I know there will be some of you who will wonder why I find it necessary to make such a big deal out of chocolate chip cookies. Go ahead and wonder. The last time I made chocolate chip cookies was years ago and they didn’t turn out. Yeah! I know! Probably one of the simplest things there is to bake, and I just couldn’t pull it off! So when I decided to try again, it was not without some twinges of nerves and of course I had to chronicle the attempt.

Ingredients

I was wanting to cook something other than dinner out of a box, and I just so happened to have all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on hand. Flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla extract, 2 eggs, butter/margarine, chocolate chips. I would have used real butter, but my margarine was already softened and my butter was in the freezer. And it was getting late enough in the evening that I didn’t want to wait on my butter.

In a small bowl, combine 2 1/4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt. Picture taken without flash because if you try to take a picture of white ingredients in a white bowl, you just end up with a blinding white blob in the middle of the picture. Set this bowl aside.

In a large mixing bowl, put 1 cup (2 sticks) of softened butter or margarine. Softened is the key word. Do NOT melt it! Turns out, this may have been my mistake so many years ago when I attempted to make these cookies for the first time. Melted butter in chocolate chip cookies will leave you with wide, thin chocolate chip crunchies.

Add to this, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar.

Add 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Hopefully your brown sugar will be soft. It was at this point that I discovered my brown sugar had dried out, and I had a heck of time carving out 3/4 cup, and an even bigger difficulty trying to get those chunks to break up and mix into my butter and sugar.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Beat until creamy. If you had rock hard brown sugar like I did, this part might take a good amount of time while you make sure all those chunks get broken up. I was starting to fear that someone was going to bite into a cookie and find a quarter sized chunk of hard brown sugar.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating the mixture after each addition.

Next, you’re going to gradually beat in the flour mixture that you set aside earlier. Add it a little bit at a time, and beat it in.

Finally, you’ll dump in 2 cups (the whole 12 oz bag) of chocolate chips. Stir these in… you’ll want to switch to a spoon. I wouldn’t use the hand mixer for this unless you particularly like chocolate chips flung into your eyeball at high speed.

When it’s all mixed together, it’s time to drop spoonfuls onto cookie sheets. And eat a bite of cookie dough with my fingers. And wash my hands because I have a cold and I’m not making Chocolate Chip and Germ Cookies.

How large you drop them is entirely up to you. I took a picture of this particular pan of cookie dough because they were all small and fairly uniform. The first batch into the oven had some gargantuan cookies and some midgets. Slide them into an oven that’s been preheated to 375 degrees F.

Let them bake for 9-11 minutes, until they are golden brown. I like to take cookies out of the oven when they look like they could cook for another minute or two. They’ll continue to firm up a little bit on the pan, and I like my cookies on the softer side. After you remove them from the oven, let them sit on the pan for a couple minutes to cool.

The recipe calls for cooling the cookies completely on a wire rack, but unfortunately I don’t have one of those. So I make do with wax paper on the counter top. (And maybe put wire racks on my birthday wish-list. Never mind the fact that it’s not until August.)

My boss has eaten three of these cookies now, and people are surfacing from the depths of the building looking for some, so I’d say they turned out pretty well. Phew! The curse of the chocolate chip crunchies has been cured!

The Recipe
Chocolate Chip Cookies

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.) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

I haven’t been posting because I haven’t been cooking. There were a few trips out to restaurants and the like, but mostly just quick heat and serve things. I think the most exciting thing I made all week was chicken cordon blue from the freezer section and macaroni and cheese in a box. In my cancer pans.

A couple of people commented on my Macaroni and Cheese Casserole about the state of my pans. Yes, I admit, they are rather sad. Most of what I have is what is left out of one of those really cheap sets they have out at the beginning of every school year for college students. I’ve had it since I was in college. I’m honestly surprised that the pans have lasted as long as they have for being as junky as they are. Even I will admit that they are on their last leg, but I just don’t have it in me to worry about whether or not the gouges in the bottoms of my pans mean that non-stick coating is flaking off into food just waiting to give me cancer.

And frankly, I just can’t afford to buy new pans right now, no matter how much they are needed! If you’re willing to buy me a new set of pans though, I will gladly trade in my “cancer pans” for new ones!

This week’s Monday’s Menu is nothing too exciting… just the fixings for taco salads. What you see there is tortilla chips, cooked taco meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, sour cream and salsa. I make taco salads a lot because they are highly customizable! Got someone who doesn’t like lettuce? That’s fine, just leave that off of their plate. You can use salad dressing instead of sour cream and salsa. You can put as many veggies on top as you’d like– lettuce, tomato, green pepper, onions, black olives… You can make taco salads using chicken instead of ground beef. You can add refried beans, which I would have done if I hadn’t forgotten to buy refried beans at the grocery store yesterday! You can scale up the amount of meat and fillings to fit the group you have. Easy peasy!

The best part of taco salads for me is that because I live by myself, there’s always leftovers. They heat up really well, and I don’t have to worry about figuring out dinner for a couple of days!