The way to love someone
is to lightly run your finger over that person's soul
until you find a crack,
and then gently pour your love into that crack.
~Keith Miller

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

THE family cookie recipe ... yes chocolate chip!


Heat oven to 350.
Everything goes in to one large mixing bowl.
  • 1 stick of sweet cream salted butter (at room temperature)
whip it with a big fork 'till fluffy
  • 1 Tablespoon (C uses less but that's not a typo) Authentic MEXICO VANILLA

whip it in to the butter
  • 1 cup of white sugar
  • 1/4 cup light brown sugar (packed!)
whip both in to butter till smooth
  • one egg (use the best eggs you can find)


cream the egg in to the butter sugar mixture

  • 1-1/2 cups of flour
  • 1 scant teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
put the flour on top of the sugary ingredients, then the soda and salt
"fork" the dry ingredients together
before combining all together by hand (with that same big fork)

  • 1 cup chocolate chips (or pieces) or combination or substitution of M&M's, toffee brittle, white morsels, peanut butter chips, whatever you prefer.
  • 1 cup of nuts - I love to use pecans, but salted macadamia nuts are great as are cashews!
combine all, spoon out cookies on to an ungreased cookie sheet and cook at 350 degrees for 15-17 minutes.  As soon as you can smell them they are probably done.  Cool and enjoy!
~makes 26 pretty big cookies~




Subtle variations to your cookie recipe can make the difference between a thin and crispy cookie versus a soft a chewy one.

Brown Sugar.  Use a high ratio of brown sugar to white sugar.  Instead of using one cup of white sugar, try 3/4 cups of brown sugar combined with 1/2 cups of white sugar.  What makes sugar brown?  It is molasses.  Molasses loves moisture (a chewy cookie's best friend).  

Shortening.  Use shortening over butter.  Shortening melts at a higher temperature than butter, giving the batter time to rise and retain moisture.   If you want to retain the butter flavor, use butter-flavored shortening.  Alternatively, you can split the difference (use half butter and half shortening).

Eggs Yolks.  Add an egg yolk to the recipe.  Egg whites dry out quickly when baked, causing you to lose needed the needed moisture for your chewy cookie .

Baking Powder.  Use baking powder over baking soda.  The cookie will spread less, since powder is more acidic than soda.  The thinner the cookie, the greater the moisture loss.

I like thin and crispy cookies.
Adding "extra" vanilla makes my batter slightly less dense.


4 comments:

vanderleun said...

I like them thin and crispy too. They soak up and hold the milk in cold little cells surrounded by massive goodness. My little essay on my family's cookie is at:

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/higher_educatio.php

I think I''l bring it back.

DeAnn said...

That's a fun story Gerard. I'm looking forward to trying your momma's recipe!

GretchenJoanna said...

Thank you, DeAnn. I think you may have convinced me to bake cookies tomorrow, even if they aren't chocolate chip. I haven't done any of that in a year or two :-(

I like my chocolate chip cookies soft and chewy, but my peanut butter cookies crunchy, and I think the latter might be what I make tomorrow, because I have the ingredients (and the craving)!

DeAnn said...

Ah - crunchy peanut butter cookies! I think I love cookies! I had forgotten that. Sometimes my momma smushed Hershey's Kisses right in the middle of peanut butter cookies before the sheet went in to the oven. I had completely forgotten that! And ... it's worth remembering. Okay - first Mrs. Van der Leun's cookies then some crunchy PB's some with big kisses!

Check out his 9/11 poem, The Missing, - here:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/terrorwar/the_missing_4.php