Chocolate Chip Cookies: Substituted Edition

My dorm's kitchen can be very convenient. It stocks a lot of baking essentials - such as flour, eggs, white sugar, brown sugar, rice, butter, cream cheese, chocolate chips - as well as baking sheets, bowls, and measuring cups. Theoretically, I can walk in there and make some thing simple from scratch without buying anything myself.

Alas, that doesn't always happen.

As a stress reliever, I wanted to make the gooey chocolate chip cookies that I made JK. As I was gathering ingredients, I realized that the kitchen was out of eggs.

The kitchen is out of eggs?!

I pondered what to do. White Dress' opinion was that it was not worth it to run out and buy eggs, and I agreed. But I had other options, right? After searching online, I found this egg substitution: 1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1.5 water, and 2 teaspoons baking powder for one egg. So far, so good - that is, until I went to add the white sugar and found out that the kitchen didn't have this either.

Seriously?!

Again, after searching online, I figured I could replace the white sugar with brown sugar, even though the recipe already called for brown sugar. I knew I was going to loose some of the great aeration that white sugar gives cookies, but I didn't have much of a choice.

I got stung by the kitchen's lack of supplies when they didn't have salt, and finally when it was time to add chocolate chips. While the kitchen usually has a large bag of chocolate chips that they keep regularly stocked, it wasn't there that night. Sigh. At this point, could I really be surprised? Luckily, I had a cup of semi-sweet chips and a cup of milk chocolate chips left over from making the boyfriend cookies a few weeks earlier.

An interesting property I noticed was that this time, it took a few minutes longer for these cookies to get brown around the edges. Also, due to the brown sugar substitution, they cracked pretty severely.

This is what cookies look like when you have to substitute practically everything in them.

The result? They were passable, but I definitely prefer the original recipe without substitutions. They were a little tough and chewy, and would probably taste best with milk, tea or coffee. The one positive is that these cookies held their shape much better than the previous ones I made for JK, although that may be because I baked them for a longer period of time. 

Spring break is coming up, and I am looking forward to baking with my mother. We usually make a small treat for me the day I leave so that I can bring fresh sweets with me back to university. My mother is a wonderful cook and baker, and I am excited to spend time with her. I just have to get through finals week first!

Until next time!

~Pink Heels

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had a dinner to go to Friday night and I wanted to bring a dessert, but I didn't have enough time to bake something from scratch. Fortunately, I had a cookie mix that would be really quick and easy to do.

Once again, Betty Crocker comes to the rescue.

I have really taken a liking to these Betty Crocker cookie mixes - so far, I've made peanut butter, pumpkin spice, and snickerdoodle, and they've come out quite well. With St. Patrick's Day not too far away, I thought this would be the most appropriate.

I just followed the directions on the back of the package, and they also have helpful substitution suggestions, so when I didn't want to use butter, I easily swapped that out for vegetable oil. Everything mixed together nicely, although I wouldn't suggest an electric mixer with this one due to the chocolate chips already being in the mix.

This is one batter you definitely want to hand mix.

In order to get more cookies, I made them on the smaller side and carefully watched them in the oven. It turns out that I got chewy cookies right around the eight minute mark rather than the ten minute mark suggested on the package. It just goes to show that you should always watch your cooking and take the baking time as a suggestion! 

Unfortunately, the chocolate chips got buried in the rest of the dough.

The result? Everyone who tried them at the dinner really seemed to like them, although I had to admit that they weren't made from scratch. Still, this is just another cookie mix from Betty Crocker that has worked out great for me - quick, easy, and enjoyable? When you're pressed for time, I would definitely suggest these.

Until next time!

~Pink Heels

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I usually spend my Thursday nights doing my math problem set, but my instructor pushed the due date back, leaving me with a free Thursday! Since JK was having a terrible week, I decided to bake him cookies to cheer him up.

I used this recipe and decided to make up my own mind if they really are the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever tasted. This recipe was a breeze to make, except that I ran into a major snag with the brown sugar. The bag was almost empty, and the only brown sugar left in there was in enormous clumps - I spent half an hour breaking up the clumps! According to a quick Google search, microwaving it for 30 second intervals would have also loosened it up. Oh well. I'll keep that in mind for next time. 

My dorm's kitchen, frustratingly enough, also didn't have vanilla. The last time I was in there, we had quite a large bottle of vanilla, but now it was nowhere to be found. Sigh. This is one reason why I dislike sharing a kitchen - when people don't put things back in their place, it creates an absolute mess. Thankfully, this was a nonessential ingredient - if I could't find the baking soda or flour, then I would be quite angry.

Adding in the chocolate chips this time was not nearly as bad as when making the boyfriend cookies. This recipe called for two cups of semisweet chocolate, and I was still able to mix it just fine. The recipe also called for I cup of chopped walnuts, but I decided to just stick with chocolate. 

Bursting with chocolate chips and waiting to go in the oven.

I popped them in the oven for about ten minutes, which was just enough time to bake them but still keep them chewy. In retrospect, I could have left them in there for a minute or so longer, because they were falling apart in the middle when I tried to get them off the cookie sheet.

Delicious, gooey chocolate chip cookies.

The result? The website doesn't lie - these really are some of the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever eaten. They were soft, gooey, and just the right amount of chocolate. JK really liked them, even though they fell apart quite easily; thankfully, they toughened up by the next day and were just right. I will definitely be making these again, and I am so happy I found this recipe!

Until next time!

~Pink Heels

Nutella Cookies

When I found myself with an unusual batch of free time tonight, did I use it to study for my upcoming exams or get ahead in my work? Don't be silly. Unexpected free time is clearly baking time!

At White Dress' suggestion, I looked around for a quick recipe using Nutella, and I finally came upon a very simple, straightforward cookie recipe. However, disaster struck at the very first step: I only had a half cup of Nutella, but the recipe called for one cup. My quick fix was to change it to a half cup of Nutella and a half cup of peanut butter, thinking that the two flavors would complement each other. (Unfortunately, this move means that JK won't be tasting these cookies, since he doesn't like peanut butter.)

The resulting dough was easy enough to work with, and after my last encounter with the chocolate chip stuffed boyfriend cookies, I was extremely grateful at how little elbow grease I needed to get all the ingredients mixed together. These last few baking experiences have made me realize what I missed in my baking supply shopping spree: a wooden spoon (for easier mixing; it would also come in handy while making buttercream frosting without a mixer) and nested measuring cups (I have been using the nested measuring cups in my dorm's kitchen, but I will eventually need my own).

These baked for a little under seven minutes, and when I was done, I had eighteen cookies:

The Nutella + peanut butter hybrid cookies.

The result? Perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on that, actually. I'm not a big fan of peanut butter cookies, and the peanut butter flavor definitely overwhelmed the Nutella flavor - a little disappointing, but now I know which taste comes out on top after head-to-head combat. Apart from the taste, I don't have many complaints - they were soft and chewy, although I did destroy one trying to get it off of the cookie sheet. Hopefully, the next time I tackle these, they will be solely Nutella flavored - perhaps even Nutella stuffed cookies?

Until next time!

~Pink Heels

Boyfriend Cookies

I'm beginning to suspect that I have an unhealthy relationship with Pinterest. One of my favorite quick study breaks is to scroll through the Food and Drink board and see if there are any baking ideas to repin; pretty soon, I have several tabs open with possible ideas to pin. One of the recipes that caught my eye was for boyfriend cookies. I still don't understand why they are called boyfriend cookies - apparently, there're for the person who wants to snag a boyfriend, get over a boyfriend, or surprise their boyfriend with a sweet treat. Regardless of the name, they looked like fun to make and a great way to use my new baking toys, so I asked JA if he wanted to help me bake and we got to it.

The one questionable thing about these cookies is the amount of chocolate and candy that the recipe calls for. I only ended up using a cup of milk chocolate chips, a cup of semisweet chocolate chips, and half a cup of plain M&Ms. Since I also wanted JK to enjoy these cookies, I didn't add in the Reese' Pieces or peanut butter chips since he isn't a fan of peanut butter. I'm also not partial to white chocolate either, so I left those out too. I left out a cup and a half worth of chocolate and candy, but the batter was already very difficult to mix - I honestly think it's fine with the two and a half cups of goodness already in there.

I also goofed while getting ready to pop these in the oven. I greased a few baking sheets before I read the recipe more closely and saw that it called for an ungreased baking sheet. Oh well, I thought. Greasing the sheet will only make the cookies come off easier. This won't have too much of an impact. Wrong! JA and I pulled the first batch out of the oven because we were convinced that we burned them - the bottoms turned a dark brown while the rest of the cookie was still turning golden brown - but it turns out that they weren't burnt at all. Having so much butter in the cookie and then having them bake in butter must have cooked the bottoms faster than the tops, so while ours didn't get burned, the first batch didn't look uniform at all. We fixed this by flattening out the rest of the cookies instead of putting little round balls of dough in the oven, but lesson learned - when it says don't grease the baking sheet, don't grease the baking sheet.

The gooey, finished product.

JA and I shared the cookies with several of our friends, and they were a big hit. They didn't hold together very well, although that could have been because they were fresh out of the oven. Several hours later, it was difficult to pick one up without it completely falling apart and unable to hold its own weight. Overall, this is a recipe I would make again. After all, I have yet to try these with peanut butter - JK may hate it, but I absolutely love it.

Until next time!
~Pink Heels