C is for Chocolate Cookie

These peanut butter chip chocolate cookies I've been eating constantly are pretty amazing. I made them for my friend's birthday (Happy Birthday!) and took them to her when we met in South Carolina. She agreed about the amazing-ness. I've made them before with white chocolate chips instead of peanut butter, and while I don't really like white chocolate (there was some deep symbolism involved in the recipe having them though) they were promptly eaten by my roommates and I instead of being given to our new neighbors, as was the original intention. Things have been sort of tense with them ever since.
Anyway, given that half a recipe made 20 cookies and had a whole half-pound of chocolate, there's pretty much no way they couldn't be delicious. The recipe comes from Baker's Illustrated, which I love more than my firstborn. If, you know, I had one. Ahem. I'll adapt it here, not out of any sort of altruism to you (and obviously not to the publishers) but so I can make it anywhere I have access to the internet. So:

Chocolate, chocolate, and more (yet optional) chocolate cookies.
(Adapted from Thick and Chewy Triple-Chocolate Cookies from Baker's Illustrated)
(Also, this is for the half-recipe, but you can double it. Or triple it. Or quadruple it. But I might stop there.)
Sift 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt together.
Melt 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate somehow.
Lightly beat 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract together, and 1 teaspoon of instant espresso powder on top.
Beat 5 tablespoons softened butter, add 1/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Add egg mixture, then chocolate, then dry ingredients. Stir in 6 ounces of chips of some sort if desired.
Cover with plastic wrap in bowl, let sit at room temp for 1/2 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Place spoonfuls on sheets. Bake for 10 minutes, switching racks at the 5 minute point. (I should add here that I left the darker baking sheet in for 9 minutes, and the lighter one in for 11 minutes. They will still look soft and maybe just a little uncooked in the very center though.) Cool on pans for 10 minutes, then remove cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling. Eat.

Anti-depressant peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies!

I'm in a foul mood. I haven't needed nor really wanted to leave the apartment all day, I read the new Harry Potter in about 6 hours and now it's all over, and I've spent far too much time on the internet. Everything I've eaten today has been bland and unappetizing, and just thinking about food now is slightly nauseauting.
Which means if I want something good to eat, I'll have to make it myself. Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies should do the trick. I already took out the stick of butter once to warm to room temperature, only to decide I didn't really want to make cookies and placed it back in the fridge. But now it's four hours later, and although I'm still not convinced I really want cookies, I've taken it out of the fridge again. Because even if I don't eat these cookies (well, I'm sure when the time comes, I'll step up to the challenge), my enterprising roommates will.
Here we begin with exhibits A and B, The Joy of Cooking, 1964 edition, and a stick of warming butter. Mmm. As I have a multitude of cookbooks, I consulted Bakers Illustrated (they wanted ground peanuts, requiring a food processor, so for once let me down) my Joy of Cooking, my roommate's JoC, 1997 edition, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Strangely, the simple recipe from JoC (1964) is different from a more complicated version in JoC (1997.) Since the first recipe is no longer in print, I'll post an adapted version of it here. It claims it makes "sixty 1.5 inch cookies." All cookbooks are liars. This made about 27 cookies, perhaps 2 inches across.
Preheat oven to 375^oF.
Cream one stick of butter, add 1/2 cup brown sugar and a 1/2 cup white sugar and beat. Add 1 egg, 1 cup peanut butter (I used chunky), 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp vanilla and mix. The JoC says you should "sift before measuring" 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour. Sifting flour for cookies is absurd. Who knows, maybe they would have been even more delicious, but there's really no reason I can for it. Anyway, add that and mix it all together.
I then took it upon myself to add chocolate bits, from the giganto-block-o'-chocolate from Trader Joe's. Hand included in picture for scale.
I broke off a fourth of this and alleviated some angst by chopping it into small bits, reducing a once formidable chunk of chocolate into this:
It was between 3/4 and 1 cup of chocolate, and got mixed in. Place balls of dough on a greased or parchment-ed baking sheet, and press fork tines down orthogonally. (My roommate did wander in while they were baking and said they smelled wonderful. Although he enjoyed eating them, he wondered why there were fork impressions in the cookies . I am led to assume that he's never had peanut butter cookies before, as making the criss-cross and eating it is one of the best parts about these cookies. He's also the same one who didn't know that one did not have to bake Rice Krispie treats, so he may not be the best go-to person for this sort of thing. That said, I guess you don't really *have* to flatten the cookies with a fork, you could do it with your palm or the bottom of a glass, but why wouldn't you? Gah.)
Aw, I sometimes wish they could stay this way; uncooked, young, innocent, free from worries and the heat of the oven/world. (Hmm. See previous posts about killing myself with bacteria. Into the oven they go.)
Bake for 12-15 minutes until light golden brown, and let cool on sheet to finish baking slightly to your taste.

Okay, fine, they did cheer me up. It's what cookies do best.