Chocolate Chip Cookie Perfection

Is there anything better than a chocolate chip cookie?  Crispy, chewy, gooey, chocolaty.  It’s one of the few things that can embody all of those characteristics at the same time.  To make them even better, they’re easy to make and use ingredients you probably already have on hand. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

½ cup butter
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Make sure your butter is very soft and put it into your mixing bowl with the sugar.  If you forgot to pull the butter out ahead of time, we have a trick for that here.  My recipe calls for sugar and molasses simply because I don’t keep brown sugar on hand.  I always have regular sugar, though, and if you just keep a bottle of molasses in the pantry, you’ll always have fresh brown sugar rather than gambling that when you pull out the bag, you might just have one big brown sugar rock.  That being said, if you have brown sugar on hand, feel free to substitute ¾ cup of it for the sugar and molasses. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until it becomes light and fluffy.  If you’re using a mixer that will probably take about 2 minutes. 

Add the vanilla and molasses.

Scrape everything down and mix until incorporated and add the egg.

Mix until thoroughly incorporated.  You can mix your dry ingredients in a separate bowl before adding them, but when I’m being lazy, I just add the flour and sprinkle the soda, powder, and salt over the top. 

Once the flour is in, you don’t want to over mix, so just enough to bring it together as a dough.  The perfect cookie dough will still be quite soft, but has just lost its stickiness.  

Add your chocolate chips.  I was on the baking aisle and these Ghirardelli mini chips caught my eye.  For some reason anything that’s miniature makes me happy.  I mean, what isn’t cuter when made small?  You can use whatever size chips you want, though. 

Stir them in so they’re fairly evening distributed.  I know it looks good enough to eat just as it is, but my mom always taught me to not eat things with raw eggs in them, and it stuck.  So I’ll pass, but help yourself if you want, but I promise it’ll be better once they’re baked anyway. 

Using a spoon, scoop the dough and scrape it off the spoon onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room for them to spread.

I wanted fairly large cookies, so I used a generous rounded tablespoon.  You can make them whatever size you like, you’ll just want to watch them and adjust the baking time. 

When they’re all scooped, pop the pan into the freezer for 15 minutes.  While they’re in there, preheat your oven to 375° At this point, if you don’t want to bake all of your cookies, simply scoop and freeze all of the dough.  (I did these ones smaller)

Then just pop the dough balls into a bag and back into the freezer.  That way you can have fresh cookies whenever the mood strikes.  Just pull out however many you want, preheat your oven, and bake them. 

After the cookies you’re going to bake have been in the freezer for 15 minutes, pull them out and bake them for 14 – 17 minutes if they’re this size.  If they’re smaller, decrease the time, and just watch them.  They should be just starting to brown around the edges and no longer look wet on top. 

This will create the perfect crispy exterior and chewy interior everyone loves about chocolate chip cookies.  They’ll be sort of puffy when you first pull them out of the oven, but will quickly settle. 

Leave them on the pan to cool for a few minutes, and then transfer them to a rack.  If you can get them there, anyway.  I’m pretty sure one will find its way into your mouth on the way. 

Definitely serve with a glass of milk, then just close your eyes and treat yourself to some chocolate chip cookie paradise. 

What cooking lesson did you learn from Mom when you were growing up?

Eclairs, Because Chocolate Always Wins!

Seeley asked me a few days ago what I was going to make for my post this week.  I said I might do a breakfast something, but with Hubby being out of town it could possibly be overruled by chocolate.  Well, chocolate won.  Really, when you’re home all alone, what’s better than spending a few hours in the kitchen followed by indulging in some serious chocolaty goodness?  On the downside, just about every dish in my house is dirty now, and I’m going to have to work my way through the huge pile that is climbing out of the sink before Hubby comes home tomorrow.  Forget about that for now, though, let’s just stick with the fun part. 

Here’s what you’ll need for the pastry cream filling:

1 cup milk
⅓ cup sugar
½ cup cream
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 Tablespoon flour
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 Tablespoons butter

In a smallish saucepan, combine the milk and sugar.  Stir them together and turn the heat on medium low. 

In a separate dish, whisk together the cream, flour, and cornstarch.  It will be kind of thick and pasty. 

Add the egg yolks and whisk to combine. 

When your milk comes just about to a simmer, add a little bit at a time to the egg mixture, whisking as you go. 

When you’ve added ½ cup or so, go ahead and pour the whole thing back into the pan. 

For this part you need to stir constantly switching between a whisk and a spatula to scrape the sides and bottom.  It will thicken fairly quickly. 

When it does, pour it through a mesh strainer into a bowl. 

Use your spatula to gently push it through. 

Now is where you add your butter and vanilla.  I used a teaspoon each of vanilla bean paste and vanilla extract. 

See the little seeds?  I like the way they look, but I prefer the flavor of the Mexican vanilla extract, so I use them both. 

Cover the custard with plastic wrap, placing it directly on the surface, then cool and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. 

Next comes the pate a choux.  It’s pronounced like pot a shoe… basically it sounds like a sneeze.  I don’t speak French, so I have no idea what it actually means and I’m not going to bother looking it up.  In my world it means the pastry used to make éclairs and cream puffs.

Here’s what you’ll need for the pate a choux (bless you!):

½ cup butter , unsalted – otherwise omit salt
1 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups flour
4 eggs, at room temperature

Combine the water, butter, sugar, and salt in a pan over medium heat. 

Bring that to a boil and pour in the flour.

Stir with a wooden spoon until it comes together into a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan. 

Remove it from the heat and dump it into a bowl.  I’m using my stand mixer, but if you have Popeye arms like Seeley, you can definitely just do it with a wooden spoon. 

Allow it to cool for about 10 minutes, stirring, well smooshing might be a better word, every so often.  Add the eggs one at a time.  At first, it’s going to turn into a slimy, curdled, mess.

Keep stirring.  It will eventually come together. 

When the egg is completely incorporated, add the next one.  You’ll have to go through this process with all four eggs.  Eventually you should end up with something that looks like this. 

Scoop it into a piping bag with a very large round tip.  You can even just cut the end off of the bag and not use a tip if you don’t have one big enough. 

If you haven’t preheated your oven yet, now’s probably a good time.  Turn it to 425°.  I like little éclairs, so I piped lines about the size of a finger.  I also made little round piles which will be used for making cream puffs.  After this one, I also did a pan of larger ones.  Do whatever size you want, but keep in mind they’ll double in size.

I know, they’re a mess.  Don’t worry, just wet your fingertip and press down all the little points. 

See?  Much better.

Now into the oven.  425° for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350°.  Don’t open the oven door.  There’s magic happening in there. 

Cook them for another 25 – 35 minutes, depending on what size you made.  When they’re ready, they’ll be a nice golden brown.

Turn off the oven and prop the door open with a wooden spoon. 

Leave them in there for 30 minutes.  This is important to allow them to dry out so you don’t have collapsed, soggy éclairs.  After the 30 minutes, remove them to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

Now it’s back to the filling.  Whip ¼ cup heavy cream until you have stiff peaks.  (am I the only one who still cracks up at that phrase?)

Pull your custard out of the fridge and mix it until it’s nice and smooth.  Dollop on half of the whipped cream. 

Gently fold it into the custard.  Down through the middle with your spatula, then up the side and over the top. 

Follow it with the other half, and continue folding until it's completely incorporated.  Scoop it into a pastry bag fitted with a more medium sized tip this time. 

Insert the tip into the end of each éclair. 

Squeeze the bag gently.  You’ll be able to feel as the cavity fills with pastry cream. 

For cream puffs, the tops are usually cut off. 

Fill that cavity with pastry cream, and put its hat back on. 

I decided to fill some of them with chocolate mousse.  I made about a quarter of this recipe, minus the add-ins, and put it into a pastry bag. 

Then just fill like you did with the cream. 

If you don’t want to use chocolate mousse, you’ll need to double the pastry cream recipe to have enough to fill all the éclairs.  When they’re all filled, place them into the fridge to wait while you make the ganache.  Place 1 ½ cups chopped chocolate or chocolate chips in a bowl.  I used milk chocolate.  Bring ½ cup heavy cream to a simmer and pour it over the top. 

Allow it to sit for 2 minutes, then whisk until it turns into a smooth, creamy consistency.  Take you éclairs back out of the fridge. 

See?  I told you I made bigger ones too.  Now take each one and dip the top side into the ganache.  Obviously you can’t do that with the cream puffs, or the tops will fall off. 

Allow the excess to drip off, then turn it back upright.

Then just place it back onto the pan.

What do you mean there’s one missing in the back corner?  Well, someone had to check and make sure they were alright… didn’t they?  Oh, they’re more than alright.  Perfectly tender shell filled with the most amazing pastry cream and topped with fudgy chocolate ganache. 

Mmmmm… creamy chocolaty goodness.  I’ll excuse you while you wipe the drool away. 

*If you're not going to eat these within 24 hours of making them, freeze them immediately and then just allow them to thaw at room temperature for 2-3 hours before you want to eat them. 

So what’s your favorite thing to make when you’re lonely?