Chocolate Chip Cookies

[butterflydreaming]

My apartment is full of the heady smell of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. I did things a little differently this time, in the way that I put the ingredients together.

All my variations of chocolate chip stem off of the Tollhouse recipe, but I cut the sugar, add and change ingredients, that sort of thing. Usually, I do the standard cookie procedure: cream butter, add eggs, add vanilla; mix in dry. But when I do that, my batter always needs to rest; it has something to do with the way that I cream the butter by hand. The last time that L made gingersnaps, she didn't want to use shortening (hydrogenated oils are looked at with horror in this household), so she cut pure butter in with the flour, and the snaps came out perfectly. So I tried that, with the chocolate chip cookies this time.

I set out the eggs to warm, and cut the butter (unsalted) into slices. I used only brown sugar (half as much as Tollhouse) and then mashed -- not exactly creamed -- the butter & sugar together. I followed that with the flour, baking powder, and -soda. To me, cookies are a one-bowl recipe; I don't sift the dry separately, because that's too much work for cookies. Once I had a nice, flakey scone-ish mix of buttery flour, I added the eggs, a heavy splash of bourbon vanilla, and a few dashes of creme de cacao. (You can use a liqueur anywhere that asks for vanilla. It's dandy.) I'll write out the recipe for you at the end of this.

The cookies... came out better than I hoped. They taste more buttery than usual, and they aren't as dense as usual. They kept their shape throughout baking, and they baked very evenly. And they came off of the baking pan cleanly. A lot of times, there's an oily residue from the butter that has melted out during baking. I see that a lot at the place where I work (we bake our own pastries and such), and I conjecture that it's caused by over-creaming the butter.

Well, I'm satisfied. And I only baked off half of the batch.
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Take out 2 eggs and let them warm to room temperature until you're ready for them. (Buy the ones from cage free, free range, vegetarian diet-fed chickens. Yes, it matters -- on several counts.) Preheat your oven to 350 F.

In one bowl:
2 sticks (1 C) unsalted butter, cut into slices
3/4 C brown sugar
1/2 marcona almonds (opt.)

Smash these together with a large spoon. Yes, by hand.

Add in
2 1/4 C organic unbleached flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Lightly stir the dry ingredients together without mixing them into the wet. Once they are more-or-less mixed, turn them into the butter+sugar mixture until an evenly crumbly texture is achieved. Use your fingers if you need to. ^_^ Add:

2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (homemade bourbon vanilla if you're lucky*)
1/4 to 1/2 tsp creme de cacao
1 C (at least) bittersweet chocolate chips (I'm not using Nestle; Nestle uses vanillin! Artificial vanilla! The ones that I bought, Ambrosia, are from Costco, though not their brand, and impressively good.)

The mixture will look like it isn't sticking together. Let it rest for 5 minutes, then use the mixing spoon and/or your hands to form balls. Press into circles on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes, drop temp down to 300 for 4 more. You could probably just bake it at 325 for 10 to 14 minutes, but lowering the temp is what I did. Makes two-dozen, 2" diameter cookies.

Don't eat three of them, not even over several hours. You'll be sorry. One will do.
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*Homemade vanilla:

Pick a whiskey or bourbon. Cheap stuff is fine, but mid-range is better. Split 2 or 3 whole vanilla beans down their centers, and put them into the bottle. Write a label for it with the date, because you'll want to know. Wait at least a couple of months... it gets even better after years. (Makes a great gift, perfect for being forgotten at the back of a cupboard.) You can take the beans out after, say, 6 months, and use them one more time in another batch.

Comments

[enjae.livejournal.com]

That sounds fabulous. I'm adding this entry to my memories. :)