Saturday, May 10, 2014

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Just likeToll House.
This blog is dedicated my oldest (oops, wrong term) longest (?) friend Jen, with whom I made about a zillion batches of cookies.

For much of my life, chocolate chip cookies were my very favorite things. As a kid I made endless batches of Toll House cookies. I knew the recipe by heart. I knew exactly how to make them the best -
  1. margarine not butter (too crispy with butter), 
  2. the margarine needed to soft but could not be melted (you were totally screwed if you hadn't though ahead and taken margarine out of the fridge ahead of time), 
  3. the batter needed to be stirred and not mixed in a blender. 
I ate such an huge quantity of cookie dough as a child it's amazing I wasn't huge, or diabetic, or something equally terrible. Shoot, it's amazing I didn't get salmonella with all the raw eggs consumed. I did occasionally eat the cookies, but it was really the dough I loved. 

As an adult, I learned that making cookies was a bad idea. I would still eat lots of dough and as good as it was it always made me feel extra ill (duh). I'm sure I felt extra ill as I child too, but somehow as an adult I was a tiny bit smarter. (Smarter in that I could decide to not make them, not smarter in that I could limit my consumption if I did make them.) This didn't stop my love of these cookies (and really these are the only type of cookies one should eat). Instead of making them, I would buy them. Not packaged grocery store chocolate chip cookies (yuck). They had to be perfect. Crunchy chocolate chip cookies are waste. Certain companies had (have) great ones, and probably got way too much of my money.

When I went paleo, I stopped most sugar except for some dark chocolate. And with that change, my love affair seems to have dwindled. Now, when I have the very occasional (once a year or so) cookie, they are much too sweet and I don't really enjoy them. 

Today, I have a couple parties to attend and since it's hard to split a salad, I decided to make some cookies to bring along. Let me tell you, the paleo version is an entirely different animal. The cookies I made today just had eggs, almond butter, chocolate, vanilla, sugar, salt and baking soda. Super easy and completely margarine free (can't even imagine margarine these days). The dough was less tempting. But the cookies are still extra delicious. (And extra pricey.......

Almond butter (do you have any idea how expensive almond butter is right at the moment? Well let me tell you the cheapest kind was $15 for a small jar!)
Coconut sugar (this stuff is like $6 per pound and really sugar is sugar is sugar, but whatever when in Rome....)
Theo's 85% cacao organic chocolate (okay, this was on sale and would be worth every penny no matter the price).)

Even in their new (healthy??) version, they took me on a walk down memory lane. I feel like running down Howe street and giving some to Jen. And maybe saving some for my mom for mother's day (I'm sure those were a present for a year or two (or three). 

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