Want to bake up your own Mrs. Fields cookies for the holidays?
Good luck with that. Since the real Mrs. Fields used to live in Park City, and the company's headquarters are still in Utah, we'd like to think that Utahns might have an "in" as far as getting the real recipe. There are plenty of neighborhood cookbooks from the '80s and '90s claiming to have a "close" version of those buttery, chewy cookies.
But Debbi Fields never revealed the recipe, even in her own cookbook, "Great American Desserts." Like KFC's "finger-lickin' good" chicken, and Coke, the Mrs. Fields cookie is one of those corporate top secret recipes.
The quest for the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe first launched Todd Wilbur into his "recipe hacking" career 20 years ago. The author of "Top Secret Recipes" and nine other recipe-clone cookbooks revisited his attempts to clone the Mrs. Fields cookie in a recent episode of his show, "Top Secret Recipe" on CMT.
Wilbur was shown visiting the Mrs. Fields headquarters and other well-known Utah goodie spots — Hatch Family Chocolates and Ruby Snap Cookies.
The premise of Wilbur's series is that he has three days to recreate the secret recipe of an iconic American brand, such as Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, Domino's Pizza, KFC's chicken and Outback's Bloomin' Onion. Then brand executives and fans sit down to taste-test both the genuine recipe and Wilbur's clone to see if they can tell the difference.
I didn't catch the episode when it aired, but I was able to go to CMT's website and view it online. You can too, at www.cmt.com.
From talking to Mrs. Fields president Tim Case, who is also president of TCBY Yogurt, Wilbur found that the company uses "proprietary" chocolate chips and "proprietary" vanilla. Wilbur sought help in making a dark chocolate chip containing 65 percent cacao from Katie Masterson and Steve Hatch, known for their own TV series, "The Little Chocolatiers," at Hatch Chocolates.
Tami Cromar of Ruby Snap cookies advised Wilbur to try using Madagascar vanilla, which offers intense flavor.
Wilbur also consulted a psychic to try to track down the real Mrs. Fields. Although the show mentions this, Debbi and Randy Fields divorced in 1997. In 1998, Fields married former Holiday Inn president Michael Rose and moved to Memphis, Tenn.
In the end, Wilbur's cloned recipe was able to stump one of the three taste-testing judges.
Here's his recipe:
Clone of Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies
It's best to use a stand mixer for these cookies, if you have one, although a hand mixer will also work fine. The quality of your chocolate chips is a big factor in these cookies, so use the best ones you can find. If the dough is tacky (it sticks to your fingers), you should add a little bit more flour. Cookies will seem undercooked when they first come out of the oven, but that is exactly what you want for the perfect clone.
1 cup cold unsalted butter (cubed)
1 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
2 eggs
1 tablespoon Madagascar vanilla extract
15 ounces all-purpose bleached flour (3 cups)
11/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
1. Combine butter with sugars and salt in a large bowl using the paddle of an electric mixer on high speed until consistency of peanut butter.
2. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
3. In a separate large bowl combine flour with baking soda and baking powder. Pour this dry mix into the wet stuff and mix just until combined. Mix in chocolate chips.
4. Use an ice cream scoop to scoop out ¼ cup portions 3 inches apart on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
5. Place a 2½-inch ring mold (or biscuit cutter) over each portion of dough and press down on the dough with your fingers so that the dough is molded into a circle around the inside edge of the can. Place the dough into your freezer for 30 to 40 minutes.
6. Preheat a convection oven to 275 degrees (or a conventional oven to 300 degrees).
7. When you are ready to make the cookies, flip over each of the frozen dough pucks onto the parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake (use top rack for conventional oven) for 20 to 22 minutes or just until a couple of the cookies show slight browning around the edges. Rotate cookies halfway through cooking time.
8. Immediately slide the parchment paper with the cookies on it off of the baking sheet to prevent further cooking. Allow cookies to cool for 5 to 10 minutes before handling. Makes 20 cookies.
— Todd Wilbur, "Top Secret Recipes"
Valerie Phillips is the former Deseret News food editor. She blogs at www.chewandchat.blogspot.com. Email: vphillips@desnews.com