Chocolate Chip Cookie Corollary

cor·ol·lary: something that naturally follows or results from another thing

Hmmm. What naturally follows Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Find Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here.

Here's how to change it to Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Decrease flour to 3 C (12.8 oz.); add 1 C unsweetened cocoa to the dry ingredients.

"I Want Just White Cookies."

Libby and I were making dinner, including, of course, dessert. I asked her what kind of cookies or brownies we should bake. She said, "I want just white cookies, with nothing in them." This was surprising! After all, she is her mother's daughter and my granddaughter. I was really expecting something to do with chocolate.

She said she ate cookies like this when she was with her mom at her mom's friend's house. Okay! So I googled "cookies" and we looked at cookie images ... until we came to this. She said that's what the cookies looked like. So we went to the site and found a recipe for Sugar Cookies that looked very promising.

I wish I had pictures of Libby and the cookies. That 6-year-old girl did a great job measuring, mixing, (I did the scooping) gently pressing the scoops of dough, and sprinkling sugar on them. I had a different focus while we were baking the cookies, so I failed to take pictures.

Libby declared the cookies good. Whew! They were what she had in mind. Hooray!

I loved the cookies, too. But I wondered if I could use white whole wheat flour rather than all-purpose flour. That gave me just the excuse I wanted to bake (and eat) Sugar Cookies--by using white whole wheat flour!

The answer is yes.

They have all of the buttery, vanilla-y, sugary goodness of the all-purpose flour version. Except for the bit of texture the bran gives--which I really like--I bet no one would guess these are made with white whole wheat flour. They're just delicious.

When you go to Blissfully Delicious you  will find the recipe. You will see that it was slightly adapted from Martha Stewart Cookies. My recipe is slightly adapted from Blissfully Delicious, and I call them

Libby's Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

3 C (12.8 oz.) all-purpose flour or white whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 3/4 C granulated sugar
1/4 C packed light-brown sugar
1 C unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
Sugar, for sprinkling

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl; set aside.

Mix butter and sugar until pale and fluffy in a mixer with paddle attachment, about 2-3 minute. Mix in eggs, 1 at a time, and then vanilla extract. Reduce speed; gradually add flour mixture, and mix until just combined.

Scoop dough, rounding slightly; space cookies 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Flatten cookies slightly with the bottom of a cup swished in sugar. Sprinkle tops with sugar.

Bake cookies until golden, about 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks for 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks; let cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days. (This sounds like it could be true, but I'll never know. Cookies never last that long in my house.)
Yield: About 3 dozen cookies

I don't have an ice cream scoop, so I just gently rounded the spoonfuls of dough.

I used the bottom of a cup swished in sugar to gently flatten the tops of the cookies. Then I sprinkled regular white sugar on top, using my fingers.

Cookies cooling on the rack. I left them in the pan (sitting on a cooling rack) for 5 minutes. Then I took them out of the pan and removed them from the parchment paper.

Lemon Ricotta Cookies

What do you do with ricotta cheese other than make lasagna? I only buy ricotta cheese when I plan to make lasagna or something similar, like stuffed shells.

Last summer I bought ricotta cheese to make lasagna for the extended family. So I bought the 2 pound container. Then we ended up not making lasagna. So that ricotta cheese sat in my refrigerator until today, with its "use by" date of July 20, 2013. It appeared to have no spoilage, though, so, at the suggestion of a friend, I decided to make Lemon Ricotta Cookies. (I also had some not-so-fresh-anymore lemons that needed to be used.)

I found the same recipe at three different websites, so I decided that must be the recipe to try. Find it here, here, and here.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe. Instead of all-purpose flour, I used whole wheat flour. I had some hard white wheat flour and some soft white wheat flour. I needed a bit more, so I also used some hard red wheat flour. The recipe calls for whole milk ricotta cheese. Mine was part skim. I also made them bigger than suggested.

The cookies were easy to make and tasted very good. Even my son, who isn't particularly fond of lemon and couldn't fathom why anyone would make cookies with ricotta cheese, liked them.

I still have a pound of ricotta cheese left. Any suggestions?

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Coconut Oil, Updated 7/7/13

I have used my mother's recipe for baking chocolate chip cookies my whole life. They were always famous among family, friends, and acquaintances. I don't know where she got the recipe from, but I do know that many of her children and grandchildren have continued to bake these cookies.

Here is her recipe:

Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

1½ C white sugar

1½ C brown sugar

1½ C shortening

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

4½ C all-purpose flour

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream together sugar, brown sugar, shortening, eggs, and vanilla. Sift (or just stir) together flour, salt, and baking soda; and then add to creamed mixture. Add chocolate chips. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Do not overbake.

In recent years, shortening has come under fire because of its trans-fats. While shortening manufacturers have modified it so it contains less trans-fat, it's hydrogenated, so it will always have some trans-fat. Also, it doesn't add anything to the flavor.

Lots of people bake their chocolate chip cookies with butter, so I tried that. Many times. It makes good-tasting cookie dough! But the cookies themselves are quite altered: flat, more chewy or even crispy, and a markedly stronger flavor. These weren't necessarily bad characteristics. In fact, some people prefer them. They just aren't my mom's cookies.

Today I decided to try using coconut oil. The ambient temperature has to be quite warm before it changes from solid to liquid. We were just verging on that today in my house, so it was still solid but not hard. I just substituted (still solid) coconut oil for the shortening in Mom's recipe.

Like butter, coconut oil is high in saturated fat. In fact, it's even higher than butter. Unlike shortening, however, it does not contain any trans-fats.

My (admittedly small but very experienced) taste-testing crew agreed that this was the best-tasting cookie dough. (Note: Members of my family have been known to make chocolate chip cookie dough and not turn on the oven, so this is an important factor.)

Although the cookies spread out flat like the ones baked with butter, they remained soft like the ones made with shortening. Flavor? Better than the butter ones; at least as good as the shortening ones.

Next time I will add a bit more flour to see if that will prevent the cookies from flattening out.

Regardless, these are keepers!

Update 7/7/13: When I made these cookies today, I used 1/2 C more flour. I also chilled the dough for an hour before baking. In fact, it's such a warm day today that I chilled the coconut oil before I mixed the dough. The cookies turned out a little plumper. With these changes, I think coconut oil substitutes well for shortening, and tastes better. Here's the adapted recipe:

Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies (with coconut oil)

1½ C white sugar

1½ C brown sugar

1½ C coconut oil (refrigerate before using if it is not solid)

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

5 C all-purpose flour

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream together sugar, brown sugar, and coconut oil. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Sift (or just stir) together flour, salt, and baking soda; and then add to creamed mixture. Add chocolate chips. Chill for an hour or more. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Do not overbake.

Cinnamon, Cinnamon, or Cinnamon?

My daughter Kirsten gave me some Saigon cinnamon last fall. Recently a friend gave me some Ceylon cinnamon. So I thought I would see how they compare to my "regular" cinnamon.

There are lots of things that are flavored by cinnamon: apple pie, apple crisp, apple cake, baked apples, cinnamon rolls, cinnamon-raisin bread, zucchini bread, bread pudding, spice cake, snickerdoodles, and I could keep going.

I settled on snickerdoodles because cinnamon is the predominant flavor.

As you probably know, when you make snickerdoodles, you roll balls of cookie dough in a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Here are the three mixtures:

First, we have McCormick-brand cinnamon. It isn't identified as any particular kind, so it is probably either Chinese cinnamon or Indonesian cinnamon (see Cinnamomum Cassia in Wikipedia). Next, is Costco's Kirkland-brand Saigon cinnamon. Finally, we have Ceylon cinnamon, packaged locally by a company called Hey Rose (315-730-7498).

I baked the cookies--a pan of each kind of cinnamon-sugar mixture. After they cooled, we tasted them.

Snickerdoodles with Ceylon Cinnamon

We thought the Ceylon cinnamon was smooth and mild.

Snickerdoodles with Saigon Cinnamon

We thought the Saigon cinnamon was sharp and robust.

Snickerdoodles with McCormick Cinnamon: Chinese or Indonesian

We thought the McCormick Cinnamon was coarse yet flavorful.

Our taste-testing group was small. The toddlers happily ate all the cookies they could get their hands on without comment. The adults were pretty evenly split about which of the three types they preferred. They, too, happily ate all the cookies they could get their hands on.

In conclusion, the cinnamons have definite differences. Which you choose may be determined by your own preferences and by your intended use.

I have unanswered questions that will require further testing, which I am happy to do!

Snickerdoodles

1½ C sugar

½ C butter, softened

½ C shortening

2 eggs

2¾ C (11.7 oz.) flour*

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

3 T sugar

3 tsp. ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 400°F. Mix 1½ C sugar, butter, shortening, and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Shape dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into balls.

Mix 3 T sugar and the cinnamon; roll balls in mixture. Place about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until set, 8 to 10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

*I used 100% whole-wheat flour, ground from hard white wheat. The flavor and consistency were great!

Ginger Snaps

After making gingerbread houses and then gingerbread cake, it seemed only right to bake one of my favorite cookies: Ginger Snaps.

I found this recipe many years ago in my Joy of Cooking. My college roommate and friend, Lani King, gave that cookbook to me for my birthday in 1974. That cookbook has been one of a handful that I have kept at hand through the years. 15 years ago my family gave me the updated edition of Joy of Cooking. But I just never felt comfortable with it. For interest's sake, I pulled it out to see if it had my beloved ginger snap recipe in it. It was definitely based on the recipe from the earlier edition, but the differences were significant: the addition of baking powder, less baking soda, more ginger, more cinnamon, the addition of salt, double the amount of butter, less sugar, lemon juice in place of vinegar, and the addition of lemon or orange zest. What remained the same: flour, cloves, eggs, and molasses. I'll give it a try sometime, but for the moment, I'm going with my tried and true recipe.

I made the dough three days ago and baked some of the cookies then. So today I pulled the rest of the dough out of the refrigerator.

I used a spoon to dig out chunks of dough, which I rolled into balls. I set the balls onto a baking sheet. I used parchment paper to prevent sticking.

I baked them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Fresh out of the oven, they are a little puffy and very soft. You will see signs of the characteristic crinkling. Wait a couple of minutes for them to firm up before transferring them to cooling racks.

When they are cool, they are crinkly, and firm but chewy.

Several years ago, before I discovered white wheat, I tried making these using red whole wheat flour. I didn't like the flavor the flour added, so I continued to make them using all-purpose flour. Having recently used flour milled from soft white wheat successfully in other cookie, brownie, and cake recipes, I used some in making these cookies this time. Because I was giving away most of the cookies, I conservatively only replaced 1/4th of the all-purpose flour with the whole wheat flour. They are delicious, and, if anything, I think the texture is improved.

By the way, I don't pretend to think that a little whole wheat flour suddenly makes cookies nutritious. Cookies, by their nature, should always be eaten sparingly. However, any time I can replace refined grains with whole grains, I consider it a benefit.

Ginger Snaps

Cream together:

¾ C butter

2 C sugar

Stir in:

2 eggs

½ C molasses

2 tsp. vinegar

Stir together and add:

3¾ C all-purpose flour (or replace at least 1 C with soft white whole-wheat flour)

1½ tsp. baking soda

3 tsp. ginger

½ tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. cloves

Mix ingredients until well-blended. Form dough into small balls. Bake at 350°F on baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or greased), for about 10-15 minutes. Let cookies set for a couple of minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Yields about 7 dozen cookies.