Tonight I had a craving for crisp, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies. As I was taking out some ingredients from my fridge, I suddenly realized I didn’t have enough butter to make a dozen cookies!
There’s a reason for my bare fridge. You see, I have this weird rule that 1 week before going on vacation, no food should be purchased for the household. Actually, it’s kind of a dorky fun challenge I give myself to use up all remaining food only using what is available. So with 3 TBSP of butter, my dreams of chocolate chip cookies and milk, were suddenly becoming just that, a dream. Then it hit me, why not try to make a tiny batch of cookies. Double the pleasure and half the guilt that comes with the desire to inhale a dozen cookies! Challenge accepted!
Luckily for me, I found this lovely recipe that yields 8 cookies (adapted from from Cake on the Brain Blog, which adapted the recipe from Small Batch Baking for Chocolate Lovers by Debbie Maugans).
Since, I like a nuts in my cookies, I adapted the recipe by adding pecans. In addition, I broke many cardinal rules of baking while making these:
- My dough came out kind of dry, probably due to not adding enough molasses (see notes below). As a result, I added *hides in shame* a splash or two of milk to my batter.
- I didn’t have any unsalted butter, so used *still hiding in shame* salted butter.
To my surprise, no matter how many wrongs I made, they still tasted and looked delicious! My husband said “these are the BEST cookies you’ve ever made”!
What you need:
- 3 TBSP butter (app. 45 g), softened
- 3 TBSP packed brown sugar*
- 3 TBSP white sugar
- 1 TBSP beaten egg **
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 c all-purpose flour
- 1/4 c chocolate chips
- 1/4 c coarsely chopped pecans (optional, if you opt out use 1/2 c chocolate chips)
- Maybe a splash of milk, if your dough is too dry
How you make it:
- Preheat oven to 375 F (app. 190 C)
- Mix flour, salt, baking soda
- Cream butter and sugars
- Add egg, mixed well, add flour mixture
- Add vanilla
- Mix in chips and nuts
- Scoop out about 8 TBSP and place them on a baking sheet.
- Bake for 10 – 13 minutes (I have a convection oven, it took my cookie a little under 10 minutes).
*On brown sugar, I live in Switzerland and don’t have packed brown sugar at my local grocery store, I simply mix molasses with my white sugar. It’s a bit of trial and error. For this recipe I used 1/4 tsp of molasses. My batter still didn’t have the desired moisture level, hence adding the splash of milk.
**Reserve the rest of the egg and use it for something else, like pancakes, which I’ll be making tomorrow morning.
Moral of the recipe, nothing comes between me and cookies! Hope you enjoy this recipe!
Frilly Aprons 