Chocolate Chip Cookies

Eric has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies from Thomas Keller that he swears by - and I have to admit, they're pretty good (my only critique is slightly too much butter makes them spread just a little too much). I was very excited recently when I discovered a recipe that just might be better. I had a craving for cookies and bought chocolate chips at Trader Joes. My bus iphone google search yielded several recipes, but the one from Calorie Count (of all places) stood out. It was phenomenal when made, and so easy! My only tip would be to use an oven thermometer to make sure the oven temperature is right. They don't cook long, and you need to make sure they don't burn.

Tollhouse Cookies, Homemade with butter, No Nuts Recipe

Source: http://caloriecount.about.com/tollhouse-cookies-homemade-butter-no-recipe-r12243

Makes 24 servings
Yield 48 cookies, serving = 2 cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
2 large eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips

Directions:
Mix flour, baking soda, salt and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar.
Beat in eggs one at a time.
Beat in vanilla extract.
Add flour, baking soda, salt.
Mix in chocolate chips.
Drop by rounded tablespoons Bake in a 375 degree oven for 10 minutes.

The Beginning

Most kids couldn’t tell you what a roux consisted of or how to make one, or the proper knife to use when cutting a tomato, as oppose to an onion. Then again, most kids were not raised the same as Jessica, Luc, and I. When our childhood home went through a dramatic remodel, we ended up with one of the most beautiful and well designed kitchens around with an island in the middle, constructed a little lower than all the other counters so the kids could use it. Growing up we were home-schooled (no we are not socially impaired), in fact, being home-schooled left room to gain skills we would have not otherwise have been exposed to on such a regular basis. As a neighborhood agreement, my mother traded cooking classes for the neighborhood kids in exchange for math, reading and writing tutoring by the other neighborhood mothers whose kids were also home-schooled. We also all took quilting classes from the little old lady who lived on the corner, Clara, again skills we probably would have not otherwise been exposed too (although I’m pretty sure sending us there was just another form of babysitting for our parents). So where am I going with all this you ask? Too bad, you don’t get to know yet. One of my fondest childhood memories is undoubtedly that of the Bleu Shoe. Having a life-long obsession with shoes and the color blue you can guess where the name came from. The Bleu Shoe was the restaurant my siblings and I ran out of our home kitchen starting around ages 8(Luc), 11(Sandhya) and 13(Jessica). We would find and test recipes until we perfected the menu, grocery shop for every ingredient and tool we needed and lock our mother out of the kitchen, because obviously she was our most loyal client, and turn the house into a full fledged restaurant. Nothing made us happier, and it was really one of the only things we did without fighting. We all had our jobs and responsibilities and took them incredibly seriously as it meant the success of our esteemed restaurant! We would have everything from freshly baked French bread awaiting your arrival on the table (from yours truly, I went to a phase of being obsessed with making bread). We had an appetizer main dish and dessert, which was my sisters specialty, she was the baker at that time. Luc was always the heartthrob waiter, because no one could resist his childhood charm and dedication to good service, which has surprisingly followed him through the years and was brought to my attention recently as he so vehemently informed me this Christmas time as I was taking him to the airport to go back to school, that he needed a couple dollars to tip the guy who takes his bag curbside. He was shocked at my objection to the idea and mostly my response of “you have to tip those guys!?” “Duh, Sunny, they don’t have to be out there doing that!” Lets just say the cheap Indian gene must have passed him up cause that still seems ridiculous to me, I can carry my own bag inside if it means saving those couple bucks. Anyways, after The Bleu Shoe was tested on family we expanded it to church friends. They were so impressed with our “restaurant” they wrote a restaurant review after leaving, singing our praises in the most “this is a real review” kind of way, which of course made our day, month, year! Soon after that we had what we thought was our first chance to really get someone to believe we were the real deal. Our mother had met a man and was having him over for dinner, we begged her to tell him she was taking him to this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant she knew about and play it off like she didn’t know who we were at all. Now obviously if this was a real restaurant we couldn’t send little 8 year old Luc out there serving the food, we were scared of getting called out for child labor or something. So this time Jessica got to be the waitress and the baker, poor Lucie was out a job but he made up for it by running the kitchen with me. We were so incredibly serious about our first real client, we cleaned and decorated and set the table immaculately, which is funny to think about now because I’m pretty sure we later drove that boyfriend away with our antics and sheer despise for any man who came into our mothers life who wasn’t our father. We gave them menus, took their orders, the works, if you ask me we were a real restaurant, we even charged them…we had to give it back laterL At the end of this flawless presentation we all came out and “surprised” them, revealing that it had been her kids cooking this whole time! He better have been impressed. Needless to say, The Bleu Shoe was something we took very, very seriously and still do to this day. Food always has been, and always will be a passion for every member of my family. My great-grandmother taught my mom everything she knows (which is quite extensive), and she somehow managed to pass it onto us. Growing up home-schooled we always had to fend for ourselves when it came to food, there was no cafeteria or lunchtime or anything like that, just the fridge and pantry to do with what we could. So we did. We experimented, out of sheer hunger and the need for food, and in the process managed to teach ourselves skills that at the time we didn’t realize every kid didn’t have. To us it was completely normal, nachos had to be the neighborhood favorite, when all else fails you can always resort on the fabulous combination of chips and cheese. I learned how to grocery shop for a full sized family at the age of 12 and was routinely sent to the store with my mothers debit card, on my bike, to do the weekly grocery shopping. I would have them pack the bags so they were balanced so I could put them on my handle bars and still bike without falling to one side or the other. Skills, to say the least. Growing up in our kitchen and with all the beautiful Le Creuset, any kind of knife you could imagine and any cooking gadget our mother could get her hands on, we had the world at our feet in that kitchen. If you wanted to make it, you could. Growing up in this environment has since sparked a passion in me, I don’t know what I want to do with my life or what kind of career I am going to be qualified for upon graduating this Spring. The one thing I know for sure, is that I love food and I love cooking and whether that takes me anywhere besides a silly blog, we will see!

Ps. Photos to come.