My Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

I can’t say I’m the best baker I know, though I’m related to a couple excellent ones, but I’m pretty good. My Mom’s peanut butter and jelly cupcakes and chewy ginger Sugar Baby cookies, and my Grandma Jo’s pecan pie and key lime pie play a major role in my dessert fantasies. (You know, the ones you have when you’re on a diet or it’s 2am?)



Or is that just me and Homer who do that? ANYWAY! I’ve always loved baking. My grandmother gave me the copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys & Girls that my Dad and his siblings had used. Some of the dishes were a bit horrifying, particularly “Three Men in a Boat.” Yes, just what every child will enjoy! A potato filled with cream chipped beef, topped with cold cheese and mushrooms. The picture makes it look like such a treat.

The one in the middle is Ted Danson.

But one of the more appetizing looking recipes was the Drum Cake, a devil’s food cake with white icing, decorated with peppermint sticks and maraschino cherries. Look how stunning this is! Sure, the cake contains neither cherries, nor peppermint, but that’s not Betty’s concern. It’s a pretty cake, and that’s all that matters.

My mother and I made it when I was probably 8 years old. (I’m sure there’s a picture somewhere in one of my mother’s many photo albums! Remember those things???) This was before either us knew about things like crumb coats or my lack of artistic ability. To say that the cake did not reflect Betty Crocker’s photo would be an understatement. The cherries hadn’t been drained, so the juice went everywhere, including on the peppermint sticks, which caused the red to bleed onto the white icing, which was filled with chocolate crumbs… The best I can say is that it tasted good. As a child, I frequently found myself in the kitchen while my parents were asleep. They’d wake up from naps to discover I’d made brownies (and wrecked the kitchen.) This has continued into adulthood. I recall many nights, home from college, baking cookies with whatever my parents had on hand, using up all of their butter, chocolate chips, or light brown sugar. And wrecking the kitchen. One of the earliest things I can remember baking completely on my own was a chocolate cake from the American Girl magazine. It was a straightforward chocolate cake with a simple icing made with milk and powdered sugar on top. I never managed the beautiful, simple swirls the magazine showed though.

They required too much artistic ability.

But I found it was okay if cookies were ugly--with the exception of decorated cookies, they aren’t meant to look artistic. They generally fall under the heading of, ‘As long as they taste good!’. I am particularly fond of chocolate chip cookies. Before the internet, I was only able to find recipes that were immediately available to me in books, and most of those recipes were cakey or chewy chocolate chip cookies. Quite by accident, I one time made a chocolate chip cookie that was crispy at the edges and chewy in the middle, but I had no idea how I’d managed it, and I was unable to replicate it again. So I kept baking chocolate chip cookie recipes, hoping to happen on that magical crispy, chewy cookie again. My cookie holy grail, if you will.

Not this one.

It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I finally found the right recipe, a Martha Stewart recipe, no less! I adore Martha. She has always been one of my role models. (Homemaking, not financial or legal!) The recipe makes cookies that are beautifully thin, crisp at the edges, but chewy in the middle where the chocolate chips congregate.

I’ve made the recipe my own, with a couple of tiny tweaks. When baking them, the cookies will look puffy and pale until the last minute. You just have to keep faith that they’ll turn out. They also want to spread out a bit, so don’t crowd your pan. A tablespoon scoop will be your friend here, along with a half sheet pan that has been lined with parchment paper. I also keep my batter in the fridge between batches to make it easier to scoop and prevent the chocolate chips from migrating in the batter. Let me know what you think of these beauties, if you bake them!

Martha’s Thin and Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies Ingredients: 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar 3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 2 large eggs 2 cups (about 12 ounces) semisweet and/or milk chocolate chips 1/4 cup of room temperature water Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda; set aside. 3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter with both sugars; beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. 4. Reduce speed to low; add the salt, 1/4 cup water, vanilla, and eggs. Beat until well mixed, about 1 minute. 5. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. 6. Add in 1/4 of the chocolate chips and mix on low speed until combined. 7. Stir in the rest of the chocolate chips. 8. Using a tablespoon sized scoop, place balls of dough about 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. 9. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn pan to ensure even baking. Bake an additional 5-7 minutes until golden brown. 10. Remove from oven, and let cool on baking sheet 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

Taco Bell: Fries of Lies

Taco Bell recently added a new menu item that immediately caught my attention—FRENCH FRIES. And not just any French fries—NACHO FRIES! Two of my favorite things, combined(!!): French fries and NACHOS!

Now I can feel some of you judging me right off the bat. Some of you are food culture enthusiasts who pretend you would never eat anywhere besides your locally owned eatery, where the drinks are fancy and food is artisanal, in favor of a fast food chain. But I see y’all during 4^th meal at 12am, shame eating a Crunch Wrap Supreme in your cars because your artisanal dinner could have fit on a postage stamp. I SEE Y’ALL.

Make sure you save room for dessert?

Taco Bell REALLY wants people to try their new menu item. They rolled out a shiny ad campaign during the SuperBowl featuring Josh Duhamel, along with sponsored social media content. They added a layer of kitsch by offering a special stand for you to use while dining in. (Do people still dine in at Taco Bell?)

(Side note: Does the bell look um.. odd here? I think it looks odd. Like something odd happened to the bell that the bell didn’t want. Who did that to that poor bell?!)

But I didn’t need selling on these fries. I was already prepared to be a customer. Look at those fries as they lounge in their stand! They’re seasoned—according to their website—with “Mexican seasoning,” whatever those might be. Cumin? Chili powder? Garlic powder? They come with cheese dip, which, sure, it’s the same cheese that they give you with the chips, but that’s fine—it’s still yummy! Not to mention, they’re only a dollar! And if you're feeling like a big roller, there are any number of toppings you can add to make your nacho fries truly SUPREME! (Har-har!) So yeah, I was on board. These fries look delicious, with their come hither crunchy looks and cheesy sauciness.

So I went through the drive thru, I ordered my entree, drink, and a side of fries with nacho cheese. As soon as I got them, I pulled into my usual spot a random parking place, and prepared to engage in rapturous shame eating. I popped open my little container of cheese—I know what that’s going to be like—I pull out a fry—that’s crispy feeling and it’s golden, must be those Mexican spices!—and I dunk it into the cheese. I put the whole fry in my mouth. And I wait for angels to start singing.

And… nothing. I just taste cheese. I’m confused. So I skip the cheese and I just eat a fry by itself. It’s crispy, but there’s… there’s still nothing. Not even salt. It’s just… it tastes like potato.

They lied to me. They made me think that I was going to have a magical fry experience. I thought I was going to relive my glory days of French fries—when I lived in Salem, Virginia, and there was a Rally’s.

Now Rally’s has magical fries. (Rally’s is also known as Checkers, depending on where you live.) They’re the kind of crispy that leaves crumbs at the bottom of the bag that you fight over with whoever you’re unfortunate enough to be sharing your meal with (I say unfortunate because many a friendship or relationship has dissolved over these crumbs.) The flavor is the perfect balance of zesty, sweetness, salty, and spice with their seasoning that’s been cooked into the whisper of batter that they’re put into before being fries. They actually improve the flavor of ketchup, bringing the flavor of vinegar, forward. Didn’t know ketchup has vinegar in it? Now you do. They are so good that they try to soothe the masses by offering them in the frozen food section at your local grocery store, but they just can’t hold a candle to the original.

Aren’t they beautiful?! Frozen just can’t properly convey the perfection that one experiences when they eat these fresh from the industrial sized fryer. Frozen.. they’re just not the same.

And neither were these French fries from Taco Bell, masquerading as something as delicious as Rally’s fries. I could have sat in the parking lot and shame ate my Cheesy Gordita Crunch, but the heart had just gone out of me. So I put the lid back on my gelatinated, imitation cheese topping, and I drove back to work, where I sadly ate a few more Taco Bell fries, hoping maybe it was just the fries on top. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

And yes, I really did just blog about French fries. No, I wasn't paid. I just have a lot of feelings about French fries.

Bonus: The beginning of this video is a segment about a potato who aspires to be a Rally’s fry!!