The chewiest cookies in the world

In my last post, I raved about Elizabeth Hartman from the blog Oh, Fransson!

This post gives a shout-out to Joy, from the food blog Joy the Baker. Joy's blog is full of great recipes accompanied by great photos of her food. She's got a great quirky personality that shines through in her posts, always really fun reading. Plus, she has freckles. Freckles are cool.

I've had Joy's Chewy Molasses Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe bookmarked for a while now. I'm not usually on the hunt for a cookie recipe, since my usual recipe is so tasty, and probably the healthiest you can get given that it's a chocolate chip cookie. But when my good friends Tammy and Trev were so kind as to lend us a whole whack of baby stuff, it called for an extra special cookie recipe. The healthy whole wheat ones just wouldn't cut it.

The best thing about this cookie recipe is that you don't have to remember to soften the butter to room temperature. It calls for melted butter. (You don't have to keep the pot on the stove until the entire cup of butter is melted. Once it's about 2/3 melted, turn the heat off and swirl the melted butter around until the last 1/3 melts.)

The next best thing about the recipe is that it uses molasses. And although I don't always have molasses in my house, buying a small carton for this recipe guarantees that I will make this recipe another 3 or 4 times. The molasses stays good in the cupboard for... well, for a very long time.



I've made a couple really tiny tweaks to Joy's recipe. I don't have bread flour in the house, so I used all-purpose flour. Use 2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour. Instead of 1 egg and 1 egg yolk, I just use two eggs. Why waste the egg white? I also find that 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips is plenty. Finally, I skip the sea salt, but I bet that would be a tasty addition if you're not planning on bringing them to an office potluck where the sea salt will likely go unappreciated.

The result is a truly magical cookie. Like the kind you get from a gourmet cookie shop. Leave lots of room between the balls of cookie dough because it really spreads out to a thin, chewy cookie. I highly recommend the use of a small ice cream scoop (I have this one). If you don't own one (or two), add it to your Christmas list! It's a huge time-saver, not to mention an integral part of portion control...