PLease Dont Get Mad at Me Vinny For Using Crisco But I Didn't Have Enough Butter, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Puffy Squishy Cookies.

OK so yesterday I made some cookies.  Our roommate finally brought all his stuff back to the house and he brought a bag of chocolate chips.  History tells me I can not have a bag of chips in the house for more than a few weeks before I simply HAVE to make something.  So yesterday I had a brief moment of motivation, and probably because Aunt Flo is some 4 weeks late, and decided to make some cookies.

Looking in the fridge however I realized I wasn't motivated enough for the 40 minute round trip into town for some butter so I went with the butter "Flavored" Crisco I had in the cabinet since some time around when God was a boy.  In the back of my mind I could hear family friend V, of Sweet Lady Lulu's Bakery in NY, yelling at me about the use of *GASP* Crisco. I'm sorry Vinny but sometimes when you wanna just be fat and a little motivated, cabinet hunting is a lot easier than actually leaving the house.  But here a link to a real Pastry Chef's website.  So to the 3 of you who read me, go there, go NOW http://www.sweetladylulus.com/

I want to speak for a moment about tools when you are baking cookies.  I have learned that you can improvise with a lot of kitchen items to make what you need but for me these are must haves:

Dishers:  Like mini Ice Cream Scoops, every cookie is the same size so they all cook evenly!!  Yay for that

The next is a sifter, really sifting just changes everything in cookies.  No more belly bombs or clumps of salt in one bite!

Now since Alton Brown has one of these nifty deals, I had to have one too but in absence of the sifter you can use:

A WHISK!  Yup works just fine!!!

Now I am spoiled by my Kitchen Aid stand mixer which is sadly, the BEST thing I got out of my seven year marriage, but I digress.  Using a plain wooden spoon works just fine as does a hand mixer until you get to adding the chips and then I say use a spoon or silicon spatula so you don't pulverize them.

OK so here's the recipe:

In the manner of Alton Brown, meet the dry team:

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp salt (kosher not so much for this)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar packed well

1/4 granulated sugar

1 tbs cinnamon

1 12oz bag of chocolate chips

Now the wet team:

1 cup of TRANS-FAT FREE CRISCO (see Vinny I tried, well I didn't try when I made them but I am trying now lol)

2 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

Pre heat the oven to 375

In a bowl combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.  Either sift or use your whisk to thoroughly combine the ingredients and then set aside.

In another bowl or in your mixer blend the TRANS-FAT FREE CRISCO, brown sugar and granulated sugar.  Blend until very light and fluffy, scraping down the sides if you must to make sure there are no sugar landmines remaining.  Then add the eggs one at a time blending very well after each addition.  Then add the vanilla.

Once everything is well combined ass the dry mixture in three batches until it is totally incorporated and there are no flour chunks left.  Then add chocolate chips.

Scoop by disher onto a baking sheet.

For the small cookies bake for 7 minutes

For the larger cookies bake for 11 minutes

I got 4 dozen mini cookies and 2 dozen large form this recipe with very little dough going directly into my gob thanks to the CRISCO as the dough is not nearly as delicious and tempting as it would have been, had it actually contained butter.  If you got lucky they look like this:

                   

All that's left to do is to get an ice cold glass of 2% and go to town!

Until next time my 3 readers........................