Week 3: Not Your Ordinary Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I mentioned last post, Tay wanted to make chocolate chip cookies (CCC) for her sleepover Saturday night.  Now in full disclosure, I have been making batches of CCC for several months before starting this blog, and although I seem to have generally satisfied customers, I have never been truly happy with the outcome…usually they are too cake-like and just don’t look like what I want my CCC to look like (I have been accused of being a perfectionist :)).  Yes, consistency is an ongoing concern of mine, and in trying to improve my cookies I had consulted various websites and local bakers, all with different advice for managing altitude such as cutting back on flour, increasing water, or decreasing eggs…which ultimately just served to overwhelm me…

So when Tay wanted to make CCC, I felt a little anxious at first, but then recalled a recent recipe that I had run across that was egg-free and accompanied by an amazing picture (because if I’m being honest, how they look is really important to me), so I figured this was a good time to try it out.

The recipe was designed for people with food allergies, and replaces the eggs with cream cheese (!)….now this is a win-win scenario for me…no, we are not dealing with food allergies, but eggs are one of the volatile ingredients when baking at high altitude, so a recipe with no eggs might be easier to bake, plus the added bonus of cream cheese! I know, say it with me…chocolate chip cream cheese cookies!!  My guy is a big fan of cream cheese, as it is a featured ingredient in several of our favorite recipes including my mashed potatoes (thank you Pioneer Woman), and Tay was pretty excited about them as well…thus it was determined that on Saturday we would bake CCC with cream cheese…

The recipe can be found here: http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2012/01/cream-cheese-chocolate-chip-cookies-egg-free.html 

Saturday was busy, with getting ready for the sleepover, our regular weekend chores, and some extra cleaning in anticipation of our guest (I know, I was cleaning house for a 12 year-old girl who would never notice if my kitchen floor was clean, but in the off-chance that her parents came in when they dropped her off, I wanted to be prepared)…so I was a bit worried about having time to get the cookies done.  I shouldn’t have been, we managed to get everything done in ample time and get some lazy couch time in before the sleepover started!  The recipe was super easy, mixed in minutes, and the dough was delicious (and egg-free so we could eat as much as we wanted to Tay’s delight)…my only change was rather than 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips, I used 1/2 milk chocolate chips and 1/2 white chocolate chips, for a little diversity.  My dough was a little to sticky and would not roll into balls, so I simply dropped them by the spoonful onto the cookie sheet, and baked them for the recommended 13 minutes, yielding approximately 40 cookies.  They came out of the oven beautifully, smelled wonderful, and were so moist!  

 

These cookies were a big hit with everyone, eaten plain with a glass of milk, or served with some vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.  They tasted even better the next day and looked like exactly what I want my CCC to look like!  That night my guy jokingly declared that he was no longer going to eat anything unless it had cream cheese in it, even bacon…I can hear him now, “woman, cream cheese up that bacon!”

Say it one last time with me…chocolate chip cream cheese cookies!

p.s. My guy took the chocolate cake I made the other day to work, and came home with a challenge for me from one of his co-workers…to bake something salty, hmmmm…..