As a little girl I grew up constantly browsing the recipes in my mom’s tattered 1963 edition of Betty Crocker’s Cookie Book. I loved the back pages that outlined the popularity of cookies during certain time periods.
The best cookie of 1935-1940 was the Chocolate Chip Cookie the same time when Gone With the Wind premiered and took the nation by storm.
The first chocolate chip cookie was invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts who ran the Toll House Restaurant. It is said that one day she was making “Butter Drop Do” cookies and without the needed baker’s chocolate dropped in a chopped up bar of semisweet chocolate expecting it to melt into the cookie dough. She called her new creation the Toll House Crunch Cookies and it they were a huge hit with the Inn’s guest. A visiting journalist asked if the recipe could be published in the Boston Globe newspaper. The rest as they say, is history.
The recipe below is an update on the classic with a bit more kick through the addition of espresso powder… also somehow, when it came time to set out the Christmas cookies in my house, the simple chocolate chip, seemed to be Santa’s favorite.
INGREDIENTS
2 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of salt
1 cup (2 sticks) real butter, melted in microwave
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1 ½ tsp of coffee espresso powder
2 large eggs (note if you use extra large or jumbo eggs you may want to add a TBL more flour otherwise you might end up with pancake thin cookies!)
1 TBL of milk
2 cups of chopped chocolate candy bar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt and sift into small bowl.
Beat granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla extract and finally, melted butter together in large mixer bowl. (Secret #1: Warm melted butter will do a better job of dissolving the sugars and therefore, create a better textured cookie.)
Add espresso powder and milk. (Secret #2: The addition of milk will make a softer cookie.)
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Gradually beat in flour mixture.
Stir in chocolate chunks making sure they get well distributed. Nothing says “disappointment” like ending up with chocolate-less cookie dough at the bottom of your mixer bowl!
Drop tsp of dough onto cookie sheet.
(Before you do, here’s secret #3. Wrap cookie dough and let sit in the fridge for 1 hour. The colder the dough, the less risk you will have of crunchy/crisp cookies and burnt edges. Nobody likes burnt cookies…)
BAKE: 9-12 minutes or until golden brown.
