Chocolate Chip Cookies

For Christmas every year my wife and I bake cookies for friends and coworkers.  This post, plus the following two will be a few of the cookies we made this year.

Chocolate chip cookies are a staple baked good.  We always have the ingredients on hand and we make them frequently throughout the year. 

This recipe is a variation on the Tollhouse cookie recipe and yields a somewhat softer and cake-ier cookie than the original recipe.  The variation comes from my mother: the flour is increased and the ratio of brown sugar to granulated sugar has been altered.

Here is the recipe:

3 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Salt

1 cup Softened Unsalted Butter (2 sticks)

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 Large Eggs

~2 cups Semisweet Chocolate Chips

This is the mise en place for the chocolate chip cookies.  I’m making a double batch, so the quantities will be doubled.

The butter and sugars go into a bowl and get creamed together.

Then the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

This is what the mixture will look like after the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

Next up is the dry ingredients.  When making chocolate chip cookies, rather than getting another bowl dirty i usually just put the baking soda and salt in with the first cup of flour.

This is the cookie dough after all the flour has been mixed in.

Lastly, the chocolate chips get mixed in.

The dough then gets dropped onto a cookie sheet.  You can vary the size, but I usually go with about 1-2 heaping tablespoons.

The cookies then bake at 375 Fahrenheit for 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Spicy Peanut Butter Cookies

This week I bring you my own recipe for spicy peanut butter cookies.  Peanut butter cookies are some of my favorite kind of cookie.  These were inspired a few years back by finding a spicy peanut butter in a grocery store.  It was “The Heat Is On” peanut butter from Peanut Butter & Co.  They make some other great peanut butter flavors that can also be substituted in this recipe.  This particular spicy peanut butter add heat with chili powder, cayenne peppers, crushed red peppers, and paprika.  The resulting peanut butter cookie isn’t overly spicy, but has a nice flavor and a slow burn that hits you over time.  The spicy peanut butter can sometimes be found in normal grocery stores or Whole Foods.  If you can’t find any, the company does ship it on their website.

Here’s the recipe (makes about 3-4 dozen cookies):

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 & 1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup spicy peanut butter (The Heat Is On)

1 cup softened butter

2 large eggs

2 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Some extra granulated sugar

Here is the mise en place for the cookies.

Like most cookies, these start with creaming the butter with the sugar.  In this cake, it also includes the peanut butter.  Some peanut butter cookie recipes call for adding the peanut butter after the dry ingredients have been added, I’ve found it easier to do at the beginning.  Mixing at the end tends to cause you to over mix the flour and you end up with tough cookies.

Here are the two eggs about to go into the cookie dough.

Here is the cookie dough after adding the eggs.

This is the final cookie dough after the dry ingredients have been mixed in.  It should still be pretty sticky, but firm enough to shape into balls and hold its shape.

The dough then gets rolled into balls about 1 & 1/2 inches in diameter and placed onto a baking sheet.  I always prefer using a silpat covered air bake cookie sheet when baking cookies.

Then dip a fork into the extra sugar and press down each cookie twice.  Once in one direction, the second time in the opposite direction.  You’ll want to dip the fork into the sugar between each press so that it doesn’t stick to the cookie.  If you are making different flavors of peanut butter cookies, you can experiment with different utensils and creating a different pattern on top each flavor of cookie.  That way you can tell which flavor is which.

Here are the cookies after baking for about 11 minutes.  There is one missing because my wife couldn’t wait until I took the picture to eat one.

And of course, here is a close up of one of the cookies.

Chocolate Biscotti

This post is all about the making of chocolate biscotti.  Biscotti are a type of Italian cookie that is baked twice.  They are often eaten with coffee.

This particular recipe once again comes from the Culinary Institute of America’s Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft.  Normally the recipe’s in this book need to be halved or quartered to make in a home kitchen.  However, this particular recipe needs no adjustments.

Here is the mise en place for the biscotti.  I’ve chosen to omit the almond extract since I’m not a fan of almonds.

Here are the “wet” ingredients.  They include the instant espresso powder and sugar.

The dry ingredients go into a separate bowl.

And then they get mixed until uniform.  Technically they should be sifted together, but here I’ve just mixed it together with a fork.

The chocolate gets chopped into small chunks.  Once again, I’ve chosen Callebaut dark chocolate.

The wet ingredients, then, get mixed together with the wire whip attachment until they get a little frothy and lighten up in color considerably.

The dry ingredients get mixed in a third at a time until just incorporated.  Then the chocolate chunks should be folded in.  The mixture won’t seem very thick by sight, but when mixing by hand and when removing from the bowl it will seem very thick and heavy.

The mixture should be arranged on a nonstick surface for baking.  I’ve used a silpat, but some parchment would do nicely.  You should try to make your dough longer and thinner than I have made it here.  It should be as wide as you want your final biscotti to be long.

After baking in the oven for an hour, the biscotti are ready to come out.  Let it cool for a few minutes, and then cut it into strips about half and inch wide.

Then arrange them on their side back on the cookie sheet.  You will probably need at least two cookie sheets for this part.  They should bake again for about 12 minutes then get flipped over and bake again.

Once they are done, they should be very dry.  When they have cooled they can be enjoyed as is or would go nicely with cup of strong coffee.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

This post I decided to make some Kitchen Sink Cookies.  It is my own recipe based loosely on the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tollhouse.  It was inspired by the flavor of the month cookie for June from Cougar Mountain Baking Company: Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal. 

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter

1/2 Cup Peanut Butter

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar

2 Eggs

1 Teaspoon vanilla

1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1 3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour

2 Cup Oats

1 Cup Chocolate Chips

 

Here’s the mise en place for the cookies.  Well, without the eggs since I forgot to include them for the picture.

Here I’ve grated the nutmeg using a Microplane grater.

Measuring out the peanut butter.

The butter and peanut butter get mixed together and then creamed with the sugar.

Here’s the creamed sugar, peanut butter, and butter.

Then the remaining wet ingredients and spices get mixed in.

Here’s the recipe slowly taking shape as I decide how much of each ingredient I’m going to use.

Then the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips, get mixed in.

Then the chocolate chips get folded into the cookie dough, so that they don’t break up.

The dough gets rolled into flattened balls and put on a cookie sheet.  I always use a silpat on top of an airbake cookie sheet when baking cookies.

They bake for about 14 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

The recipe makes about 2-3 dozen cookies, depending on how large you make each cookie.