Cookie Monster

That's me, of course! Taking a brief break here in the Netherlands to report on tonight's unexpected cooking triumph: chocolate chip cookies. I know I haven't posted at all while I've been away (don't worry, I've got a lot stored up!) but I have been cooking quite a bit. We are fortunate to have a lovely, spacious apartment with a kitchen and dishwasher; however, we are oven-challenged. We basically have a microwave for an oven - I'm told it's a convection oven and so far we've cooked all kinds of goodies in it, but it still just looks like a microwave to me. I don't trust it. On top of that, the other night we had an unfortunate incident in which the microwave/oven began to smoke and emit a very strange and alarming smell, prompting me to worry that a fire might be imminent. I went so far as to fetch my neighbor (more on him later) and ask him to have a look at the thing, and we haven't really been on solid footing since then.

My lovely roommate was making dinner tonight and mentioned that she had tested out the oven a couple times and it seemed to be fine. Hope! Of course, at the end of our meal I began dreaming of chocolate chip cookies, and after a brief peak at the internet, I rose from the table with a mission. Baking makes me feel good, for so many reasons that I won't go into now, but suffice it to say that I love to eat and food is comforting and sometimes it helps to fill my heart with gezellig when I am missing someone. I was looking for something really quick and easy because after a few glasses of wine, I get a little sleepy. This recipe took all of 10 minutes and turned out delicious. I even made the entire thing in one pot on the stove, so there was minimal cleanup. I think the key is that you brown the butter on the stovetop, which imbues the batter with a heavenly nutty caramel flavor. Then it's just sugar, flour, the usual suspects, and some chocolate, which I chopped roughly from 2 different chocolate bars because they don't seem to sell chocolate chips here (perhaps the only deterrent from living here permanently?)

The cookies took about 8 minutes in our little convection contraption (I ran it hotter than the recipe calls for because our temperature only increases in 25-degree increments) and they were perfect...crunchy but not quite crispy on the outer edges, soft and almost mushy in the middle... I couldn't wait for them to cool off, but by the time I got to the third one, they were at perfect temperature. I guzzled some cold milk with these babies and sighed a long, happy, comforted sigh before crawling into bed.

Recipe here.