Do as I Say, Not as I Do: How I Made Chocolate Chip Frisbees

     If you ask my mother she would tell you I can't bake for crap, which isn't entirely true. If you ask my husband, I'm more baking than savory. So which is it? The truth is I love baking, just as much as I love cooking, but sometimes my absent mindedness gets in the way.


     It's been quite some time since I've really messed  up a baking recipe by not following instructions properly, although at Thanksgiving I did mess it up because I did follow a recipe. The last time I really messed something up was before culinary school, so probably about 3 years ago.

     I never really put much thought into why I suddenly stopped messing up so bad when I entered culinary school, but now I realize that it's because I was actually focused on the recipe.

     Today I decided I was going to post my first recipe including step by step pictures, and I still will, but everything went terribly wrong because I was off in lala land.

     My first mistake was grabbing the 2/3 cup measuring cup instead of 1/2 a cup, so I accidentally added 2/3 cups sugar. Then, I grabbed that same cup thinking it was 1 cup. So I added two 2/3s cups of flour instead of 2 cups. I didn't realize it until my first batch was already in the oven.

     My next mistake was I put butter in the microwave to defrost. Which that in itself is fine, however I realized after I put the butter in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes that the other cookies were wrong. I went over to the oven to check on them, as predicted they were spreading entirely too thin. As I was debating what to do I hear the microwave beep. Knowing that I'm going to find a mess I head over to the microwave to find the butter melted all over the place. I salvage what I can and put it in the fridge. In the end I managed to fix both batches just fine. So without further ado let me introduce to you Corina's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.

Mise en Place What You Need:

 2 Cups Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Cup Butter room temp or softened
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
3/4 Cup Packed Brown Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla Extract (or imitation vanilla if you're poor like me)
1 Egg
12 oz of your favorite chip or m&m's or rasins or whatever you like

Note: If you're using salted butter like I am, cut back on some of the salt you add, just a touch.

From here on out follow the directions, but don't worry about what the picture looks like.

Put your butter in a large mixing bowl or in the bowl of your stand mixer, if you have a stand mixer use it, mine is currently en route to Korea.

On the other hand, if you used the microwave to soften your butter like me and it turns out like this:

Just put in the fridge for 5-10 min to firm it back up.

Next add your sugars, both of them and mix using the paddle attachment or the little swirly things for your hand mixer. (I don't have the swirly things because I'm borrowing this hand mixer, the beaters work fine, but I think the swirlies are better)

Your mix should be smooth and creamy, not clumpy like mine.

Next add your egg and vanilla(or imitation vanilla). Mixture should be smooth.

At about this time set your oven to 375 F or a little past 170 C.

Next add all of your dry ingredients except the chips. If you are using a stand mixer, slowly incorporate. If using a hand mixer plop it all in there and start on low speed.

Mix mix mix mix mix. Your dough should look like this:

Not this:

Next add in your chips, or M&Ms or whatever, I weighed my M&Ms you don't have to.

Mix them in.

Now you have a few options. You can spray your cookie sheet with Pam or non-stick spray. You can use a silpat or silicone mat, or you can use parchment paper. I used parchment paper even though it doesn't really fit my itty-bitty pan.

Spoon little blobs of cookie dough about an inch in diameter, onto the sheet about an inch apart.

Something like this.

Baking times depend on altitude. My mom lives in the mountains so the recipe says 8-10 min. I'm at about 200 ft so it took mine about 15, I didn't think it would really make that big of a difference but I guess it does, or maybe it's because its really cold, I don't know.

When the edges are golden brown pull them out and place them on a cooling rack, or a paper towel, or a plate, really whatever you have.

Your cookies should look something like this:

Not this:

These are cookies:

These are frisbees.

Tasty, crunchy frisbees, but frisbees non-the-less.

Now about how I saved the first batch, I was able to figure out what I did wrong and added 2/3 cup more flour so that they wouldn't spread all over the place, however because there was already extra sugar they ended up a little bit denser. Here is the result:

Notice my awesome stacking cooling rack, I'm not sure if you can really tell from this picture, but my cooling rack stacks three high so that the entire counter top isn't taken up by cooling racks. I absolutely love them! This is the first time I've used them though, so once they've been used a few times I'll get back to you about the quality.

     So there you have it, my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, eventually I'll tweak it and make it my own, but for now, this recipe is fantastic, a must try. And in all actuality, I have tweaked it, if my mom were making it she'd say just throw all the ingredients into the mixer at once. I shudder at the thought.

   

   Hope everyone is ready for Christmas, or anything else you may celebrate.

     Anyeong-haseyo.