The Long Awaited Conclusion...

Ok, so I finally have a little time so write down the recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I've started calling this batter "Traditional" because you can put pretty much anything you want in it and it becomes that kind of cookie. Want MnM cookies? Use traditional. Want white chocolate macadamia nut cookies? This is your dough. Want coconut craisin? Well, here ya go:

BTW, you're going to need a scale. A digital scale that reads in ounces and grams. I weigh almost all my ingredients in grams because it's more accurate. So my recipes are going to be in grams. Here's a picture of my scale.



I found it on amazon.com and it's made by Salter. I've had no issues with it whatsoever besides it being a little hard to clean sometimes.

Anyway, here we go.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Use an oven thermometer because I can almost guarantee your oven isn't that accurate. Mine is but that's because I paid $1000 for it. And it was worth every penny. :^) ...and I still use an oven thermometer.

200g Butter Flavored Crisco
150g granulated sugar
170g brown sugar

Cream these ingredients together until light and fluffy. Use a mixer if desired.

Add-

1t vanilla
2 eggs

Mix them in. It helps to slightly beat the eggs before mixing them in but it isn't essential.

Add all at once-

315g flour
1t baking soda
1t kosher salt

Fold these in WITH A SPOON until the dry ingredients are about halfway incorporated. Do not use a mixer. You will almost certainly overmix. Refer to the earlier post for a picture to compare to.

Add the mixins. Use 350g total of chips (have fun with combos!) plus no more than 1 cup (weights vary) of nuts or fruit.

Finish mixing, leaving some of the flour showing. Again, look at the earlier pictures for reference.

Here's another reason I should've done the supplies post first. You're going to need good cookie sheets. Many people like half sheet pans that you get at the restaraunt supply store or Williams Sonoma but I swear by AirBakes. They rock. I don't ever have a brown bottom on my cookies unless I overbake them.

You also need parchment paper. It's with the aluminum foil and stuff at Walmart. Don't use wax paper or anything. It won't work.

Then you need some cooling racks. Two, to be exact.

Finally, you need a disher. I used to make mine with the two spoon method but every cookie was a different size and therefore a different done-ness. That's not ok. A disher/cookie scoop/ice cream scoop is the easiest way to get uniform cookie sizes. The ones at Target work well... for about 5 batches. Then they break. The ones from Williams Sonoma are crazy expensive ($26) but they haven't broken yet. I'm asking for some cool Zeroll dishers for Christmas. I hope they work as well as advertised. I'll keep you updated. If you're left handed, like me, you're going to be restricted to universal dishers. The ones with the little thumb lever aren't going to work for you. Everyone else, I have no idea if the thumb lever ones work or not because I can't use them.

Ok, now you can put parchment paper on your cookie sheets. You'll need two cookie sheets. The parchment will want to roll back up when you tear it off so just flip it over and viola! It doesn't cause you any more problems. You'll need 3 sheets of parchment (yes, that's one more than you have cookie sheets. It'll work out.

Now, you can dish out your cookies. In my opinion, the #40 disher is perfect for cookies but they don't sell a #40 at the stores. So I use a #50 (the littler of your two choices) and overfill it. If I'm using a #50, I can get 5 rows of 4 on each cookie sheet or 20 cookies. When I get my #40, I'll start doing 4 rows of 3 or 12 cookies per sheet. You don't want the cookies to run together when they bake. They look funny that way.

Put one pan of cookies in the oven at a time. The more cold stuff you put in the oven, the longer it takes to heat back up to the right temperature. Also, try very hard not to open the door during baking. Lots of heat escapes. Now, if your oven likes to make wide temperature cycles or it gets hotter the longer it's on, you can use the open door thing to your advantage. But be careful. Lots of heat escapes really quickly. I just turn my oven light on with the first pan and don't turn it off again until all the cookies are done.

I have no idea how long they'll bake. (?!) They'll get done when they get done. You just have to watch them. If you feel they get too flat when they bake, try chilling the dough for a little bit before baking.

Here's a before and after.



These cookies are just a little too done. They'll be kind of crunchy. I need to get more pictures to show exactly what they should look like but this'll have to do for now.

Ok, when you take out a pan of cookies, slide the parchment and cookies off onto the cooling rack. Then put the other pan with more cookies into the oven. When you have two cooling racks with cookies on them and a third pan in the oven, take the cooler cookies off the parchment and put them in their storage/transport container. Then use that sheet of parchment again to put more cookies on. You can rotate out pans and cooling racks in this fashion until you're done. If that's too confusing, let me know and I'll try to explain it differently. It's late and my brain isn't running at full capacity.

You can expect the cookies to taste good for about 3 or 4 days. But I doubt they'll last that long unless you made waaaay too many for whatever you're doing.