Chocolate Chip Cookies from Scratch!

I have never been afraid to proudly announce my fear of baking. But, like having to overcome my fears of poultry gizzards in order to make a real gravy, I decided I needed to overcome my fear of making crappy baked goods. Hmm. That was probably a really strange analogy as fowl gizzards have nothing to do with cookies, but I'm sure you get my point, as misguided as it may have been.

Anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to find that baking chocolate chip cookies is not only fairly easy, but also fun in a deliciously messy way. I think most of my reticence is based on a prior baking mistake wherein I mistook baking soda for baking powder when baking a cake. Determined to forge ahead without salty tasting cookies (more on that debacle later), I followed the instructions on the package to semi-sweet chocolate chips to a T.

My Librarian and I prefer chewy to crunchy cookies and I found that the trick to ending up with entirely chewy cookies is to bake them through, closely monitoring the time and to pull them just after the very tops have baked from gooey cookie dough into, well, cookie. The result of my neurotic time keeping and toothpick poking in the end was pure success - we had over two dozen chewy chocolate chip cookies that were neither crunchy, hardened, nor burnt and were baked all the way through.