Welcome to Katy and Super-Top-Secret Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

WOW!

I'm back.

The break was great and well deserved...(we had baby number 4 and moved back home to Texas, ya'll!!) but I sure missed thinking about food, writing about food, looking at food, and talking about food. Missed. It. So. Much.

The transition to Katy, Texas hasn't been too hard, minus the fact that it's a bit difficult to get into turning on your oven when your house skyrockets to the mid-80s when you do. That means I bake in early mornings and use my grill pan in the afternoons to save my sanity. Oh, and I love my crockpot. True story.

But enough of my reintroduction, eh? Hi. My name is Megan. I took almost nine months off to have a baby and sell everything I own and relocate from Alaska to Texas. And now I'm back!

Let's talk about this week. My oldest returned from his summer visit to El Paso and he started third grade. His lunch lacked a little TLC this week, so I dug out my recipe box (oh, I love my recipe box) and found my husband's top secret chocolate chip cookies. The three older kids (Ages 8, 3, and 14 months) helped me bake and for the first time in a long, long time, I let all cares out the kitchen window and we had a messy, flour-covered blast. It was so, so good for my soul. The kids were happy. The husband liked the surprise when he came home from work and the third grader got a respite from the fig newtons for the two days the cookies lasted. Success.

A little cookie backstory: The hubs spent a few months last year perfecting this recipe based on the old Toll House equation you find on the back of your chocolate chip cookie bag. I never knew there was a baker in the man, but I guess when you think about how picky of an eater he is (read it: highly developed palate) and how awesome he is at math (read it: highly developed recipe swapping ability) it probably always made sense.

He likes a straight butter recipe. I like halving the butter with shortening. He prefers the taste of brown sugar, so he upped that while dialing down the regular sugar. Up with the vanilla a smidge, and be sure the eggs are beaten before you add them. Simple as pie. And probably more delicious.

Though we diverge on the ingredients a bit, our thoughts on what makes a great chocolate chip cookie (or bar) run parallel. There has to be a perfect balance between the crisp and the chew factors. Crisp on the edges, chewy on the inside...even (ESPECIALLY) on day two and beyond. Make sure there's a bit of savory (salt) to heighten the sweet. Yum.

I first wanted to publish this recipe last year, but he wouldn't let me. But now, I think he's forgotten and after the kids and I turned the cookie recipe into bars, well, it's fair game.

Without further ado...

P.J.A.'s SUPER Top-Secret Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Ingredients:
3/4 c. sugar
1 and 1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. butter, room temperature
1 T vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 t. baking soda
2 and 3/4 c. flour
chocolate chips

The bake:
Preheat to 350 degrees. Combine butter and sugars. Add egg and vanilla to butter mix. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until just incorporated. (Many a cookie have been sacrificed on the altar of overmixing. Don't do it!)

Bake 10 to 12 minutes per batch, depending on oven.

Do your best not to shove the entire first batch in your mouth when you pull them out of the oven. It will hurt and your family will not trust you with the rest of the finished cookies from that point on. It's true.

Happy baking!

Any excuse to make sweets: Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Cookies

There's a new baby around the nest and with that comes the joys and pains of nursing. (At this very moment, emphasis on the pains...but I digress.)

During the downtime this sleeping newborn affords me, I did a mad-dash web search for foods that help with nursing and supply and all that happy stuff. It ranged from dill to asparagus to mussels (no thanks!) but the one item that made it on to almost every list was OATS! The science even suggested that oats in most forms did benefit nursing mamas...be it oatmeal or oatmeal cookies. Huzzah! An excuse to escape to my kitchen and bake COOKIES with my Boo!

I get excited about cookies. What can I say?

So without further delay, the fruit of our afternoon labor in the small, overheated kitchen we call home. The dough was Boo-approved as the picture clearly illustrates. So, too, were the final products. Little man thought he could make a mighty fine dinner of oatmeal cookies and more oatmeal cookies. Cutie pie.
 

Recipe modified from Betty Crocker's Cookbook

Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Cookies

2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
3 cups quick-cooking oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts (pecans would be delicious, too!)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all ingredients minus the oats, flour, raisins, and walnuts. Mix well with spoon or mixer. (I'm lazy and just use a spoon. And a toddler.)
3. Stir in oats. flour, raisins, and nuts.
4. Drop by rounded spoonful about two inches apart on ungreased baking sheet
5. Bake 9 to 11 minutes until light brown. Immediately remove from sheet and cool.

Yummo!

Thursday Links and COOKIES!

I spend a lot of time browsing food sites. I spend a lot of time searching food sites moments before I leave work for the afternoon, hoping and praying for some inspiration for dinner that night. Suffice to say, most weeks, I am not much of a food planner, but I am a food gawker and felt compelled to share some of my more interesting finds.


1. Homesick Texan’s Green Chile Apple Dutch Baby

Are you kidding me? Do you know anything about me and my passion for green chile? I think she felt me calling to her all the way from Alaska when she posted this recipe. It’s on my list.

2. Recipe Curio

I don’t have a specific post to point you to here, I just thought it was a very interesting site. I’m addicted to antique stores (the aprons and the bakeware in particular), and this site gives off that same sort of vibe…but for FREE! Classic, vintage, just plain old-fashioned recipes featured. Some are fantastic…some feature dried beef casseroles and are odd, but I love recipe cards and the author scans plenty of random ones she comes across. Love it!

3. Ezra Poundcake’s Roast Chicken with Lemon Bacon-Rosemary Potatoes

Well, I love the name for starters. And, the picture of the roasted chicken looked mouthwatering and I have “roast own chicken, from scratch” on my kitchen “bucket list.” So when I do finally get the cojones to roast my own bird, you can bet it’s going to have bacon. And rosemary.

4. Alison’s Lunch

Alison runs a bakery here in Alaska (will feature a post on her in the coming weeks, stay tuned) and in our preliminary conversation, she directed me to her blog. And I love it. It’s about food, family, vegetables, and, well, lunch. I’ve bookmarked her oven-roasted zucchini cutlets to try SOON.

5. Vanilla Garlic

Another winner in the name category! The most recent post over here is a cheese profile, and I’m on a mission to understand cheese a little more lately. I’d like to move past that awful orange science experiment that passes for cheese in our lives and learn to appreciate the real thing. The thing with fat and flavor and a life that happened in a creamery somewhere not too long before I brought it home. I’d hate to think how long cheesefood stays on shelves. Come to think of it, I don’t much like to think too much anything called cheesefood in general.

Recipe Time!
On another note, I might have made headway in my epic struggle to find a cookie for my family. There are four of us and I’ve yet to hit a recipe that all four members like. At the same time. It’s pretty much guaranteed that the baby and I will snarf down anything staring out at us from inside the cookie jar. My husband and Boy Wonder? Well, not so much. They both dismissed my beloved ginger crinkles. *sniff* My chocolate chip cookies worked with the baby and Boy Wonder, but not as much with me or P.

Well, I stumbled upon a recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies and think we might have found “the sweet spot.” All four family members enjoyed the cookies, which means mama and baby don’t have to ingest 20,000 calories worth of dough. Hurray! Original recipe called for nutmeg. Me, not so much. I also upped the peanut butter a bit, added a splash of vanilla, and nixed the salt. My version:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Yields: Approximately 4 dozen (or more) 2-inch cookies

Ingredients:

Wet:

2 sticks (1 cup) softened butter

1 ¼ cup smooth peanut butter

2 large eggs

Dry:

2.5 cups flour (I used all purpose, bleached)

¾ tsp. baking soda

¾ tsp. baking powder

1 cup brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar (plus extra to roll dough balls in prior to baking)

8 oz. chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat butter on medium speed for about two minutes. (I didn’t understand why I’d have to beat one ingredient for so long, all by it’s lonesome, but I just did. And the cookies turned out great, so I didn’t argue with the method!) Add peanut butter and brown and granulated sugar, beat until combined.

Sift dry ingredients (minus chips) into wet ingredients, and combine just until mixed and consistent. Add chips.

Use a level tablespoon to form dough balls. Roll in extra sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet. (I flattened mine with fork tines at this point, but I’m sure it wasn’t necessary.) Bake 10-12 minutes.