When I was a junior in high school, I went abroad for a semester and lived in France. I went to a lycee (French high school) and lived with a French host family. It was wonderful. I went for my fall semester, which meant that I was away for Thanksgiving for the first time in my life and since I was in France, that meant I went to school on Thanksgiving and most people were completely clueless. My host family was not, but they weren’t exactly going to make a huge turkey dinner just for me, so instead, we had tacos and chocolate chip cookies.
The reality was that for this Los Angeles girl, the meal could not have been more American. I’m not sure if it is that event, or something else, but to me, autumn always calls for chocolate chip cookies.
Recently, the Big’s teacher asked for some parents to send in cookies and juice for Halloween and I love baking my cookies for people so I jumped on the chance.
The other funny factoid about my chocolate chip cookies is that I had a best friend when I lived in New York City for a number of years during and after college and she and I would always say that we would know we had become “grown ups” when we had all of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies just on hand, at any given time…..well, I guess I’ve been a grown up for years now then…..
This recipe is from my mom. I don’t think it is any special family heirloom, but I have no idea who else to credit. However, this time I added a little something extra. I threw in some cocoa powdered to my batter and they are pretty darn delicious.
Oh and then Hubby went and did this…..yea, I would say, definitely recommend turning them into an ice cream sandwich!
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
3/4 cups brown sugar (you can see my tutorial on brown sugar here)
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder (optional)
2 1/4 cups flour
1 cup chocolate chips (ish)–I tend to just keep adding until it looks like the amount I want.Directions
- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
- Cream together butter and both sugars (or if you don’t have brown sugar, just double the sugar and add about a Tbsp of molasses).
- Beat in eggs and vanilla.
- Now add the baking soda, salt and cocoa powder (if you are using it), mix until well combined.
- Mix in flour
(Note, some people will tell you the proper way to do this is to mix together your dry ingredients–ie flour, baking soda and salt–and then add it all together to the wet ingredients, but I like to save a bowl and I find that as long as you add the smaller amount stuff first, it mixes all together just fine).- Add chocolate chips and mix until evenly distributed
- Line cookie sheets with parchment (or grease them) and portion out into small dollops, smaller or bigger depending on how big you want your cookies, and make sure to give each mound plenty of space around it.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes.
Los Angeles Girl Goes Country 