Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever?

Have you ever had a chocolate chip cookie you thought was the BEST EVER?  I did once.  I was staying at the Ritz Carlton in Lake Las Vegas.  I was with two of my girl friends.  We all agreed.  I think we ate ... well, a lot of them, over the several days we were there.  We knew the pastry chef and asked about the recipe.  He attributed the amazing cookies to the altitude & convection ovens.

As I sit & write this post, the kids are in bed and I am watching a French movie, Jean de Florette.  Maybe more importantly, I have a large glass of whole milk and three large freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

I love chocolate chip cookies.  For some reason, I have always been a Nestle Toll House Cookie girl.  I've never tried a new recipe.  Recently, I've grown a little dis-satisfied with the results.

Having thought about making some cookies for a few days, I decided I'd try a new recipe.  I googled: best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever.  I came up with several blogs / websites but after reading this one from Savory Sweet Life  I thought I'd give it a try.   I love that her recipe is very detailed, even in the amount of time you should mix!  I am also a sea salt fan and love that it is in them.

So: Are they the best EVER??  Well, they are pretty darn good.  They are chewy yet crispy.  Ones that you could easily eat several and then crave them the next day.  But, the BEST?  I don't know.

I've decided sometime in the next two months I'll have a chocolate chip cookie recipe contest.  If you live in the Bay Area & think you have the BEST recipe, leave a comment below.  I'll be sending out an evite with the details in the next two weeks!

Cooking with my girls

I grew up in a home where dinner was prepared from scratch every night.  Very rarely did we have take out or go to a restaurant, let alone frozen food.  Cooking is something I really enjoy as well.  With three little ones under 4, it is sometimes harder than other days to get that meal cooked & I go to some quick pasta with a little sauce of butter, garlic & Parmesan.  Many nights it is just the girls and I for dinner, so I don't feel as pressured to make a "complete" meal.  I do however, really like to cook.

Yesterday, the girls & I made eggplant Parmesan.  We have dinner Sunday nights at my parents, and thought this would be a fun thing to share.  I love to try and involve my girls when I cook.  They love to help and it keeps them entertained as well!  When kids help, you can't be too much of a prefectionist or all of the fun will be gone & the stress level will go through the roof!

I gave Coco the task of breading the eggplant & Vivienne put the egg on.  They did a great job!  The key is to stay calm, and teach them the "right" way to do things.  Otherwise, you end up with a crazy mess.

Here is the recipe we used. Eggplant Parmesan from Epicuious.com  I didn't make my own sauce, but used a small jar from Trader Joe's.  I also just used one large eggplant.  It was the perfect amount for 6 of us as a side dish.   It was yummy, and yes .. they all ate it!!

Fun in the kitchen.

These last two days have been great. My husband had a day off Sunday. He is a chef, and works in the land of the salaried. (Translation, he works A LOT.) He also commutes into San Francisco, which is about an hour door to door from our house. Oh, how I miss living 2 miles away from work!! Anyway, when he has a day off it is like a gift. This time was no exception. We cleared some weeds that had been bugging the heck out of me in my front yard. It wasn't a project I could really work on with the girls around & no one else watching them. I like having a good looking front yard. It makes me feel like no matter what is going on inside, it looks good from the outside. Also, a kid can't undo a mowed yard (unlike a vacuumed house!)

I also got to do some creative stuff in the kitchen. When I was young, the big treat when I was sick was ginger ale. We would get to drink it when we had an upset stomach. When pregnant, I learned that ginger candy cured morning sickness. So, how thrilled was I to learn that you can MAKE ginger ale and candied ginger. They are a bi product of each other. I've enclosed the blog page that I got the recipe from ... she wrote it better than I could and has great pictures too.

http://sweetsavoryplanet.blogspot.com/2011/04/ginger-soda-and-ginger-candy-double.html

Anyway ... you should try it. It's one of those things that you can do (in multi-steps over a few days) that when you have a party with your nice bottle of ginger & bottle of soda water so people can make their own ginger ale ... well, you have just "bumped it up a notch." in the party world.

The other creative kitchen project was making my own graham crackers. Now I must admit, this sounds cool, and yes, they are so much more yummy that the store bought ones. They are however a pain to make. Well, the mixing is fun & a great thing to do with kids since it involves pulsing the food processor - they love that. It is the rolling out & cutting that is nuts. I've got to look at some other recipes, I think. My husband gave me some tips for next time & saved me this time by doing it for me so I didn't have a complete meltdown in the kitchen. Let's just say, the dough is VERY sticky. So, rolling & cutting then moving to a pan are not easy the way I was doing it. BUT it did make some YUMMY graham crackers, along with the marshmallows my husband made last week & some melted chocolate ... um, yeah. I've eaten a few.

Today was back to the everyday grind. But I am enjoying the fruits of my labor! Here's to a good s'more & a cold glass of ginger ale on a beautiful spring day! Cheers!