Easiest Cookies Ever

I'd like to share two extremely easy and delicious cookie recipes today. Quite frankly, there is no reason why anyone should have to buy stale pre-cooked cookies (ew!), pre-made cookie dough (shame!), or cookie mixes (blasphemy!) when baking cookies is really this easy. In the culinary arts, there seems to be a huge fear of baking in general. Truthfully, it is a lot harder to cover upyour mistakes when you're baking--you're much more likely to have to throw everything out and admit to yourself that you just wasted a whole lot of time and ingredients than you would if you made a cooking goof. But don't let those fears overwhelm you. Start small with cookies and work your way up to more advanced baking recipes!

The first recipe is the extremely traditional Chocolate Chip Cookiesrecipe from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book: Celebrating the Promise. Look, this cook book has been around since 1930--so this is the same recipe your grandmother used when she would make you chocolate chip cookies from scratch. In fact, it's the exact way my mother taught me to make cookies--only she had this recipe memorized, so I never realized it was duplicated in an actual cookbook until I bought my own copy of the BH&G recipe collection. You know, I ran into a regular customer of mine from The Players Club, where I tend bar, once while I was shopping in thebaking aisle at the grocery store. He looked in my cart and said, "Shortening? Do you actually know what that's for?" He was stunned that a 22-year-old girl baked for herself. But why wouldn't you bake for yourself? Made-from-scratch cookies taste so better than any pre-mixed brands, and there's no sweeter gift to your friends and family members. Make these cookies for a friend who's down in the dumps, your sweetheart, party guests, or just for fun. After, they only take maybe five minutes longer to prepare than a pre-made mix.

The second recipe is just as easy as the first one, and a copy can be found online at AllRecipes. Don't be fooled by how simple the recipe is; these cookies are extremely rich, and so scrumptious. Sometimes when I make these, I substitute the cup of butter with a cup of butter-flavored shortening. It almost seems wrong for something so easy to make to be so delectable.

Chocolate Cherry Drops

Beware! This blog is for cherry lovers only. And, yes, I do mean the fruit.

Being a chocaholic and a blossoming cook, I am determined to try as many scrumptious-looking chocolate cookie recipes as I possibly can. After all, once you've begun mastering your own chocolate goodies, those frozen cakes you get at restaurants suddenly just don't taste very good, do they?

I found this recipe on one of my favorite websites, AllRecipes, while browsing holiday desserts. You see, I had offered to bring dessert to a holiday party at work, and I was eager to try out something new. I love chocolate covered cherries and I love cookies, so I thought I'd love "Chocolate Cherry Drops." And after all, cherries are sort of a holiday treat, aren't they?

However, the preparation and baking process for me did not go exactly as the recipe intended, for after already softening the butter in the bowl, I realized I had only a half cup of white sugar left. However, I had an unopened bag of brown sugar, so I substituted the other half a cup needed with brown sugar. A faux pas, I know, but it was two o'clock, and I had to have a dessert in hand for the party by four!

I altered the recipe in one other way. It called for one cup of chopped maraschino cherries. Instead of chopping the cherries, I measured out a cup of whole cherries and dipped a knife into the mixing cup. I slashed back and forth, Freddy Krueger style. I did this because I wanted the fragments of cherries the recipe called for, with whole cherries, because I kept thinking to myself how delicious a chocolate-covered cherry is. Another faux pas. In retrospect, I'm glad I did this, because a whole cup of sliced cherries would have added up to a great number of cherries, and already, these cherries overpowered the cookies. There were too damn many! My recommendation to anyone interested in cooking this is to modify to maybe a third of a cup of chopped or sliced cherries. Also, I could barely taste the walnuts, so I would recommend adding an entire cup of walnuts instead of just the half cup the recipe demands.

Additionally, the recipe was so dry, even before I added the cherries and walnuts, that I also had to crack open another egg to mix it. And when I waited the appropriate eight to ten minutes to retrieve it from the oven, I toothpicked a cookie and found they were not done baking. I turned the oven off and left them in the lowering heat for a few more minutes, and that seemed to do the trick.

I tasted the dough and was shocked at how dry and unsweet it was. After baking, the cookies turned out somewhat sweeter, but only because the cherries take over the entire cookies. This was a very quick and easy dessert recipe, and I could, I suppose, tinker it to how my taste buds would like--more walnuts, less cherries, and, actually, I think white chocolate chips would be divine in this--but unless I had an extreme cherry lover coming over for dinner, I doubt I'll ever make it again. And, be warned: Do not eat chocolate cherry drops without a hefty glass of milk.

Do you know what the kicker was in all of this? I received a text while putting these little cherry monsters in the oven: the party was cancelled due to the ice on the roads. Well, I'll be...