Cook: Chocolate Chip Cookies
There are a few simple truths in life that cannot be denied. Black is always the New Black, when in doubt bet on the Blonde and everyone loves a Chocolate Chip Cookie.
Now, I hate baking. I hate it for several reasons. I never met a baker I liked. And baking requires stringent adherence to rules and formulas. That’s not how I roll.
But that’s the beauty of a Chocolate Chip Cookie, there is no right way to make one. There are so many different variants and twists to the recipe that its hard to say what a real Chocolate Chip Cookie even is?
So rather than go on a peyote induced vision quest to seek the meaning of COOKIE I instead just snatched up Toll House’s recipe as a starting point.
(I just don’t have that kind of time anymore)
Seriously, the Toll House recipe is the exact opposite of a State Secret. You can find it everywhere. Check under your couch cushion.
What you’ll need is pretty basic and fairly cheap too.
Chocolate Chips- There are so many different kinds. Pick whatever is speaking to you. I like to avoid sweetened ones if I can because there is so much sugar in these recipes anyway that its not really needed in the chocolate. But it won’t ruin anything either.
Flour– Don’t be pretentious, just get anything. You’re not making cookies for the Queen. She wouldn’t even want your cookies anyway. They call them biscuits.
Brown Sugar– Just get a huge bag. It lasts forever and you’ll be making these a lot.
White Sugar– Not racist
Butter– This is America. You won’t have a hard time here. Also, if you get salted there is no need to add salt as an ingredient. If you get unsalted, include salt in your shopping list. Also, what’s wrong with your life that you don’t have salt at home?
Eggs– at least two but they don’t sell them in pairs. Sorry.
Vanilla Extract– I have nothing clever to say about this.
Cinnamon– If you’re me, I stockpile the stuff. But there is no reason not to have some around even if you don’t have a crippling addiction like I do. This is not part of Toll House’s recipe.
Walnuts– Get a big bag of the shelled halves or pieces.
Now here’s where you can get inventive. Basically, anything that’s not a fish head can be thrown into the mix and it will turn out delicious. Peanut butter. White Chocolate, raisins, almonds, pieces of candy bars, M&M’s, Unicorn Blood, seriously whatever you want.
(Santa stopped, met the gaze of the vacant eyed cookie laying beside the fireplace and then silently escaped back up the chimney)
So step one,mix your dry ingredients in one bowl and your wet ingredients in another. You want to make sure everything is even distributed so really fluff this up good.
(Similar instructions will be found in my future article entitled Cook: Methamphetamine )
Next, get all your wet ingredients together except the eggs. This is where I added double the amount of vanilla. I like vanilla, adds a great smell that meshes really well with cinnamon. After that’s all together you can then add the eggs. Now, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet. Do it a little at a time so you can ensure that there is no unmixed ingredients. When its all together then you add the Chocolate Chips, Walnuts and anything that, and again I can’t stress this enough, is not a fish head.
(You should be about here ish. If not, throw the bowl against a wall and blame the nearest person to you for ‘ruining THIS TOO’ and then storm off. Get more ingredients and repeat the above steps minus this part. Unless you have the income to spare than by all means do this again too. It’s liberating)
So now you can start panning them up. Shape isn’t that vital and size doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do a penis-size reference here either. I’m better than that.
I used an ice cream scoop to at least get a consistent amount into each cookie and because standing around making tiny cookies all night is not fun. At 15 minutes a batch and a dozen cookies at a time it gets dull.
Don’t bother greasing the sheet. All that butter you added will keep them from sticking. Make sure you give the cookies their space too. Raw cookie dough, in addition to being delicious, obeys all the same rules as Beta fish. Put them too close together and all you’ll be taking out of the oven is blood soaked murder scene.
Crank it up to three fifty, or three seventy five if you’re a total badass like me, and stay near the oven. You have to watch these things. At the first sign of browning get them out and let them stand on the pan. Carry over heat will continue to darken them. You can get them on a cooling rack to if you have that kind of thing but if you take them out at the right time the extra few minutes on the pan won’t make that much of a difference. Aluminum pans lose their heat very quickly anyway.
And this is what you should be taking out of the oven:
Now why, If I hate baking so much, did I make these cookies you may be asking? I hope you’re asking anyway, it adds more drama. I did it because its one of those simple things that everyone loves. The house smells great after a few batches. Everyone loves a warm cookie and I bring them to my co-workers in the morning who will hopefully one day build a statue of me… or at least like me. Either is fine.
Joking aside, people love the simple things. A simple cookie like this is something everyone can relate to and bond over. Everyone had cookies made for them as a kid and when you take a bite of a home made cookie it takes you back, you start comparing it to mom and grandma’s cookies and bringing people to that place even for just for the span of time it takes to eat a cookie is the kind of thing I like doing.
Even if it means baking.
And that’s my approach to Chocolate Chip Cookies. I’d love to hear yours.
The Approach 