whole wheat chocolate chip cookies

Ever have one of those days where you just want to sit inside eating raw cookie dough and watching Jon & Kate plus 8? I know I do, and today was just that day.. so that's just what I did.

While I clearly made some cookies, I honestly just wanted the dough. I know some people say that's bad for you but many years of experience has proved otherwise. If it makes you feel any better, you can make these whole wheat chocolate chippers and say "hey, at least they're whole wheat."

So if you're having one of those days.. here's all you need.

• 2 heaping cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 stick of butter (1 cup)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 bag (or whatever amount your craving heart desires) of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• walnuts (optional).. I ended up adding two handfuls to half the cookies

So now to make the cookie dough:

1. Combine the flour, salt, and baking soda in a medium size bowl and set aside.
2. In a larger bowl use an electric mixture to beat softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until smooth, around 5 minutes.
3. Add each egg to the sugar mixture one at a time, beating for a minute after the addition of each egg.
4. Add vanilla extract.
5. Add in all the dry ingredients, beating together until all the dry ingredients are mixed in. It will be kind of separated and lumpy, it won't look like your typical dough ball until you form it (where your hands will get dirty).
6. Fold in the chocolate chips and if you want, walnuts.

It will look something like this:


Yum. Now go ahead and take a spoon, spoon up some of this goodness, and roll it into a little ball. Your hands will get dirty so don't try to get around this, just embrace it. Using the spoon is just a little trick to make all the dough balls the same size. It's also another utensil you get to lick clean when you're done with the process.


Now here is where the tough decision making comes in. Do you want to:
A) Just make a bunch of cookie dough balls to freeze
B) Make a bunch of warm gooey cookies OR
C) A bit of both?
Like I said, tough decisions.

If you chose A) Make a bunch of cookie dough balls to freeze: line a baking sheet with wax paper, put your rolled up dough balls on the sheet and leave in the freezer for about 4 hours. You can then take them off the sheet and put them in a freezer bag. This way, if you ever want to make cookies you have the dough handy, or if you're like me.. you'll have the dough handy if you just want some dough.


If you chose B) Make a bunch of warm gooey cookies: preheat oven to 350, place cookies on a greased baking pan with a few inches between each cookie, leaving room for them to rise. Bake for about 8-10 minutes, double check once in a while, taking them out when they seem just ready.

If you chose C) A bit of both, then do a bit of both A) and B). It's like an MCAT question, I know.

Then just sit there eating your cookies watching Jon and Kate and Mystery Diagnosis all day long.

So the Goesselin's are going on Oprah this episode, this is an old one.

Those matching outfits Kate is getting for the kids are so cute.

Those bathing suits are precious.

...Hey, where did my cookie go? Baffling, guess I better go get another.

And that's pretty much how my day went, and that's fine. It was a beautiful summer day in Florida, not even raining.. and I wouldn't have spent it any other way. The cookies are ten times better for you than the sun anyway, really. So...

Eat two and call me in the morning.
-your pre-med chef

chocolate chocolate chip banana bread

I should probably have titled this post chocolate chocolate chip banana bread disaster, because it really was. Ultimately though, the bread was delicious, so that would have been slightly misleading. Let me explain...



Yeah...that's what I meant by disaster. What happened was I put the loaf pan on top of an insulated baking sheet to keep the bottom of the bread from overcooking (good idea). Then when it came time to check if it was ready, I pulled the bread out by the baking sheet underneath the pan (bad idea). The uneven weight caused the loaf pan to slide gracefully off the baking sheet and onto the kitchen floor, oops.

So what did I do? I decided that instead of letting all this food go to waste, I would embrace the second law of thermodynamics and accept that the disorder of this universe is constantly increasing, and it just so happened in my kitchen. I slid the pan (that was obviously face down) onto the baking sheet, flipped it back right side up, scraped off the top layer, and put it back in the oven for a little to finish cooking/kill any germies i didn't scrape off.

In the end, it was good. It would have been a lot prettier had I not encountered that little mishap, but can't judge a book by it's cover, right?

So if you trust that this baby is good enough and have not been completely grossed out by the fact that part of this banana breads journey was on my floor.. then here's the recipe for disas...success!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup cocoa powder

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

• 2 large eggs

• 3 ripe bananas, mashed

• 3/4 cup buttermilk

• 1/2 bag bittersweet chocolate chips (or as much as you please!)
  

Little Trick: If you don't have buttermilk on hand you can add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice for every cup of regular milk, and let sit for 10 minutes. This is what I did this time.

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F
2. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl
3. In a larger bowl use an electric mixer to beat the room temperature butter until soft
   
4. Beat the brown and regular sugar into the butter until soft
5. Add eggs, again beating until smooth
   
6. With reduced speed, beat the mashed bananas into the mixture
   
7. Add the dry ingredients into the mixture gradually (about 1/4 of it each time) mixing until they disappear into the batter.
8. Add the buttermilk and mix thoroughly into the mixture
   
9. Add in your chocolate chips (you can also add nuts if you like)
   
10. Put in a greased 9x5 loaf pan, put the pan on top of an insulated baking sheet, and place in the oven for 30 minutes (this will keep the bottom from overcooking)
    
11. After 30 minutes cover the top of the bread loosely with aluminum foil (this will keep the top from overcooking). Leave in for about another 40 minutes.
12. Check to see if ready by sticking knife in center of bread and seeing if it comes out clean.
    
13. Take out, NOT by pulling out the baking tray from underneath the loaf (for reasons already established) and let cool for about 20 minutes before running a knife around the edges of the pan and taking out the banana bread.
14. Enjoy while still warm, gooey, and delicious.

See, in the end it came out quite good, despite the technical difficulties. I don't know if this picture fully conveys the chocolatey-ness and moistness of the bread, more like cake.

Banana bread is just the perfect thing to make when your bananas get all brown and too ripe, why throw them out when you can make this? Especially in summer when the transition seems to happen twice as fast. I guess that means I'll be baking twice as much banana bread. Mmm.. I'll leave it on that optimistic note.

Eat two and call me in the morning.
- your pre-med chef

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