Musings of an MBA Housewife: The Old Standby

I received a curious call from my Romanian neighbour the other day. No, Sir Winston had not escaped again. My children were all fully clothed and accounted for. My truck had not been in an accident with one of her husband's employees and no, I was not threatening to call the police about it. (Long story - OK, Coles Notes version - another one of my lovely neighbours drives almost the identical truck that I do. The husband across the street owns a construction company. One of his guys had slid into the other truck and was so distraught, thinking he did not have the money to pay for the damages, that the husband across the road was trying to track me down to pay for the damages that didn't actually occur to my vehicle. He is an incredibly good man, my neighbour. And a smart businessman. That employee is one of his best tiling guys. The employee was so distraught he couldn't work. Seems like a fair trade to me)

ANYWAYS...

An evil, evil neighbour brought over chocolate chip cookies and cream cheese brownies the other day. Darn her. They were so good I had to send some away with my father-in-law to keep from scarfing down the entire batch.

Apparently, my Romanian neighbour was the recipient of some as well. And, apparently, she has never had chocolate chip cookies before. Egads - she has been in the country 7 years and never had chocolate chip cookies? Truly, we are failing our immigrants here, people.

At any rate, she asked me for a recipe, and I was more than happy to oblige

The recipe - please note, as always, the intricate detail noted on the recipe itself

And here we have the cast of characters. And the ingredients.

Toss the sugars and the shortening in your mixer bowl and give it a whirl

This step is crucial, crazy as it may seem. The goal is to coat each granule of sugar in the shortening you have added. This will ensure that is evenly distributed in the final product and give you the nice, chewy consistency you are craving. Or maybe that's just me.

After that, add in the egg, vanilla, and all the small dry ingredients (salt, soda)

Save the big guns for last. I always make a triple batch. I would make more, but that's all my poor old mixer can handle. And a triple batch makes for easy math.

Here we go. Note the nice dusting of flour. Just about everywhere. It is inevitable. Do not fight it. Do not attempt to hold the flour in with your hands. Wear and apron, have your broom ready, and go with it.

Then, the good part. Add the chocolate chips. My mother always told me too many chocolate chips meant the cookies wouldn't bake well. I have yet to break that threshold.

What I do like to do is a a mixture of chips. Semi-sweet and milk chocolate, and on really daring days, peanut butter or butterscotch chips.

Mix'em in, but not too much. The chips will break down and you'll loose the chocolate CHIP part of the cookie.

Then get yourself one of these little puppies. I am tellin' ya, for an A-type like me, it is a sanity saver. Call it an ice cream scoop, a disher, a measured scoop, whatever. It's great. I have a few different sizes. Love them all.

Then you get to make pretty little rows of perfectly same-sized cookie dough balls. Ah, sweet bliss!

Then into the oven. Be sure to enlist small people to carefully watch over them. This is crucial.

Not really about the last part. But it did manage to keep my kids occupied for a full 30 seconds without a single squabble, in close proximity to one another. A small miracle indeed.