I’ve got to be honest. Dessert is my favorite thing…kind of a specialty, so I really just want to write about sweet junk this time around.
And for the record, it is perfectly okay to have cookies for dinner once in long while. There, I said it. Just don’t exceed four or five and you should be fine. Ha ha.
But, seriously, I’m about to give you one of my favorite cookie recipes. It’s fast (expect hot cookies no more than 20 minutes after you start pouring out ingredients), cheap (you’ll be surprised by how little is actually in these … and they’re so good) and easy (yeah, easy – there aren’t even any ingredients that you have to refrigerate!).
Since everyone likes chocolate chip, we’ll do that version. Oh, let me go ahead and mention that these are incredibly versatile. If you don’t like chocolate chip, you can easily make oatmeal raisin by substituting half the flour with oatmeal and adding raisins. Or you can make a peanut butter variety by substituting 3/4 of the oil with peanut butter, etc. Okay, enough. Here it is:
Chocolate Chip Cookies (this makes 12-20 cookies depending on size):
First, you’ll obviously need an oven, at least one cookie sheet, a medium/large bowl and a spoon. Preheat that oven to 350 degrees (in case you are unfamiliar, you’ve got to heat up the oven before you put stuff in it or else it’ll take much longer to cook, and it may not even work quite right, so just turn it on to 350 before you start the recipe).
Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar – brown or white, it doesn’t really matter.
1/4 cup oil – canola is my personal choice, but it works with vegetable, peanut or even olive oil if that is what you have.
2 tablespoons water – right out of the tap.
Splash of vanilla extract – this is kind of optional if you don’t have it. If you do, a “splash” is roughly 1/2 teaspoon.
1 cup self-rising flour (If you don’t usually have it on hand, you can buy these little one-pound bags at the grocery for less than a dollar. If you don’t get or have self-rising, you’ll have to add a bit of baking powder, baking soda, and salt.)
Semi-sweet chocolate chips – buy a smallish bag. The beauty here is that you can use as few or as many of the chips as you like.
Directions:
Put the sugar, oil, water and vanilla extract in the bowl and stir them up until they’re “smooth.” In other words, you shouldn’t have any big chunks of sugar floating around in there. This should take less than a minute. Don’t get all crazy, stirring all day or anything.
Add the flour and stir a little less vigorously until it starts to get cookie dough-ish. Dump in as many chocolate chips as you like.
Here is the trickiest part: Depending on your flour and sugar, the batter may be crumbly (read: dry). If this is the case, add a little more oil and keep stirring. If the batter is more like porridge, then you should add a little more flour. Some of the chocolate chips may seem to be separate from the dough. That’s ok. You can always press the extras in after you form the cookies.
When the batter is uniform, spoon out chunks onto an ungreased cookie sheet. The chunks should be no bigger than half-dollar size, but there is no need to roll them into balls or smash them flat. Leave an inch or so between them on the sheet.
Stick the cookies in the oven and leave them there for about eight or nine minutes.
If you like crispy cookies, let them bake until they are slightly firm to the touch (probably a bit longer than nine minutes).
If you like them chewy, you’ll take them out at about eight minutes and they will have to cool for a few minutes to “set.” Yum. Eat them, because they’re good.
Easy … yes. Cheap … yes. Delicious … absolutely. Just Eat.

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