One Cup of...Chocolate Chips

Normally when I read a recipe, I take a quick look to see if I have the ingredients.  If I do, I may start preparing it right away.  If I don’t, I either add what’s missing to my shopping list or decide not to make that dish after all.

But what if I start with an ingredient I have and then search for a recipe that calls for it?  One of my favorite ingredients when I’m baking is chocolate chips.  What could I make with one cup of them?  Here’s what I found:

Lure of the Chocolate Chip

Mom's Jaffa Cakes

I’m proud to be a chocoholic.  I’ve tried weaning myself off this addiction.  Once I managed to avoid chocolate for two weeks, but that was a long time ago.  Without the invention of chocolate chips, I might have succeeded. 

A 12-ounce bag of chocolate chips is incredibly versatile.  Eating a handful now and then is one way to empty the bag.  Making Chocolate Chip Cookies is another way. 

Tired of Chocolate Chip Cookies? Try Chocolate Biscotti!

A huge box of biscotti somehow found its way into my shopping cart at Costco, and soon after I got home every adult in the house was standing next to it.  Maybe the see-through packaging was too inviting to ignore.  Within a few days the box of 20 individually wrapped 8-inch-long biscotti was empty.

Why Are They Called Lava Cookies?

How do certain foods get their names?  Consider Toad in the Hole, a British concoction featuring sausages baked in a flour-egg batter that puffs up in the oven.  Could it be named after the character Toad in “Toad of Toad Hall,” a play written by A.A. Milne of “Winnie the Pooh” fame?

Lemon and Chocolate? Why Not?

You might not think lemon and chocolate belong together. You would be wrong.  A chocolate brownie-type base topped with a firm lemon custard is just what the dessert doctor ordered—especially if that doctor is Mom.

These Chocolate Lemon Bars started out as plain Lemon Bars, and they were good.  But they weren’t memorable.  Also, they were chocolate-free.  I don’t make many desserts without a smigeon of chocolate, so eventually I began experimenting.  Why not substitute a chocolate crust for the traditional shortbread crust used for Lemon Bars?

Nostalgia When the School Bell Rings

One of the greatest joys of my childhood occurred when I got home from school and smelled homemade chocolate chip cookies in the oven.  My mother was not a great cook, but she knew the ins and outs of making chocolate chip cookies.

Now that school is back in session, I am reminded of those homework-filled afternoons sustained by seeing how many chocolate chip cookies I could get into my mouth at one sitting.  For some reason my mother liked making small cookies.  Seldom were they more than 2 inches across, and often they were smaller.

Seriously Chocolate Brownies

I love going to potluck brunches because there’s always a chance I will discover something new and delicious. That’s how I came across a brownie recipe that has a deeper chocolate flavor than any I’ve tasted before.  My friend Rhea brought the whole pan of brownies to share, and she took very few of them home with her.

Too Much Peanut Butter

Some years ago, spoonfuls of peanut butter served on top of banana slices was one of the most popular dishes in my house.  Pre-teens loved it, and I got into the habit of buying large quantities of peanut butter.

Now those pre-teens are teenagers, and they wouldn’t be caught dead eating such a juvenile snack.  I guess I wasn’t paying attention to their change in eating habits when I stocked up on two 48-ounce jars of peanut butter.

Why Reinvent the Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie?

Chocolate Chip Cookies Using Only Brown Sugar

I have often wondered why there are so many different variations of chocolate chip cookies.  After some considerable thought, I have come up with a simple answer.  Bakers don’t like to leave well enough alone. 

I grew up on chocolate chip cookies.  It was the one dessert my mother prepared flawlessly.  She never told me where she got the recipe, but I imagine it came from the back of a package of chocolate chips.  

The ingredients are simple: butter, flour, sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla extract, baking powder, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Homemade Truffles

In case truffles are new to you, they are little balls of chocolate mixed with cream, butter and vanilla, then covered with cocoa or powdered sugar. 

They are a lot more exotic than a bar of chocolate, even though they’re usually made from a bar of chocolate.  The process is straightforward, but there are two steps that require your full attention.

1) Melting the chocolate—a simple task as long as you focus on it.  Look away for a minute while checking your phone, and the chocolate may turn gritty and inedible.  Melting directions are below.

2) Shaping the truffles once the chocolate mixture is cold.

Store-bought truffles can be expensive, but 15 homemade truffles can cost less than $5 total. 

Chocolate on My Mind

I’m proud to be a chocoholic. I’ve tried weaning myself off this addiction. Once I managed to avoid chocolate for two weeks, but that was a long time ago. Without the invention of chocolate chips, I might have succeeded. 

A 12-ounce bag of chocolate chips is incredibly versatile. Eating a handful now and then is one way to empty the bag. Making Chocolate Chip Cookies is another way. 

Now I’ve come up with a third way: a Triple-Layer Chocolate Cookie.

Another 4 Ways to Use Chocolate Chips

Jaffa Squares

I’ve got to stop eating chocolate chips straight from the package.  I suppose I could cut off my supply, which would mean no longer buying the 72-ounce bags from Costco.  But that seems like an extreme measure.  Surely I will soon need to make one of the many chocolate desserts that I have mastered over the years.

Chocolate chips are incredibly versatile as an ingredient. 

A Fool for Chocolate

I sensed my life  going downhill yesterday when I found myself in the kitchen eating a spoonful of creamy peanut butter covered with chocolate chips.  It was my own fault.  I’d made a chocolate cake earlier in the week and foolishly given most of it away.  I didn’t want it to tempt me, but here I was making a fool of myself over chocolate.

I could have whipped up a batch of chocolate peanut butter cups, but that would have been work.  Or I could have made a batch of Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies – same problem.

Chocolate Frenzy

The only sure-fire way I’ve been able to drag teenagers away from computers and video games is to say, “Let’s make something chocolate!”  This time the lure was Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups.

Andy, 16, had already researched the topic online.  He discovered a video about how to make a peanut butter cup that was apparently the size of a dinner plate.  Unfortunately he couldn’t find it again, so we had to fall back on adapting my Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chunks recipe.  It was a lot easier than I expected, mostly because of Andy’s enthusiasm.

I Can Make That Too: Peanut Butter Cups in Mom’s Kitchen vs. Store-Bought Peanut Butter Cups

My first encounter with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup came in middle school, when we had a fundraiser that involved buying candy wholesale and selling it full price to fellow students.  The Peanut Butter Cups sold out immediately.  Did I really buy them all?

Now, many years later, I’m okay with not getting too many Halloweeners.  That way I can take charge of the leftover Peanut Butter Cups.

Best-Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies

“What was the best chocolate chip cookie you’ve ever eaten?” I asked Bart earlier today.  “The last one,” he said, licking off some crumbs left from the cookie he had just demolished.  Never make a batch of chocolate chip cookies two days before you need them.  My 60-cookie dessert tray was now down to about 40 cookies.  When he wasn’t looking, I hid the rest.

It’s true that any chocolate chip cookie is better than no chocolate chip cookie.   For some, size matters.  I’ve eaten chocolate chip cookies the size of small dinner plates, and I didn’t mind sharing them because they tasted too much like cake.  I’ve also had chocolate chip cookies no bigger than a quarter, but eating 10 of them to get my chocolate chip cookie fix seemed piggish.

My mother made a good chocolate chip cookie using the recipe on a bag of NESTLÉ® chocolate chips.  I tried the same recipe, but they never seemed to taste as good.

Chocolate Calamity

Intensely Chocolate Cocoa Brownies

The worst four words in the English language are: I burned the chocolate.

Not only is burned chocolate inedible but also it smells nasty.  There is no guaranteed way to revive it, so you have to start again.  

However, if the chocolate turned gritty while melting but didn’t actually burn--AND if you’re an optimist--you can try to rescue it:

The Importance of a Killer Dessert

Chocolate Chip Squares (photo by Jenny Craig)

You can slave in the kitchen for days making the perfect meal, but if the dessert doesn’t prompt guests to demand seconds, thirds and fourths, you might as well have ordered out.  Even guests who tell you they’re on a diet or they don’t eat carbs or they’re too full will remember an outstanding dessert.  And if you somehow made a mess of the main dish, they’ll forget it immediately because they’re slavering over something much better.

You can even make your mark at someone else’s dinner party if you volunteer to bring the dessert—as long as it looks fabulous and tastes even better.

Do You Speak Chocolate?

I was never good at languages, but speaking chocolate comes naturally. It dates back to my childhood, when my father, a dentist no less, designated the top drawer of the dining room bureau as “the candy drawer.” He had a sweet tooth, and never did a day go by when he, my brother and I didn’t visit this special hideout. I don’t know why he told us about it. Maybe we caught him sneaking into it one evening, and we promised not to tell our mother IF we could visit the drawer ourselves.

I was interested only in the chocolate candy, and over the years I got to sample everything from the basic Hershey Bar to Whitman’s Sampler and store-bought fudge. As a teenager, I tried making fudge myself, but I never managed to get it to firm up. I didn’t care because it was just as tasty eating it with a spoon.