Where it all began...

Apparently I make good cookies. Not just good cookies but awesome cookies. Not my words, the words of my family and friends. Don't get me wrong, I can follow a recipe. But I'm not really sure what makes them so delectible. I almost feel as though I am cheating my family, mostly my husband, out of the tastefulness of life when I make cookies from premade dough or pour them out of a box. They even have their own name: Shari Cookies. These "Shari Cookies" have become the only request of my family as Christmas presents and are a requirement at family parties. It all started Christmas 2005 when I tried to get a cookie exchange going. I made hundreds of cookies in my college apartment all by hand (I didn't yet have a mixer), in an oven that barely fit one pan. My roommate awoke to masses of baked goods covering each and every surface of our living space, save her bedroom and our tiny bathroom. I boxed them all up, well most of them, wrapped them in holiday flare, and placed them under the trees of my unsuspecting family members. With visions of sugar plums fleeing their dreams, they awoke to the sugar spender that has now become the traditional holiday staple. My goal is to get some practice this year. Not that I'm rusty. I absolutely adore baking. However, it seems as though I always go into the holiday cold, without the proper shoes, stretch and warmup. Not this year. This year I plan to outdo all the rest, which will be hard to do, for sure. And so, "The Cookie Project" was born. Each week I plan to make one type of cookie. It must be from scratch and have all the love and tenderness of warm homemade cookies and the subsidial milk, sans the slobber of my husband's spit on the spoon. So, one homemade cookie a week. This can't be good for our waistlines, but he's not complaining...

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Week Thirteen: Chocolate Chip and Coconut Rum Cookies

Chocolate Chip and Coconut Rum Cookies
Yields 24-30 cookies
Courtesy of Cooks.com

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp light rum
1/2 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.
Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl and set aside. In another bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla, and rum. Beat the mixture well.
Fold in the flour mixture, coconut, and chocolate chips. Form the cookies on a baking tray, using a small ice cream scoop. Bake at 375°F for about 8-10 minutes.

After cleaning my kitchen, I realized that we have a lot of hard liquor that we never drink! I have used it in many a recipe but we just aren't big drinkers. I figure I need to start using some of this stuff in my recipes and the best place to start would be in cookies! When we were on our honeymoon in St. Lucia, we bought rum that is very cheap there but extremely expensive here. We thought it would be great to have on our one year anniversary. However, when we popped the bottle, it tasted horrible! Very rummy...so it has been sitting on our counter ever since. I loved it in this recipe. It was not overwhelming and the coconut made the cookies seem like a tropical trip. All these needed were little plastic umbrellas! They were very soft and tasted better once they had been sitting for a little while rather than right out of the oven. We had company so they were gone in a couple of hours, so I am not sure what they would have been like a few days out. I'm sure it would have been like getting on the plane coming home from vacation, sad, but glad to be back in the real world. Actually, nope. Just sad.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)