Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

I have a new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. This one! I've been meaning to try this particular recipe for a while now, and I am thankful I finally did. These cookies turned out to be just what I look for in a cookie...soft and chewy yet just very slightly crispy on the outer edge (very slightly). And they were super easy to make too! That's always a bonus.

This recipe is from a fun cookbook my sister gave me a while ago - Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens.

Now I wouldn't say that I have a crappy kitchen, nor do I have a little one, but the recipes in this book are right up my alley. They're generally on the easy side, yet they're delicious and unique. A few examples of other recipes include crabtastic avocado cakes, grilled cheese sandwich soup, daylight come and me want pork stew, the mean green frittata, butternutty squash bread pudding, fig and lavender honey yogurt pie, and mexican chocolate soup. Interesting, right? Many of the names of her recipes are hilarious actually (there are probably at least 100 recipes in the book). This cookie recipe is probably one of the more traditional recipes in the book. Some recipes do require ingredients that the average, everyday cook like me might not have on hand on a daily basis. But none of them really require totally off-the-wall ingredients that are hard to find either. There. That was my short and simple review of this cookbook! Now I'll finally get to the point - the cookie recipe!!

Ingredients:

-6 oz. unsalted butter, melted

-1 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup sugar

-1 whole egg plus one yolk

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-2 cups plus 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (or flavor of your choice)

-1 cup pecan pieces (toasted, if desired)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Melt the butter in the microwave but allow it to cool down a bit to keep it from melting the chocolate prematurely. Using your whisk, combine the butter and sugars together in a large bowl. Whisk in the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture and fold until just combined. Fold in the chocolate and pecan pieces. Be careful not to overmix.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough by the spoonful (whatever size you desire; the cookbook said use a 1/4 cup measure, but mine were tablespoon-sized) on cookie sheet, placing at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes. When the edges are just lightly golden brown, remove from oven. Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for a couple minutes before removing to cooling rack. Once fully cooled, the cookies can be stored in an airtight container.

A couple other points to note... I actually used milk chocolate chips, not bittersweet, simply because that's what I had on hand when I made this recipe (and I didn't plan ahead and buy bittersweet ahead of time; I made these cookies kind of last minute...). Also, initially, the cookie dough was a tad dry, in my opinion. The recipe calls for 1 egg and 1 yolk. I was wondering if it might be okay to add 2 whole eggs? Perhaps that would make the dough less dry. What I ended up doing was adding a couple tablespoons of milk to the dough before forming it into balls to put on the cookie sheets. Perhaps you'll have better luck with the recipe as is if you try it. If you have a similar experience to me though, maybe try adding two full eggs or a teeny bit of milk like I did. It worked like a charm! The cookies likely would have turned out just as well if I hadn't added the milk, but it seemed necessary to me at the time.

As I look at these pictures, I'm thinking that I might need to make another batch of these cookies ASAP! My mouth is starting to water...

:)

Talk to ya again soon!