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!

The Art of Marriage...and Brownies

There are so many pieces of advice that people give when you get married.

 I've been wanting to talk about one in particular for a long, long time and how I struggle with it every day...people joke about how hard it is to combine stuff--but what about combining different palates onto one dinner table? Two sensibilities into one dessert?

That, I'm finding, is the hardest part of marriage. I miss tomato and pineapple pizzas. I miss cherry cobblers. Oatmeal and raisin cookies.

It's not that I can't bake them, it's that it is absolutely no fun sometimes to splurge by yourself. You want to impress, get those "oohs and ahhs" and you want to feel like you made someone's day. (I make my own day all the time...just ask the checkout girl at Barnes and Noble.)

My husband was most likely the model for the character Stoic in "How to Tame Your Dragon." He's solid. He rarely stumbles or wavers in his stances--whatever they are. He's my rock. He's also the man who orders the exact same drink from the exact same coffee cart (preferably from the exact same barista) each morning. He'll never order anything other than a Grilled Stuft Burrito from Taco Bell. He hates tomatoes. He doesn't enjoy any sort of fruit (other than the occasional apple) in his desserts. He likes what he likes and that's what he wants.

And then there is me. I never do the same thing the same way two times in a row. Never park in the same place twice in one week. Never order the same coffee drink more than once or twice every few days. Rarely get my hair styled the same way twice in a row. That's me. The eternal seeker. Him? He sought and he found and he's happy right where he is.

One of my love's most favorite desserts is a good pan of chewy brownies. He went through the pains of baking from various boxes and finally settled on the Duncan Hines brand Dark Chocolate. Don't. Stray. From. Path.

Do you know how hard that is for me? A few weeks ago I took his beloved Duncan Hines brownie mix and poured a delicious peanut butter fudge frosting all over them. (I found the fantastic idea from Southern Plate.)

It went over like...well, let's just say it didn't go over. The boys and I ate ourselves silly on the peanut butter fudge. But P, well, I messed with two things: peanut butter (by making it taste fudgey) and brownies (by making them taste peanut butter fudgey). He was gracious and tried to be enthusiastic, but the fact that they survived the night mostly untouched spoke volumes.*sigh*

Crestfallen is the best word to describe me. (Crestfallen...and bloated from all those damn brownies I ate by myself.)

Don't get me wrong, he is a very supportive eater of all things baked. I was just looking for that "wow" moment where I impress him...and all my crazy kitchen  adventures just seem to fall short. (I'm starting to think my blog should have been named "crazykitchen" instead.)

And here's the point in the story where I finally impressed myself. (That's fun, too!)

I wanted brownies. I was stranded at home with the minions while P went to church to put in a good word for our bunch. I had no brownie mix...but what I did have was my grandmother's recipe cards with a King Arthur Flour recipe cut and taped to a faded index card. I tinkered a bit and came up with the most outstanding brownies I have ever tried. No fake sugar taste. No high fructose corn syrup. No preservatives. All chocolate. (And more chocolate.) It had a crust, by goodness, that was salty and sweet and the tiniest bit crunchy that I loved.

Did I mention they were fantastic? I even impressed P, regardless of the fact that he thought they could have been a little more "chocolately." (Yes, hard to please, but I love him anyway!) I started to have hurt feelings that they didn't bowl him over...but then, suddenly, I didn't care. I had won myself over, and every now and then...well, that's all that matters. Yay me!!

Super Easy Brownies (if only to impress yourself)


(adapted from King Arthur Flour and Challenge Butter recipes)

1 c. flour
1.5 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 stick of butter, melted
3/4 unsweetened cocoa powder
3 eggs
1/3 c. oil
2 tsps. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8 or 9-inch square pan well.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugars, cocoa, and salt. Stir in the melted butter, oil, eggs, and extract. Spoon evenly into prepared pan and bake 35-40 minutes until brownies begin to pull away slightly from the edges.

Happy eating!