Improv'd Cookies

It's cold. It's snowy. There's about 7 inches of snow on the ground from our several "winter storms" over the past week.

I'm sorry, I just broke one of my own rules. Sn*w is a 4 letter 's' word, and should be spelled as such.

If you can't tell, I hate snow. So tonight, there was no way in hell I was stepping foot outside that door.

Which also means it was a good night to bake some chocolate chip cookies.

I quickly realized the flaw in my plan: I didn't have a full bag of chocolate chips. I had a partial bag of milk chocolate chips, and another partial of white chocolate chips, but it was still no where near enough for chocolate chip cookies. While scrounging through the cupboard hoping to find another partial, I found a pack of Abuelita Mexican Chocolate. I decided to chop it up and make it work.

Soon I was doubting my idea. As I was chopping up the chocolate, I got pieces ranging from huge chunks to lots and lots of chocolate dust. I shrugged, put it all in a cup, and decided to just run with it.

Then, after I got all my wet ingredients mixed together, I realized that we were all out of baking soda. And we had less than a teaspoon of baking powder. Also, I'm allergic to egg whites. Unless I thought of something, we were going to have some strange shortbread. Or I could go to the grocery store, or ask a neighbor, but that meant stepping out of my nice warm house into the evil white stuff. I don't think so, I'd make it work. I added what baking powder I had, a touch of cream of tartar, egg yolks, milk and egg replacer.

The verdict? I've actually got some pretty decent cookies. So if you'd like to try my experiment, here's the recipe for my as-yet-unnamed cookies:

2 sticks of butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbs milk
2 egg yolks

Beat together wet ingredients. Then mix in:

3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tbs egg replacer
2 1/2 cups flour

Finally, add the 2 cups of broken up Abuelita Mexican Chocolate.

Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for... Um well, until they're done. I didn't exactly time them, I just kept checking every 3 minutes. I guess it probably took somewhere around 9 minutes.

Let sit on the cookie sheet for about 3 minutes, then move to cooling rack.