Chocolate-chip cookies, production style

An older gentleman in our church passed away late last week, and his funeral is this Friday (Don is a pallbearer). I was asked to make some chocolate-chip cookies for after the service. Lots of chocolate-chip cookies.

For this task, I took the best chocolate-chip cookie recipe I've ever found, and multiplied it. It's kind of an awkward recipe to multiply, since it starts with 11 tablespoons of butter. I had a full two pounds of butter I wanted to use, so I had to figure out the ratios. A little cross-multiply-and-divide (for those who remember that classic high-school math trick) and I determined the recipe needed to be ramped up by 5.5 times.

I got the original recipe from a now-defunct blog called (oddly) "A Girls' Guide to Guns and Butter." The blog is gone, but the recipe lives on. Here's the original:

• 11 tablespoons butter, melted (hot is fine)
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar (do not pack the brown sugar into the measuring cup but scoop it out gently and simply level it off – it should be loose and fluffy, or you will end up using too much and your cookies will be tough)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash of vanilla
• 2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Here's my 5.5x calculations, made a bit awkward due to the eggs and yolks:

The secret, apparently, is to melt the butter rather than merely soften it.

Brown sugar, white sugar, salt, vanilla, and baking soda:

Adding the whole eggs and egg yolks:

Mixing in the flour and melted butter:

Ready to add the chocolate chips:

This is the first batch. It's been a long time since I made this recipe, and I swiftly realized the raw cookies have to be much smaller, and more widely spaced, so they don't all meld together. I reserved the first batch for us; delicious, but not "pretty."

Thereafter I got the hang of making the cookies "pretty." The cookies are baked in a low oven (325F) for anywhere from 12 to 16 minutes, depending on oven particulars. I baked and baked, bagging up the cooling cookies, until the dough was gone. (The blue-lidded tub holds the misshapen first batch.)

This really is one of the best chocolate-chip cookie recipe I've come across. Just don't add too much raw dough – or overcrowd it – on the cookie sheet.

Cold rain, warm cookies, hot tea

Yesterday it was cold and raining and howling wind. Obviously it wasn't quite cold enough to snow, but it was chilly and windy and nasty outside.

Today it's a decidedly brisk 25F, but with high winds that make it feel much colder. It's an excellent day for warm cookies...

...and hot tea.

Power went out for about five hours during the night, which meant that somewhere in all that windy rainy darkness, some poor linemen were working hard. I sure wish I could give them some warm cookies and hot tea.

Another birthday

Today is my birthday. I'm 51 years old.

We don't make a Big Deal out of birthdays in our house, so today's been a pretty ordinary day. It started out early before the rest of the family was awake by scooting a couple of pregnant cows into the corral.

This is Jet, looking very grumpy. She doesn't want to be holed up like this, but she's due any time and I'd prefer to have her close.

How can I tell she's about to calve? Well with Dexters, I've learned to watch the udder. When it goes turgid and all the teats stick out every-which-way, it usually means they're close.

I'm also seeing periodic bubbles of mucous that come and go.

On the other hand, she's been in the corral all day and hasn't gone into labor yet, so my hopes of having a birthday calf may be dashed.

I also shoved Matilda into the corral for the same reason -- she's due any day. With Matilda, however, her massive udder balloons up well in advance and the poor dear walks around with this enormous pendulous beach ball between her legs.

Matilda is pure Jersey and about eleven years old now, and she's always had a poor udder attachment. She's a wonderful mama, though, and adores having calves on her. We missed a breeding last year, so I'm sure she's looking forward to a new baby.

However Matilda and Jet don't get along, and I knew it was dicey to keep them confined together (Jet is vastly dominant to Matilda and has horns to boot). I ended up closing the rest of the livestock in the pasture and letting Matilda loose in the driveway and keeping Jet in the corral.

This morning I also noticed Polly was in heat, so Don and I shoved her and Petunia in with Samson, our bull. I'll keep her in for about a week and then release her, since I want to keep milking her and I can't milk her when she's with Samson.

Later in the morning I had to hurry to get my WND column finished and submitted by noon. I was a few minutes late in sending it, but that's because my folks called to wish me happy birthday. Sorry, they take priority for a few minutes over a noon deadline!

We had some heavy rain showers move through yesterday and today. This means I'm off garden-watering duty for awhile, a nice break.

However it was past time to pick a lot of the cantaloups. I sent Younger Daughter out to pick the ripe ones.

Some are over-ripe and have split.

I'm not overly worried about keeping the house tidy right now. It's trashed, but that's because we're in the throes of our busy season and have tons of tankard work going on.

I get the kitchen cleaned up each night, but that's about it. This is the reality of a home business -- it's at home. A messy house just happens.

One nice thing is that I can listen to classical music again. I'm an absolute classical music fanatic. For years I listened to our one and only regional classical station on a thrift-store radio in the living room, but my radio hasn't been working and I've gone into withdrawals. Then the girls told me about Pandora.com, so I've been listening to my beloved composers via the tinny speakers on my computer. Today Older Daughter loaned me her computer speakers which vastly improved the sound quality. As I type this, I'm happily listening to Concerti a Cinque by Albinoni. Bliss.

This afternoon I made some chocolate chip cookies, and toward the end Older Daughter rummaged in our bag of candles and took out a birthday candle (in green, my favorite color) and stuck it into a cookie for me.

I thought that was SO sweet.

So that's been my birthday. Nothing earth-shattering... except for being continuously around my lovely family. Doesn't get any better than that. I'm one lucky woman.

Chocolate chip cookies

At last for all you cookie-lovers, here's the scoop on the chocolate chip cookies pictured on the masthead.

I'm in search of a recipe for good chocolate chip cookie. I've tried many over the years with varying success, but for one reason or another they just... miss the mark, I guess.

Well I just found a new recipe on a page called, oddly, A Girls' Guide to Guns and Butter.

The recipe seemed simple enough, so I tried it... and ooh la la, they were delicious! And picturesque!

I'm not a huge chocolate fan, so I significantly reduced the suggested amount of chocolate chips in the recipe, but otherwise I followed it exactly. Below is the recipe, including the notes from the Girls' Guide page.

• 11 T (5.5 oz, weight) salted butter, melted (hot is fine)
• 2/3 C light brown sugar (do not pack the brown sugar into the measuring cup but scoop it out gently and simply level it off – it should be loose and fluffy, or you will end up using too much and your cookies will be tough)
• 1/2 C granulated sugar
• 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk (if you don’t feel like separating your eggs, two whole eggs will work as well, resulting in flatter cookies)
• A dash of vanilla
• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 C dark chocolate chips (you can also use all semi-sweet or all bittersweet or any combination you like)

Bake at 325F for 12-14 minutes (in my oven, it's 16 minutes).

Last night I made a fresh batch of these cookies, and tripled the recipe. The photos below represent the tripled amount.

I started with butter.

While the butter melted, I cracked eggs and separated some extra yolks as well.

Loosely-packed brown sugar...

...and white sugar.

Adding melted butter.

Mixing. The liquified butter makes things very, well, liquidy.

Baking soda and salt (I forgot to photograph the vanilla).

Adding flour.

The first time I made these cookies, I noted how loose the dough was, even with the flour mixed in. This is due to the liquified butter. Would it hold its shape when it was time to bake, I wondered, or would it blob all over the cookie sheet?

I added about a third or a quarter of the recommended chocolate for the simple reason that I'm not crazy about chocolate (yes, I know -- heresy). Add as much as you wish.

By the time I was ready to put the dough on the pan, the butter had cooled enough that the dough did indeed hold its shape.

While the first batch of cookies was baking, I chopped walnuts. To me, that's what makes for a superb chocolate chip cookie -- lots and lots of walnuts. Sadly no one else in my family sees the light in this regard, so I usually reserve a portion of the dough for last, and load it with walnuts.

First batch (walnut-less) out of the oven, second batch in.

The evening's bounty.

My husband suggested calling these Trollhouse cookies -- which sent me into gales of laughter -- but they shall remain nameless, I suppose.