When he and I were interns, we frequently purchased Fairlight cookies (I favor the chocolate chip and ginger spice varieties) as a reward for ourselves after a night of call. Although our conversations included topics such as politics, medical education, and the foibles of the hospital, we frequently talked about cookies. Such discussions brought us comfort at strange hours of the night and made us laugh when the day stretched into its 26th hour.
After he completed his internship, he and his wife moved across the country to New York City, where he is now (I trust) a highly competent and respected resident in emergency medicine. Our conversations about cookies and other baked confections have since dwindled into semi-annual affairs.
My appreciation of cookies is legendary. Many people think of me when they encounter cookies. Colleagues (and the occasional brown-nosing medical student) buy cookies for me if they sense that I am having a rough day—they all know that I will immediately smile and express deep gratitude.
It doesn’t take much.
Several months have passed since I last corresponded with my friend. When my eyes alighted upon the e-mail he sent to me this morning, I was already pleased—
—and I snickered when I read the contents of his letter: He had found a worthy chocolate chip cookie in New York City—and he wanted me to know where I could find it (74th Street and Columbus on the Upper West Side, for those of you who are reading from Manhattan).
This is remarkable news, primarily because he had bemoaned the lack of excellent cookies in New York. Seattle boasts several excellent bakeries and cookie factories (see Fairlight above; see also Cupcake Royale, Cougar Mountain Baking Company, and Larsen’s) that sell their wares at low prices (though nothing will ever beat Diddy Riese in Los Angeles).
This Manhattan cookie apparently costs a whopping $3.50.
My cookies consistently receive high ratings from all who consume them, so in case you’re not in Manhattan (or Seattle) and would like to experience the joy of eating a fantastic cookie, read on:
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (based off of the Hershey model)
2 1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
Key step #1: Think warm, gooey, lovey-dovey thoughts about the cookies while you are mixing the ingredients. There was a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded study in the New England Journal of Medicine a few years back that demonstrated, with significant statistical significance, that thinking “warm, gooey, lovey-dovey thoughts” while baking will improve the gustatory experience of the eater by at least 50%.*
Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in separate bowl. Mix butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla extract and eggs. Then mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients. Add chocolate chips.
Key step #2: Put the dough in the refrigerator until it is thoroughly chilled. This helps with molding the cookies to give them that aesthetically pleasing round shape when putting them on the baking sheet.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls (or smaller; small cookies look extraordinarily cute and, in conjunction with the lovey-dovey thoughts already mixed in, somehow taste better) and space them about 1.5 inches apart on a baking sheet. (I personally line the baking sheets with parchment paper.) Bake for about five to seven minutes on the top rack, or until edges just start to brown. Remove cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the baking sheets for about one minute.
Remove the cookies and place them on a wire rack. Allow them to thoroughly cool before packing them up for consumption.
Makes about 48 soft, mouth-watering, delicious cookies.
* No, of course not.
6 Feb 2007 |
How can something cooked with such “warm, gooey, lovey-dovey thoughts” can be so evil? Dang. I’m hungry now and I just got done with dinner. :-)
Comment by Jesse | 6 Feb 2007 @ 9:37pm
one day i will use your mouth-watering-ly good recipe to actually make some cookies. one day.
Comment by yaser | 6 Feb 2007 @ 11:37pm
The cookies from NYC that I love come from the Union Square farmer’s market. I guess you could argue that technically they’re not from NYC, being made elsewhere and brought here. But who cares. I love they’re gigner spive (I think that’s what they call them). They go for 3 cookies for $1.
I have to admit that I’m pretty partial (sp?) to my own cookies. I have at leat 2 cookbooks that I can think of that are just cookies.
‘Scuse me-I need to let out my lab coat!
Comment by Abby | 7 Feb 2007 @ 5:09am
I haven’t posted here very often but I do look forward to new postings. So I’m glad you are still here (so far at least). I think a great direction for this blog to go would be to give some informative and educational postings that would inform those of us that read your blog with your insight and the medical and psychological world. And of course random goodies like your cookie recipe! Thanks for the recipe, I’m sure this will be wonderful given your love of cookies so I look forward to trying it. I think I found my activity for this weekend to keep me occupied while it is cold and gross out
Comment by Suzanne | 7 Feb 2007 @ 7:26am
These, found on the web, are quite good.
CRISPY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup crisp rice cereal such as Rice Krispies
1/4 cup oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1. Whisk the flour, cereal, oats, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in a bowl, then set aside
2. Cream butter with both sugars until light and fluffy
3. Stir in the chips and flour mixture just until flour is incorporated.
4. Drop dough in 3 tablespoon mounds onto baking sheets, spacing about two inches apart.
5. Bake in 350 degree(F) oven for 12-14 minutes or until cookies are set and golden around the edges.
6. Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to cooking rack.
Comment by bill | 7 Feb 2007 @ 12:40pm
I saw an ad with a 12″ valentines choco-chip cookie and thought of your entry abou the guy with the big one.
Comment by Terry | 7 Feb 2007 @ 10:54pm
Intrepid Cookie Tester reporting in.
I made a batch of these today. I have thus far distributed them to the friend I visited this afternoon and the people who I had dinner with tonight. My family has also been sampling them in my absence. And I will take the rest to uni tomorrow to share with my lecture buddies and tutorial buddies.
Verdict: they are good cookies! All consumers concur.
I made mostly little ones. I have no idea how many I made. Lots.
One thing that has always puzzled me is why Americans measure butter in cups. Why?! Who wants to go ramming butter into cups when they could just cut it off at the measurement on the wrapper that says the mass? Luckily google is my friend and informed me that a cup of butter is 8oz. And my cooking experience tells me that 8oz is about 200-250g.
The other confusing thing about American recipes and butter is that if they don’t specify cups, they’ll use sticks. Did you know that the rest of the world doesn’t have sticks of butter? The closest thing we have to a stick of butter is 250g. Whereas a stick is about 125g.
AND American cups are smaller than Australian cups. 13mL smaller in fact. I believe our tablespoons are different too.
However as I guess on some ingredient quantities anyway, I don’t suppose it really matters. And google tells me the answers.
The End.
Comment by yay | 8 Feb 2007 @ 4:45am
oh lord i’ve had your cookies before and they were AWESOME!!! deeeeeelicious!
Comment by steph | 8 Feb 2007 @ 1:25pm
Although there has not been a true study conducted on the effects of positive thought improving the tasting experience, I would not be entirely surprised if warm fuzzy thoughts really *did* affect the taster’s tastebuds (if that makes sense).
Comment by catherine | 10 Feb 2007 @ 5:19am
Okay, Steph, what made them awesome? Size, texture, ingredients? Sparkly surprises in each and every one?
Comment by bill | 10 Feb 2007 @ 6:53am
I took a note of your recipe before reading the comments, and now, I definitely plan on trying it out =).
Couple of questions:
1) How can you tell when it is ‘thoroughly chilled’? Aprox. how long would that be?
2) Do you grease the baking sheet?
Comment by maryam | 11 Feb 2007 @ 8:09am
Thanks for the recipe!
ALso, if you love cookies, you MUST try Beths Heavenly Little Cookies. We had mint chocolate chips last night, and betwen the four of us, poished off the wole bag!
Comment by TBTAM | 11 Feb 2007 @ 8:12am
[…] my love for cookies is known far and wide, I must comment that they are a bit labor-intensive for me: In addition to […]
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