Friday, January 22, 2010

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

My brown sugar was really giving me sass the other day.

I had decided to make Martha Stewart's chewy chocolate chip cookies with white and semisweet chocolate chips.

But lo and behold, my brown sugar was a brick. Seriously, I could break windows with that brown sugar. I could build homes with that sugar. It was ridiculous.

I googled all the tricks for softening brown sugar and found this one to work (sort of; the sugar still clumped like crazy):
1. Place sugar (still in bag) in the microwave alongside a cup of water.
2. Heat for 3 minutes.
Sugar should be softer after that.

The sugar hardens because of lost moisture; anyone have a storage tip for brown sugar to avoid this?

Anyways, I added the sugar to a stick of butter and granulated sugar. Then I beat it until it got "fluffy." I put fluffy in quote marks because if anything, the clumpy brown sugar just got clumpier until it looked like I was making a breakfast cereal. But whatever; you know me, I just steamroll ahead.

Added the vanilla and eggs, then beat it into oblivion.

Oooh pretty.

I slowly added the flour/baking soda mixture.

Which eventually turns the batter into this thick mass.

I folded the white and chocolate chips into the batter, dropped it in clumps on my cookie sheets and voila:

COOKIES!

About these cookies: They were good, they tasted like cookies, they looked like cookies. But they were way cakier than they should have been; I'm figuring this has something to do with the butter temperature (it got very soft while I was wrestling with the brown sugar brick) and maybe the brown sugar?

I'm starting to realize I might have to actually learn what different ingredients do to achieve different consistencies. LOL. I'm sure you all just read that and said, "ABOUT TIME!"

Have a great weekend you guys! I think I'm going to try pizza again.

1 comment:

Amanda said...

haha... I tell myself that all the time. Ya know, Amanda, if you actually understood why room temperature ingredients are important maybe you'd remember to set them out ahead of time. I'm rather snarky with myself, but I just give the sass right back and maintain my ignorance.

In conclusion... I'm not judgin'.