FINALLY! Granny’s famous French Normandy chocolate chip cookie recipe is revealed... 

Following a beautiful morning or afternoon on the water, when we are making our way back towards the main Akaroa wharf, we offer our passengers on board some refreshing homemade baking – a tasty chocolate chip cookie. Through the years there have been many recipe enquiries and questions about the origin of this incredibly delicious cookie, and we feel it is now time to give (some of) the answers.

Enjoy our famous homemade cookie while taking in the scenery.

The recipe is from Gran – Owner's George Waghorn and Julia Waghorn's grandmother, and Pip Waghorn's mum. She passed away in 2020, aged – 94-year-old – and she was a direct descendant from the French settlers that arrived in Akaroa in 1838.

When Hugh and Pip started the business around 15 years ago, Hugh especially liked the idea of giving passengers a small treat to pick-them-up after all the adventure at sea. He, therefore, went to his mother-in-law who was known for always serving these delicious cookies.

She handed Hugh the recipe and he hardly left the kitchen (except when he was skippering of course) in those early years of Akaroa Dolphins. He was busy baking, adjusting, and modifying the recipe to meet the increasing passenger numbers on the boat, and to get the cookie “just right”.

Today Hugh is no longer on cookie duty. He has let go of that (and the skippering). The cookies are made by professional chefs in an industrial kitchen meeting all standards, rules, and regulations. It is still the same recipe though, with no additives or preservatives – still as “homemade” as if it was from your own kitchen.

Below is the secret French Normandie chocolate chip cookie recipe – modified through generations – carefully handed down – now to you (straight from Hugh’s memory, that is why it is a bit imprecise…with an opportunity for you to put your own mark on it).

This recipe is for 150 biscuits

8 cups of flour
2 cups of porridge or oats 
2 ½ blocks of butter
Sugar
2 ½ cups chocolate (add last so they stay chunky)

Mix it all ~ but do not overmix ~ if the butter gets too warm the cookies will be too flat. Bake them for 15 minutes, 180 degrees. AND SERVE! ~ Bon appetite!

Written by Emma Perrin

Photos and drawing by Chalita Aommy Klumjui