The urban legend $250 cookies

The recipe:
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 (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
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 and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet..Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies..Recipe may be halved

The urban legend:
My daughter and I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie". It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and the waitress said with a small frown "I'm afraid not." Well" I said, "would you let me buy the recipe?"

With a cute smile, she said YES". I asked how much and she responded, "Only two fifty, it's a great deal!" I said with approval, "just add it to my tab".. Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus and it was $285.00. I looked again and remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00". That's outrageous!!!

I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them that the waitress said it was "two-fifty," which clearly does not mean "two hundred and fifty dollars" by any POSSIBLE interpretation of the phrase. Neiman-Marcus refused to budge.. They would not refund my money, because according to them, "What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the recipe - we absolutely will not refund your money at this point." I explained to her the criminal statutes which govern fraud in Texas. I threatened to refer them to the Better Business Bureau and the State's Attorney General for engaging in fraud. I was basically told, "Do what you want, we dont give a damn, and we're not refunding your money." I waited a moment, thinking of how I could get even,or even try to get any of my money back. I just said, "Okay, you folks got my $250.00, and now I'm going to have $250.00 worth of fun."

I told her that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250.00 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus... for free..She replied, "I wish you wouldn't do this" I said, "Well you should have thought of that before you ripped me off", and slammed down the phone on her.. So, here it is!!! Please, please, please pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of. I paid $250.00 dollars for this... I don't want Neiman-Marcus to ever get another penny off of this recipe....

Comments:
Here is a "true story" almost everyone has heard by now, generically known as "The $250 Cookie Recipe" and most recently associated with the Neiman Marcus company, though during the 1980s it was the bane of cookie diva Mrs. Fields.

If you hadn't figured it out already, it is not true, by the way. It's a classic urban legend -- a variant of a popular tale traced by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand as far back as 1948, when the ridiculously expensive recipe yielded a red velvet fudge cake belonging to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the asking price for which was $25.

The current adjusted-for-inflation version (reproduced above) is still making the email rounds and its popularity shows no signs of waning, even though it has been debunked repeatedly over the past two decades. To paraphrase the ancient Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served warm out of the oven."

As to the recipe itself, I haven't tried the cookies, but by most accounts it yields damn good ones (and plenty of them). No one knows whose kitchen it came from, but we do know it wasn't Neiman Marcus, whose restaurant didn't even sell chocolate chip cookies when this legend first began circulating. The company chefs did create a chocolate chip cookie recipe after the fact, however, which Neiman Marcus now distributes free of charge as an antidote, if you will, to the defamatory urban legend. Bon appetit!

The real thing:
NM Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder, slightly crushed
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 

Directions
Cream the butter with the sugars until fluffy.
Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract.
Combine the dry ingredients and beat into the butter mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Drop by large spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, or 10 to 12 minutes for a crispier cookie.
Makes 12 to 15 large cookies.