My son, Sylvester (4) wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies to share with his friends at the beach last weekend.
My go-to recipe for cookies is a bit fancy for kids (Inspired by THE recipe by David Leite for NY Times). Also, he wanted the cookies right away, and I find that my recipe benefits from a few days in the refrigerator. However, I didn't have a better recipe, so we adapted this one for the kiddos.
In the recipe for really really good chocolate chip cookies, I use dark chocolate chips, I age the dough in the refrigerator for a week before baking, and I sprinkle fancy salt on top for that finishing touch. It's a show-stopper cookie. (I'll post those instructions next time I make them).
For the kids we made a few tweaks:
We used peanut butter and milk chocolate chips. We didn't age the dough, or even chill it before baking (we got flatter, crispier cookies, not a bad thing, but not what I'm used to from this recipe). Also, my regular recipe uses 1/2 cake flour, and 1/2 all purpose. I had only high-gluten white flour on hand, so we just used that. No finishing salt for the kids either.
Here's what we did:
Ingredients:
482g white flour (I used high-gluten, but all purpose would work too)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder (You can just do 2 tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp cream of tartar if you don't have baking powder on hand)
1 1/2 tsp course salt (I use kosher salt, if you're using table salt use 1/2 as much)
1 1/4 cup butter (I used salted, and we got a nice salty dough. if you prefer your cookies less salty, or you are going to add the finishing salt on top, use unsalted butter)
284 g brown sugar
227 g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons Mexican vanilla extract
1 bag peanut butter chips
1 bag chocolate chips of choice
Method:
Whisk together flour, salt, soda, baking powder in a bowl and set aside.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream together butter (softened but not melted) vanillq and sugars.
Once your mixture is very light in color and well combined, add in your eggs one at a time. mixing well in between.
Add your dry ingredients and mix until the powders are well incorporated
Add in your chips and mix carefully until they are evenly distributed.
At this point I usually form the dough into balls, place them in a plastic bag and refrigerate for several days. This time we wanted cookies right away so we skipped this step.
Preheat oven to 350º
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (NOT waxed paper)
Scoop 6 large balls of dough onto the baking sheet. They should be a bit larger than a golf ball.
Bake until golden brown - 18-20 minutes.
Cool on a rack but serve warm.
Cookies will be crispy around the edges, but soft in the middle.
If you are not going to eat all the cookies the same day, you can refrigerate or freeze the remaining dough. I like to pre-shape it into balls so that you don't have to try to shape cold (or frozen) dough. Frozen dough can be thawed, but still cold and baked.
Enjoy!
Nutrition Information:
Recipe yield is approximately 20 large cookies
404 Calories each
Total Fat 19.2g
Sat Fat 12.2g
Cholesterol 47.9mg
Sodium 266mg
Total Carbs 55.1g
Fiber 0.9g
Sugars 36g
Protein 6.8g