Chocolate Chip Cookies

My sweet tooth was aching something fearce this weekend.  I opted for some good old fashion homemade chocolate chip cookies. Yup that was sure to hit the spot. I used Bittmans recipe on page 880.  He says the key to any good chocolate chip cookie is the chocolate.   Luckily I am some what of a chocolate snob and with my birthday just passing my friends and family have stocked me quite well with some delicious dark chocolate.  The rest of the ingredients are fairly straight forward for any chocolate chip cookie recipe.

With an assortment of fairly dark chocolate, I ended up with a variety of cacao percents, from a more mild dark of 55% to slightly more bitter of 70%.  I thought the variations might be interesting in the final product.

Mixing together was quite a breeze in the stand mixer (b-day present from my mom last year... Thanks Mom!) Butter and sugar until creamy, add in the rest of the wets, and then in portions add in the mixed dry ingredients until everything is well mixed.  Lastly throw in the chocolate, and you have yourself some delicious cookie dough.

 Now unfortunately the cookies did not really turn out as I expected.  I am not sure exactly what went wrong, other than I may have had slightly to much butter (I used a hand rolled pound of butter and estimated what half would be (2 sticks is what the recipe calls for).  I believe everything else was measured correctly.  However even though these are flat and unattractive they still taste good! 

Closing thoughts... estimating and baking don't mix that well.