CtBF – chewy chocolate chip cookies

At first blush, it’s easy to make a quick judgement about something. When this recipe came up, I thought simultaneously – “it’s too hot to bake cookies”, “well, it makes sense because it’s back-to-school time” and “oh, well I can take them out to the nurses”. Well, the first one? Nope, the season has officially changed, and it’s perfect timing. So everything came together for this recipe.

I think that baking, and especially sharing what you’ve baked, has some healing properties. Beyond the practical I want to bake something but can’t/shouldn’t/won’t eat it all, sharing something home made is a wonderful practice. I do it when I want someone to know they are appreciated, but maybe more importantly for me, when I think the world pretty much sucks. Getting out of your own head, and doing something nice for someone is always a good thing.

I bake something almost every Saturday to take out to the team that works in the facility my mom is staying in. They are awesome caregivers, and it’s a difficult job. So it’s important that they know people recognize the good that they do. Plus! for me, I get to have a captive audience for my baked goods. I’ve done a lot of different things. I really like muffins, especially with fruit. But chocolate is never unpopular. These chocolate brownie cookies were a hit. But then, there were the chewy chocolate chip cookies we were baking this week! Dorie is an amazing baker, and her cookies are pretty much legendary. So it was going to be a great thing to try these out. And really, you just can’t go wrong!

One great thing about all of Dorie’s cookbooks is she gives you lots of options and hints. I think it’s a great way of teaching home cooks how things work, and helps people make their own choices. The first thing was that you had a choice to bake the cookies immediately, or to chill the dough and cook it later. The former, the cookies will spread more. Just for convenience, I went for chilling – so that I could make the dough, and then bake them Saturday morning.

This is a fairly traditional chocolate chip cookie dough, with just enough oatmeal to add some texture, and yes, of course, I added the optional cinnamon! Another interesting deviation was to melt the butter. Dorie also offered some options about the amount of sugar. I think I added just a bit more white sugar (she suggests that if you adjust the amount, you do it of only one kind) – mine was probably due the measuring cup I grabbed TBH.

Once all of that is incorporated, the chocolate is added. The ideal is to have chocolate that you can chop so that it has the “tweedy” look you get from the shards. Um, I didn’t have, so I used the mini chips I had left over from the brownie cookies, plus some other regular chips I had, that I “kind of” chopped up. Not my best effort. At least it was good chocolate!

Chilled overnight, then I was ready to bake! But wait! A cookie scoop! I have a couple, but it turns out they are “small”. These were supposed to be made with a 1.5T scoop. Now, here’s the thing. I had no idea about sizes, and how that translates, because guess what? They are advertised as small, medium, large. What does that mean? Then after doing a little research I was able to piece together what is what. (and yes, I ordered some – for next time)

Small = #60 = 2 teaspoons
Medium = #40 = 1.5 Tablespoons
Large = #20 = 3 Tablespoons

As it turns out, even my two, that looked the same are a bit different. A 60 and a 70. Sheesh! So, I over-filled them, and just went for it. Cookies were a bit smaller than originally designed, but that’s ok.

These baked for about 10 minutes. I ended up rotating them at about 7 for even baking, since I decided to use my fancy new oven that allows the option for just using a portion of it.

These were super delicious. A great yummy treat with a cup of coffee, and perfect inspiration for a blog post!

And yes, they were a huge hit. After baking, I packed up by box of cookies and went out to visit. Cute, they are now very, very careful about getting my containers back to me – for a re-fill! They were incredibly popular, there were a fair number of exclamations, and well, they were all gone by the next morning! Mom and one of her friends there enjoyed them too. So all in all – a huge win!

So – back to the recipe. I will definitely make these again, and will likely freeze some unbaked, so that I can bake them fresh. Since they do so well after chilling, freezing should work. It’s a very nice thing to be able to take out a few to bake, and serve at the last minute. Plus a good way to have something fresh, but not necessarily the entire recipe.