Recipe: Reverse Chip Cookies

I'm sure there are various other names for these, but they're basically chocolate chip cookies, with chocolate dough, and white chocolate chips. They stay chewy after they cool, and don't have that cake-like texture that some chocolate cookies have.


Yield: about 4 dozen cookies
Time: 15-20 minutes to make the dough, plus 10 minutes at 350F baking time per batch

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
• 2/3 c. cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 lb. of butter (one stick, or half a cup), softened
  
• 1/4 lb. of vegetable shortening (or just use all butter)
• 3/4 c. granulated white sugar
• 2/3 c. of brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2 c. of white chocolate chips (a 12 oz. bag)

Method:

1. let the oven preheat to 350F while you make the dough
   
2. sift together the dry ingredients in one bowl
3. cream the sugars and fats together in another bowl
4. beat in the vanilla to the wet ingredients
5. add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each
6. mix in the dry ingredients, a little at a time, incorporating well between additions, until thoroughly mixed
7. stir in the white chocolate chips, taking care to get them as evenly distributed throughout the dough as possible
8. form balls of dough, about an inch in diameter, and arrange them on an ungreased cookie sheet (or use a small ice cream scoop or soup spoon, and drop them in place)
9. bake for 10 minutes at 350F
10. let cool on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack

Notes: you can use all butter, all margarine, or half butter and half shortening, like
I do. It doesn't really matter -- whatever you've got on hand, but don't use oil. There's no reason you couldn't use peanut butter chips, as suggested to me by someone, instead of the white chocolate. PB chips sounds really good, although I've never tried it. If you don't have powdered baking cocoa, you probably could substitute melted unsweetened chocolate blocks, but I suspect you'd probably have to add some extra flour (1/8 c.?) to make up for the additional oils it contains.

Chocolate Chess Pie

I didn't bake this. A neighbor did, and brought it over, while it was still hot. If you love chocolate, you'd love this. Two days later, the chocolate melts on your tongue, even after it's been in the fridge.

I happen to think it looks and tastes like sewer sludge, with a whole lot of sugar. The crust is fairly flaky, though.

Bear in mind that I really don't like chocolate. It was a heckuva nice gift, but every bite is sort of like eating fudge. More than one bite of it, and I'll get sick.

One of these days, I'll have to bake an apple or blueberry pie for her. Or strawberry. I think pie should contain fruit, even if that happens to be coconut or pumpkin. Well, I like ice cream pies too, but only in very small doses.

Chocolate is just sort of icky to me. If I'm going to load up on something that's like candy, it should taste like peppermint, black licorice, butterscotch, or English toffee.