Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

(This article originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of La Brea Living Magazine.)

Chewy Unboxed
by dale reinert, food editor

The early April afternoon on my way home from school was the first time that spring the warm sun truly foretold that spring could no longer be held at bay.

It was turning out to be as a momentous a semester as my teacher had promised. Flight Four, the fourth grade field program, had started with a tour of the Hamm House Museum and Log Cabin, which was way cool to me – boring to most other fourth graders. The week previous, my first hospital stay meant being absent from my own first communion party. My ogling, over-perfumed aunts couldn’t squeeze my cheeks; I wouldn’t have to be the center of attention (which I hated more that almost anything); and I didn’t have to deal with being nice in a big crowd.

Nope, just sitting in a hospital room, watching TV and eating endless Jell-O and ice cream was fine by me.

But, today I was, my mom had said, going to be special. She had forewarned warned us my father’s return to work some weeks previous meant a real paycheck today and that we would be having something other than government block cheese, bologna, and Wonder bread for dinner. I couldn’t wait.

So, I walked along the playground fence and slapping my hand along the steel diamonds of the hurricane fence, thinking tonight’s dinner might be steak. I passed the three big stone houses that shared the block with the schools and figured dinner is likely to chicken, one paycheck in seven months likely won’t go far after bills are paid.

Rounding the corner at Old Man Alba’s Store, I remembered mom’s fondness for bananas – he always kept a bin filled out front -- and figured she’d make some banana bread or at least buy a bunch of them to cut up on top of ice cream before we stirred heaping teaspoons of Nestlé’s Chocolate Quick Mix into it. We love to do that when we would squeeze that out of the grocery dollars.

Just one more long block and a corner. And I thought I could smell something. But what was it? Hamburgers? Big old messy homemade whoppers like that made over at the Lange’s – with slices of tomatoes and onions and crunchy lettuce? Sniff. SNIFF. Nope. No scent.

I walked up the three steps of the back porch leading to the kitchen, opened the door and before my eyes was spread across the table boxes and boxes of baked goods from the outlet store – Archway cookies and Little Debbie cakes. In 1974, these were fine eats, especially to a nine year-old who had been told that they’re too expensive every time he saw them in the grocery store.

Dad simply said, “Go ahead, sit down, pick a box, enjoy. This ain’t never gonna happen again. Everything was half price.”

I grab a box of Archway molasses cookies. Chewy, earthy and nutty. The next day I ate another kind of chewy cookie. Another day, another variety. I fell in love with chewy cookies. Up to that date I had only had crunchy cookies and since then I have only loved chewy cookies.

Why were all the cookies in the whole universe crunchy, except the cookies made by Archway, I wondered? Below is a basic chewy cookie recipe with some simple additive and some extra tips. Enjoy!

Chewy Cookie Dough

The Dry Ingredients:

2 1\4 cups bread flour or flour of bread machines
1 teaspoon fine grain salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

The Wet Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 1\2 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla (please use high quality)

Flavor Options:
Equivalent of 2 cups of the following flavor combinations:

• Semisweet chocolate chips with or without walnuts
• Macadamia nuts with white chocolate chips
• Chopped Andie’s Mint Candies
• Chocolate\Caramel chips with pecans
  Peanut butter chips rolled in cinnamon and sugar

Procedure
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom small saucepan over low heat. Pour the melted butter in the mixer's work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugar on low speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons whole milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.

3. Sift together the bread flour, salt, and baking soda. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined.

4. Stir in the 2 cups of flavor options you decided on.

5. Chill the dough for at least one hour or (preferably) overnight, and then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, about six cookies on each sheet. I use about 2 or 2 1\2 heaping kitchen (not measuring) tablespoons per cookies – these are big cookies – just shy of a quarter of a cup measure.

6. Bake on the middle rake of the preheated oven 11-13 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after ten minutes. It helps with most ovens to rotate the baking sheet to ensure even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.


Tips and Hints:
A. The length of time you chill the dough and the size of the cookies impacts how long you will bake the cookies.

B. The flavor options you decide on will impact how much the cookies spread when they cook. This is true for a variety of reasons, like the amount of edible wax manufacturer’s use in their product and how some ingredients interact with others.

C. Half of all the cookies made and consumed in America are chocolate chips, so start with that and expand there.

Chocolate: If you want to make the chocolate-chocolate chip cookies pictured here, then reduce the amount of flour by 1\4 cup and stir 1\2 cup of Dutch-processed cocoa and 1 tablespoon instant coffee into melted butter. Roll the dough into powdered sugar before baking.