CHOCOLATE CHUNK SPICE COOKIES

This is a very special recipe; it was prepared late on Christmas Eve in response to my children's incessant demands to make fresh cookies for santa.  After a hasty scan of all the cookie recipes in the EDBV book, this was the winner; it was the only one for which I had all the ingredients in my kitchen.  Though I did substitute (as author suggested in note) slightly less white flour for the barley flour I don't possess.  I did not think they would care for the cookie all that much given that its not kid-minded spice composition of cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, but they loved them.  My 4-year old went so far as to proclaim, "I do not want Santa to have any of these cookies, they are all for me and my sister!"  Upon further and sometimes rational discussion she compromised by agreeing he could have 1 cookie - 'he' consumed a half-dozen of the non-traditional-for-Santa Chocolate Chunk Spice Cookies.