New Chocolate Chip Cookies

Time to get back to some cooking business. My son seconds the thought. He is presently in the middle of his X Board Exams. Two down, three to go. And I had promised to bake his favourite chocolate chip cookies during his preparatory holidays. He reminded that if I continued like this his exams would soon be over, with no cookies whatsoever.

Tomorrow is his Sanskrit paper and I could see it was getting harder to make him stay in his room. So we made a deal: I’ll bake the cookies, and he’ll try to keep his butt in his room. Moms are allowed to bribe a little when they think prudent. It is more like an incentive. And he has been good (he just might have aced the Math paper!! Yay! He got a hug for that! 🙂 ).

I started the preparation just before lunch time. Bad idea. The lunch needed to be fixed as well. In my rush, I didn’t look at the recipe carefully enough. It called for rolled oats which I never have. So I had to resort to the recipe on the Nestle semi-sweet morsel package. I was still not paying close attention. That called for oats too! Before I knew it I had a huge batch of dough and a new recipe. Less fat. I wasn’t about to dump my month’s ration of butter into the cookies, no way. So I replaced it partly with vegetable oil. These turned out really great. And I wrote down the ingredients right away before I could forget.

As always, the first batch out of the oven was gone before it could cool! The son approved and returned to his room [sigh of relief]. He’s back since and at the computer playing games – he’s prepared as much as he wants to. And that’s final. I have learned to pick my battles. I am not going to pick one for Sanskrit. The Science paper is in two weeks 🙂 .

My New Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes about 7-8 doz.) 🙂

3 ½ C all purpose flour
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon powder
1 ½ t salt
2 ¼ C sugar (3 C if not in India; replace half with brown sugar if you have)
¼ C butter
2/3 C refined vegetable oil
2 t vanilla essence
3 large eggs
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 C chopped nuts (optional)

Pre-heat oven to Gas Mark 6 (375 F). Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Take the sugar in a large bowl. Add butter, oil, vanilla essence and eggs. Mix on low speed till light. Add the eggs and mix. Now add the flour mixture and mix till well combined. Stir in the chocolate morsels (and nuts, if using). Spoon on to an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 12-13 minutes, rotating half way through. Cool for just a minute before removing to a wire rack for further cooling. This is the trick to keeping the cookies whole and saving yourself a lot of frustration. Unless, of course, you have the fancy Sil Pat silicone sheets being featured all over. Just give a sharp nudge and the cookies will come off – whole! If you like them chewy (the whole point of cookies – else we would call them biscuits, right?), store with a small piece of bread.

But there is something to be said for fresh cookies. So halve the recipe or freeze half the dough to bake later, as I have done.

Got milk? A great treat for all the kids. They deserve it. As does that kid inside you. Deal with the consequences later. 🙂