Who doesn’t like cookies? To me, they are a wonderfully
versatile food: part dessert, part snack food. I have been known to
leave a plate on the dining table for grabbing during the day or
even slip them naked into my purse for snacking on the run.
Who doesn’t like cookies? To me, they are a wonderfully versatile food: part dessert, part snack food. I have been known to leave a plate on the dining table for grabbing during the day or even slip them naked into my purse for snacking on the run.
Our word “cookie” comes from the Dutch word “koekje,” or little cake. While many cultures have a variety of small, sweet flour-based tidbits, I’d wager no nation has as enormous a variety of cookies as ours.
If you let it, cookie making can require a number of unnatural contortions: pushing the dough through tubes, draping burning hot cookies over broom handles, dipping in chocolate or rolling in coconut.
And of course at holiday time, there are cookies that must be chilled, rolled out, cut with cookie cutters into the shapes of pumpkins, bats, turkeys, Santas or Driedels, depending on the holiday, and then frosted with royal icing in the appropriate combination of colors.
I have been making cookies like this since my mother let me “help” when I was 5 or 6, and it can be lots of fun. It’s a great way to spend time with kids, and the results are festive and memorable.
But those are cookies for another column. Today we are talking about quick cookies, cookies to fill the cookie jar, cookies to serve at the end of the school day.
We are not talking about a project. We are talking about a snack. So I have assembled an assortment of cookie recipes that are relatively easy and don’t require much more time than the time they take in the oven.
Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
(adapted from the back of the chocolate chip bag)
Mrs. Fields has made giant chocolate chip cookies, with dozens of different kinds of chips – and many different kinds of nuts – into a big business. But I don’t think you can beat the original, and I wonder if people realize how easy it is. The Nestle recipe calls for butter, but I like the texture better with half butter and half vegetable shortening such as Crisco.
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups (1 12 oz. package) chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Step 2: Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
Step 3: Beat together butter and shortening until combined. Add sugars and vanilla extract and beat until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each.
Step 4: Gradually beat in flour mixture.
Step 5: Using a spoon or spatula (not electric mixer) stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
Step 6: Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls on to ungreased baking sheets.
Step 7: Bake in preheated oven nine to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for two minutes, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.
Shortbread Wedges
(adapted from Everyday Food magazine)
These cookies are as simple as they are rich and decadent and bear the same relationship to store-bought shortbread as a symphony does to a doorbell. They are somewhat fragile and so good that they rarely actually make it into the cookie jar.
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup flour
1/3 cup confectioners‚ sugar
Step 1: Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Step 2: Cream the butter until smooth and add the flour and sugar. Mix just enough to combine.
Step 3: If very soft, chill mixture for 10 minutes.
Step 4: Pat mixture into an 8-inch round cake pan; crimp edge with a floured fork.
Step 5: Bake 30 to 35 minutes until firm and slightly browned. Drape edges with foil if browning too quickly.
Step 6: Score into 8 wedges immediately upon removing from oven; cool completely.
Step 7: Turn out of pan, turn over so scored side is up and slice with a serrated knife.
Chocolate Molasses Cookies
(adapted from Everyday Food magazine)
These cookies should be very soft when they come out of the oven; be careful not to overbake them. As they cool, they will firm up giving them a wonderful chewy texture.
4 oz. semisweet chocolate (I use chocolate chips)
1 stick unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups flour
2 Tbs. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 Tbs. dark unsulfered molasses
1 tsp. vanilla extract
confectioners‚ sugar for dusting (optional)
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Step 2: In a large microwaveable bowl, melt chocolate and butter in microwave on high, in 30-second increments, stirring after each, until chocolate is not quite melted.
Remove from microwave and stir to completely melt chocolate. Let cool about five minutes.
Step 3: In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
Step 4: Add brown sugar, egg, molasses and vanilla to the cooled chocolate mixture, whisking to combine. Gradually add flour mixture and combine.
Step 5: Place tablespoons of dough (it will be soft) on ungreased cookie sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake until tops are crackly but cookies are still soft to the touch, about 12 minutes.
Step 6: Let cool on the cookie sheet about five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Step 7: To make them doily-worthy for afternoon tea, dust with powdered sugar. Otherwise, just eat and enjoy.
Ideally, cookies should be store in a covered container at room temperature. If you promise not to try this at home, I will tell you that the Chocolate Molasses cookies survived, and stayed nicely chewy, a couple of days uncovered on the dining room table.
