Making Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everyone has their favorite recipe, some like them crispy, some like them soft...I like them somewhere in between. But there are basic rules in cookie making.

1-Cream together a mixture of butter/margarine and crisco with the sugar. Why a mix of fats? It makes the cookies softer. Butter doesn't hold up that well under heat, so you get a way crispy cookie. If you want a nice buttery flavor but also a soft cookie, you need something that has better heat resistance. Why cream? It also makes a softer cookie and allows the flour to evenly hold onto the fats and sugars.

2- Add your eggs and flavoring (I use vanilla). Mix, mix, mix. After mixing, DO NOT scrape down the sides, if you do that it will take a longer mixing time when you add the flour and that is the last thing you want, unless you like hard almost non-chewable cookies.

3- Sift in your flour, baking soda and salt, then dump on your chocolate chips...actually you could use almost anything here except oatmeal - white chocolate with mac nuts, chocolate chips and raisins, M&Ms, Andes Mints, Reeses Pieces, toffee...whatevers.

4- When I mix in the flour I cover my mixer with a damp kitchen towel, to keep the puff of flour contained. I mix in the flour between 10-15 seconds, anymore than that, you risk forming complex strands of gluten which is great for bread, but makes a cookie tough.

5- Here it is all mixed up. This is really the time to eat it...it's easier for me to take out the chocolate chips, which I don't like.

6- I use a 1" ice cream scoop to scoop up my dough. Because the recipe I use makes a lot of cookies, I keep a damp kitchen towel over the bowl to keep the dough moist.

7- Space your cookies nicely and put into pre-heated oven. I use 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes, just until I see that they are getting firmed, but the middle is still a tad raw. I bring them out of the oven and let them sit on the cookie tray for another couple of minutes, while the pan is cooling, it is still slowly cooking the cookie but not to the point that it would get over-done.

8- Eat your warm, soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies with a nice tall glass of cold milk!

And yes, you're right, when my life is boring I blog about food.