I admit it. I am a cookie snob. Don’t bother serving me a cookie that requires removal from plastic, cardboard or both.
My cookie snobbery goes beyond flavor; though I have yet to find a store bought cookie that replicates the gooey, melty perfection of a cookie straight from the oven.
It is about the ingredients. My butter is from pasture-raised cows in Petaluma , California who graze on rain-fed grass. This is important to me. A pound of butter according to The Green Blue Book, has a water footprint of 3,602.3 gallons of water. A chocolate chip cookie recipe requires 1/2 pound of butter (two sticks) or 1,801 gallons of fresh water.
My butter has the same water footprint as a store-bought cookie but the water is green water, water that isn’t diverted from its natural cycle.
The eggs are from my backyard chickens. My ladies are on a diet of organic pellets, food scraps, grass clippings and the assortment of plants and insects they discover when I let them out to roam the yard.
The sugar and chocolate are fair-traded. I purchased a 20 pound bag of sugar from my grocery store at a bulk price and keep a small quantity in a mason jar. I stock up on fair-traded chocolate when it goes on sale. This helps to lower the price.
But in truth, I shell out the extra dollars for fair-traded ingredients to protect what I value–clean water, clean soil and workers treated with dignity. It makes for a sweeter cookie.
For the recipe visit Sunspire. Want more decadence? Turn your cookies into ice cream sandwiches with homemade ice cream.

They look so good, I bet they even taste better. The recipe on Sunspire is fairly easy, but where do you buy the chocolate chips in Ventura County?
I find my fair-traded chocolate chocolate at Lassen’s In Ventura. It unfortunate that my neighborhood grocery store doesn’t carry any fair-traded or organic chocolate.