Don’t you love it when you receive a package, a gift from friend or family for Christmas and it says “Open Immediately!” No waiting until Christmas eve or Morning, when ever your tradition dictates opening gifts …or…well, whenever Santa drops them off…
We received such a package this past week. It was sent from Harry & David and YES – it WAS fresh fruit. So delicious! Just look at these pears!
I said to Ted “Please don’t take them out of the box until I take a photo” He was ok with that but couldn’t take his eyes off the GOLDEN FRUIT.
I told him it was just a packaging “cosmetic”, if you will. No. He wasn’t buying. He thought there had to be something special under the gold wrapper. There wasn’t. It was just a pear, as big and fresh and crisp and delicious as the others.
Thank you Mary Jane and Angelina! There couldn’t be a better gift for these two fruit crazy maniacs. Happy Holidays 
COOKIES!
Deep rich flavor in this perfect chocolate chip cookie. In Bouchon Bakeries original recipe both chocolate chunks and chips are used. The chunks melt but the chips don’t creating a different style chocolate chip cookie.
In my recipe, I simply used chocolate chips but Bouchon’s recipe is detailed below with subtle simplifications on my part. For the original recipe, you’ll have to buy the book.
Makes 6 4-inch cookies or 2 dozen standard cookies.
- 1 1/2 + 3 TBS all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 cup + 2 TBS dark brown sugar
- 1 3/4 tsp Blackstrap molasses – unsulfured
- 1/2 cup + 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup 3/8” 70% – 72% chocolate – put in a strainer and tap off any powdered chocolate.
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- 6 oz unsalted butter – room temp.
- 3 TBS + 2 1/2 tsp eggs *Put 2 eggs in a cup and whisk to blend with a fork. Now measure out the eggs.
Sift the flour, baking soda, salt.
Mix the dark brown sugar with the molasses, pressing out all clumps. Stir in the granulated sugar. It won’t be smooth but do your best to get big chunks of sugar and molasses to mix in.
Beat the butter in a standing mixer to the consistency of mayonnaise. Add molasses – sugar mix and beat another 4 minutes. Add eggs and mix for 30 seconds. Scrape down bowl and add the dry ingredients in two additions.
Add the chocolate chunks and chips then refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 325 F.
Use a TBS scoop for standard cookies and place on parchment lined baking sheets. If making 6 big cookies, use an ice cream scoop.
Bake 18 minutes on convection or 20 minutes regular oven. *Less time if baking standard cookies. Mine took about 15 minutes on convection.
Allow to cool and store up to 3 days.
Be careful if you rotate cookie trays when baking if you use parchment. It might just slide right off the baking sheet causing cookies to drop on the oven door and then they look like this:
Fortunately, only 3 cookies dropped but left quite the mess on my oven door.
The rest looked AND tasted pretty darned AWESOME!
No matter how much we all say some other cookie is our favorite, it seems we just can’t resist the good old Chocolate Chip-ster.
Does the chocolate chip cookie make an appearance on your holiday cookie tray?
Jay’s work used to get him the fruit of the month from Harry and David. They were always so delicious!
And, yes, it’s not CHristmas without chocolate chip cookies. 🙂
We got the exact same package! We have a relative who sends us the pears every year (much appreciated). Your cookies are making me want one right now, I’m actually kind of glad they are not in my kitchen because one is not the number that I would eat. The dark brown sugar and molasses must make them much better than your average chocolate chip cookie.
How funny – I don’t think we’ve ever made chocolate chip cookies for Christmas. Maybe because we have them year-round and save the baking for the ones we only eat once a year (why only once a year – they are so delicious!).
My grandma used to send us a huge box of oranges and grapefruit from Florida every year and I always looked forward to it. I was a huge grapefruit fan as a kid. I guess I still am. 🙂
Oh boy, now those are some glorious cookies! The classic chocolate chip cookie doesn’t usually make it to the holiday cookie plate for me, simply because I make them so frequently all year long. I like to let the less common variants shine during this special occasion. It’s only fair to share the spotlight at least once or twice a year. 😉