It's Wednesday. Let's Bake!

Hi everyone! So, it's Wednesday, I don't have to work, and I'm home all day. What do you think I did? Well, I went looking for a new and exciting recipe and made it! Shocking, I know!

My boyfriend, Rob, loves chocolate chip cookies. So I figured, what a great way to start. I found this blog post at Une Gamine dans la Cuisine for what she said were some pretty perfect choc chip cookies! (She'd found the recipe on the Food Gal blog). So, the recipe was a Thomas Keller one for a non-vanilla recipe. I love vanilla, but I figured...well, why not?

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 sticks of cold butter cut into small pieces
1 cup of packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup of white sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/3 cups + 1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. of baking soda
1 tsp. of kosher salt
5 oz of 55% chocolate, cut into small, chip-sized pieces
5 oz of 70-72% chocolate, cut into small, chip-sized pieces

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. I used a non-stick cookie sheet. If you don't have that, you can use parchment paper.

2. Chop up your chocolate bars. I used Lindt 70% dark chocolate and a milk chocolate Galaxy bar. (That's all I had! ^_^ Rob will have to forgive me for mixing chocolate brands - he hates that. He's a chocolate snob! ^_^) Set your chopped chocs aside. The directions say to also put your chocolate in a strainer to keep all the dust-y bits out of your mix. Me? I wanted all the chocolate I could get in it, so I kept the chocolate dust.

3. In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat 1 stick of butter on medium speed until it's smooth. Then, add the brown and white sugars and the other stick of cold butter, and beat until it's all well combined. Keeping mixing until the mixture is light and creamy. Don't forget to scrape down the sides. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. In a bowl, sift the flour and baking soda, and then stir in the salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet.

5. Fold in chocolate!

The mix: light and delicious


6. Roll into balls and place 2" apart of your cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes until beautiful. - My mixture came out too wet to roll into balls easily, so I spooned them onto the cookie sheet in a mound.


Here's how they came out:




The verdict: How did they come out, you ask? Well, they came out delicious. But, I think I'll stick with recipes that incorporate vanilla. I prefer the flavor that light brown sugar and vanilla bring to the table. These are really good, but the brown sugar is a bit too strong for me. And, my cookies weren't quite as fluffy-looking as the other bloggers, but, I love the dark chocolate chunks, for sure! Would I made this recipe again? Probably not.

I am still searching for a recipe to rival Ben's Cookies!
















Uhm...that's not me licking the bowl clean after baking all those cookies!

Hey, you should be proud of me for waiting till the end to eat the cookie dough! ^_~