Chocolate Chip Cookies

When the holidays are approaching, I always get the urge to bake copious amounts of cookies.  Cut-outs, jam thumbprints, pecan sandies, snickerdoodles and especially my infamous pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting.  I figured I would feed the urge and knock another of the 101 Classic Recipes off the list and kill two birds with one stone and make recipe 80 - Chocolate Chip Cookies.  The recipe includes the ingredients listed in the classic Toll House Cookie recipe.  A bit of an aside - if you have ever wondered why they are called Toll House Cookies - it's because the recipe is from the Toll House Restaurant in Massachusetts, where Ruth Wakefield first made them in the 1930's (find more information here). 

The ingredients are:

2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp kosher salt
16 tbsp unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg yolks (save the whites for breakfast)
9 oz bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped

Full disclosure - this is the first recipe that I completely screwed up and had to make again.  I can blame it on bad lighting or smudges on my glasses, but I misread the recipe and used 1/4 cup of both dark brown sugar and sugar, rather than the 3/4 cup that the recipe calls for.  I even noted to my wife, "I can't believe these cookies use so little sugar."  The cookies that resulted were super dry, almost powdery when you bit into them. More like dog biscuits than cookies.  When I re-read the recipe and tried again. All photos are from attempt #2.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and whisk together the flour, soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside.  Combine the sugars, vanilla and butter in a mixer and beat until fluffy and smooth (and mighty tasty...I can't help but munch on the dough at each phase in the recipe, it just smells so good!).  creaming the butter/sugar should take about 3 minutes.

Then add the yolks, two at a time, beating completely between each set.  Add dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and divide into 3 pieces and flatten into a 4 x 6" rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.  I don't usually keep a ruler in the kitchen, so the pieces may have been different sizes, but I'm more of a "eyeball it" kind of guy anyhow.

With the dough in the fridge, I set to chopping some chocolate.  I'm a big fan of labor saving devices.  You saw the Kitchen-Aid mixer (my second love, next to my wife) and I'm also a fan of the microwave, slicers and my food processor.  I realize that I have an unhealthy connection to my kitchen tools and utensils, just ask me about my wooden spoon, cleaver and dough blade.

I chopped the 9 oz bar of chocolate into thinner bars and tried to chop it in the food processor using the chopping blade and the results were less than astounding.  Because of the hardness of the chocolate and the fact that the pieces bounced around the processor bowl, all I got was big hunks of powdery chocolate.  I dumped it out onto the chopping block and went at it with the knife.

After the dough had thoroughly chilled, I placed one layer of dough on the floured counter and covered with half the chocolate.  I then laid the second layer of dough on that, followed by the remainder of the chocolate.

Finally I placed the final layer of dough on top of the pile.

Using a floured rolling pin, I rolled the pile out to the recommended 9" x 6" x 1 1/2" rectangle and using a 2-inch round cut out the cookies and placed them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, spaced 3" apart.

After munching on some of the smaller scraps, I bunched the survivors...I mean remainders, and rolled them out to 1 1/2" thick, cut out cookies and placed them on the sheet.

I baked them for about 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the cook-time, and they came out golden brown.

It's tough to screw up chocolate chip cookies...says the man that screwed up this recipe once, but these were pretty good.  Hand chopping the chocolate caused there to be chocolate morsels of varying sizes in the cookies and because of the way the cookies were layered, there was chocolate in every single bite.  Some bites you would get a swirl of chocolate, possibly from the smaller, powdery chocolate.  Other bites you would get a fantastic, gooey pocket of sweet goodness.

They were good, but I'm not sure if they were worth the extra work of chilling the dough, layering it and rolling it out.  I could have been eating cookies 30 minutes sooner if I'd just dropped tablespoons of dough on the sheets (and they would have been a bit chewier too).  I believe that the chopped chocolate would still have the same wonderful effect on the cookies.

As for the response of my wife and kids, they didn't need to tell me that they liked them.  The fact that cookies kept disappearing off the cooling racks was comment enough.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - Schuler  Version

 

 

Credit: Todd Coleman

Over the next few posts I will be writing about making a bunch of recipes, but this will be my last dessert until I make Croquembouche for our Christmas party.  I'll also be making a few of the past recipes I've blogged about (Ful Medames and Gougeres for sure).

Thanks for reading this post - hopefully you enjoy the cookies as much as my family did!

15 down, 86 to go!

Peanut Butter Cookies

As I continue to catalog the ingredients for my 101 recipe challenge (see original post), which is taking much, much longer than I originally thought it would, I am trying to continue to make recipes to keep myself on a pace of at least 2 a week to make my deadline of August 3rd.  I will have to make 3 dishes during some weeks, but until I get ahead of myself in preparation, 2 should keep my head above water.

I had originally planned, and purchased ingredients for, Senate Bean Soup but life has gotten in the way a bit and I haven't had the time needed to prepare and enjoy the soup.  Sure, I could have made it at 10:30 at night, but that's not the best time to have dinner.  I had planned to make it over the weekend, but instead I had the opportunity to make a dessert for a football party at a friends house (Go Pack Go).  I chose to make recipe 84 - Peanut Butter Cookies.

This recipe for peanut butter cookies was pretty standard (flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, peanut butter, vanilla) and it took me about an hour and a half to make a batch.

The recipe first calls for whisking together the flour, baking powder and salt and setting aside.

Next, using an electric beater, I combined the sugars and butter, beating until fluffy (about 3 minutes).  First - 3 minutes seemed like an awful long time, and second, I'm not sure if I would have classified the result I got as "fluffy".  Mine ended up more like the consistency of wet sand.  Honestly, I probably could have made mud pies out of it.  Delicious, buttery mud pies, but mud pies none the less.

 

 I then added the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly adding each.  Then the peanut butter and vanilla, beating until they were combined.

Taking a tablespoon, I took the dough and made dough balls that ended up being about 1 1/2" in diameter.  I placed them on the cookie sheet with 2" separating the dough balls and pressed them with a fork making a criss cross pattern.

Off they then went into my semi-faithful oven, preheated to 350 degrees for 12 minutes, with a rotation of the tray halfway through the cook time.  The recipe called for parchment paper, which I did not have, so I cut the bake time by a minute to make sure they didn't get too browned on the bottom.

As the cookies came out of the oven, I couldn't keep them in the kitchen.  As soon as they were even close to cool, my wife and kids started to grab one whenever they walked though and I'm sure that they made a few extra trips.  The cookies were nice and chewy, with a peanut butter flavor that was satisfying, but not overpowering.  The cookies had a little bit of buttery flake on the edges, a little like a pie crust.  The recipe I usually make calls for a dusting of granulated sugar on the dough balls prior to pressing with a fork, so these cookies were slightly less sweet than I would have liked.  Kim (my wife) rated them 7.5 out of 10.  A Hershey's kiss planted in the center of the cookie would have probably landed me a 10 (her all time favorite Christmas cookie is the Peanut Butter kiss).

My Peanut Butter Cookies

Saveur Peanut Butter Cookies

The only issue that I really had with the cookies was in the days after I made the cookies.  They dried out a bit and became really crispy - almost like shortbread cookies.  They didn't taste any worse, but I am more of a fan of chewy cookies than crisp cookies.  It may have been due to not having the parchment paper, or possibly just how these cookies "age".  Maybe they don't usually last that long.

Another idea for these would have been to make a Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwich by slathering on some strawberry preserves and finishing up with a second cookie.  Mmm...will have to try that next time.

I'd love to get your favorite Peanut Butter Cookie trait, story or obsession.  Feel free to post!

I've picked a few recipes and ingredients for the next week - in no particular order: Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, Senate Bean Soup, Egg Cream Soda, Spaghetti Carbonara and Elvis Presley's Pound Cake.

I will also post some interim items based on the fun things I find during the cataloging process (like the inordinate amount of eggs and onions I will be using) and the planning process.

Two down, ninety-nine to go!