Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

This blog post is coming at you from 30,000 feet somewhere over one of those states in the middle of the country that I never get right when I try to fill out those “name all the states on this map” quizzes. Geography is not my strong suit. But I’m on a cross-country flight right now from Philadelphia en route to Salt Lake City. My first adventure in Utah. I’m really starting to feel like Anna Kendrick a la “Up in the Air” — which means my hotel lobby breakdown in front of George Clooney about how I should be married with a dog and a Jeep Grand Cherokee by now is imminent. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie I highly recommend it if you want to understand what my life is like on a weekly basis. Though the ending is wicked depressing, and there are no trips to Pinkberry involved. But read the third quote set from IMDB from the movie on this link and that is exactly my life right now. So apologies if this post gets a bit punchy .. it’s been a long day.

But enough about my impending turning 30 in 3 weeks from tomorrow and the closest thing I have to a boyfriend is my Tumi suitcase that goes everywhere with me. Let’s talk cookies. Because in the past 5 days I have spent over 12 hours on a train and 6 hours on a plane, I did not get any baking done this weekend. Luckily, I predicted this and did some proactive baking a few weekends ago when I had time and was snowed in back in the arctic tundra formerly known as Boston. Growing up I used to love these Chips Ahoy soft batch homestyle cookies. Put them in the microwave after school for 15 seconds and it was absolute heaven. Warm gooey soft chewy chocolate chip cookies that tasted fresh out of the oven. So the other day I really wanted to start experimenting with some soft batch cookie recipes. I had some cream cheese in the fridge that I wanted to use too, so I went to the interweb and started browsing all different kind of soft batch and cream cheese cookie recipes. So when I found this recipe for Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies on one of my recent blog finds – Averie Cookies – which is becoming a favorite of mine, I knew I had to try them. So I baked them up and brought half to my friend Amanda’s place when she hosted brunch for her and her boyfriend and his brother to taste test, and left the other half for my cleaning guy a few weeks back. And my trusty taste testers agreed, these are delicious. I didn’t adapt this recipe at all because I wanted to see how it came out following her recipe exactly … but based on how yummy these are I think I’ll definitely be experimenting with it in the near future.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1/4 cup cream cheese, softened (use full-fat cream cheese, not any of the lighter versions)
  • 3/4 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt, optional and to taste
  • 2 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Step 1: Cream together the butter, cream cheese, and sugars on a high speed. Add in the egg and vanilla and beat on a medium-high speed until well creamed, light and fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl before adding in the dry ingredients.IMG_2186

Step 2: Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet batter and mix on a low speed until just combined.IMG_2187 Step 3: Add in the chocolate chips and beat just for a moment until they are evenly distributed.

IMG_2188

IMG_2189

Step 4: Using a medium cookie scoop, place heaping mounds of cookies on a tray and flatten them. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (1 hour is fine if you’re in a hurry) or overnight. If you bake with warm dough they will thin out too much. So be patient young grasshopper.IMG_2190

Step 5: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. On a sil-pat or parchment-lined baking sheet, place the mounds of cookie dough at least two inches apart. These are bigger cookies, so give them a little space to breathe. Bake for 8 to 9 minutes at 350 degrees or until the edges have set and the tops are just beginning to set. Don’t bake longer than 10 minutes since the cookies will continue to firm up as they cool.IMG_2191

Remember if you put a few chocolate chips on top of the dough before you bake them your cookies will come out a little more photogenic. Say cheese!IMG_2192

Let the cookies cool on the sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.IMG_2195I found there were multiple delicious ways to enjoy these. Fresh off the tray burning hot with a fork (classy and impatient). Chilled. Microwaved for 12-15 seconds. OR most delicious, stick it in a coffee mug broken up a bit, microwave it for 15 seconds, then top with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Booyah. I’m thinking of  making a variation of these with toffee chips or browned butter in the near future. So so good. Soft and chewy and just perfect.

IMG_2201

Alright, let’s see what I need to fill you in on from last week. It’s sad that in my near very old age, I have to go back to my Instagram to try to remember what I did last week. I can barely remember what I did yesterday or what city or state I was even in. So I was in Philly again last week. No real highlights from there except I ate a really delicious steak on Wednesday night from Butcher and Singer, which I’m still dreaming about a bit. I mean look at that giant hunk o meat. I can’t believe I didn’t eat red meat until last year. WHAT WAS I THINKING?! IMG_8671 The snow this winter I feel like is singing that song to me -“I will follow you, follow you wherever you may go. There isn’t an ocean to deep, a mountain so high it can keep me away.” So with that in mind, Boston was finally spared a snowstorm last Thursday … but Philly (where I was) was hit with the worst of it. Which meant more cancelled flights, and trying to scramble to find a way to get home on Thursday. 3 of us who are Boston-based ended up taking a 6-hour Amtrak back to Boston all day Thursday during the snow. The trains after ours were apparently nightmares, where my friend Robin got stuck in CT with no power on her train for 3 hours at night, so I really can’t complain about being on a train for 6 hours .. except I will. IMG_8675

I got my hair cut this weekend (or as my Grandpa says … get them all cut!). I had a mild panick attack in the hairdresser chair because we went for bangs … which I’ve gotten many times before and always regret. So I don’t know why I do this to myself. But I think actually she did a nice job and it was time I got a new do since the end of my twenties is rapidly approaching. At first I thought I looked like a Ringo Star and Farrah Faucette had a love child. .. but once she styled the bangs they ended up looking more like a normal person, which was a relief. Saturday afternoon I got back on the Amtrak and headed down to Connecticut to make it to my friend Suzanne’s baby shower on Sunday. So it was nice because I got to have a good dinner in Fairfield with my parents on Saturday night and then hang with the two fluffballs back at home.

Sunday I drove down to Eastchester, New York for my long-time friend Suzanne’s baby shower. I wish I had access to some embarassing photos from our childhood easily accessible right now to include in this post, but I will spare both of us the embarrassment. Suzanne and I met when we were just wee little nuggets back in our dancing days when we were ballerina, tap dancing, jazz hand, pointe dancing ballerinas at KICKS Dance Studio in Shelton, Connecticut. I would not say we were the stars of the show … but we bonded over eating cheeseburgers during long rehearsals, befriending a sassy girl in our group named Chinetta who once got kicked out of high school for stabbing someone (we were smart to befriend her), and we spent a lot of dance numbers standing on some staircase in the back holding up electric candles. You have to have been there to really understand the picture. Anyway! Suzanne is incubating a tiny human right now, so we all showered here with little baby gifts and ate cake! suzanne

And finally I wrapped up my weekend spending some quality time with Grandpa at the Outback Steakhouse. He wore a battery operated light-up shamrock necklace and on about 3 occasions randomly belted out very loudly a full rendition of “Happy Birthday Month to You” – probably because he just really enjoys seeing me get beat red. grandpaThen this morning my Skuber driver dropped me off at the train station at 6:30am in New Haven so I could start this lovely multi-city journey today via planes, trains and automobiles from New Haven to Philly to Salt Lake City. For the record, Skuber is my dad (Skip) + Uber (my favorite on demand car service). My mom loves when I send her the tracking link when I’m in an Uber. And with the bad weather lately, my dad has been driving my mom around a bit more. So we call him our personal Skuber and crack ourselves up. I can’t figure out how to download the pic on this crappy plane wifi, but here it is on instagram.

So that’s it. I need to wrap this up because FINALLY we are landing in about 45 minutes, so I need to QA this and post this to the interweb before they shut the internet down on the plane. Or I pee my pants since I haven’t stood up in over 5 hours. Whatever comes first.

SPRING IS COMING. I’ll try to make something St Patrick’s inspired this weekend … since despite being buried under 8 feet of historically devastating snow … Southie has decided to still host this weekend’s parade … because that seems like a great idea. But with my brain being old lately, if you have any cookie ideas you want me to try or even just some flavor combos you want me to experiment with, let me know! I’m always looking for new suggestions.

Happy Monday.