Hello, cyber friends! Happy September! September is my favorite month because it is the month when I was born and because it means that Fall is around the corner. Who’s excited for Fall? I can’t wait!! :) We finally have a new super in our building, after our beloved Mike left (without saying goodbye) a few months ago, apparently for health reasons. Or at least that’s what the building company said… Anyway, we really loved Mike, the old super, and we want to love this new super as well. Or, better, we want him to love us as much as Mike did. (Or as we thought he did, because if he really did, he would have said goodbye, right?). So I thought I would do something nice to welcome him into the building and what better way to do that than to gift him some delicious home baked goods? My parents taught me since I was little to be a good “gift-giver”. I would never show up empty handed to a party or even to a sleep over. A box of chocolate, a cake, a bottle of wine, flowers… I think in America it’s called a “hostess gift”. Also, during the holidays, I watched my parents give gifts to every single person that provided any kind of service to us during the year: gas station people, doormen, porters, cleaning ladies, teachers, school janitors, school bus drivers, my dad’s employees, hair stylists, manicure ladies, pet groomers… So I can say that I learned to appreciate those who serve me and, every now and then, I like to do something nice for them. For the holiday this year I’ll buy some Christmas tins and bake lots and lots of delicious things and give to everybody in my building, at the deli, at work! I know, I know, people like money! But since I don’t have that much money to toss around, baked goods will have to do! :) But for now it’s Chocolate Chip Cookies for the new super! I must confess: I’ve also decided on those because I was craving chocolate chip cookies like crazy! But not any chocolate chip cookies: CRISPY chocolate chip cookies! My favorite!!! For me, there’s nothing like biting into a crunchy cookie. God, how I love those! Nothing against the chewy cookies, I like them too every now and then, but I would trade 1000 chewy cookies for 1 crispy cookie any time, any day!
The problem was I didn’t have any recipes for crispy chocolate chip cookies. I had some recipes for the chewy ones, but – as delicious as those are – they wouldn’t cut it for me this time. So I went to that awesome place full of every kind of information called the internet and I researched and researched. And I tried a bunch of recipes (I can’t even tell you how many because I lost count), all promising crispy and crunchy cookies. I tried famous chefs recipes, I tried food blogger recipes, I tried the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies guide, but none of those recipes worked for me. The cookies came out chewy every single time. :( I was feeling incredibly frustrated, especially ’cause my husband kept saying: “These are great!” while stuffing his face with all the “bad” cookies. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had a decent crispy chocolate chip cookie. And the image that came to my mind was a bag of Tate’s Double Chocolate Chip Cookies that I bought a few weeks ago at the grocery store because they were close to the cashier and I was hungry. I wasn’t expecting them to be so good! They were crunchy, they were crispy, they were not overly sweet, they were buttery, they were heaven!!! So I went back to the internet to research about those cookies and, guess what?!? I found out that they had a cookbook, which I immediately purchased on my iPad!
Next day, after sending my husband to the grocery store for chocolate chips and butter for the third time in a week, I tried the Tate’s recipe. YES YES YES, I shouted after biting into the first cookie almost as soon as they came out of the oven. This is the recipe I’ve been looking for my whole life. These are the cookies I wanna serve to my grandchildren, with a side of milk, when they come to visit my (way) older self in a loooong time from now. And these are the cookies Peter – the new super – is getting to hopefully make him like us (and possibly make him more prone to helping us whenever we have an issue at the apartment)! :) “What’s the big buzz about this recipe?”, you might ask. Well, the biggest difference I noticed was the addition of a teaspoon of water. I confess I was skeptical about adding water to cookie dough, but since the result was successful, I imagine this was the reason why my cookies were finally crispy. Kathleen King, the woman behind the amazing Tate’s cookies, also recommends using salted butter as the salt will enhance all the flavors. She couldn’t be more right! These cookies are not just sweet, they are 3 dimensional, “flavorly” speaking! (The blog is mine and I invent words if I want to!!! lol) Anyway, if you like crispy cookies like me, you HAVE to try this recipe. I was almost tempted to name it “The Most Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies ever” (or something like that) but since the world seems to be divided between people that like crispy cookies and people that like chewy cookies, I figured this wouldn’t be the perfect recipe for everyone. I have slightly changed Tate’s recipe by adding 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. You can totally omit that, but I think the cinnamon helps bring out the chocolate flavor even more! You can’t really tell there’s cinnamon in them, but it’s up to you. Cinnamon or no cinnamon, I hope you enjoy these cookies! Just be careful: they are highly addictive! :) (Look who I got stealing a cookie before the photo shoot was over:)
