What's This? A Recipe???
So you might be wondering: "How is this relevant?" It's not. I just like cookies. And if you've been reading my blog, you'll know that I mentioned recipes as occasional content here. This counts as one of those occasions.About This Recipe
I've been searching for a really good — great, in fact — chocolate chip cookie recipe for about 15 years now. I'd always loved to cook, but I was never much of a baker, so I didn't want to start from scratch. And before the internet was a real part of my life, all I could do was look at commercial cookbooks, and poll people I thought of as decent bakers. But I never found a recipe that produced the ideal homemade flavor I remembered from childhood. Then came the internet: not just a career space for me, but a new part of my daily routine. I redoubled my search and started baking all over again.I still didn't have much luck, but I was persistent: lots of ingredients, lots of oven lightings, and lots of mediocre cookies. Finally, I was inspired to just start working with other recipes, and tweaking individual ingredients in a search for the right mix. This recipe is the current iteration of the tweaking process. It's not 100% where I want it to be, but it makes a mighty good cookie. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
By the way, if you're wondering about the name — the base recipe is one of the many Famous Amos recipes out there. I’m not so famous, and I’m not Amos...
The Recipe
1 ¼ Cups Packed Dark Brown Sugar¾ Cup White Sugar
1 ½ Cups Butter (Soft but not melted)
½ Cup Vegetable Oil (Canola, Corn, or even Olive)
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp. Vanilla Extract
4 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 ½ Tsp. Salt
½ Tsp. Cream of Tartar
1 Tsp. Baking Soda
2 ½ Cups Semi-Sweet or Dark Chocolate Chips (Milk chocolate chips work too, but they make a swee-eet cookie – use at your own risk!)
Makes: a ridiculous amount of cookies.
Thoroughly cream Sugars, Butter, Oil, Egg, and Vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine Flour, Salt, Cream of Tartar, and Baking Soda. Add dry ingredients by halves into the wet ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Add Chocolate chips (and the nuts of your choice if you’re into that kind of thing). You’ll want to bake these cookies right away, and make sure not to chill or refrigerate the dough — they lose flavor and consistency if chilled. (If you do need to refrigerate, just make sure you let the dough come back to room temperature before you start baking. That will help preserve at least some of the original flavor.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drop cookies by heaping tablespoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 11-13 minutes, but beware: the cookies will not brown. (11 minutes is just about right in my oven.) Let cookies stand on the cookie sheet for 1 minute before transferring to cooling rack. (The cookies are incredibly soft and gooey when they first come out of the oven; without the standing time, you can end up with a lot of misshapen and broken cookies. They’ll taste fine, but you might just be ridiculed by friends and loved ones for not making nice, round cookies...)
Eat and enjoy! I'll be back soon with another deep post.
Postscript: An Updated Recipe
Only a week after posting this recipe, I've done some additional tweaking — so the one you see above has changed from what was originally posted. If you tried and liked the original, you'll probably like this one even more. If you haven't tried the original, skip it and try this one instead.Updated: 7/26/08
