Page 8 of Sex On A Plate

SOFT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

DIFFICULTY: If you have to ask, forget it.

TIME: 18 minutes.

What you’ll need from the cupboard: A soup spoon. A mixing bowl. A cookie sheet and cooling rack.

What you’ll need from the pantry: 2 sticks of softened butter, a cup of granulated sugar, a cup of brown sugar, vanilla extract, 2 eggs, 3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, salt. 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

* * *

Bendy chocolate chip cookies are great. Crunchy chocolate chip cookies are pretty good shit, too. Why can’t we have both?

Well, we can.

These are bendy in the middle and crunchy around the edges, thanks to the brown sugar.

Jess just made these two days ago as a coronavirus calming tool for the kids. It worked. Well, it worked except for Charlee. They made Charlee run in circles.

For THREE FUCKING HOURS.

The other two kids and Jessica’s sister were fine, though.

Here we go…

Preheat the oven to 350. Prepping isn’t going to take long at all.

Mix the butter, granulated sugar and white sugar in the mixing bowl until everything’s as smooth as butter.

Hahaha.

Crack an egg and dump in the contents. Mix, mix, mix. Add the other egg. Mix, mix, mix.

Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to the mix. Mix, mix, mix.

Grab a 1/2 cup sized measuring cup and put 2 teaspoons of hot water in it. Add a teaspoon of baking soda (soda, NOT powder).

While the baking soda is dissolving, add a dash of salt to the batter. If you want to measure it, that’s about 1/4 teaspoon. Yeah, that’s a dash. A pinch is a pinch, a good solid dash is 1/4 teaspoon.

Dump the baking soda/water mix into the batter.

Mix, mix, mix.

Now, the fun part. Add the flour (In steps is best. If you dump it all at once, it’s a pain in the ass, believe me). Mix. It. Up.

Add the chocolate chips. Fold them into the mix, making sure they’re mixed, but leave some areas that are chip infested. Those will be the cookies you keep. The batter with one random chocolate chip goes to the kid who’s been a little turd lately.

C.H.A.R.L.E.E.

Using your soup spoon (from the list above), scoop the dough out of the bowl with the spoon and flick it onto the fucking cookie sheet.

What?

You want to roll them into perfect little balls? NO!

Just flick the shit onto the fucking cookie sheet. Like. A. Cookie. Boss. If you want perfectly shaped cookies, go buy those big expensive fuckers from Starbucks.

Grow a set and make a cookie that looks like a cookie.

If your cookie sheet is old and raggedy like most of mine (some of them are 80 years old, if not older) use parchment paper. If you’ve got nice cookie sheets, don’t.

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes (until edges are browning). Don’t wait 12 or 13 minutes, until the edges are BROWN, because when they cool, they’ll be dry and crispy all the way through. When you eat them, your spouse will side-eye you like you’re munching a bag of fucking Doritos. Nobody likes that shit.

10 minutes. Edges beginning to brown. Yank ‘em out. Give ‘em two or three minutes. Transfer them to the cooling rack (Tabs down, remember?)

After they’ve cooled a few minutes, have one.

There’s nothing that takes me back to my childhood more than fresh baked cookies. We didn’t have them from time to time. We had them ALWAYS.

My mother would cook a batch and when they were gone (in 2 days) she cooked another. In fact, if my father got home from work and there were no cookies (this only happened once or twice in my LIFETIME that I remember) he’d say, “God damn it, Anita. Did Those little friends of Scott’s come eat all my fucking cookies?”

She’d wink at me and say “yes” even though she knew it was me and my brother Matt that ate them all, even after she said, “leave some for your father.”

Sit down with a glass of milk, pass out some cookies, and make a few memories of your own. Life’s short. It’ll be over before you know it.

Enjoy.