My Adventures with "The Best, Easiest, Most Reliable Chocolate Chip Cookies"

To me, eating is a necessity, and cooking is a way to do it cheaply. In our family, K's the gourmet chef for fancy occasions and I'm more of the short order cook for daily eating. Yet, this week I've been on a cooking kick. My friend forwarded me a recipe for The Best, Easiest, Most Reliable Chocolate Chip Cookies, so to reward K and his friend Shane for crawling into attic to install two recessed hallway lights, I decided to make them a little treat. Here's how it went...

INGREDIENTS:
(makes ~72 cookies)

• 1 cup shortening and 1 cup butter
• 1.5 cups white sugar and 1.5 cups brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 6 cups flour
• 1.5 tsp baking soda
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 2.5 bags choc chips (12 oz bags) – 1 semi-sweet, 1 milk chocolate, 1/2 bag white chocolate

INSTRUCTIONS:

1) Mix the shortening and butter with white and brown sugar for three minutes.
2) Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix for seven minutes (a long mixing time is necessary to completely combine the ingredients).

Piece o' cake (well, technically cookie)

3) In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, and salt). Add 1/2 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix. Then add the other 1/2 and mix.

Hmm, my KitchenAid mixer is getting a little full...

4) Add in the chocolate chips and mix.

Ok, switching to a bigger bowl; let's see how this works out...

Because my new bowl cannot be locked into the mixer's base, cookie dough sprays everywhere! After picking up the chocolate, the canine vacuum cleaner is called over to inhale the remaining crumbs. Hand mixing is used to finish Step 4.

5) Refrigerate dough while oven preheats to 350.
6) Place 1/4-cup balls of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet (NOT nonstick is better for this – just a regular pan).

The dough is incredibly crumbly, and therefore, my "balls" look more like fat, lumpy UFOs.

7) Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes or just until the cookies are barely golden on parts of their tops. Allow them to cool for a few minutes and transfer to a cooking rack.
8) Divide the rest of the dough into 4-5 piles on pieces of plastic wrap. Shape each pile into a loaf, roll them up inside of the plastic wrap, and place them all inside a ziploc bag for freezing. When you're ready to bake another batch of cookies, cut off chunks of dough from the cookie loaf and bake as above but for 11-12 minutes.

Hmm, the cookies are finished, but was it worth the mess?

Here is the official verdict from the two hard workers:

• Shane: "It's not really a cookie per se, but rather chocolate held together with little bits of dough."
• K: "I feel the cookie is having sex with my esophagus. Allll the way down."

I'm not a huge chocolate/dessert fan myself, but I rather enjoyed this recipe as well because the shortening totally does give the cookie a slightly crispy outside while being perfectly soft on the inside. And the bit of saltiness really makes the sweetness tolerable. So yes, I would totally recommend this as The Best, Easiest, Most Reliable Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe ever. ;)

"Om Nom Nom" perfection

Question:
Are you interested in reading more about recipes I try out? Being a short order cook, my recipe criteria is a) it must not be "difficult" (loose definition) and b) I must own most of the ingredients already.