the sometimes senseless ravings (and the occassional rant) of an aspiring marine ecologist who may enjoy killing things a little too much

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Cookies!

I discovered a neat trick over the weekend. If you add a little baking powder to your chocolate chip cookies, they don't fall flat after you take them out of the oven. Maybe you don't have that problem, but I certainly do. Then I tried a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that used both baking soda (traditionally found in chocolate chip cookies) and baking powder. That is a great recipe, but it's not what this is about. This is about your basic chocolate chip cookie recipe. My chocolate chip cookies have been puffing up beautifully in the oven then falling flat once they cool. I don't like that. So this weekend I did some experimenting. I added 1/2 tsp. of baking powder to my basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, and they look great! It didn't change the flavor at all, just kept them from losing their puffiness after they cooled. Try it out.

Ingredients:
  • 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 2 cups (one 12 oz. package) chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugars with a mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla, beat well. Beat in the flour mixture about 1/2 cup or so at a time. Stir in the chocolate chips. Drop little balls of dough onto a cookie sheet (I use a small cookie scoop so they're all about the same size) about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 10 minutes (maybe a bit longer if your oven runs cool). Cool for 1-2 minutes in the pan then move to a cooling rack.