Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Three Chips a Charm?

First of all, I have a question? I went to an awards dinner Monday night and they had a dessert that was reminiscent of a coffee cake. Made me want to make one. Does anyone have a good recipe for a coffee cake?

Next, I have been given another blog award!!! These are exciting to me because it lets me know that people still read my blog, even though the entries are less often due to a lack of time to cook. From the French Kitchen gave me the Excellence Award. Thank you SO much! Here are the blogs I'm nominating:
A Year in the Kitchen
Baking and Boys
...a Cookie a Day
Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy
Eat Me Delicious
Feeding My Enthusiasms

A little FYI to the deserving recipients, this award comes with a few rules attached to it:
Please find at least 10 more blogs of any kind which you deem to be excellent; but hey if you only come up with 3 or 5, I don’t mind. Quality over quantity folks!
Post about the blogs you picked, linking back to me and to them.
Once you’ve posted, return here to let me know your post is up, and of course let your 10 award winners know too.
Now on to the cookies! About a week ago, when I had my ear infection, my parents came into town for a wedding. Despite feeling a bit down, I decided that I needed to make cookies for my dad as my mom was leaving the next day to go out of town for a week. So, I pulled up this recipe in order to use some of my almost empty bags of baking chips. I changed some of the chips, as reflected in the recipe below. Now, some people really like the classic Nestle recipes; however, I have come to the conclusion that I am not one of them. Let me say that the cookies were not BAD...they are just flat! The texture was chewy enough for me but there just wasn't enough height in them. Some of you may think...bad leavener. I don't think this is the case as EVERY TIME I use a Nestle cookie recipe, this is the type cookie I get...flat! At first I thought it was because of using butter instead of margarine, but this time I used margarine and they were still flat. It must just be the proportion of butter:sugar that they use. All in all, a good cookie, but I don't think I'll use the recipe again. Three Chip Cookies* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
* 1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
* 2 large eggs
* 1 tablespoon vanilla extact
* 1 cup (6 oz.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® White Chocolate Morsels
* 1 cup (6 oz.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
* 1/2 cup NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Peanut Butter and Chocolate Swirled Morsels
* 1 cup chopped pecans

Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 375° F. COMBINE flour, baking powder and baking soda in medium bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop dough by level 1/4-cup measure 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets or stones. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

16 comments:

Elle said...

Claire, Thank you for teh award...and you certainly deserve it!
These cookies look delish...and I'm trying to avoid thinking about cookies, but might have to make 'em anyway ;)

Katrina said...

Thanks for the blog award! That was nice of you.
I decided a while ago that I don't like the Nestle recipe either. Mine are always flat, too, and just not quite as tasty as so many others.

Katrina said...

Hey, Bake or Break just posted a yummy looking coffee cake.

Red Dirt Mummy said...

Congrats on your award! And thanks for the links to a bunch of new blogs to read.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much Claire, That is so sweet!

Yummm, those cookies look soo good!!

Also, This recipe is Fantastic for Coffee cake :)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/sour-cream-coffee-cake-recipe/index.html

Annie said...

I like the idea of using up the almost empty bags of chips. We all have those hanging around!
Plus it makes the cookie more interesting, flat or not!

Emily said...

Sorry about the cookies...

You know, I don't have a good coffee cake recipe! I never bake them, but I like them.

Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point said...

congrats on the award!

i like my cookies flat... is that weird? LOL

gail@more than a song said...

Cookies with 3 kinds of chips, just has to be good! Don't think I've bought the peanut butter swirled ones before.

Unknown said...

Elle - Sure! I always enjoy your blog. Hope I didn't tempt you too much!

Katrina - We just think the same on cookies, I guess.

RDM - I always enjoy the new links, too!

Briannalee - I'll have to check out that recipe.

Annie - gotta use them up somehow!

Emiline - S'okay! You have so many other good looking things!

Caitlin - Sure is! No...I'm just kidding...everyone has their preferences.

Gail - They are pretty good, but my favorites are the caramel swirled...I haven't seen them in a while.

Joe said...

Claire - Refrigerating the dough can help with them spreading too much (getting to flat). If that doesn't help, it could certainly just be that you might be a little too light-handed with the flour :-)

Peabody said...

They may go flat but all the stuff in them sounds great.

Jane said...

I always get flat cookies when I make the nestles toll house cookie recipe too.
These cookies look great!

Anonymous said...

I can find cappucino chips locally and I love pairing those with chocolate- esp. dark chocolate. Your cookies look wonderful! All you need is milk....

Anonymous said...

Looks great! If I had a quarter for every almost-empty bag of chips that I've demolished (not with a great recipe like this one, alas) by just nibbling on them until they were gone...ugh! :)

eatme_delicious said...

I'm an awful awful person for not thanking you a month ago for giving me this very sweet award! I've been pretty out of the food blog world recently but that's no excuse. Thank you so much for it. =) As for the flat cookies, they still look delicious. There was one recipe I tried that was supposed to be thin and crispy and turned out thin but soft - that was pretty disappointing too. I think time of year has to do with it (like moisture content in the air and all that).