Chocolate Chip Cookies

Got some classic Nestle Tollhouse cookie recipe cookies here.


Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional--I left them out)

Preheat your oven 375 degrees while you get your ingredients ready.

Please, please, please, PLEASE don't soften butter in the microwave. Ideally, butter that is softened is basically room temperature. The best way to soften it is to cut the butter into small pieces and let it rest an hour before baking, assuming you can't just leave it out all day for some reason. Microwaving it melts random pockets of butter and doesn't soften other parts, so you end up with butter that's all wrong for making delicious cookies. So, plan your cookie baking in advance, as much as you possibly can so that your butter will be just right for giving you chewy, awesome cookies.

You'll need two sticks for this recipe:

With these sticks of butter, cream in 3/4c of plain white sugar and 3/4c of brown sugar. I prefer using dark brown to light brown whenever I can. I prefer the depth of flavor and color it gives to cookies baked with it. Also, I fairly recently bought some fancy-schmancy vanilla beans, made some epic cupcakes, and put the used bean in a baggie with some sugar to make delicious vanilla sugar. I like using that for, well, pretty much everything. However, it's hardly a requirement, and non-vanilla sugar works just as deliciously. Regardless of sugar used, add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the other "wet" ingredients, being the sugar and the butter, and get them all creamed together.

I didn't photograph the two eggs, but add them in at this point, mixing them in one at a time. You want to get a lot of air in this, so you want the butter particles well hacked up by sugar granules before you add the eggs, and the last thing you want is under-mixed egg!

Now, for the dry ingredients. Get the flour, baking soda, and salt mixed together. I'm really lackadasical about sifting flour, honestly. Flour sifting used to be a necessity, but modern flours are very thoroughly pre-sifted and are much softer than flours used to be, so I don't often bother. For very finicky baked recipes, I probably would still sift (you know the ones... Where you measure the flour by weight or risk baked good horror) but for something like completely foolproof cookies? Nah. It's almost traditional to do so, however, so if you insist on sifting flour all the time, you won't get judged by me. I also can't ever see myself baking finicky pastries, but if you do, let me know how it goes!

Add your flour in parts to the wet ingredients, blending completely after each addition. This does a couple of things: It gets your flour in thoroughly, so you don't end up with clumps, and it keeps flour from exploding all over the place when you start mixing. When you're done, you'll have something that looks like this:

Now, for the best part! Adding the chips! Two cups (or so, I think I had a little less, since I eyeballed it and I always seem to under measure stuff like that when I eyeball) of semi-sweet chocolate, please! I am usually all about the milk chocolate, and I've made these cookies with milk chocolate before, but they are burningly sweet unless the chocolate has at least a little bit of bitterness, so I strongly advocate semi-sweet.

Now, eat the dough right out of the bowl with your big, honking, wooden spoon. Kidding, kidding! Well, mostly.

Now, at this point, you can do two things: You can roll the cookies into balls and bake them up, or you can roll the cookies into balls and freeze the dough for later baking. You'd bake the cookies straight from the freezer (which can make for a thick, chewy, and delightful cookie!) if you chose the second option, and this way, you can have a ready supply of cookie dough whenever you get the urge for fresh-baked cookies.

I, however, am not that forward-thinking, so I baked them. How could I not? They look so GOOD!

The original recipe says nine to eleven minutes, at 375 degrees, but I suggest starting with seven minutes and adding time as necessary. Mine baked in about 7-8 minutes. Look for just a little bit of browning right around the bottom edges. They'll spread quite a bit, so don't focus on being particularly economic with your pan space. I always put too many cookies on a pan. Don't be like me.

Whatever, I have no regrets. LOOK at these!

Holy sugary deliciousness, Batman!

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies

Perhaps it's appropriate that I'm kicking off this blog with some cookies. I have a ravenous sweet tooth--ice cream, cookies, cakes, brownies, unholy combinations of all of the above... I want it all. Unfortunately, I'm poor and so whenever I indulge in treats, I usually try to take care to make sure that they're handmade so that 1) it means more when I DO indulge, and 2) it actually helps me avoid impulse purchases at the store. Which doesn't meant that I am a saint and therefore make NO impulse purchases, but it's a lot harder to blow $5 on cookies when you've only got $10 and have to feed two people for a week.

So anyway, here's some cookies! The recipe was taken from http://jamiescupcakes.blogspot.com/2008/06/peanut-butter-nutella-cookies.html which is a really nice blog with some really ace desserts. I wish I could take credit for coming up with this all by my lonesome, but sadly, I'm still very much a novice baker and as such, I'm just not brave enough to come up with recipes on my own yet. There is still time!

So, without further ado, here's how it works:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup peanut butter (unlike the original cook, I used creamy peanut butter. Obviously, either will do)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Approx. 1/4 cup Nutella (the original recipe says this is optional. I say this is blasphemy! VIVA LA NUTELLA!)

Like all cookie recipes, this is split between two mixtures: wet and dry, with the wet blended first and the dry added in. In this case, the wet ingredients are everything except the flour, salt, baking powder, and Nutella. Just slap it all in a bowl and whip the crap out of it! I suggest using a mixer that is NOT the mixer that I own, which was purchased from QFC for $20 and always feels like it's going to catch on fire if I mix anything denser than pure water.

I don't have a handy-dandy picture of the ingredients. Why? Because I'm lame. I'm sure you know what butter and flour and sugar look like. I'd even venture a guess that you know what peanut butter looks like. Of COURSE you do, or you wouldn't be my friend. Anyway, here's what it looks like as it's first coming together, as you're adding flour to it. Adding flour in three increments is helpful. You don't get flour everywhere and you get it all thoroughly mixed in without any trouble.

And here it is, looking luscious and tempting, pre-Nutella swirling:

And, of course, post-Nutella swirling. This is what love is made of, folks. Note: Nutella, in my experience, doesn't "drizzle" without a whole lot of help. In this case, help came in the form of 20 seconds in the microwave. You don't want to melt it and cause it to separate, but getting it just warm enough so that it flows rather than glops is really helpful for the actual swirling part. Not that Nutella glops aren't wonderful, of course. Nutella in any form is wonderful.

Now, stick that sucker in the fridge and let your dough firm up a bit. This will give you ample time to get your oven preheated to 350 degrees and do some dishes. Well, I did some dishes. What you do is your business.

Once your dough is cooled, roll it into balls and impose your will on them with your fork.

It's important to let all your baked goods know that you are their god and your ineffable will is not to be thwarted. Forks are instrumental for this.

Notice, too, that there is no parchment or pre-greasing on my pan. I don't believe in pre-greasing for cookies. They're 1,000,000 percent butter! No more grease is necessary! Perhaps if you brought your pans with you from the Peloponnesian War and they're made out of equal parts tar and taffy, some greasing is necessary. My pans are new-fangled and non-stick, so I don't do anything other than slap the cookies onto the pan and profit immediately. Why no parchment? I'm lazy, and cookie pan aftermath isn't exactly a whole lot of cleanup.

Now, get those suckers into the oven! I let mine go about 7 minutes, but my oven is kind of inexplicably hardcore. You want to see just a tiny bit of browning along the bottom edges, but don't let them bake any longer than that. Let them cool for a good five minutes or so before trying to transfer them off of the pan. They're peanut butter cookies, so they're pretty soft and crumbly and liable to fall apart on you.

But LOOK at them!

Arrange them in the pattern of your favorite ritualistic cult meeting and enjoy pure deliciousness. Allow your significant other/family member/roommate/faithful hamster to smother you with hugs for making these cookies.

Here's the link to the original recipe again, in case you missed it the first time. Also, her pictures are much more attractive than mine and I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due: http://jamiescupcakes.blogspot.com/2008/06/peanut-butter-nutella-cookies.html

These are TOTALLY milk and cookies type cookies. I can't imagine anything nicer with these than just that! And, like with pretty much any cookie, they're tastiest when they're still warm and slightly soft and ohmigodsodelicious. So give these a try and have a look-see at the original blog from which I pilfered the recipe. It's really quite lovely!