While there are more than 10 recipes, I can’t find a definitive answer to how many total there were. They were prolific though, and most vintage recipe lovers have at least one or two in their repertoire.

The Recipe!

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey’s cocoa
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 cups (12-0z package) Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips

Directions:

Cream butter or margarine and sugar in large mixer bowl. Add eggs and vanilla; blend well. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; blend into creamed mixture. Stir in peanut butter chips.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350*F for 8 to 9 minutes. (Do not overbake. Cookies will be soft. They will puff during baking, flatten upon cooling.) 

Cool on cookie sheet until set, about 1 minute; remove to wire rack to cool completely. About 4 1/2 dozen.