chocolate therapy

I'm not ordinarily one of those people who uses chocolate as a substitute for therapy. But I have a sweet tooth, I've got a hard few weeks ahead of me school-wise, and by golly, there are just times when a batch of good cookies hits the spot. I made these the other night and they are delicious, and I sort of made up the recipe, so I'm posting it instead of trying to slam out a couple more shitty paragraphs during Daniel's (too-short) naptime. I say I "sort of" made up the recipe because it's really just my own adaptation of Mark Bittman's basic butter cookie.

Ready?

Beat until fluffy:
1 stick (8T.) butter
1 cup sugar

Add and beat some more:
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix dry ingredients:
2 cups flour
6 T. cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt

Add dry ingredients alternately with 1/3 cup milk, mixing only as much as you need to get the dough. It will be fairly stiff.

Stir in:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped walnuts

*ETA: I didn't write this because I thought it seemed obvious, but just in case there are novice cookie-bakers out there...you don't just stick the bowl of cookie dough in the oven. Not unless you're asking for a disaster, anyway. Put spoonfuls of dough evenly spaced (2" or so) on a cookie sheet and THEN bake.
Bake at 375 for 9-11 minutes, but not too long or the cookies will be dry.

Comments

ann said…
One of the first times I ever made cookies, my mom found me in the kitchen with my hands in the bowl, kneading it, and she said, "When it says 'mix by hand,' you can still use a spoon."

Then another time I was making cookies when my brother was home. He sat in the kitchen while I cooked, and I was so excited to be talking to him. (I rarely see him). After everything was in the oven, I checked on the cookies, and they were very flat. They were spreading. I asked my dad what was wrong with the oven. We had some theories. Then one of my parents suggested that I might not have used quite enough flour. I checked the recipe again. It had called for "1 1/2 cup". I realized I had read it as "one half cup", instead of "one and a half cups".

I'm kind of denying that you included that paragraph in italics for me, but I could totally see your logic behind the decision, if you did.

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