The beginning

I'd like to say I was born in the kitchen and had a knack for cooking early on, but the truth is that I married my first husband at 21 and was completely clueless. I always joked that if we could survive on spaghetti, pancakes, and cookies we would be just fine! I remember very early on in my life my Mom made these yummy chocolate chip cookies. I liked them but didn’t love them. Now if you put a cheesecake or a donut in front of me there was no doubt it was going to be demolished. My Mother gave me a recipe book for a wedding gift. She hand wrote all my favorites she used to make. I still have most of them today! I especially kept the cookie recipe and made them for years just as she wrote it for me many years ago.

As my family grew year after year, I spent more time in the kitchen. I started my own recipe book and keeping notes as I went along. I began experimenting with anything I could get my hands on. The internet changed the way I looked up recipes and my whole culinary world exploded. It was feeding my ADHD and my creativity kept improving. I was getting better at dinner and breakfast and still pumping out cookies for everything my kids did. We always loved making Christmas cookies. I made the dough from scratch. We would roll them out and cut each one with a Christmas cookie cutter. Baked to perfection then the icing nightmare began. Boy was it a mess, but each of my 3 kids made a handful of over-frosted, sprinkled works of art. Memories I will have forever.

As time went on, I was divorced, remarried and decided to tweak the cookie recipe a bit. I was blessed to have two more young cookie testers in the family. I discovered that certain flour and salt made a big difference. I cut back on the butter and made batch after batch critiquing each bite. Six years ago, I finally landed on my perfect cookie. Good chocolate to dough ratio, a bit salty, soft in the middle and a nice crust.

Perfection…

The kids begged for cookies! All my friends begged for cookies. I started to wonder if I could turn my cookies into something that I could share with the world? This is how Jeni’s Southern Homemade came to life. It all starts with the cookie. I can make other things like pies, cakes, baked breads, and muffins.

In the end, it begins and ends with the Sweet & Salty Chocolate Chip Cookie.