Chocolate Chip Cookies

After the coffee cake misadventures, I decided to try a slightly easier recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies. I realize that everyone and their uncle has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, or, if you're like me, you go for the tried and true recipe on the chocolate chip bag. Admit it! But I have a man with an insatiable hankering for chocolate chip cookies, and when he wants cookies, he gets cookies. This one goes out to the biggest cookie lover I know. Stay tuned and I'll give you his take and appraisal on these fine cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies should be easy to make, right? There shouldn't be any earth shattering decisions to be made, just follow the recipe. That's what I thought, too. My friends, I am here to tell you I was wrong. So very wrong. We must choose. Yes! We must! Shall we go the road of disappointment or the road of flavor? Paula Deen would agree, flavor.

Pay no attention to the out of focus bits in this picture. They will only fill you with guilt, and guilt has no place in the kitchen when baking delicious goodies. Let's just focus on the little pleasures in life, and not the fact that we're putting two whole sticks of butter into these cookies. Agreed? Butter rant over. On with the recipe.

Get those ingredients together! We'll be using an entire twelve ounce bag of choco chips and... Wait a minute... Could it be?!... Doth mine eyes deceive me? But certainly, that can't be?! Okay, try not to get excited, but there may be a slight similarity between this recipe and the coffee cake. Thankfully, it's not that the preparation was a bit of a mess. We will again be using a CUP of pecans. I've got to hand it to Estella, she really loved her nuts.

Up until this point, I had been getting pecans from work. Yes, work. I manage a Dairy Queen for my folks, so I'm allowed to dip into the pecans every now and again. However, there is a point when borrowing pecans from work ceases to be "okay" and when it starts to become an issue. If the customers aren't getting their Blizzards or sundaes because of my coffee cake fiascoes, then "Houston we have a problem." Don't worry, no Cool Treats were sacrificed in the making of these cookies. This time, I bought a bag of pecans at the store. Do you have any idea how expensive nuts are? Whoa momma. Moral of this story: If you've got a connection, use it. I will soon be the proud mother of a case of pecans.

Look at all those pecans, chocolate chips, and butter! If you're a cookie dough lover, you may need a chaperone. You're right, it's almost too much to bear. Just do the best you can to get at least a dozen smallish cookies out of the dough. If it helps, you can imagine that you're eating a MASSIVE amount of butter, pecans, and chocolate chips. If you're like me, that won't do much to stop you from shoving dough in your face. If the cookies taste a bit salty, don't tell anyone it's from your tears of shame, it's just that you didn't measure the salt correctly.

As far as size, make those cookies the size you want. You can make them nice and small so you don't feel guilty eating ten at a time, or you can make them HUGE so you feel really good about eating only one. I made these guys pretty big based on the deliciousness of the batter and the laziness of the baker. It was late, and I really didn't feel like cycling through all of my cookie sheets a million times.

Put those suckers in the oven and a short - albeit excruciatingly long - 12 minutes later, we have cookies! If you can wait 10 more seconds, put those beauties on a plate and pour yourself a cold glass of milk. Or you can just eat them off the cookie sheet, burning the roof of your mouth to oblivion, then run to the fridge and chug down some milk from the carton. Either way, they're still delicious.

Next time, maybe you could double the recipe so that you'll have some to share with someone else who likes cookies. Then again, what would be the fun in that?

A bit on the texture of these cookies for those connoisseurs out there: the cookie is very light, fluffy, and cakey. I'm not much of an expert on how to change that texture, but feel free to tweak the recipe to meet your optimal noshing needs.

My #1 cookie fan didn't necessarily like the texture of these cookies at first since he's accustomed to store bought cookie texture. He changed his tune and called them "possibly the best I've ever had" after they retained their softness for several days. But don't take it from us, try this recipe yourself!

Happy baking!

Next up: Banana Cream Pie