Cookies: Chocolate Chip

In college we always used packaged cookie mix (just add egg and water) for the all so popular classic chocolate chip cookies. They made the dorm lounges a cozy place for friends and dormmates. Now that I have more storage in the apt I wanted to try more recipes from scratch.

Got a book at borders the other day titled: The Cookie and Biscuit Bible. The cookie bible included mostly made from scratch recipes, some that I recognized (sugar, lemon, ginger, oatmeal) and a lot that I do not.  

ingredients (for dozen cookies)

-half cup soft butter (1 stick)

-half cup sugar

-1 egg

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-1.5 cups of flour

-1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

instructions

1. preheat oven to 350 F

2. cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy

3. add egg, vanilla, flour and mix

4. fold in chocolate chips

5. drop cookie dough in spoonfuls, press lightly with folk

6. bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown (we needed it for much longer like 15 min. hm....)

7. cool on rack and serve

Future modifications

//I will try to add baking soda and use a combination of brown sugar and white sugar. They will probably help the cookie become more chewy and less crunchy. 

//Alton Brown's recipe Alton's recipe includes baking soda, salt, brown sugar, and milk which were all absent from the recipe I used. it could be good to experiment. Also will remember to chill dough before cooking.

PB&J Cookies

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookie Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray



Cook Time: 15 minutes
Yield: 12 cookies

Ingredients:
-1 cup smooth peanut butter
-1/2 cup light brown sugar
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 large egg
-1/4 cup fruit jam (any other jam works too, you don't need to measure this out, just have the jar ready)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Lightly grease a cookie sheet with butter.
3. Combine in a medium mixing bowl 1 cup smooth peanut butter, brown sugar, baking soda, and egg.
4. Roll into 12 balls and evenly space on the cookie sheet.
5. Slightly press cookies down and make a small indentation with index finger. Place 1 teaspoon jam in the indentation.
6. Bake cookies for 15 minutes.
7. Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes and transfer to a wire baking rack to cool completely.

Note: Those cookies are so easy and so yummy that I recommend it even to people who are not fans of baking. You can substitute jam with Hershey's kisses. Just add them as the cookies are cooking.

First Cookie Attempt

intro
Inpired by G.'s delicious cupcakes with frosting which he made totally from scratch (including frosting), I decided to bake for the first time this year. G., if you're reading, please send me your perfected recipe whenever you have it! Before you move on, let me just warn you that a lot of this experiment was driven by desperation and laziness. Actually, let me give you the recipe first. You can read the long ramble later. I'll upload the photos (not so snazzy) on a later date.

ingredients
-a little less than 1/2 cup of oil (the recipe called for a stick of butter, which I had, but I didn't have the heart to use it all up just on some cookies, big mistake...)
-crushed oreo cookies (I crushed them with my bare hands)
-walnuts
-1 cup of flour
-3/4 cup of sugar
-1 egg

directions
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix everything well.
3. Grease cookie sheet.
4. Scoop out mix with a spoon and drop onto sheet. Leave enough space between cookies. I made about 7-8 cookies with the recipe.
5. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
6. Let cookie cool and then serve.

story/rambling
Last time I baked was some year ago, the item was probably some sort of cookie, made from cookie mix in a box. At the time I had people bake for me, and being spoiled is awesome. Unfortunately for the baker, I max out at 2 cookies, which meant a lot of left overs--cold, hard cookies. One of my favorite parts of baking is actually smelling the fresh cookies being taken out of the oven. My least fav. part has to be clean up. But clean up is my least fav. part of cooking anything!

Today after being inspired to bake, I figured I should get a cookie mix, something very basic and very simple, like chocolate chip cookie mix. Obviously I had forgotten that Duane Reade is not exactly like CVS, the latter actually carried cookie mix (or maybe I'm mixing it up with Safeway and Vittles). The Duane Reade didn't have anything I was looking for and I was too lazy to walk to another supermarket. At that point I really wanted to put the baking project on hold.

Then it was around 10:30 and I was inspired to look up chocolate chip cookie recipes online. Some of them are pretty simple and I decided to modify one and create my own. I didn't have chocolate chip but I did have oreos and walnuts. So I used them. I also halved the recipe so I won't have too many left over cookies. The rest is history.

Lessons for future cookie baking: use butter, bake until brown, get a better spatula to remove cookie from sheet easier.