Chocolate chip cookies

(Before It's News)

At last for all you cookie-lovers, here’s the scoop on the chocolate chip cookies pictured on the masthead.

I’m in search of a recipe for good chocolate chip cookie. I’ve tried many over the years with varying success, but for one reason or another they just… miss the mark, I guess.

Well I just found a new recipe on a page called, oddly, A Girls’ Guide to Guns and Butter.

The recipe seemed simple enough, so I tried it… and ooh la la, they were delicious! And picturesque!

I’m not a huge chocolate fan, so I significantly reduced the suggested amount of chocolate chips in the recipe, but otherwise I followed it exactly. Below is the recipe, including the notes from the Girls’ Guide page.

• 11 T (5.5 oz, weight) salted butter, melted (hot is fine)
• 2/3 C light brown sugar (do not pack the brown sugar into the measuring cup but scoop it out gently and simply level it off – it should be loose and fluffy, or you will end up using too much and your cookies will be tough)
• 1/2 C granulated sugar
• 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk (if you don’t feel like separating your eggs, two whole eggs will work as well, resulting in flatter cookies)
• A dash of vanilla
• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 C dark chocolate chips (you can also use all semi-sweet or all bittersweet or any combination you like)

Bake at 325F for 12-14 minutes (in my oven, it’s 16 minutes).

Last night I made a fresh batch of these cookies, and tripled the recipe. The photos below represent the tripled amount.

I started with butter.

While the butter melted, I cracked eggs and separated some extra yolks as well.

Loosely-packed brown sugar…

…and white sugar.

Adding melted butter.

Mixing. The liquified butter makes things very, well, liquidy.

Baking soda and salt (I forgot to photograph the vanilla).

Adding flour.

The first time I made these cookies, I noted how loose the dough was, even with the flour mixed in. This is due to the liquified butter. Would it hold its shape when it was time to bake, I wondered, or would it blob all over the cookie sheet?

I added about a third or a quarter of the recommended chocolate for the simple reason that I’m not crazy about chocolate (yes, I know — heresy). Add as much as you wish.

By the time I was ready to put the dough on the pan, the butter had cooled enough that the dough did indeed hold its shape.

While the first batch of cookies was baking, I chopped walnuts. To me, that’s what makes for a superb chocolate chip cookie — lots and lots of walnuts. Sadly no one else in my family sees the light in this regard, so I usually reserve a portion of the dough for last, and load it with walnuts.

First batch (walnut-less) out of the oven, second batch in.

The evening’s bounty.

My husband suggested calling these Trollhouse cookies — which sent me into gales of laughter — but they shall remain nameless, I suppose.

• Saturday evening
• Let The Blooming Begin!
• Motorectomy & Head Transplant
• How to Sight in Your Scoped Rifle With a Single Shot
• From Blue to Grey
• A Year Later
• Minarettes and a new fence
• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Giveaway
• Vegetable Container Gardening: 7 Easy Steps To Healthy Harvests from Small Spaces
• March 2013 ~ What’s left of the garlic…