Favorite Recipe Friday: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Let me just begin by saying that I made cookies waaaaay too many times this winter. But given the two (or was it three?) sets of snow days we had, I don't really feel it was my fault. I'm stuck in the house, I shouldn't go anywhere, what am I gonna do? Bake, of course. And eat.

I love love love classic chocolate chip cookies, and I've never bothered to find a recipe other than the one from the back of the Nestle bag. And when I discovered that even when I threw away the bag, I still had access to the recipe on the Nestle website, Very Best Baking, I was thrilled.

So, without further ado, my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cookies


Original recipe from Very Best Baking

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 12 oz. package milk chocolate chips
3/4 to 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

The only change I make to the original recipe is to only use half a package of chocolate chips. Because I'm cheap. And I like a rather large ratio of cookie to chocolate chip. When all you can taste is the chocolate, you lose the wonderful cookie flavor, and that makes me sad.

Start off by beating together the butter and both kinds of sugar. You want to beat it until the whole mixture becomes light and fluffy. I had a wonderful picture of this; unfortunately, my computer hated it, so it's gone now. Just take my word for it. It was beautiful.

Next, add the vanilla and eggs.

The eggs should be room temperature; the easiest way to get them there quickly and safely is to fill a bowl with warm water and submerge the eggs in it for no longer than two minutes.

After you add the room temperature eggs, and the vanilla, beat it all together. Resist the urge to taste the dough because of the possibility of salmonella (unless, of course, you're not pregnant and don't have a paranoid husband. In that case, go right ahead)

Then add the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Mix it all together and add the chocolate chips and nuts.

Mix it for the last time.

Drop the dough onto a greased cookie sheet. If you want more cookies but smaller ones, only do about a tablespoonful of dough. For larger cookies, use larger globs of dough

Bake at 375 degrees (Fahrenheit, obviously) for 9 to 11 minutes. If the edges are golden brown, that's usually a good time to pull them out, unless you're one of those weirdos who prefers their cookies crunchy and half-charred. Let the cookies cool on a cooling rack, and try to avoid eating them all at once

In case anyone was wondering, the mixer in the pictures is a Bosch classic mixer. My mom got a new one, so she gave me her old one to see if I could get it functional. There's nothing wrong with the mixer itself, but after Mom using it for 20 years or so, the little plastic pieces that keep the bowl in place while the beaters spin have worn completely off. Like so.

And here you can see the grooves on the bottom of the bowl that are supposed to slot into place on the base.

We tried replacing the plastic pieces with JB Weld; it held long enough to make this one batch of cookies, but that was about it. Now we need to see if we have any welders in our friends or family who can run a bead that will work. Or I need to find $400 to buy a new one. To any of my family members reading this, the answer to "what do you want for your birthday" is "money to save up for a Bosch. I hate to retire the old one when the motor on this one is just fine, but I'm not sure if there are any other options. 

Rotisserie-Style Chicken Breast for Sandwiches

Right about this point in my pregnancies, I usually start really missing sandwiches. I know that the risk of listeriosis isn't huge, but it still makes me nervous enough not to want to eat even toasted subs; I'm not a huge fan of warm sandwiches anyway. So when I started thinking about what to take for lunch this week, my mind naturally turned to sandwiches and sandwich meat.

Even when I'm not pregnant, I'm tempted to make my own sandwich meat, just because that way I know what actually went into it (and I'd really like a meat slicer as well :). I had some boneless skinless chicken breast in my freezer that needed to be cooked and eaten before it freezer-burned, so I set out to search the internet for recipes on how to make your own lunch meat.

I was disappointed.

Oh, there are lots of blog and forum posts about how much better it is for you to cook meat at home and use it for sandwiches than to buy overly processed, overly salted deli meat. But recipes? I found one recipe for roast beef, which didn't really help me with my chicken dilemma. The only recipes I found were for grilled chicken or chicken salad, neither of which were what I wanted. I wanted a nice, flavorful cooked chicken that I could slice for sandwiches.

I was on my own.

One of my favorite flavors of chicken deli meat is rotisserie-seasoned, and I remembered seeing a recipe for rotisserie-style chicken on Stephanie O'Dea's fabulous blog, so I went searching. I modified the recipe a bit for my taste, and because I was using boneless skinless breasts instead of a whole chicken. I don't think this quite qualifies as a new recipe, since it's almost entirely hers, but I did tweak it significantly.

Rotisserie-Style Chicken Breast for Sandwiches


Original recipe for Crockpot Rotisserie-Style Chicken 

4 boneless skinless chicken breast pieces (approx. 2 lbs)
2 tsp. coarse salt
1 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. black pepper
2 heaping Tbsp. minced garlic
2 Tbsp. liquid smoke
1/2 10 oz. can chicken broth

I partially thawed the chicken breast so it would cook faster, and to facilitate rubbing it down with the spice mixture. You could probably do this just as well with frozen; it would probably need more cooking time, though.

Combine all dry spices in a bowl. Generously rub the chicken breasts with the spice mixture and place them in the crock pot.

Sprinkle minced garlic over chicken breasts and pour liquid smoke and chicken broth into the bottom of the crock pot.

I cooked this on high for 4 hours because I was afraid I'd end up with chicken too falling-apart to slice or too dried out to eat if I cooked it on Low. It seemed to work out okay.

Then I put the chicken breasts in the freezer to cool for easier slicing. I couldn't wait too long, though; I needed lunch. I had a picture of my scrumptious sandwich, but my weird memory card for the camera managed to lose it; I really have to reformat that thing.

Conclusion

Yummy! The bit with the seasoning on it was a bit spicy for my taste, with the cayenne and the black pepper, but the rest of the breast has a nice flavor. I couldn't taste the liquid smoke at all; I think I'd need more if I want a smoky flavor.

Also, do not leave the breasts in the freezer for too long before trying to slice them, or you might cut yourself while trying to cut them. On two fingers. At the same time. Not that this happened to me or anything. I would never be so foolish. I shudder to think what would happen if I had a meat slicer.

After some experimentation, I determined that what works best for me in slicing is to lay the chicken breast flat and cut it in half so I have a flat surface to stand the chicken up on. Then I can stand it up and slice some relatively thin slices, although still not at all uniform. The little crumby bits that fell off while slicing should make an excellent chicken salad. I just can't escape it :D