Adventures Near and Far: December 2012

My favorite recipe was shared with my family by our former neighbor, Sherry Burkhalter. She's an awesome lady who also is an amazing seamstress (like my mom!). It's similar to the standard recipe, with a bit of different proportions, of course.

First you start with some sugar and crisco...(mix).

Cute little round ball of tightly packed dark brown sugar.

The beginning.

Add pretty eggs, mix again. Nothing unusual.

eggs!

In a separate bowl, be sure to mix the flour and salt and baking soda. Flour: you must NOT let the flour get packed or it won't turn out right. Scoop the flour with NOT the measuring cup, and don't tap the cup or the flour will settle and it'll be too much. I guess normally this may not be too big an issue, but with this recipe, there must be a higher flour to everything else ratio than normal recipes. So, be sure the flour mixes with the salt and baking soda, or else one cookie will be REALLY fluffy and salty, where the rest will be flat and ... not. Ask me how I know.

All ingredients about to be friends.

Ok, now here's the fun part: mixing in the flour into the dough. Be careful here and don't get impatient, because if you add too much flour at once, you will look like this:

Don't be like me.

No, I didn't do this today while cooking -- I actually just played with flour to demonstrate what you could theoretically look like if you were impatient and dumped an entire cup of flour into the dough at once. More commonly, when you get impatient, there will just be a lot of flour dust all over the counter surrounding the mixing bowl.

Also, careful with your mixer here, if you are using a handheld one. The dough gets pretty thick. Today, when I was at the end of this step, my handheld mixer actually broke. Horrible metallic sound, then the smell of burning.... something. I would say oil, but I don't think mixers have oil in them.... so, be careful. I usually use a stand mixer, because they are heavier duty, but I accidentally left it in Alabama, so have to go back to get it this December. I only have one thing to say about the poor little mixer: I'm glad I only was making a half batch, or else these cookies would have taken MUCH longer!

Don't forget the vanilla! I forgot to take a picture of the vanilla, but don't forget the vanilla. I can't tell you how many times I have forgotten to put in the vanilla - it's easy to get excited after all that mixing. ( "Yay, cookies! EAT THEM SOON! Chocolate chips now!" *20 minutes later* "oh yeah .... I forgot vanilla." )

After vanilla...

Ready for chocolate chips? Also pictured: sad mixer.

Stir in chocolate chips...

So tempting...

THEN, important tool: The awesome cookie spoon! Warning: do NOT use this spoon for ice cream. Trust me, I tried once. Broke it. This spoon is one of those super awesome self-emptying ones, but is only to be used for soft things like cookies, not hard things like ice cream.