Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I want you to take in these words, close your eyes, and visualize their meaning. Feel the warmth from the oven as you peer at them baking. Breathe in their scent, imagine the taste, the texture, and let it linger softly on your tongue. Chocolate Chip Cookies will always be my ultimate cookie. Certainly sugar, shortbread, and oatmeal raisin all have a time and a place, but they have never carved out such a sweet place in my heart like dear chocolate chip.

And oh what a sweet place it is.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Chocolate Chip Cookies

In my year and a half of blogging, I have never shared a chocolate chip cookie recipe with you. There was a reason for this. I've shared a variation here or there, but you don't mess around with the true classic. When I was going to share a chocolate chip cookie recipe with you, I didn't want it to be just any cookie. I wanted it to stand out, to be special, to be different.

A good chocolate chip cookie has a few requirements. A great chocolate chip cookie has many more. I know some of you prefer them thin and crispy, but today's recipe is all about the thick and chewy chocolate chip cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This chocolate chip cookie recipe comes to me from a close family friend. It is her secret recipe, sought after by everyone blessed enough to try one of her cookies (me included). Fortunately, she has given me permission to share her secret with you. I won't reveal my source, however. The woman has an image to uphold (and a secret recipe to stay "secret").

This particular recipe has a slight twist. It is made with vegetable shortening instead of butter, which keeps the cookies wonderfully thick (cookies with a high butter content spread out very thin). The cookie also uses a couple tablespoons of mild molasses for one specific purpose. The molasses keeps the inside of the cookies soft for days (if they last that long, of course), without lending a distinct flavor. Five days on my kitchen counter and these cookies are as soft as the day I made them.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Chocolate Chip Cookies

These soft and chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies are the only chocolate chip cookie recipe you'll ever need. With just the right ratio of chocolate chips to cookie dough, the cookie maintains a very soft center while the edges stay lightly browned and crispy. These are lovely dipped into a glass of milk or eaten warm and gooey, straight out of the oven.

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Tuesday Tip: Freezing Cookie Dough

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How many times have you wanted a cookie fresh from the oven, but didn't actually want to go through the work of making them? How often do you find a recipe that makes three dozen more cookies than you actually need? How often do you make a batch of cookies and, after the few days it takes to eat them up, they taste a little... stale?

I've been there. You've been there, too.

Today, we're going to solve this problem. While freezing cookie dough isn't a new idea, I find it helpful to be reminded of this every so often. This is a surprisingly easy trick to forget. Here are few tips for freezing cookie dough with the best results.

Freezing Cookie Dough:

  • Scoop cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and place in the freezer until cookie dough gets hard and no longer sticky. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
  • Remove cookie sheet from freezer and place the frozen cookie scoops into an insulated freezer bag or Tupperware container, making sure the seal is airtight.
  • Label bag or container with the date and type of cookie as well as the baking temperature and time (important information to remember!).
  • Freeze cookie dough for up to 4-6 weeks.

When baking frozen cookie dough, you do not have to thaw the cookie dough. Simply place the frozen, pre-scooped cookie dough onto a baking sheet and bake for 2-3 minutes longer than the original recipe recommends. That's it!

This method will work for freezing and baking all drop cookies (chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter, etc).

Vanilla Bean Pudding

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Vanilla Bean Pudding

Vanilla Bean Pudding

Simplicity.

It's an idea we all ascribe to, a concept we all strive for, and a belief we all can't help but hold faith in. If we could simplify our lives, everything would be easier. If we could control the day to day chaos, we would be happier. Simplicity. Even the word itself brings up images of organized bookshelves and Norman Rockwell paintings.

But, as I've realized over the past few weeks, simplicity can have many meanings.

Vanilla Bean Pudding

When I think of a simple lifestyle, I flashback to reruns of Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch. A hot, homemade meal is on the table precisely at six o'clock every evening. The house is always spotless, no excuses (you never know when company will arrive). Even the linen closets are photogenic enough to grace the cover of Good Housekeeping. If chaos does enter this genuinely unnatural world, it is dealt with so elegantly, so gracefully, that the issue simply evaporates by the end of the scheduled half hour period.

I can imagine maintaining that lifestyle is more trouble than it's worth. Not to mention, you know, impossible.

So how can we simplify our own lives without looking to The Wonder Years for advice?

The truth is that there is no quick, cookie cutter answer. We all have different ideas of what a little simplicity would do for ourselves. Some dream of keeping house like Martha Stewart and finding peace in the familiarity. Others imagine moving to the mountains and freeing themselves from everything but running water. I dream of a cup of tea, a good book, and unplugging myself from the electronic world, if only for a few hours.

Vanilla Bean Pudding

I started my personal quest for simplicity by uncluttering the bits and pieces of my life. I stopped working so many hours a week, opting for a more reasonable forty. I've gained a good deal more sanity with a cut in pay. The pursuit of money, as we all know (but often forget), is not everything.

I cleaned up my room. I sorted through the nightmare that is my food prop closet. I'm trying to take small steps every day to maintaining a more organized home. I have always been drawn to the internet, wasting days and weeks of my life doing things that are utterly forgettable (can you even remember what you looked at yesterday?). It's easy to get caught up between blogs and Google searches, ignoring the hands making circles around the clock. I cleaned up my virtual life, sparing only the websites that are most dear to me from harsh reality of the delete button. I'm trying to watch less television.

Even though I can't remove all of the chaos or complexity in my life (and nor would I want to), I've made room for simple moments. Baking in the kitchen while the radio serenades me from the next room. Giving myself over to the camera for an hour and letting food divulge its secrets. Reading beautiful, haunting novels near a blazing fireplace. Savoring a small bowl of vanilla bean pudding as the winter sun sets.

Simple moments.

That's the secret to simplicity.

What do your simple moments look like?

Vanilla Bean Pudding

Vanilla Bean Pudding is simple and unpretentious. Lovely warmed for cold evenings or chilled for hot summer afternoons, this pudding is sweet comfort food. It is thickened with a combination of cornstarch and egg yolks which lends a creamy, smooth texture. Vanilla bean adds such a pure flavor to the pudding—the vanilla bean pods are steamed in the milk to add extra flavor—but vanilla extract can be used in a pinch.

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