Because Cookies are freaking awesome. 

I don’t know about you, but, wow, it’s been one hell of a summer. And one of the highlights was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which contains a scene set in a primate jailhouse in a third-world hellhole (aka San Bruno) where a simian demonstrates the classic meaning of fascism with a bundle of sticks, inspired by the tactically and psychologically relevant question “Why Cookie Rocket?” 

I also, during the recent lacuna here at Cooking With Rocchi, got sent a picture of my most recent niece standing like a colossus over a bowl of cookie batter. My brother noted that “She doesn’t get all that science bullshit you keep going on about, but she sure likes eating the batter.” And why shouldn’t she? Batter is delicious, a civilized luxury, and packed with flavor, plus evoking a thousand memories of a thousand childhood batches where you’d steal just a primal taste of the cool, sweet-fat batter, a gritty graininess that was only improved upon by reversal, where the oven’s heat melts and smooths and flows and browns everything together. (If I can be really pretentious here, might I suggest that if Proust knew how to bake, or had baked. his trip back into the past would have been with the madeline’s batter, long before the baked finished product came from the oven. Also, really? Worrying about being pretentious on your baking blog is like worrying about being wet in the ocean.) 

With that said — and within the original guidelines of this, where I wanted to write every day, i wanted to write for under a half-hour, etc, which have to come back at some point — here are some cookie variations. They’re both built upon Cook’s Illustrated’s browned-butter Chocolate-Chip Cookie Recipe, which is worth having in it’s own right. When I see my niece in a few weeks, I really hope I get to make cookies with her and her dad, my big brother — who hand-skins his hazelnuts for his biscotti, knows why the cork is on the fork, and also knows what the chocolate-chip cookie recipe at 2171 Trinity Church Road tastes like. 

COOK’S ILLUSTRATED BROWNED BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP-COOKIE RECIPE

1 3/4 C Unbbleached All-Purpose Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

14 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter

1/2 C Granulated Sugar

3/4 C Packed Dark Brown Sugar

1 Tsp Salt

2 Tsp Vanilla

1 Lg. Egg

1 Lg. Egg Yolk

1 1/4 c Chocolate chips or chunks

3/4 C Chopped Pecans or Walnuts, Toasted

1. Adjust Oven Rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment. Mix flour and baking soda, set aside. 

2. Heat 10 Tbsp Butter in saucepan with gentle heat and attention until melted, cooking until butter is dark, rich golden brown and yet not burned. (I know this seems like a pain in the ass, but, seriously trust me: a) it is, and b) It’s is also the key to an end result that the quality of the final cookie will ably compensate foe that 10 minutes you couldn’t check Twitter while watching a pan.) Using rubber spatula, transfer butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir remaining 4 Tbsp butter in until melted. 

3) Add sugars, salt and vanilla to bowl. Whisk. add egg and yolk and whisk until smooth, Let stand 3 minutes. Whisk again. Let stand three minutes; whisk again. (Again this sounds like a huge pain in the ass, but a) maybe it’s the closest you’ll ever get to a state of Zen satori, huh, did you think of that? and b) you’re going to like how these cookies wind up.) Mix in Flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and optional nuts, making sure no pockets of flour remain. 

4) Divide dough into portions — 2-ish tablespoons each should make 2 dozen —arrange on parchment-lined cooking sheet. (Right now is an excellent time — especially if you live alone, and should not have access to 14 tablespoon’s worth of butter — to place cookie dough balls on parchment-lined plate, freeze, and then place in ziplock bags in batches of four in case friends drop by or you want to give them to the catsitting super-neighbor next door. Just bake any frozen cookie dough as long as you would the fresh, at the same temperature, and eyeball it from there.)

5) Bake until golden brown and still puffy, with set edges and soft centers, 10-14 minutes, rotating cookie sheet halfway through. 

VARIATIONS: 

The Bacon-Bourbon Chocolate-Chip Cookie (Above photo credit C.Godfrey)

Remove two of four Tablespoons of Unbrowned Butter. Add 8 slices of bacon, cooked until medium-crisp, diced fine and cooled, with chocolate chips. (Rushing this makes for a semi-molten dough that’s tough to work with. again, you’re making cookies here. Why would you rush it? Do you look at your iPad while you kiss people?) Replace vanilla with 3 Tbsp bourbon. (Add more to taste, but again, too much makes the dough unworkable and the cookie too fluid. Also, for this? This is the ONE PLACE where you can know in your heart that a great bourbon and a mediocre one will be interchangeable, because your boring-ass kind-of-not-friend Ted can’t drone on about malts and oak-y flavors when it’s in a cookie with chocolate and bacon.)

The Blondie Cookie (Pictured at top, with cellphone pic of salted Variation above.)

Replace chocolate chips with a mix of 1/3 white, chocolate and peanut-butter or butterscotch chips. Double vanilla. Add 3/4 cup toasted chopped pecans.

If you really want to BLOW SOME MINDS at your daughter’s bake sale, sprinkle with coarse sea salt 1/2 to 3/4 through the cookies, at moment when cookies are crisp enough that salt will not melt into cookie, but molten enough to let salt adhere. Again, trust me, the effort is worth it. And you’ve read this far, right?

I have this idea for a fake Errol Morris film where we learn that for one disastrous month under Nixon, Cookie Monster was Secretary of the Treasury, 

James.