March 1: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Who doesn't like a good chocolate chip cookie? It already has a rich, buttery batter, so when you add something as indulgent as chocolate to the mix, your tastebuds were had at "Hello."

As purposefully matched as the flavours seem to be, like most culinary wonders, the chocolate chip cookie was invented by accident in 1933 by Ruth Wakefield. Owner of the Toll House Inn (I think you see where this is going), Ruth was making chocolate cookies one day, and upon discovering that she'd run out of baker's chocolate, she used pieces of Nestlé semisweet chocolate assuming that they would melt into the batter to the same result. Later, Ruth sold her recipe to Nestlé and accepted a lifetime supply of chocolate chips as payment, and her recipe is found on every bag of Nestlé chocolate chips.

This reminds me of one of my favourite "Friends" moments, where Pheobe et al discover that her French great-grandmother's sacred cookie recipe was simply the Nestlé Toll House recipe:




While Ruth's recipe has become the go-to Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, I have never found much success with it. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if I just have a particular idea of how a chocolate chip cookie should be, but I always find the resulting cookies to be less flavourful than I want. Also, I find this recipe doesn't result in a chewy cookie, which I prefer.

However, I have found a recipe that calls for less white sugar, flour, egg white and butter (less butter sounds like it would be a travisty but it really isn't), and more brown sugar, salt and baking soda. The result is nothing short of Chocolate Chip Cookie perfection.

These cookies are the perfect balance of chewiness and crispiness, and because I used Ghirardelli's bittersweet chocolate chips rather than semisweet, they taste more chocolatey than sugary, which means they are indeed MY perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Final Grade: A+. Sweet success! You can find this Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe on my Recipes page. It should be noted that, for the cookies in the photos, I dropped the dough in 1/8 cup measures rather than the called for 1/4 cup. This economized the dough by producing over 2 dozen standard-sized (albeit thinner) cookies rather than 18 large ones. Whichever way you choose, they will turn out great!

To order these "Cookies for a Cause" please click this link to donate at my Daily Bread Food Bank fundraising page.