Nov
8
Hey, check out the awesome new banner that Ranie O’Dell made me, up there at the top of this website! (You may need to manually reload the page if it’s cached.) How cool is that? I love it so much I may have licked my laptop screen after I got it posted. Mmm, tastes like nematic phase liquid crystals.
I needed an excuse to update just so I could squee about the new header graphic, but I also have a legitimate problem: people, why are really good chocolate chip cookies so hard to make? I seem to be producing the same batch of dry, only-marginally-good-by-virtue-of-being-a-cookie cookies, and I’ve tried several different recipes (mostly variations on the chocolate chip package recipe). I feel like I’m missing some key secret ingredient that’s necessary for creating the chewy, moist cookie I crave. Is it lard? You can tell me if it’s lard, I don’t mind. By god, if that’s what it takes, I will make cookies formed entirely from chunks of clarified pork fat.
Anyway, if you have a recipe that produces amazingly good chocolate chip cookies, please share it with me. My giant expando belly thanks you in advance.
PS. You’ve probably already seen this, but if you haven’t, please take a moment to enjoy this fantastic french beatboxer. I’m not sure why, but watching that video makes me almost deliriously happy.
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It is all about the crisco, baby.
Swistle has a good recipe.
I just made Janet’s oatmeal-chocolate chip recipe and can vouch for them. I added a good teaspoon or more of cinnamon and used butter-flavored crisco for the shortening. Quite tasty. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of this three-day weekend trying to get through the rest of these recipes.
The new banner looks fabulous. As does the kitchen remodel. Congrats on your survival.
I really like the new design – especially the date tags! And the beatboxing dude is awesome. :)
The people who are giving you the 1/2 and 1/2 solution with the shortening are right. I use half butter and half margarine. All butter makes doorstops and all margarine makes paper thin crisps. I’m happy to pass along my oatmeal choc chip recipe if you need it, though it sounds like you’ve got a ton of those already. It’s got Oatmeal, so it’s healthy!
This works wonders on the choc chip cookie recipe on the Toll House bag: refrigerate them a couple of hours or overnight. Then put them on the pan in cold round 1″ balls. They don’t spread all over and are moist and — I think I need to go make some now.
I have no idea if anyone else listed this, but my ex, who was an amazing baker, used the recipe on the back of the Tollhouse bag… and added a package of vanilla pudding. MOIST COOKIES EVERY TIME.
Long Time Reader, First Time Commenter.
Heath Bar. Do I need to say anything more? I don’t even like Heath Bar, and yet heath bar makes these cookies close to a religious experience.
Plus, I can’t bake, and it’s impossible to ruin them.
Yum. Yum. Yum.
It’s a recipe from Giada on Food Network. It’s from her cookbook, and she says they are her favorite.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_29315,00.html
BTW, I love, love, LOVE reading your blog. Thanks!
Do you know, that tip about adding a little extra flour worked with my recipe. I did 2.5 cups instead of 2.25, and they were better.
I tried the vanilla pudding thing, and it was meh. It gave the cookies a processed, fake-vanilla flavor without improving their moistness or yumminess.
The best and most consistent recipe I’ve found is the one on the bag of See’s Chocolate Chips – stays chewy for a few days (if the cookies last that long) and the See’s chips stay sort of melty too.
So you have about a billion recipes here, but I can’t resist throwing my favorite in too. I really and truly suck at baking, but these cookies turn out so well for me every time… so I can only imagine how great they’ll be when someone who actually knows what they’re doing makes them.
http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=18476
And if you swap half the chocolate chips for M&Ms… well, it’s divine.
I’m scribbling down a ton of notes here, thanks!
My two cents: I use the Tollhouse recipe, butter, twice as much vanilla, and I add a Tablespoon to two Tablespoons of molasses.
I use a baking stone, and take them out of the oven while they’re still undercooked, let them sit on the stone for a minute then transfer.
(I’m totally trying these other suggestions though :)
thanks for sharing with us.
I have made chocolate chip cookies!
they are not so hard to make, you just have to be patient!
n_n
I bet you make really excellent cookies!!
LOVE [KAT]