SIGH... Chocolate chip cookies

Ok, let's face it. Anyone who makes cookies is, at one time or another, going to have to face up to these. And the fact that, regardless of how good yours are "they aren't as good as my mother's." For a cookie that is, at its heart, so simple, there have got to be more variations on this guy than just about anything else in the standard cooking repertoire. What kind of chocolate? What kind of flour? Chewy or crispy? What kind of sugar? Nuts? Coconut? Dried fruit? And let's not even get into techniques. There are some recipes that call upon you to SLAM the baking sheet down on a counter when you take the cookies out of the oven (I SWEAR this is true. ). There are others that want you to put the tray on a bed of ice right away, and when all is said and done.... they still won't be as good as his or her mother's.

Of ALL cookies, I probably hate chocolate chip cookies more than any other. But again, if you cook, and especially if you bake, you're going to have to deal with them at one point or another.

Nearly fifteen years ago, I found "my" recipe. It is from an old issue of "Cooks" magazine. Now, there are excellent recipes for these cookies around, and perhaps the most famous one is the one on the back of the toll house chip package. Those cookies are really good, if you like yours soft, and buttery, almost oily. It seems that this is a style that a lot of people like. Not to my taste. The one that I like is a little chewy, but not too, and more of a scone consistency than a true cookie. I HAVE varied the recipe (of course I have), and I will explain why as we go along. And if you think you've heard everything about strange techniques, wait until you see the one in here. I THINK I know why it works, something about breaking gluten strands, but whatever it does, or doesn't do, it makes a good cookie. So, here we go.

You start with 2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour. The originnal recipe called for 2 1/8 cups of bleached.

1/8 of a cup. ARE YOU NUTS? That's two tablespoons. IF you happen to have a 1/8 cup measuring cup, fine. But if you're like me, you don't bring your tablespoon and the measuring cup to the flour at the same time. No, 2 1/4 is fine. The bleached flour is supposed to make a tender cookie. Wait a minute. What do you think they mean when they say "bleached." DUH. Aren't we supposed to avoid this stuff? No, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell "give me tougher cookies, just give me the birds and the bees". (I know. It's a stretch. Just use plain all purpose, ok?) You combine that with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and baking soda.

Now, melt 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter. In fact, do that while you're measuring the flour, because you want the butter to be at room temperature. This is important. I've tried to rush things and used it warm, and I wasn't happy with the cookies.

Yuo also need one cup of brown sugar, whatever kind you like, and a half cup of white sugar. You can mix those together. Finally, you need a whole, large egg, plus an egg yolk. Save the white for the hazelnut cookies I wrote about yesterday. And a tablespoon of good quality vanilla .And of course, two cups of chocolate chips. You can use whatever kind you like, but spend some money. I like semisweet chips or bittersweet.

Now, let's bake. You can use a mixer, but again, these seem to beg to be done by hand. Mix the melted butter and the sugar together. When it looks like the sugar isn't going to take up any more butter (about five minutes), then add in the egg and vanilla. Combine this, and then add the flour and stir just until the plain, white stuff is gone. Finally, stir in the chips.

Have parchment lined baking sheets ready, as well as a preheated, 325 degree oven. Now, here's where the weird technique comes in. Take scant, 1/4 cup balls of this (that's not a lot of cookies. Think four tablespoons worth). Take the ball in both hands and pull it apart. Then, rotate each half 90 degrees and stick them back together (you know I don't advocate witchcraft in the kitchen, but you'll thank me for this). You don't want to put more than about 10-12 balls of dough on the sheet, because they are going to spread.


Just like with the hazelnut cookies, use a doubled baking sheet in the hottest part of the oven, and bake the two sheets at once, for a total of about 15 minutes. At 8 minutes, reverse the trays, and reverse the positions, so that the top one is on the bottom, the bottom one is on the top, and for each tray, the front is now at the back and the back is at the front.

WHen they're done, let them cool. Warm cookies are overrated. The chips in these cookies never fully solidify, which is probably a good thing, because people like that sort of soft, unctious feel of chocolate when they eat them.

You'll get about 20-24 cookies out of this, which is a snack for some people, and they're welcome to it. I'll stick to hazelnut meringues.

Next time around, we continue with a side trip into chocolate land, with a cake that is the ONE chocolate cake I like.