Traditional Homemade Chocolate Chips Cookies

 Kasidy Klein
Honors 10th Grade
Blog

Who doesn't love just plain chocolate chip cookies? Okay I'm sure there is some people out there but I decided that I wanted to go back to a more basic and traditional skills to see how far I have come. I thought of doing traditional chocolate chip cookies applying my skills I have developed over the course of this project. Ever since I was little I have eaten these kinds of cookies wondering how they got to taste so good. Since I have a family of cooks i figured i would go off of the cook book my mom has that has been passed down for generations to see if i can do it like them. The book said, "Leave butter out till soft", I did as said which in my case it took a few hours. In the mean time I gathered all the ingredients such as:
-2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon salt
-3/4 cup granulated sugar
-3/4 cup packed brown sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-2 eggs
-2 cups Nestle semi-sweet chocolate
 -2 sticks butter

 I figured that everyone knew what a bowl of these ingredients mushed together looked like and the pain of looking at it and not being able to eat it. But i did just use a spoon to grab chunks of the cookie dough and placed them on a pan with a sill pat so the cookies were easier to get off. I decided to use a spoon so that I wouldn't have to wash my hands so much and i can get more done. The spoon trick was something I have seen family use so i decided to try it out, it worked very well but if you are someone who likes everything to be symmetrical then the spoon isn't something you should use.

 The picture above is the before they were put into the oven, and this was actually my second batch. i decided that i would only put nine on the pan after my first trail because i started with twelve and they expanded too much and conjoined. Once i cut it down to only nine they were turning out just fine. The oven was "set to 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 9 to 11 minutes", at 10 minutes it gave them the perfect golden brown on the bottom. I then pulled the cookies out and put then on a cooling rack after two minutes of letting them sit on the pan.

 This is the final result of just a few cookies from the seconds batch. They turned out fairly well, tasting very similar to the ones I use to eat as a child meaning I followed directions well and applied the skills i have acquired correctly. I think that after making these cookies I have made process because now i know that i am able to do much bigger things and going back to a basic food that everyone makes has helped me see my progress I've made. i think that i have learned to be patient and with making different types of desserts I have grown by going through various processes with each.

Apple Crisp

Do you ever crave something sweet but try to stick to fruits? Well here is something that is both of these. It's called an Old Fashion Apple Crisp. It combines sweet flavors of sugar and cinnamon with apples. I used a recipe from one of my moms cook books that she home made. I chose to do this recipe because I have never made a kind of dish such as this. the recipe for it is:
-5 pounds of apples (your choice)
- zest if 1 orange and 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice/ lemon juice
-  1/2 cup granulated sugar
-2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
and for the zest of orange and lemon it said, "grade the fruit" which this would occur on the top when baked. At first I gathered all my ingredients and objects I needed, then i cut up the apples into pieces shown in the picture below. Then on top of these cut up apples i put the cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, some of the zest and the juice.

 I let these apples sit in the bowl while i made the crisp part of it. which for this i made to gather the indregiants for making this:
- 1 1/2 cups of flour
-3/4 cup granulated sugar
-3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
-1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup oatmeal
- 1/2 pound cold unsalted butter, diced
then i placed all of this into a food processor which molded it into a the crust texture. After this was made i took a baking dish, buttered the sides and bottom, then placed the apples on top of that then the crust/crumble on top. while i was getting this all set i had to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. i then placed the dish in the oven for an hour till the top was brown.

The final result turned out well said from my family. This experience helped me grow by experiencing a different type of task that had little step that needed to be done in order for this food to work. I think that I grew from this cooking project by just even practicing the little skills that were incorporated in this project. i find cooking really fun and an easy thing to do for others. this was a fun thing to do and it turned out looking pretty.