Mixin the Nana Cookies

My Nana makes outrageously delicious chocolate chip cookies. When we were kids she'd bring a few dozen over every time she visited. My mom used to hide them and ration them out because they are so good, my brother, my dad and I would eat them all in one sitting. Sometimes after school, if we knew there were Nana Cookies in the house, we'd go scouting and search for them. If we found them, we'd hide them on mom! It became quite the sport!

Nana used to send me "care packages" of cookies when I was off at college. They were a favorite "late night munchie" of my friends. Everyone LOVES Nana Cookies. They are a part of our family and she's passed the secrets on to me!

Nana doesn't cook much any more. After all, she's 94 now! She did give me the recipe. It's your standard butter, flour, sugar and brown sugar toll house cookie-with a twist. The twist is she grinds the walnuts to an almost powdery texture so they're distributed throughout the dough. First the flour must be sifted so it's fluffy. Nana likes to cream the butter very thoroughly. An electric mixer is also good for this, it almost becomes whipped butter when it's done properly.

Nana always used a good stand mixer like the Hamilton Beach® Eclectrics® Mixer since the bowl is anchored well. When I use a hand held mixer, sometimes the bowl goes flying around. Nana still has a Hamilton Beach® Mixer that must be 50 years old. The new Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer is much better though. It's a lot quieter and more powerful too, offering 12 settings so you can "customize" your mixing.