Chocolate chip cookies ii

A couple of months ago I carefully followed all the instructions on Sally's Baking Addiction to make the best chocolate chip cookies ever and they were really good. I learned some useful things from that experience like: (1) the butter and sugar are not creamed until the mixture has been beaten long enough to change color and (2) never, ever melt your butter in the microwave to soften it.

BUT

Since then I have found a recipe on a different blog that is a much less finicky and still makes amazing chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies from Joy Food Sunshine.

In previous years I've made chocolate chip cookies from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook or from the back of the Nestle chocolate chips bag and I think these are a lot better.

It's still important to soften the butter properly without melting it. This evening I got the butter out right after supper and when I was ready to start making cookies an hour and a half later I put the two sticks of butter in the microwave for 10 seconds. That seemed just right. They were not melted at all.

I know it sounds like I take chocolate chip cookies very seriously. It's strange but ever since I had Julian I frequently get this feeling that I want to eat all the chocolate chip cookies in the world. And I consider it nothing less than providential that 3 different people from church made me a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the 2 weeks after he was born. The chocolate chip cookie craving might have something to do with needing extra calories for nursing, I suppose.

Before he was born I didn't even like chocolate chip cookies that much unless they were made with milk chocolate chips or M&Ms. But now the balance of sweet, salty, buttery, and the slight bitterness from semisweet chocolate chips is nothing less than perfection.

Of course, Laura from Joy Food Sunshine says one of the best things about cookies is sharing them with someone you love. Which is funny because the first time I made this recipe it was after the boys had gone to bed one night. Silas came into the kitchen and said, "I heard the mixer and I wanted to see what you were making." You just can't outsmart these preschoolers. I told him he could stay up and have a cookie when they came out of the oven. So he waited at the kitchen table and when the cookies came out of the oven Christopher and Silas and I had some together. Micah was asleep but he got to have some the next day.

I haven't tried any of the other recipes from Joy Food Sunshine, but sometime soon I would like to try her spinach pancakes. They look good and I have been trying to keep fresh spinach on hand lately. It keeps much longer in the fridge than baby spring mix and -- as this recipe demonstrates -- you can sneak it in a lot of different foods.

Spinach oatmeal pancakes

Currently Christopher makes breakfast every morning and this doesn't seem like something he would go for...

Anyway, we can definitely vouch for the chocolate chip cookies.