The Best Cookies Ever

 

The best cookies I have ever eaten have always been the uncooked ones. Usually when I bake cookies it isn’t because I feel like baking or want to have a gooey warm cookie from the oven with a glass of ice cold milk. It’s because I’m having an intense craving for cookie dough that I can’t ignore. Raw eggs don’t scare me. What do people think is in ice cream, scrambled eggs?

I will eat spoonfuls of cookie dough until I get so thirsty I could drink a pail of water. The only time I’ll eat cookies baked is if the cookie dough’s gone.

My chocolate chip cookies don’t come out of the oven looking very appetizing. Mine look more like chippy cowpies: flat and lumpy. Living in high altitude country has its drawbacks when it comes to baking but I mix the yummiest, creamiest, most amazing cookie dough I ever tasted.

Here’s where it all begins:

 

 

Cookie dough is one of those nostalgic favorite comfort foods for me. I’ve never outgrown my desire for a good-sized spoonful of cookie dough. As I mix the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies in my Kitchen Aid mixer, the moment right after I’ve added the flour when the dough starts to bind together but isn’t sticky yet, is my favorite cookie dough eating stage.

 Here’s a perfect example of when I would stick my spoon in the bowl for a scoop to eat.

My next favorite cookie dough stage is after the walnuts have been added and before the chocolate chips get mixed in. My third favorite stage is when all the ingredients have been completely mixed together and it’s time to drop cookie dough on the baking sheet.

 

Some bakers use a spoon, and some like a scoop to make perfectly round cookies. I sometimes use a small scoop but don’t like the dough sticking to the scoop.

I’m more of a slob regarding the shape of my cookies so my favorite cookie dough scooper is this handy little gadget. No sticky dough on my finger or a scoop.

Talk to your Pampered Chef representative if you want one like mine, or go to a party and maybe you’ll win one like I did.

I’ve passed my cookie dough tasting habit onto my kids. Once my husband, kids, and I all get our sugar-filled quota of cookie dough, I only have to wait around for 1-1 ½ pans of cookies to bake. The baking part and clean up is my least favorite aspect of making cookie dough and the reason I don’t make cookie dough more often. Sometimes I’ll freeze scoopfuls of dropped dough on a sheet instead and save it for eating or baking later. I did use a small scoop this time, just for the picture.

 

If I have to eat homemade cookies completely baked, oatmeal raisin cookies are my favorite because the dough isn’t as good but I’m the only one who likes baked oatmeal raisin cookies. Chocolate chip is my family’s favorite so that’s usually what I attempt to bake.

My favorite cookie doughs are gingersnap, peanut butter, chocolate mocha with or without vanilla chips, chocolate chip with nuts eaten at the mixing times as described above, and sugar cookie.

 Recently, I decided to make some cookie dough for a snack and to bake cookies for my kids after they got off the bus. I picked a new chocolate chip cookie recipe from Rosie, who ran a daycare for nearly thirty years and always made cookies for her kids. When she passed away the family printed Rosie’s chocolate chip recipe in her funeral bulletin. Her recipe said it was good for high altitudes and I decided to give it a try.

I’m guessing Rosie, the chocolate chip cookie angel was shining down on me because I’m sure you’ll think I’m lying seeing how my chocolate chip cookies turned out so…not like my normal chippy cow pie-looking cookies. I swear to you that my chocolate chip cookies have never turned out looking like these. This is the first time I’ve ever had them look so appetizing that I plan to ditch all other similar recipes to try. I can’t tell you what a breakthough in my research this was. There is hope for me afterall.

I also made up soft gingersnap cookie dough; a recipe from my girlfriend Erin. My daughter used Erin’s recipe to make cookies for 4-H Achievement Days and her cookies got a purple.

Here’s how the gingersnap cookie dough turned out:

Pre-perfect cookie dough stage

 

There’s nothing like a nice, satisfying spoonful of cookie dough; except maybe a tall glass of ice water to wash all the sugar down.

If you want my cookie dough recipes, you’ll have to come back on Saturday. I will post my cookie recipes April 16 (This is my way of getting you to come back for a visit.)