Sitting in her rocker, eatin' Betty Crocker...

I love cookies!

A while ago I mentioned that I had a lot of stuff on my plate, some of which I would get into on a later post.  Well, the lot of stuff on my plate equates to being pregnant!  Hubby and I are very excited, and are hurtling towards parenthood full steam ahead.  Right now I have about 5 months to go, and it at times feel like SO LONG and other times feels like NOT ENOUGH time.  I guess its both.

So as a result of being pregnant food and I have a very strange relationship these days.  For the first four months of my pregnancy (I am five point five months along... crazy!) I could not stand most food.  The few things I could manage were oatmeal and some veggies.  Sugar and I were mortal enemies.  I could not understand how any child of mine could create conditions that would make it very difficult to eat sweets.  I wasn't overweight by any means when I got pregnant, but man, I definitely lost weight that I would have liked to lose a long time ago during that first trimester.  Too bad at that point I really wanted to be gaining weight instead!

Needless to say, morning sickness and an aversion to sugar made baking basically impossible.  Add a back injury that makes standing for any length of time challenging, and you now know why this blog took a three (four?) month hiatus.  I am hoping to be better about this now that I am craving sugar!  Of course, I am trying to be a good mommy and keep the sugar to a minimum, but dang, when a girl wants a cookie, a girl wants a cookie.

So we will make some cookies!

I found this recipe from Betty Crocker and the first thing I thought of was the schoolyard rhyme of "Miss Mary Mack".  You remember that one... she was all dressed in black?  I figured that goes well with the fact that I will be having a little kid in the house soon.  Plus... the recipe is called the "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie."  Those are some big assertions being made there.  I had to test it out.

Best of all, it looks easy.

Even better, it DOES live up to its name.  These are easy and amazing!  Literally took me about 20 minutes to make, including baking time.  And the recipe makes a LOT of cookies... enough to share!  But remember to hold on to some for yourself... I took my batch over to my in laws' thinking I would divy out a small ration to bring back home and forgot.  So today I may have to make more cookies...

Betty Crocker's Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 packed brown sugar
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 1 egg
• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional
• 2 cups chocolate chips (or any other type of chip you like)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

microwaving the butter for 10 seconds will soften it without melting it, making it easier to mix!

Mix sugars, butter and egg in a large bowl.  Combine the flour, baking soda and salt and then stir this mixture into the wet mixture.  The dough will be stiff.  Stir in nuts and chocolate chips.  I decided to leave out the nuts since my hubby doesn't like nuts in his cookies or brownies (what??) and to make these half milk chocolate chips and half white chocolate chips. You can pretty much make whatever kind of cookie you like, following the base recipe and the amounts for chips/nuts.

Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough (a #16 ice cream scoop works well!) on a cookie sheet about two inches apart.

seriously, buy a cookie scoop.  It makes cookie making (and other things) SO easy!

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.  The cookies should be light brown, but soft in the center.  Allow to cool a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

so many cookies...

Try not to eat the whole batch.  The recipe said it makes 4 servings.  I got more like 4 dozen.  So unless a dozen is a serving (and it might be... these are addictive), be prepared for LOTS of cookies!

Source: Better Crocker