New Year's resolutions - new recipes, week 4 - Katharine Hepburn's Brownies and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

This was the week of desserts - next week I'll be back to dinner food, but I felt like it was time to have an option other than grocery store bakery items when my sweet tooth struck.

Once again, I plucked recipes from the NY Times Cooking website, both that looked quite simple relative to what I always imagine anything from scratch might be. Not as simple as from a box - my typical baking m.o. - but quite manageable, and I even had all of the ingredients on hand.

On Sunday afternoon, for the first new recipe of the week, I pulled everything out - ingredients, bowls and measuring tools - and off I went! I was going to give Katharine Hepburn's Brownies a try.

I've often considered the fact that I do truly enjoy cooking and baking, but I truly do NOT enjoy cleaning afterward. Cooking from scratch also equates to about a zillion and one dishes in my mind, and while the number varies, it's almost always more than cooking from a box. I'm learning, though, that there is also a satisfaction in using all of those pots, pans, bowls, spoons, cups, etc. that we have in our cabinets and drawers. I've even adopted my sister's exhortation to "always sift, never skip" with anything that seems like it should be sifted - in this case, the cocoa powder combining with the melted butter on the stove. While I don't know differently because this was the first time I've ever made these, it seemed like it all melted together smoothly and evenly. Definitely because of the sifting.

The melted cocoa and butter got mixed with the other dry ingredients - whisked, actually - then into the pan, into the oven, and voila! Made from scratch without that much more effort, honestly, than making them from a mix.

These were fully cooked and still nice and chocolatey gooey in the center even when fully cooled. I added walnuts because a) it was in the recipe and b) I love nuts in my brownies, and figured if the kids didn't like it, then more brownies for me! Alas, the kids loved the brownies in spite of the nuts, and the whole pan was gone in a few days. This is certainly one to make again when the spirit moves me.

With the brownies gone, I had the chance to make a second new recipe that also popped up in one of my daily NYT emails. I love chocolate chip cookies, and when a recipe that promised cookies that stayed chewy long after they were cooled appeared, I knew that was a prime candidate for next up in the queue.

Flat and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies - if that isn't an All American idea, I don't know what is. Once again, in my new technique that I recognize as making everything about baking and cooking easier, I gathered all ingredients and read the recipe all the way through before starting with step 1.

What a delight to have the proper tools that make baking fun - I will probably wax poetic about my mixer all year long! It creamed the butter and sugar like a charm; then John came along and helped add the eggs to the mixture and then the dry ingredients. In no time flat, the dough had formed and the last mixing step was the chocolate chips, which John helped with:

He has more and more frequently offered to help in the kitchen, and I'm all about it! If he goes off to college someday with the skills to make more than a grilled cheese and scrambled eggs, I will make a note of that in my parenting performance file with a gold star!

With the dough mixed and ready to go, there was an extra step that was new for me with chocolate chip cookies - chill the dough. I have read before that is what makes them chewy; I'm not totally clear on the food chemistry, but I'm all about following the rules, step by step, so into the fridge it went while we went to Saturday mass. Upon returning home, I got the first batch going and then kept it up with John's help all the way through dinner (which was a crock pot Yankee Pot Roast and absolutely heavenly, by the way). Finally, the bowl was empty, all of the cookies were done, and we have the 30 cookies the recipe promised.

We all enjoyed cookies for dessert while we watched a show together, and though I thought they were a little bit salty (which the comments on the website revealed was a common problem, though I hadn't seen that ahead of time), everyone else said they thought they were really good, so that's a win! I'm not sure I would replace the recipe on the back of the Toll House bag for these, honestly, but the next time I make chocolate chip cookies, I might just add that chill-the-dough step in, because they really do stay chewy long after they're cooled. And that's just how I like my cookies!