Resolution.

It's nearly the end of January, and I've just now come up with a resolution for 2012, one that I'm really excited about.

In Houston, there's a somewhat elitist, somewhat sneaky little business that sells take-and-bake meals for busy parents who apparently don't understand the catharsis cooking provides. In addition to these meals, the woman who owns the business made some top secret "buffalo chip" cookies (hereafter BCCs), which she sold for a pretty ridiculous price, especially considering that the base for the cookies was bought in bulk and then embellished. Not cool, Madame Baker. I'm onto you.

IN ANY CASE. This semester, my little buffalo chip cookie, I will figure out your secrets. I will make many many versions of you and force you on my roommate, suitemates, floormates, orchestramates. I will conquer this ludicrous $1.25-a-cookie nonsense. I will discover your recipe, or something close enough to be a stunt double. And hopefully, come semester's end, you, the blog-bearing world, will have access to the fruits of my labor. Because no one should charge that much for a cookie. No one should be able to call "secret recipe" on a cookie that's not even made from scratch. Disgusting.

Here's what I know so far:

• The cookie does not spread when it bakes. It is a tall cookie, a beauty, more like a mound than a disc. 
• Cookies made with butter tend to spread more than cookies made with shortening. Cold dough spreads less than room temperature dough. 
• Alton Brown did an experiment with chocolate chip cookies, changing key variables to make them thin, puffy, or chewy.
• The texture of BCCs comes from some combination of oats, cornflakes, coconut, and chocolate chips, with additional help coming from any number of sources, such as pecans, potato chips, or rice krispies.
• They are delicious.

And now, a poem, inspired by Pippin:

We've got magic to do, just for you
We've got oats and 'flakes to bake
We've got cookies to form, ovens to warm
Apron strings to take by storm
As this recipe we will make


*Note to Mom: Any li'l buffalo chippers you want to send my way will most definitely prove useful as taste-testing subjects. Just sayin'.