White Chocolate Chip Cookies!

This is one of my favorite recipes!  Bryan isn't all that fond of regular chocolate, and conveniently I like white chocolate more than regular chocolate, so I started substituting white chocolate chips awhile ago.  He loves them, and so do I!


Here's the breakdown of the ingredients:

1/2 cup of shortening
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
6 to 12 oz chocolate pieces

As always, the very first step is to preheat the oven.  For these cookies, the temperature is 375 degrees.  In regards to the recipe, I do make some modifications.  I go ahead and substitute butter for the shortening.  This means using two sticks of butter.  Instead of "softening" them at room temperature, I go ahead and melt both of them in the microwave--it takes about a minute.  I break that minute up into two 30 second segments so that the butter doesn't boil.

While the butter is melting, I put the brown sugar, the granulated sugar and the baking soda in the mixing bowl.  Then I pour the melted butter in, and mix it a low speed until it's properly combined.  Next come the two eggs (I always use AA large eggs) and the teaspoon of the vanilla.  I then mix on a medium-low speed, so that the yolks will break and everything will mix evenly.

The brown sugar I used this time was dark; if you use a light brown sugar the mix picture above will be correspondingly lighter.

Next I add the 2 and 1/2 cups of flour, all at once.  I start the mixer on the lowest setting so that the flour doesn't fly everywhere.  Once the flour is at least partially mixed in, I bump the mixer up to the medium setting so that everything mixes evenly.

After everything is mixed, I generally take a flat icing spatula and scrape the edges of the bowl so that the dough is gathered in the center.

Next, I pour in half to three-quarters of a 12 ounce bag of white chocolate chips!  Really, it depends on how chocolately I want the cookies, while still balancing the need for the dough to set and not fall apart due to too many chocolate chips.  I mix these in on medium speed, and then lower the mixing bowl and turn the speed up to high.  This lets the mixing implement shake off accumulated batter without having to scrape excessively.

After spraying an air-bake cookie sheet with baking Pam, I form the dough into balls approximately one inch in diameter.  The dough is very sticky and moist, and somewhat challenging to form neatly, at least at first.  As it sits, it does firm up.  But then again, neatness isn't necessary...the cookies still turn out yummy!  After placing the balls of dough an inch to two inches apart on the cookie sheet, place them in the oven. 

The recipe calls for a bake time of 8 minutes, but for my oven I bake the cookies for 9 minutes.  Another way to tell when they are done is when the white chocolate chips and the edges of the cookies are just turning brown, but when you use dark brown sugar (like I did this time) you can't really tell if the edges are browning.  I definitely had a batch of trial and error cookies when I was learning to use my oven, and then again when I started using dark brown sugar!

After 9 minutes, take the cookies out, and transfer them over to a cooling tray.  Letting them cool on the baking tray a bit makes it a bit easier to transfer them, but I often use my floppy spatula and just transfer than right away!  Generally, this recipe makes around 60 cookies.  And once they cool, you have delicious white chocolate chip cookies! 

***Regular Chocolate Chip Variation***
After mixing the flour in thoroughly, simply add regular chocolate chip pieces instead of white chocolate chip pieces.  Continue the process, and you get wonderful chocolate chip cookies!