Baking is one of my most favorite things to do with our little ladies. We have spent countless hours baking together and, when I think about this house no longer being our home, the dining area where we enjoyed all the special things we have made together, is the space I think I will miss the most. I have been thinking a lot about the moments that shape us and I want to share a special memory of a mother and moment that made a lasting impact on the life I am living. I, like most humans, had no idea how how formative my junior high and high school years would be, nor the ways our relationships to our experiences and memories would shape who we are as adults. I mean, most of us maybe don’t realize how formative so many things were until we reach these years that I like to call our ‘retrospective years’.

I have this memory from our time in Maine where we were at my friend’s house and her mom was making a massive amount of chocolate chip cookies. She mentioned that she got the recipe from some kind of baker at maybe a large camp cafeteria or maybe church event, that part is cloudy, but the recipe made A LOT of cookies. She told us that she quartered the recipe but it still made dozens of cookies. I remember her laughing and saying, “but they will definitely get eaten”, and there was just this lightness to her. Her wearing a lovely dress, barefoot and baking all these delicious chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the day in between home educating her children… I mean, not really in between though, because baking and being together in the kitchen is actually one of the best parts of what makes home education so special, ya know.

Anyways, that moment made such a strong impression on my heart and helped shape the kind of mom I am and strive to be and the life I want to create for our daughters. I recently got to hug these special friends and this beautiful mother that made this impact on me hugged me and she told me how proud she was of the life I chose and am living. I was too emotional in that moment, but what I wish I would have told her was how big of a role she actually played in all of it. What a gift it is that she modeled love so well and that, even though our time living close to one another was brief, she gave me a kind of permission to live what we are living now.. Next time I see her, I am certain I will do a better job thanking her how she helped shape my heart. Because baking cookies barefoot in the afternoon with our gaggle of gals is truly one of the best things I have ever known.

With that, here is our go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe we modified from Pinch of Yum.

INGREDIENTS

• 8 tablespoons of salted butter- soft and melty but not melted all the way
• 1/2 cup raw sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1/4 tsp almond extract- almond takes them up a lot of notches we think
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt, maybe a little extra flaked salt on top, ya know
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips- I can’t explain the science, but our girls think the mini chips are best.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350f
• Cream together the sugars, butter, and extracts.
• Add the egg and dry ingredients and mix as little as possible until all ingredients the ingredients form into that perfect dough.
• Add chocolate chips- snack on some of those to resist eating the bowl of dough before you bake the cookies. Don’t eat all the dough. You can do it. I know you can.
• Roll into 12 balls, 10 if you couldn’t resist the dough or your children really needed to make sure you got the dough just right.
• Bake for 9-11 minutes. These are the kind you don’t want to over bake and want the tops to look just slightly brown, like maybe they’re not all the way cooked, and your husband might say every time you make them, “I don’t think they’re done”, but they actually are done and in about 30 minutes are just so gosh darn good.
• Enjoy with milk and your favorite humans and favorite music and maybe barefoot in your favorite dress for good measure.

A very big thank you to our talented friend Megan Maree Photo for taking these special photos, to The Honeybea Shop for letting us play dress up with this lovely dress, and to the special mothers who have shaped my heart.