Food with Friends, Part 2

         I like a lot of things about cooking, and now baking too. Making food is a tangible reward, where your efforts immediately pay off. I think having at least one activity like that is important for a graduate student, where your work payoffs are not immediate. Plus, as I have discussed on this blog, making food is a great method of self-care. You need food to survive. Why not frame it as a moment of caring for yourself?

But I think my favorite thing about cooking (and baking) is the element of sharing. Cooking a meal for others, for me, is a real gift and chance to enjoy some time together. The idea of sharing extends into recipes as well. Some of my favorite dishes are things I’ve learned from friends and family members. Even when I find recipes from random blogs, it still feels like being in a concentric circle of food and knowledge sharing.

At the end of July, I made a recipe deeply steeped in sharing. I’ve been looking for a good homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe, as I’m growing more confident in my baking abilities. The first one I got was from a friend, Kristen. I met her and her daughter Maddie when I first moved to Santa Barbara, and we’ve remained friends since. Kristen described the recipe she uses as “foolproof,” so I made it when she shared it with my mom. Continuing in the spirit of sharing, my mom and dad also “chipped” in making the recipe. And when I found that there were a few too many for three, I gave the rest to my friend Liza.

Raw cookie dough

    The cookies turned out golden brown on the outside and nicely moist on the inside, with perfectly melted chips. In other words, they were perfect! I will definitely be making these again, and using them to spread a little joy.

1 dozen wonderful cookies, all done!

Chocolate Chip Cookies: Makes 2-3 dozen, depending on the size of dough balls you make.

Prep Surface Ingredients and Equipment:

2 cookie sheets*

Parchment paper (for nonstick pans)

2 medium mixing bowls

Flat cake spatula

Cookie Ingredients:

¾ cup Crisco vegetable shortening OR equivalent amount of butter (you can also split the two, say ½ cup Crisco and ¼ cup butter)

1 ¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar**

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 medium or large egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all the wet ingredients in one bowl: shortening, brown sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth and incorporated. Mix all the dry ingredients in another bowl: flour, salt, and baking soda. Add the egg to the wet ingredients and stir until smooth. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in small bursts, stirring until all ingredients make a smooth and mildly sticky blend. Stir in chocolate chips.

Form the dough into balls and place on the baking sheet in sets of 6-8. Keep them roughly 3 inches apart. For a size reference, make one ball with a rounded tablespoon of dough. Bake 8-10 minutes for chewy cookies, or 11-13 minutes for crispy cookies. If you use two pans, you can bake one set of cookies while the other set cools.

*A specialized cookie pan, with air inside the bottom, will give you puffier cookies.

**Light or dark brown sugar is appropriate. If you choose dark, the cookies will be very moist and may look undercooked, but they are fine. We used a mix of light and dark, because I had some older sugar I needed to get rid of.