XXX Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature (get ‘em out when you get the butter out)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cups flour
¾ cup cocoa powder (whatever kind you have in the cupboard)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ scant teaspoon salt
half a bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
half a bag white chocolate chips
(half a bag = about 1 ½ cups)
This is your basic creaming method cookie of love with some cocoa powder thrown in. XXX for the cocoa powder, semi-sweet chips and white chocolate chips. Get it? You can make XX cookies if you only have one kind of chip – it’s your cookie! Just use the whole bag then. (Pssst: when I run out of vanilla, I use Myers’s rum. This might explain my frequent and wholehearted substitution of ingredients.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.
Sift dry ingredients together. Reserve.
Cream the butter and the sugars. A little light. A little fluffy. Don’t get too crazy.
Combine eggs and “vanilla” and SLOWLY add to the butter-sugars mixture.
Scrape down the bowl – make sure you get under the beater where the unmixed chunks hide.
Add about 1/3 of the dry ingredients. Turn mixer on LOW – otherwise you get a faceful of cocoa powder. Add the rest of the dry ingredients in two more additions, then throw in the chips. Mix until just combined.
This dough can be baked immediately, held airtight in the fridge for several days, or frozen into cookie balls that you can whip out of the freezer and bake at a moment’s notice. (Frozen cookie balls=superhero)
How many cookies you get depends on how big you make ‘em. I make them about the size of a marshmallow, and I bake them for about 11 minutes. I rotate the pans, top to bottom, front to back, halfway through the baking time. When this cookie is done, the structure is just set when you poke it with a finger, and it doesn’t sink when you pull it out of the oven to cool. Mmmm. Happy XXXing!
