The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last I checked, nobody can really say that they 'don't like chocolate chip cookies'. Maybe some people can say...well, they are not my favorite cookies, but really now, who can resist these buttery, all American, heaven-on-earth morsels?



But not every recipe results in the best chocolate chip cookies. I think you would agree. Some recipes result in cake-like cookies, and some are too crispy, or plain unpalatable. We have made some of those ourselves, and have eaten far too many to know why we even bothered.



Besides the fact that these are the best chocolate chip cookies that I have ever made, I really like it that the recipe asks for melted butter, and not room temperature butter. I lack patience, and sometimes planning... So to have the butter to ready for the room-temp baking process can be tough. To be able to melt the butter and add to the recipe, and have the best cookies in less than 30 minutes? Brilliant.


Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe from Gooey Chewy Crispy Crunchy

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 lb unsalted butter, melted and still warm
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar, lump free
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips


Equipment: 

2 cookie sheets, ungreased or lined with foil, dull side up

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and mix together thoroughly.

In a large bowl, combine the melted butter with the sugars, vanilla, and the eggs. Stir in the flour mixture just until all the dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in the chocolate chips. If possible, let the dough stand for 1-2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven.

Scoop rounded tablespoons of dough and place them 3 inches apart on the ungreased or lined cookie sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until the cookies are just lightly brown on the edges. Remove from the oven and let the cookies firm up on the pan for 1-2 minutes. Cool completely before storing or stacking. Can be kept in airtight containers for several days, but best eaten right away!

A winning dough recipe

I was weeding in the new garden when the phone rang. Balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder, I kept on working the soil. The lady on the other end was calling from Cooks Illustrated, a magazine for which I actually have high regards. So instead of politely declining without hearing the rest of the first sentence, I listened on.

The lady, for an unknown reason, wanted to send me two things: The Best of America's Test Kitchen magazine, and More Best Recipes Cookbook from the Test Kitchen. The former is complementary, and the latter is an optional purchase. I can have it (for a fee), or send it back (if I don't want it). Because they are coming from a source I trust, I accepted without much thought, hung up and kept weeding.

Weeks went by, and I completely forgot about this phone conversation until I found a large package outside the door one afternoon. The cookbook is a decent size tome, full of recipes, related helpful illustrations, and stories about each dish (just like in the Cooks Illustrated magazine).

I have been hesitating to go one way or the other about this cookbook. By nature, I am a horrible recipe follower, so another cookbook around here may just collect dust like the rest. But it takes an effort to send it back as well.

At any rate, tonight I wanted to make pizza since I was strangely inspired by the growing rustic arugula in the garden. I opened the new tome, and landed at Pissaladiere. I zoned into the dough making part as each time I make a pizza, I seem to go about it differently.

This one was nice and easy, so I went with it, and actually followed all the steps of the dough making part! The result? Brilliance. I might even stick to this one dough recipe from now on. And just because of this 1/10 of a page of success, I might just keep the book and pay for it.



Pizza Dough
2 cups all purpose flour, with extra for dusting the work surface
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup warm water (110 degrees)

Mix all the ingredients together (by hand, or food processor). Shape into a ball and let it rise. After about 1.5 hours, gather the dough, knead with a little extra flour, and divide into two balls. Flatten dough until desired thickness, and it is ready to become the base for your next best pizza! Bake at 500º for ~ 10 minutes or until brown and crispy.

The other chef

When I saw Jim studying the cookbook the other day, I knew something was up. And honestly, I was a wee bit worried.

I can be rather territorial, especially in the part of the house that I find myself spending most of my time: the kitchen. I am occasionally joined by the younger members of the family (when they respond to my invitations). But it's not often that the oldest member of the family lingers in there.



And when he does linger, he is up to something rather grand.

It's true: when Jim cooks, or bakes, he is often doing something much more complicated than I normally am. For instance, the man made Beef Bourguignon a la Julia a few years ago. He even made beef consomme to go with it as an appetizer. That impressed even our Chef-friend whose jaw dropped when he found out that indeed it was Jim who made it, not me.

Jim's also known to make homemade Caesar salad dressing, homemade rye bread, and my favorite, lemon pudding.

These masterpieces, fortunately or not, occur once in a blue moon. And so, the kitchen (wherever we happen to be living) remains my domain.



Anyhow, the other day when he was studying the cookbook, and reaching for cake flour, and asking me to make him a pie crust (I just need one, he said), I knew to get out of my territory.

After a while of activity, and help from a little one, what did I see rising out of the oven, but a beautiful Banana Cream Pie, with a beautiful meringue top and all.



Not only that, the product tastes amazing, and was enjoyed by all. I think I even heard one of the kids saying:

Daddy, you are a really good cook!

Ah, yes, he is... But the kitchen is still mine!

The winning Chocolate Cake Recipe

Before the cake bake-off, I tried a few recipes for chocolate cake. I am not a natural baker, partly because I have a hard time following a recipe! I have a tendency to tweak it, substituting ingredients if I don't have exactly what the recipe asks for.

For this particular event, I wanted to make a flourless chocolate cake at first, which I tried to make, but it did not quite turn out as planned (I don't have an electric mixer, which may be part of the problem). So I started playing around with the three recipes, ending up with this one!

In all honestly, my husband's cake was really quite good. I can see if he can share his secrets (I think he made up his as well). For now, here goes:

Preheat oven 350F, and set out a 9" spring form baking pan.


Cake Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

4 eggs, separated

3/4 cup sifted self-rising flour (with salt already added)

8 oz semi-sweet dark chocolate, broken into small pieces

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)

½ cup coffee

Melt chocolate  and butter in a double boiler until all melted together.

Beat egg whites until firm, set aside.

Combine egg yolks, sugar and coffee. Mix well. Add the chocolate mixture, and then the flour.

Slowly and gently mix in the egg whites. Fold this into the batter until all mixed.

Line a 9" springform pan with parchment paper, and butter the pan well. Pour the cake batter into the pan. 

Bake at 350 F about 30 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Lather with chocolate frosting and decorate with fresh raspberries. Serve with homemade whipped cream or a little vanilla ice cream.

Ginny's Chocolate Frosting

2 Tablespoons cocoa powder

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons coca cola or pepsi

1 cup confectioners sugar

Melt the butter with the cocoa powder, add sugar and coca cola. Bring to boil, and take it off the heat. Add confectioners sugar and whisk until smooth. Poor and spread over your chocolate cake,

Seventh Birthday

Hard to believe: our children are now seven years old! They wished each other a Happy Birthday upon awakening.  It's called being twins!

This pair of twins has changed life as we knew it, in the best ways possible.



In celebration, Jim and I each made them a cake.

Better yet, we had a cake-bake off!

The competition was fierce (not really), and fun.  We had several judges who tasted each cake and voted. I came out the winner (really?!), even though I really, honestly, think that my husband's cake was far superior. Anybody interested in the winning cake recipe? I made it up myself, you know.

I wonder if this is going to be come a new tradition? It could very well be, but what was more fun was to have our children be surrounded by loved ones on their special day. How appropriate that it is one day after Thanksgiving.

Needless to say, we are all thankful to have them in our family. Happy seventh birthday, Claire and Momo! We love you so.

Thanksgiving Pies

A Nantucket Cranberry Pie and a traditional Pumpkin Pie. Michigan, we are ready for you!
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate this day. More on being thankful in a bit, as you know, the big (most thankful of all) day is almost here!

Easy Popovers

How can one not like popovers? Just the name alone sounds fun, and the real things are even more fun because we can actually eat them!

I used to have a popover tin (it feels like in my last life, maybe in Maine?). With all the moving around, who knows where it is now. I do hope that whoever has it is using it to make these easy and delicious and kid-friendly pastries.

I was re-inspired to make them recently after reading this post, on a cold November day (which quickly went away for about a week when we had our glorious Indian summer days). I had forgotten how easy and quick and fun making popovers was until I made it again with the kids.

"We love them Mommy! Thank you for making them Mommy!" They both said while biting into their warm, steamy popovers, with the hollow middle filled with Nutella (although... everything is good with Nutella).

We liked them so much we made them again the following day, with a little more butter in the batter this time.

Popovers
Adapted from this post, and a recipe in this book (because you know, I can't follow a single recipe to save my life)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoon melted butter

Preheat oven 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whisk eggs, milk, sugar together. Add flour and salt and melted butter and mix well. For best results, mix the batter with a hand-held electric mixer (if you have one, if not, a blender probably works well) until batter is smooth and lump-free.

Grease a muffin tin pan, or a popover tin pan, and fill each one half way with the batter. Should make about 6-10 popovers depending on the size of your pan.

Bake for 30 minutes or until popovers are all puffed and golden brown.

Serve immediately with plenty of options for filling: butter, jam, honey, or Nutella!

Post Halloween Blondies

I may not be excited about Halloween, but I won't ever say no to a piece of blondie!

What's a blondie? Well, think of it as a brownie that tastes a little like chocolate chip cookie! Now do you still question my love for blondies?

So, despite our efforts to get rid of as much Halloween candy as possible (by giving it away to others), we are still left with handfuls of stuff around here. This recipe is a good way of getting rid of some of that stuff! You can add any kind of chocolate covered candy you would like. Here, we used Kit Kat Bars and Twix (we don't like nuts in our cookies/ brownies, but don't tell Jim that!).

Post Halloween Blondies

Wet ingredients
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg

Dry Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped up Halloween candy (we used Twix and Kit Kat bars here)
several small marshmallows on top for decoration

Preheat oven 375 degrees F.

In a bowl, mix wet ingredients together. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together before adding it to the wet ingredients. Add the chopped candy and mix well. Grease an 8x8 baking pan and fill with the batter, making sure to spread it evenly. Sprinkle marshmallows on top.

Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool 10-15 minutes before cutting into squares. Served warm with a glass of milk or a cup of tea! Happy non-Halloween!

French Baguette: First attempt

You know I have made bread before, right? Would you believe me if I told you that I have never really tried to make French Baguette, my most favorite bread of all?

It must be fear: fear from knowing what a really good baguette should taste like. I have been spoiled by having real fresh-out-of-the-oven baguette in France. It's warm, and crusty on the outside, and soft and spongy on the inside. There is just enough salt to mix with the naturally sweetness of the flour. I fear that nothing can compare.

I am still searching for a bakery in this new city that will come even somewhat close to what I am looking for. So far, no luck. There are some bakeries here...but I am afraid they have not shown me a winner. I am also afraid that most people here are fine with the chain stores, the sliced bread, the bake-your-own-for-ten-minutes-dough. I miss Iggy's of Cambridge, or Gayle's of Capitola.

Well, I am on a mission to make my own then. It's a good challenge. I have gotten whole-wheat bread down. Easy peasy. Now it's the supposedly easy french baguette that I have to master.

First attempt... not the best. The crust was good. Flavor not bad. The inside though? Total disappointment. Even the kids said it didn't taste like a baguette. We hypothesized about what could be different. More yeast? More time to rise? Different flour? Higher heat? We will see. I am not going to give up just yet.

Shoo-Fly Pie

This was our first attempt at making Shoo-Fly pie, the Amish way.

And this was after purchasing a small pie from the Amish booth at the North Market farmers' market a couple of weeks prior. We were inspired by its simplicity...and well...Amish things.

There is some tweaking we still need to do...but it was a rather simple thing to make. Molasses, sugar, flour, shortening (or lard, you know, if you prefer!).

What was the most eye-opening lesson from our baking session was the pie-crust recipe. I have always used Julia Child's as my go-to pie crust. But this one is called "Never Fail Pie Crust". Who would not give it a try?!

It surprised me that we needed an egg, and apple cider vinegar to make the pie crust. You would have been proud of me, though, because I followed the recipe precisely (something I have a hard time doing). And poof! A perfect pie crust! Those Amish are trust-worthy when it comes to cooking!

Applesauce Cake

In the middle of the city of Columbus, I stumbled upon an apple tree, next to a parking lot.

It was not any sort of apple tree. It was an apple tree that is producing a lot of apples, ripe apples, so many that a lot of them were on the ground, rotting away.

It sure didn't look like the tree belonged to anyone in particular...so I went ahead, and gathered a few good apples. I knew exactly what was going to become of them: applesauce cake.

Our children love this cake. I made it a bunch of times last fall, back in Santa Cruz, with the apples we picked from a cool little orchard not too far from the coast.

Here is the recipe that we like for applesauce cake, adapted from the Joy of Cooking:

Applesauce cake

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons butter

1 cup sugar 

1 egg

1 cup thick, preferably homemade applesauce 

1/2 cup raisins (optional)

 Heat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar.  

Beat in egg and applesauce.  

Sift all dry ingredients together. Add to wet ingredients

Bake in greased pan 50-60 minutes. 

Easy Banana Cake

In warm weather, bananas go ripe so quickly. What better way to use them but whip up a Banana Cake?!

I found this recipe while in New Zealand...and can't remember where it came from. I did add some yogurt to it ( you should know me by now!), so it's been changed a bit. I think with the yogurt, the cake is a bit more moist, but you sure don't have to add it in.

Sometimes I add a cup of blueberries, or chocolate chips to the batter as well. Other times, to please the only person in the family who likes nuts in things, I sprinkle some chopped walnuts on top. But it's pretty rare...

Banana Cake

Dry ingredients

1.5 cups self-rising flour (or cake flour)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients

3 ripe bananas, well mashed

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup oil

2 beaten eggs

1/2 cup yogurt

Preheat oven 300 degrees Farenheit.

In a large bowl, mix all wet ingredients well. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients, then add to the wet ingredient bowl. Incorporate everything until it is a smooth batter.

Grease a loaf pan or a round cake pan. Pour batter into pan, and bake for one hour.

Olive Oil-Rosemary-Lemon Cake

Here we go again.

Inspired by a recipe, but can't for the life of me follow the recipe.

In my defense, the recipe asked for spelt flour. And no offense to anyone, but whoever keeps spelt flour around the pantry, good on you! Not a chance over in this household, that's for sure, at least not yet. We have palm sugar, and condensed milk, but no spelt flour.

I had everything else the recipe asked for...and I almost did it. I followed the recipe despite the spelt flour (I just used unbleached flour for the whole thing). While I chopped up rosemary sprigs as the last ingredient, I glanced over at the fruit basket, and saw lemons. Fresh, organic, yellow lemons that were screaming to be grated and included in the cake. I succombed to their plea. And failed at following a recipe to its entirety yet again. Oh well...

It's rainy over here today, so the warmth of the oven, and the aroma of the baking cake, are most welcomed. Who knows, maybe we have a new favorite "recipe" on hand!

Tassajara Bread

I seem to be on a baking roll. An altering-baking-recipe roll. You see, one does not have to stick to a recipe, and the proof is in the pudding!

The other day, we ran out of bread in the house. We like our starch around here, so when we don't have rice, or bread, I go on a bit of a panic mode.

But why panic when we can make bread (not rice, unfortunately)?!

With most of our things still neatly packed in boxes that just went on a 4.5 month-cruise, I don't have any of my cookbooks. Most importantly, I did not have my Tassajara bread cookbook handy. But there is always Google!

Of course there was not just one simple bread recipe. I narrowed my search down to the basic 'Tassajara Bread' recipe, which again resulted in thousands of hits. I cross-checked and found the most trust-worthy one to settle with.

I looked at the recipe, and noted that I had everything except for whole-wheat flour. Was that a problem for me? NO! Not this altering-recipe kind of girl. I went ahead and used unbleached white flour...and added some rolled oats to it. The result...not bad. Not bad at all.

The recipe makes two loaves. The family happily ate those up in two days, which gave me plenty of time to go out and get some whole-wheat flour so that I could make the proper bread according to the recipe.

I still altered it a bit, using half unbleached white bread flour, half whole-wheat flour. And oh, we never have milk powder around here, so forget that ingredient (of course you should try to make it with, if you happen to have it around). This time, I had little hands to help me shape up some fun loaves. They were thrilled to eat their own loaves for lunch with all kinds of options for the topping.

Tassajara Bread (my version)

3 cups lukewarm water

2 packets active dry yeast

1/4 cup honey

3 cups unbleached bread flour

1/3 cup olive oil

4 teaspoons salt

3 cups whole wheat flour

In a large bowl combine yeast, honey and water. Let stand until the yeast has bubbled about 5-10 minutes. Add 3 cups of bread flour. Mix until well blended into thick batter. Rest under wet cloth for at least 45 minutes.

To the batter, add the rest of the ingredients, gently combining as you add the whole wheat flour. Once the dough is firm, take it out of the bowl and knead on a clean flat surface for about 10 minutes.

Rest the dough back in the bowl for at least another 45 minutes. Punch the dough and shape into two loaves. Heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the oven is ready, put the bread in to bake for about 40 minutes until brown and crusty.

Best eaten right away, but great for the next 2 days, especially lightly toasted.

Choco-Oatmeal Cookies

I am not a great recipe follower. Actually, I am a really bad one, you can ask my husband. But when it comes to baking, one should (or needs) to follow a recipe down to science. Or so I was told.

Along the way, I got a recipe for Chocolate chip cookies from my mother-in-law. I asked her if she had a 'half' recipe for these cookies since the usual ones you find will make so many cookies that more of them go into my own tummy than anybody else's (and that's never good). Plus, everybody would agree that cookies are best fresh out of the oven. So the more cookies made in the same batch, the less fresh the uneaten-right-away ones are.

Cut to the chase. I have been using this 'half' recipe for a while now and trying to follow everything as best I can. Today, of course, my usual non-recipe self said I should substitute a little oatmeal for the 2 extra Tablespoon of flour asked for.

It satisfies my creative-baker self, and I think it still tastes great. Here is the revised recipe, if you are interested. And if you would rather use the original recipe, just substitute the 2 Tablespoons flour instead of the oatmeal... And if I remember right, there is something about 1 Tablespoon water, too...But I have never really used that. See what I mean?

Choco-Oatmeal Cookies

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 lb unsalted butter at room temperature

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dry ingredients:

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Set oven at 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk wet ingredients together until smooth. In another bowl, combine dry ingredients together before adding it to the wet ingredients until all blended. Spoon small balls of cookie dough onto a baking sheet.

Bake about 9-11 minutes until light brown. Longer if you like your cookies crisper. I usually like mine on the chewy side. Eat warm with a cup of tea or coffee...or a cold glass of milk for your children (or your Mid-western husband).