Man Cookies

Hi friends!

So, the other day, Matt was making cookies. Yes, that's right, my husband makes cookies...and darn good ones! About an hour or so later, he calls me over to look at his computer, and we have the following conversation:

Matt: Come look at what I did for fun.

Me: (cautiously curious) What did you do? (proceeds to look at laptop)

Me: Oh my gosh! You wrote a blog post about your cookies! And it has pictures! And it's funny! This is so going on the blog...

Matt: OK.

My husband totally wins at blogging! Honestly, I think this post is better than most of mine. Who knows, maybe we'll become one of those super fantastic husband/wife blogging teams. Probably not...but I can dream, right?

So, without further ado, I give you....Man Cookies.

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When did it happen? When did the idea that a man, secure in his identity as a husband, father, provider, protector…whatever you want to call it, couldn’t be “domestic?” On the overall “Man Scale” I’d never say I’m a Dos Equis spokesman, but I like to think I have my share of testosterone…Hell I’m a 4 year Army veteran (ok, Intelligence isn’t the infantry, but the uniform usually looks similar). Ok, bad example…I play ice hockey every week, that’s pretty manly right? (Ok, goalies wear the more gear that most positions in all of sports, but 70 mile an hour vulcanized rubber hurts!)…This all sounded better in my head….Regardless, a guy has to have a release…thanks to my mother, a small percentage of that tends to be baking cookies. [Man Cookies] {CHOCOLATE BAZOOKA EXPLOSION COOKIES!}.

The point is, men can do plenty of things once thought the realm of the more fairer sex…and baking has the tendency to yield yummy goodness that make people happy. Happy Yumminess is something we can all agree on, so let’s do it!

1. Work Space…clean it up you man pig…it’s easy to wash the stuff you dirtied in the process, instead of those things along with all the other dirty dishes.

2. Recipe…it helps to have a playbook, usually teams win if they’re all on the same page, baking is pretty specific…stray from the game plan and you’re shelling out for Dairy Queen instead of CBEC’s.

       

 I’ve adapted a long standing family recipe I learned from my mother, with help from a Betty Crocker cookbook. Here’s what I’ve found works.

*1/2 cup butter (1 stick for you brainiacs)                                   * 1 cup butter flavored shortening

*1 cup sugar                                                                           * 1 cup brown sugar (packed) 

* 3 cups flour                                                                          * 2 eggs

* 2 tbsp vanilla                                                                        * 1 tsp salt

* 1 tsp baking soda                                                                 * 12 oz chocolate chips (or white chocolate, your call)

A lot of recipes may call for nuts…matter of personal preference really, but nuts have absolutely no place in cookies. And let’s be honest, you’re a man, you should be all set.

3. Prep. Assemble your ammo sire of the stove, no one wants to show up to a war short a grenade, pulling your components together before hand saves a Grand Theft Auto trip to the store… 

4. Butter and shortening- For the love of God, let your stick of butter warm up to room temperature…cold butter blends about as well as oil and water. As for the shortening, if you have a metal measuring cup, it makes this whole process easier…and includes FIRE! Use a tablespoon to scoop the Crisco into the cup, and throw it on the stovetop burner for a few seconds to melt the outer edges, the contents basically slide right out into the bowl.

5. Blend the sugar, brown sugar (make sure it’s packed), eggs, salt, baking soda, and vanilla together with the butter. If you have a counter top mixer, this process goes by much more quickly, and is as close to a power tool as you’re gonna get Bob Vila. We’ve reached what I consider the most important ingredient in a good cookie, vanilla. The recipe calls for 2 table spoons, and I’d suggest holding to that for your first few attempts until you learn how tweaking the standard changes the final product. I go at least 3 table spoons…or more…

*Blend it !!!

Consistency wise, this will be pretty wet, don’t worry, the flour changes all that. Here it’s pretty important to get a solid 3 cups…not close to 3 cups…use the back of a knife and smooth out the measuring cup of flour…seriously, baking is a science…standards are a good thing here…this is don’t screw with it unless you have adult supervision type stuff.

Smooth flour makes good cookies.

6. Slowly add the flour to the mixture as the mixer is on its lowest setting…don’t dump it all in there…patience grasshopper. After your 3 cups of flour, you can tell if you need more or not…the dough should be easily moldable in your hands, and not sticky…if it’s sticking, add more flour in quarter cup increments.

This is 3 cups in…way too sticky still…I went almost ¾ cups more flour for this batch…

7. Add the namesake…chocolate, white chocolate, even peanut butter chips. Make sure you use semi-sweet chocolate chips, I’ve found milk chocolate comes out with a burnt taste…and actually makes the cookie too sweet sometimes. For this batch I did my semi sweet chocolate chips for about two third of the batch. Once they were already in the oven, I added some Peanut Butter morsels in and finished it off that way.

8. Your oven should be preheated to 375 f. Drop the dough in loose clumps on your pans, bear in mind the cookies will about double the width of your clumps during baking…so If you need to stretch your dough, obviously you need to go smaller on your clumps. 

9.Toss those guys in for a worry free 11 minutes. Here’s where all your hard work to impress your wife can be lost. After your 11 minutes are up, if they’re not done, they need to be left alone and checked every 30 seconds. Usually any tips of dough will brown up as a sign they’re almost done. As soon as small canyon like cracks start showing up, pull them out. Usually the pan on top will cook faster than the bottom one will (the whole heat rising thing…). If you have an oven capable of convective cooking, use it, you’ll get a much more even baking process. Once the pan is out of the oven, get the cookies off the baking sheets. Think about it, those sheets are 375 degrees, the cookies will keep cooking if left on them. If you cleaned all your wares during the first 11 minutes, you’re pretty well set skippy, enjoy one of your cook err CHOCOLATE BAZOOKA EXPLOSION COOKIES…man stuff. Go forth, bask in the glow of your manly domestication…women swooned.

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So, what did you think?? Not to shabby, eh? I promise you, these cookies are fantastic!!

Maybe I'll have to get him to guest post more often!

Be blessed!

Heather