Ode to the chocolate chip cookie

I love cookies. If it's got chocolate or is from Bakesale Betty, it's destined for my mouth. Lately, I've been on a crazy cookie-baking kick. I make cookies at least once, if not twice, a week. I come home from work, and I want a cookie. After dinner, I want a cookie. While watching a movie, I start getting cravings for — yep, that's right: cookies. I'd probably eat cookies for breakfast if I didn't have this crazy notion that normal people simply do not eat cookies first thing in the morning.

Chocolate chip cookies are my go-to cookie when I want to bake. They were the very first thing I ever learned to cook all by myself, at the tender age of ten or eleven. At our school's book fair, I'd bought a book called The Best Cookie Book Ever, in which a parade of anthropomorphic teddy bears in late 80's garb instructed me on how to make a variety of cookies. The recipe for "Teddy's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies" is splattered with bits of batter that had gone flying off the electric hand mixer nearly every time I baked.

Back then, I used margarine in my cookies because... well, didn't everyone? Many years later, throwing together a batch of chocolate chip cookies while vacationing in Austin, TX, I found only butter in the fridge. I was hesitant to use it. Butter had always seemed too decadent for the average cookie, and besides, it was expensive. Those cookies turned out to be the best I'd ever made — and so I only ever used butter from then on. (I now think spending the money on organic butter is totally worth it, as you can probably guess.)

 I used to have a problem with my cookies being too cakey, and they would practically retain their shape after being scooped out of the mixing bowl, instead of spreading in the oven. I haven't quite figured out the science of cookie baking, though I do know that a slight reduction in the amount of flour and a larger brown to white sugar ratio (á la the recipe on the bag of Trader Joe's chocolate chips) has helped create cookies that are still soft but more traditionally cookie-shaped.

They're damn good, if I do say so myself. The Anthropologist agrees.

All this talk of cookies is making me want one. I think it's time to whip up another batch.

The only chocolate chip cookie recipe you'll ever need
(courtesy of me)

2 1/4 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 c firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
1 c softened butter
1 tsp good-quality vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips
optional: chopped nuts, dried fruit, or whatever floats your boat (I put cranberries in the ones above)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl, and set it aside. Using an electric hand mixer, cream together the sugars, butter, and vanilla. Add eggs and beat. Add dry ingredients and continue to mix. (At this point, my ancient mixer — the one I found abandoned at the back of the cupboard when I was moving out of my freshman year apartment — can no longer handle the work, and I switch to a wooden spoon.) Stir in chocolate chips and any additional add-ins.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a non-greased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until golden. Transfer to a wire rack and cool.

As Teddy likes to say, "Did you turn off the oven?"

Makes about 2 dozen.

Avoiding disaster

This week is going to be a long week. One of my co-teachers is out on vacation part of the week, and my other co-teacher has a knee injury and can't move around too much in the classroom. Yay. To lift my spirits, I decided to do a little baking in the form of a loaf of chocolate banana bread.

It was inspired by a recipe in the latest issue of Sunset magazine. But instead of a classic banana bread recipe with cocoa added to it, it substituted prune puree for the butter and included such things as walnuts and chocolate chips. Which I didn't have. I did have, however, two frozen bananas and a brand-new container of Green and Black's Organic baking cocoa.

A small aside here: A lot of chocolate is produced in not-so-friendly ways. In fact, much of the chocolate in the more commonly known brands is from plantations where they pay extremely low wages and employ child slave labor. I highly recommend buying chocolate from companies that support fair trade and organc growing practices, which would include Green and Black's, Dagoba, and Endangered Species. Sure, it costs more — but isn't it worth it to know your chocolate wasn't harvested by child labor?

To make the bread, I used my usual banana bread recipe and simply added the 1/2 cup baking cocoa from the Sunset recipe. Into a large bowl went the dry ingredients, and into a blender went the wet ones. It wasn't until I began to mix the two together that it occurred to me that perhaps I had misread the amount of flour — and as I stirred and saw that the dry ingredients were not fully incorporating into the wet ones, I already knew what my mistake had been. Two mistakes, actually. The first was that I used 1-3/4 cup flour instead of the 1-1/4 in the recipe. The second was that by adding 1/2 cup cocoa, I should have reduced the amount of flour. So there was far too much flour in the bowl than necessary.

I panicked slightly. Considering how much my fancy organic cocoa cost, even on sale, there was no way I could just throw out the batter. Although I had used melted butter as the lubricant in the recipe, I decided that canola oil would do the trick to moisten the mixture enough. I poured in some, then a little more, until the batter was dense but combined. If I'd had another banana, I would have thrown that in, too. But I didn't.

I put it in the oven to bake, crossing my fingers that it would all come out okay. Halfway through baking, the apartment smelled wonderful, and I figured there was still hope that the bread would be fine.

It took a little longer to bake than as directed in the recipe, so while the middle was still not completely baked through, the sides were drying out and nearly beginning to burn. The resulting bread wasn't perfect, but it was quite tasty, especially with a smear of cream cheese on top.

I've already told my co-teacher J that I plan to make a blueberry cream cheese coffee cake next week. Let's just hope I can manage to do it without any mishaps!



Chocolate banana bread
(adapted from Clueless in the Kitchen by Evelyn Raab)

1 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c sugar (feel free to use less, particularly if your bananas are especially overripe)
1/2 c baking cocoa, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 c melted butter or oil (I used butter this time)
2 bananas
2 eggs


Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a large mixing bowl, stir dry ingredients together. In a blender, add all the wet ingredients and blend until fully combined. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry.

Pour the batter into a well-greased loaf pan and bake for an hour. Test the bread with a toothpick or wooden skewer; when it comes out with only a few crumbs clinging on, it's done. Turn out onto a wire rack and let cool.

Serve with cream cheese, if you so desire.