One Darn Good Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Posted on February 13, 2012 by karen

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I love me some chocolate chip cookies.  Call me a purist, call me boring…I love plain ol’ chocolate chip cookies.  For most of my life, I’ve stuck with the standard recipe on the back of the Toll House Chocolate Chip bag (with some slight modifications…see this post).  But, something happened that made me want to stray and try new recipes.  Life is crazy like that. 😉

Frontier Airlines serves warm chocolate chip cookies on every flight.  Did you know that?  Dane and I took Frontier on a trip to somewhere that I can’t remember, but I’m willing to bet that it was either California, Minnesota, or New Mexico since those are three place we flew to in the last year.  Anyway, we ate the cookies and couldn’t believe how amazing they were.  Blame it on the altitude, blame it on the fogginess of waking up at an ungodly hour to catch a flight…blame it on what you want, but those cookies were good…like make-you-start-thinking-about-changing-your-chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe good.  We began to dissect the flavors of the cookie as we ate them and I realized that there must be shortening in them.  They were chewy, but had a slight crunch…an amazing slight crunch.

When we got home, I searched the interweb and found a recipe by Crisco.  I tried it and I was not disappointed.  This recipe will make some darn good cookies.  But, I do have some complaints.  Mainly, my complaints about this recipe encompass things that relate to my OCD behavior.  For instance, the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of Crisco…which leaves me with 1/4 cup of a Crico stick that I have absolutely no use for…annoying.  It also doesn’t use an entire bag of chocolate chips…Dane has no complaints about this because he likes to eat the extras. 😉  Lastly, it only makes 3 dozen cookies.  Not, that I ever actually get 5 dozen cookies out of a traditional toll house batch, but after Dane and I eat our share of cookie dough, it really only makes a little more than 24 cookies…which were subsequently eaten within a day and a half.  I guess this isn’t actually a horrible thing now that I think about it. 😉

Anyway, now that I’m done complaining, here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 stick Butter Flavored Crisco (or 3/4 cup butter flavored shortening from tub)
  • 1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda (I used a full teaspoon)
  • 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

(the original recipe can be found here.  I made some slight modifications.)

I know what you’re thinking…”milk mixed in with the cookies?  No white sugar?  What trick are you trying to pull here, Karen?”  But, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one…it makes one darn good cookie.

Oh, and one thing to note…shortening has gotten a bad rap in the past with all this talk of trans fats and what not, but they changed their recipe and it now has zero trans fats.  Not that this makes crisco a super food, but that may put your mind a little more at ease. :)

The nice thing about Crisco is that they put the recipe in the package for you (it’s slightly different than the one online actually, but it has the same essentials).

One thing I really like about this recipe is that it has a ton of brown sugar…

That’s usually one of my modifications of the regular toll house recipe…add more brown sugar, so that was already done for me.

To start this recipe, be sure to preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Cut the stick of crisco at the 3/4 cup mark using a sharp knife.

Even though I have no use for that extra 1/4 cup of shortening, I saved it anyway just in case I find a use for it in the future…does that make me a hoarder?  Hope not.

In my stand up mixer I added the shortening, sugar, milk and vanilla.  (Another thing I like about this recipe is that it doesn’t mess around with the vanilla.  It calls for a full tablespoon!  My kind of recipe!)

Because I love all of you so much, here’s a tip I picked up along the way.  Toss some marshmallows in with your brown sugar stash to keep it from getting hard.  Don’t say I never gave you anything. 😉

Back to baking…next I creamed the ingredients on medium until it was light and fluffy looking.

Next, add the egg.

Scrape down the sides with a spatula if needed (I needed to).  The recipe says to combine the dry ingredients in a bowl before adding it to the creamed mixture.  I’m lazy so I just added the flour in two portions and tossed the salt and baking soda in with it.

Which brings me to my next complaint (lots of complaining for a cookie recipe I love, huh?).  The original recipe calls for 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda.  I don’t know anyone who has a 3/4 teaspoon measure and I sure don’t and since I’m lazy (as established above) I didn’t want to measure out the baking soda twice, so I just tossed a whole teaspoon in…I know what you’re thinking…”Karen is such a rebel…she’s crazy.”  I know…it’s true…I am both a rebel and crazy. 😉

Once the dry ingredients were well combined, I added the chocolate chips.  I used semi-sweet, but sometimes I use milk chocolate…just kinda depends on my mood.

Mix those puppies in well.

With my cookie scoop I quickly got the dough to fall into a respectable formation on my silicone baking mat atop a cookie sheet.  I love that I don’t have to clean the cookie sheet…especially after all that work I put in getting it sparkling clean (see how to clean your cookie sheet to make it shiny and new here).

The recipe gives two cooking times.  8-10 minutes for chewy cookies and 11-13 for crisp.  I’m a chewy on the inside, crispy on the outside girl so I cooked mine for 9 minutes and they came out just the way I like them.

I’m telling you…these cookies are really good.  I rarely bust out a glass of milk for cookies unless they are of the oreo variety, but these cookies called for a nice cold glass of milk.

The shortening helps them to not spread out quite as much as they do when I make them with butter.

So, these cookies taste good and look good!

Now, don’t get me wrong, this will never replace my beloved modified toll house recipe, especially when it comes to cookie dough eating, but this recipe is officially in my chocolate chip cookie recipe rotation.  I may work on modifying the amounts of ingredients to be able to use a whole stick of crisco…it just seems like the right thing to do. 😉

Now, for those of you that have been reading for a while, you may remember that I made my own vanilla extract back before Christmas.  You may have also noticed that I’m still using my Costco vanilla extract.  That’s because I haven’t used the homemade batch yet!  Oops…the big taste test is next on my agenda…rather, it is on the agenda somewhere.  I’ll try to get to it soon!

Have any of you branched out and tried a new recipe for something that you love?  Have any success?  Or did it just make you realize that your tried and true recipe was the way to go?

Posted in Food | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

DIY “Will You Be My Bridesmaid?” Cards

Posted on February 10, 2012 by karen

Phew!  I am finally back to blogging after a short hiatus called “wedding planning craziness” while I was in California last week.  Before I left for Cali, I imagined having lots of extra time to blog along with relaxing in the California sun…in reality, I was super busy the whole time!  Don’t worry, I did manage to squeeze in some cuddle/wrestling/tickling/giggling time in with the Squishy (aka my nephew Zachary).  :)  I’ll be sure to share some of the deets from last week soon!

Now that all the lovely ladies of my bridal party have said “yes” I am excited to finally share how I asked them!

The gals that are in my bridal party are spread out across the country, so I wanted to think of some way to make asking them still be special even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to speak with each lovely lady face-to-face.  I read about all kinds of crazy ideas online from sending a cupcake to each girl (cute idea, but I was weary of mailing cupcakes across the lower 48), to creating a “bridesmaid survival kit” (which I figured would never actually be used by any of my girls and may just end up in the give-away pile), to buying barbies and dressing them up as each girl wearing a bridesmaid dress (can you say, creepy?).  I also didn’t want to get too crazy and spend a fortune.  That’s when I came upon The Wedding Chicks free printables!  I fell instantly in love.

Specifically, I fell in love with the free “will you be my” printable cards, which you can find here.  These were exactly what my little DIY Bride heart desired.  😉  I love how you can choose the colors that you want (and they have quite a few to choose from, might I add) along with the design.  I went with the vintage design in my wedding colors, teal and pink (tiffany blue and perfect pink were the exact colors that I used from Wedding Chicks).  :)  LOVE!

It’s quite simple to use.  You create the design that you want, save the image as a jpeg file, and then insert it into a word document.  I placed it in the bottom left hand corner of the page.  It was pretty simple to change the dimensions also to make it about a 5 X 7 inch card to fit my DIY paper lined envelopes (now the reason why I made teal lined envelopes is all making sense, huh?).  I printed each one out on a piece of white card stock that I already had.  I have 9 girls in my bridal party…yes n-i-n-e beautiful, amazing, and talented women that I love and adore.  :)  So, after printing them all out, I whipped out my paper cutter and got to work.

The first thing I did was cut an inch off the top so that when I folded the card it would be exactly 10 inches.  It’s funny how the blue laminate counter tops don’t really bother me until I see them in photos.  But, wow, those are some blue counters, huh?  Ahh, the joys of renting. 😉

Then I folded the card in half.

Normally, it would be easier to cut it before folding, but my paper cutter is pretty small (I bought it last year at Michael’s with a 50% off coupon to make Dane a framed map where we pin places we have visited and/or lived.  I’ll have to share that little DIY gift project soon.), so I improvised.

Once it was folded, I did my best to cut it so the design was centered.

Ok, now is as good of time as any to mention that although I absolutely love the look of these cards, the inner grammar crazy that lives inside of me had a very hard time with the fact that there was no question mark after ‘bridesmaid’.  I know, I know…nerd alert!  I was able to get past it eventually (obviously) and hopefully all my girls did as well. 😉

Once the card was cut, here’s what the end product looked like.  Cute, right?  You can catch a glimpse of the paper lined envelope in the background as well.

Inside each card, I wrote a special message for each girl and asked them to stand by me on my special day.

Isn’t it so cute with the teal lined envelope?  I thought they came out quite well, even if I do say so myself. 😉  And, the whole project only cost me a package of envelopes (score!).

How did you ask your wedding party to be there for your big day?  Were you the girl that cut Barbie’s hair and dressed her up like each girl?  If you are, I truly apologize for calling it creepy. 😉

Posted in Arts n' Crafts, Wedding | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

We are women, hear us roar!

Posted on January 31, 2012 by karen

A couple weeks ago I talked a little bit about our training schedule for the half marathon we trained for.  And now I am very proud to announce that my mom, sister, and I finished the Inaugural Tinker Bell Half Marathon this past weekend!

We started out getting to Disneyland at 4:30am…aka o-dark-thirty.  Rickie still seemed quite cute and cheery at the car in the parking lot.  :)

My mom and sister were smart enough to make a pit stop at the parking structure bathrooms, so they could skip the porta potties at the start line.  There were tons of people dressed as fairies and Tink…men and women in tutus!

Lots of other women had the same idea…here’s the line!

We were all smiles to start…please ignore the extreme close up of my face at the self-portrait style angle.

We found a nice girl to take our picture near the start line.  I had no idea how reflective my zipper was until I saw this photo!

The “start line” is a vague term…with 12,000 runners and walkers, we were about a half mile from the start line in our corral!  This was the view in front of us…

And this was the view behind!  So many people!

The race started at 5:45 am…we didn’t cross the START line until 6:15!  Once we did, we got our butts moving and had to do a lot of bobbing and weaving to get around some of the slower walkers around us.  The first mile and a half or so was out on the streets of Anaheim.  Then we got to walk through Disneyland!  There were people waiting in lines to get to take photos with all kinds of dressed up characters.  We wanted to make sure we finished within the time limit so we just big leagued someone else’s photos ;).  I think that may be Tarzan behind us.

We made our way around to Space Mountain in Tomorrowland.

And then went through the back lots and eventually made our way to Main Street, USA!  A nice Disney worker took this shot for us.

And then we took a shot closer to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Walking through the castle was one of the highlights for this Disney lover. 😉

And seeing the sun rising over the Rivers of America was pretty sweet as well.

And I loved seeing the Haunted Mansion without a ton of people waiting in line in front.

After we left Disneyland, there was quite a bit of boring time where we walked all through the streets of Anaheim.  Although, they did have some live music and lots of cheerleaders and bands from local high schools cheering us on.

Around mile 11 we made it into California Adventure.  Here’s a shot of my favorite ride, Tower of Terror.

And my mom and sister still smiling at almost mile 12!  This was in the Hollywood section of California Adventure.

And then we finally made it all 13.1 miles (don’t forget the .1!)  My mom and sister are officially Half Marathon Finishers!  Ya, they’re kinda a big deal.  I’m very proud.  :)

My mom ended up tweeking her knee a bit about half way through (hence the ice on her knee), but she’s a trooper and kept on keeping on until we crossed the finish line!  We came in at just over 3 and half hours which is pretty good considering all the breaks for photos!

It was a pretty awesome experience to complete something like this with my mom and sis and I’m so happy we did it!  Congrats to all the people who finished this race on Sunday!

Posted in Life | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Westward…ho!

Posted on January 28, 2012 by karen

Yesterday, I started my journey at the Dayton International Airport (ahem, ya it may be small, but they fly to other countries, ok? Kinda a big deal). It was dark and early at 4:30 am.

20120128-062411.jpgAnd, yes, the Wright Brothers are from Dayton (this was something I had never known until I moved here). And, yes, this is a weird poster, but it was the only thing I could find in the airport that represented Dayton.

I had my trusty travel companions in tow.

20120128-062623.jpg
And after de-icing the plane at both airports…(brrr!)

20120128-062750.jpgI made it to sunny California! Here’s the infamous spaceship restaurant at LAX.

20120128-062926.jpgGetting excited for our half marathon this Sunday…wish us luck!

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