Zaque and I have a tradition of making chocolate-chip cookies and delivering them to friends around town. Since both of us are leaving in a few days, we decided to do it one last time. We made a list of our good friends, and since it was kind of long we had to make two batches. He made the first one and showed me his “patented” technique.
Apparently when you add the chocolate chips (he uses the small ones), you lean into the mixer to really get everything churning well.
For my batch, I used the larger (and slightly more bitter) chips. I also tend to have a higher chip-to-dough ratio; in Zaque’s cookies, you may take a bite and not get any chips at all. I feel like that’s just wrong. But anyway, we baked everything and they turned out great.
Since we’ve packed up all our “nice” plastic plates, we didn’t have a way to present them nicely. We ended up shoving them into plastic bags and delivering them. Fortunately the presentation isn’t all that important when you’re getting a surprise bag of freshly-baked cookies.
Zaque’s friend Makenna has asked him for the “secret recipe” several times over the years, so he wrote it for her and included it in the delivery:
I think my favorite part is the measurement of the chips:
You gotta measure the chocolate chips with your soul. Add ’em ’til you FEEL that it’s good.
Interestingly, the “secret recipe” is the Toll House Cookie recipe found on the back of every bag of Toll House chocolate chips… except we seem to use shortening instead of butter, and we add a tiny splash of water. I’m not sure why, but it definitely works because the cookies turn out great.
It was fun to make a round of deliveries one last time. Laralee mentioned that she’s “getting tired of goodbye-ing”. It’s hard to leave behind such good folks. Maybe the next time they enjoy a chocolate-chip cookie, they’ll think of us.