Friday, August 20, 2010

Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Well, look at the blog title! You know the first post had to be about cookies! Cookies are awesome. And, seriously, who doesn't like cookies?
We got this recipe from Hershey's Easy Baking desert book, published in 2004. But because the recipe didn't quite suit what we were looking for, we changed it slightly.

1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups of cocoa
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt (approx.)
1/2 cup of butter or margarine*
3/4 cup, packed, light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract**
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups (10-ounces) of white chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. The book says to grease (lightly) the cookie pan, but we used non-stick, which I prefer. And it works well anyway.
2. On wax paper, stir the flour, baking soda, cocoa, and salt together. We do this to make putting all the ingredients together easier.
3. Beat the brown sugar, regular sugar, butter, and vanilla in a large bowl until "well blended." That means that it should look sort of like yellow icing.
4. Add the eggs and beat well.
5. Gradually add in the flour mix from step 2. Fold the wax paper with all the dry ingredients into a cone and slowly pour it into the wet ingredients, making sure to mix when it looks too dry.
6. Stir in the chocolate. :-)
7. Drop rounded teaspoons onto the rounded cookie pan.
8. Bake for 7-9 minutes until the cookies are set. Make sure not to over bake them.
9. Cool slightly on the baking pan. Move them onto a wire rack and cool completely.
10. After waiting for about 10-15 LONG minutes, you can finally eat them.
(Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies.)
NOTE: Try to make them when you have company over, or plan to eat a LOT of cookies, because they only stay fresh for about 5 days, and then they start to get stale.

* There is a difference in the final product if you use butter vs. margarine. We used butter in this recipe. Hopefully, we'll be able to put up a post on the differences and the pros and cons of one or the other.

** We make our own vanilla extract. We'll put a post on that too.

Cheerio, peeps!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Well, Hello!

Why, hello there, everyone who probably isn't reading this! Not yet, at least.

I'm Ari(ella, but just call me Ari!), one of the co-writers of this blog. My mom will be henceforth known as Elizabeth. As you can tell from this blog description, it will be us, cooking. And I like cookies, so that's where we got the title. But what person in their right mind doesn't like cookies?!
I'm a veteran blogger (See here and here!), but my mom's new, and I'm also not too sure how this whole team member thing works, so, in advance, please forgive us any glitches!

Hope you'll like the recipes we make here!

Cheerio, peeps!