Coooooookiiiieeeeeeess

I made the most perfect chocolate chip cookies a couple weeks ago!

I followed the Toll House recipe, with these modifications:

Add an extra cup of flour (I use unbleached all-purpose)
All butter, no shortening or other fat (salted)
Increase sugars to one cup each (dark brown, the stuff I get in bulk from WinCo actually smells like molasses)
Make the teaspoon of vanilla running-over, and use good stuff
Kosher salt

And the most important step: refrigerate dough at least 4 hours before baking 10-11 minutes at 375 degrees. Take them out when they no longer look moist. If they start to brown, they're already overdone.

This will give you perfectly chewy cookies. The great thing about these is you can use any kind of chips, nuts, or candy and they will turn out beautifully. They also freeze well; just roll into balls, freeze and put in a ziploc for freshly-baked cookies on demand!

Other favorite: Susan Branch's ultra-versatile Butter Cookies, and Smitten Kitchen's blondies, with brown butter and a full 2oz of booze.

Ooh, definitely gonna make those!

I made Mexican chocolate brownies last night. Super rich, with a ton of toasted almonds. I just added some cinnamon & chipotle to my usual brownie recipe.

I don't remember the recipe exactly at the moment, but my mom's chocolate chip cookies are pretty awesome. I used to make them myself so much that I had the recipe memorized, but I have it written down somewhere now. I should look it up to post it here! I think she probably just got it off the back of a bag of Chipits or something, but still!

My wife makes a bunch of different kinds of cookies for Christmas, including a chocolate coated walnut cookie that is so fucking good. I don't even know if she has recipes for those or if she just makes them up.

Dorie Greenspan's peanut butter cookie recipe (from "Baking: From My Home to Yours") is absolutely killer.  We like to add M&Ms, just to gild the lily.

I'm pretty sure Anthony Bourdain's cookbook includes things like "1. Take a shot of your favorite hard liquor"

I've seen food bloggers go on for DAYS about refrigerating dough and for how long and the effects.

Days!

(Seriously, it's a good idea to refrigerate your dough, even up to a day, if you aren't jonesin' for cookies right now.)

Congrats on perfect cookies!

Joy the Baker says she couldn't tell 12-hour resting cookies from 36-hour cookies. I haven't tried comparing two batches on different days.

See, none of those cookies look good to me. I like them soft & chewy, just short of cakey.

Agreed. Those Joy the Baker cookies look crispy and boring. A good chocolate chip cookie is dense and luscious and not remotely crisp.

(Don't like cakey though. That's too far.)

THIN & CRISPY 4 LYF

I'm not adventurous enough in the kitchen to have my own personal recipe just yet, but the one I do love, my absolute favourite cookie, bar none, can be crafted from this recipe for double-chocolate espresso walnut cookies. Copypasted for your convenience:

1 pound semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup (3 ounces) unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 extra-large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups fine-quality bittersweet (56% to 60% cacao) chips or ¼-inch chunks
2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts (about 8 ounces)

1. Position the oven racks in the center and upper third of the oven and heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line 4 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the semi-sweet chocolate and butter over medium-low heat until smooth, 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, beat together the eggs, sugar, espresso powder and vanilla until blended and slightly foamy, 1 to 2 minutes. Beat in the melted chocolate mixture, then the flour mixture. Stir in the bittersweet chocolate and walnuts.

5. Using about 3 tablespoons of dough for each cookie, spoon the dough onto two of the prepared baking sheets, forming about 6 cookies per sheet. Bake until the cookies are cracked on top and moist in the center, about 14 minutes (do not overbake so as to keep the center of the cookies moist and fudgy). Transfer the baking sheets to a rack and cool the cookies completely before removing.

I see similar recipes nowadays calling them brownie cookies, which is understandable, as the outside gets crusty like a brownie while the inside stays incredibly soft. The dough is always very runny, more like a batter, I guess, but it turns out great either way. Tbqh I've never even made the full recipe. I always half it and make smaller cookies than it says and it turns out great and you still get plenty. I think I always do the full amount of vanilla though, or close to. I need to make these soon.

So much cookie news!

Last week I made the Truly Amazing Peanut Butter Cookies Liz n Dicksgiving recommended, and they are, indeed, truly amazing. Pretty sure I ate more dough than I baked. The only flaw was the peanuts; I used Trader Joe's blister peanuts and chopped them myself, so they were too chunky, not salty enough, and some of the larger pieces were a little soft. (Beema said they don't need to be saltier, but what do boys know about baking?) But even so, still probably the best PB cookies ever.

This weekend: There was nothing sweet in the house to feed the menstrual beast, so I half-assedly whipped up some Toll House cookies, even tho I didn't have any nuts or brown sugar. Used all granulated, then added a glug of molasses with the eggs and vanilla. Didn't even pre-mix the dry ingredients or level off the flour, just dumped it all right in the bowl. They turned out fine; the texture was more cakey than I like, but the absence of brown sugar was the real bummer. I'd also used dark chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet, so they ended up not as sweet as I like my chocolate chip cookies to be. I only made two dozen, so I'll roll up the rest of the dough and pop it in the freezer for emergencies.

Three weeks ago: Dulce de Leche, Coconut and Chocolate Chip Magic Bars. I was intrigued by these because I looooove magic cookie bars; I can't resist that graham cracker crumb/sweetened condensed milk/coconut combo.

They turned out to be more and less than what I expected. They're very labor-intensive for cookies, tho I did create some more work for myself by having to make dulce de leche after I couldn't find any canned. I also didn't cook it long enough, so I was only slightly more caramel-y then the milk.

The crust was delicious, and would make a good cookie by itself, tho I'd prolly add a smidge of vanilla extract in addition to the seeds. (This was my first time using a bean! Scraping out the seeds was fascinating, and it smelled divine.)

I chopped the bacon very fine, and was so glad I did, because these bars don't really need it. This was the first time I baked with bacon, and I wasn't too thrilled. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't have missed it, either.

I used pecans because I only like to bake with almonds when almond is the main flavor, and it definitely would have been wasted here.

The finished product was very heavy; I used a disposable pan with rounded corners, so it wasn't spread as far as it would have been in a squared-off pan. They were super thick and sweet, and the texture was wonderful. I ended up eating almost the entire batch by myself over the course of a week. I am not proud.

My brother won $50 in a department cookie contest with my macaroon recipe.

I think that should be my $50, thank you very much.

We made Italian butter cookies dunked in chocolate. I do not have a fancy piping bag but they still taste great.