Issue #19: Chocolate Chip Cookies With a Secret (That Isn't the Mueller Report)
Dear Disaster Bakers,
I turned 27 last Sunday, so I'm allowed to be late with this week's newsletter. Do I feel bad? No! Am I wracked with guilt? Of course not. It's not like I fear I've let us all down. It's not like I'm worried I've become the Beto O'Rourke of the newsletter-sphere—once full of promise, but now just another overrated dude with a bad Instagram presence. I'm not nervous! Not at all.
Ha! In fact I feel so bad about this I want to deliver hand deliver these cookies to all the people I know and even a lot of people I don't.
What a weird week.
I don't feel older, just wearied. I tried not to expect too much from the festivities, which in the end were excellent and better than I could have even hoped. But somehow the pressure just builds no matter how much a person insists it's just another day of the year. When it was over I wanted to sob and sleep. Here's what I've learned: A normal person can't tolerate unlimited attention!
This is the reason all the people who run for president are narcissists. (Yes, even Pete Buttigieg! So affable not even Leslie Knope can resist his civic-minded charms! Yes, even him. He has to be a sociopath.)
All that said, it was nice. People were kind to me and gave me presents. I cooked a meal for a lot of people I love. I celebrated what it means to be alive. (Which is crazier—that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised to ban assault weapons and took decisive action to do so in under a week in the wake of a massacre or that we never do?)
Meanwhile, no sooner was I was about to fire off this email than I find out that Robert Mueller has submitted his final report on the Russia probe. I had hoped for a Don Jr. perp walk, but whatever. I've been prepared to be disappointed for months. Now all we can do is wait, I suppose. But it's torture, isn't it? It's like J.K. Rowling decided to write the final Harry Potter book just for William Barr, and the rest of us have to sit on our hands until he summarizes it on Goodreads.
I'm scared to refresh Twitter! I'm scared not to refresh Twitter! I want to be put in a isolation chamber.
Please leave me alone for the foreseeable future, unless you have questions about these chocolate chip cookies that happen to contain no eggs or butter but are so tender and luscious that I served them at a meal in which zero guests were vegan. That good.
Once, decades ago, my grandmother told my mother she felt she could die a content woman. She'd married a great man. She'd raised four beautiful, smart girls. She'd lived to see her grandchildren born. She had a great life! What more did she need?
At the time, my mother was horrified. But then at some point later, my grandmother recanted. She's 91 now, and as she likes to tell us, she's gotten gluttonous. "I want to know how it all ends."
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies (No Collusion!)
Servings: 22 cookies
Distractability: Under normal circumstances, 4. Since now these will be made in a furious panic while we wait for someone to leak something about the Mueller report, 10.
Scratchpad: One point for the oil, water, and sugar emulsion, which feels like it'll never come together but then does. It's a metaphor. Two points for the ratio of chips to cookie, which is so golden it should be included in the Math SAT II. One point for the essential rest in the fridge, which will give us all a reason to survive the imminent, asinine tweetstorms to come. Six more points on this weekend in particular. In the words of one Disaster Baker, "FIVE ON A FRIDAY. HE IS THAT BITCH."
Notes: This genius recipe comes to us from Food52's literal Genius Recipes column. I've made the cookies countless times, and the people love them. I mean love. Four-cookies-in-a-row love. Smuggle-cookies-out-in-a-napkin-to-eat-on-the-train-home love. Like, Entenmann's Soft Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies, but gooier. Or, the taste of childhood, but Goopier.
I like to add vanilla extract to make up the caramel notes that butter would otherwise provide and I use a small cookie scoop to stretch this recipe past its usual limits. But those tweaks aside, these are superlative. Make them to cope with all the stuff that's less excellent—CNN news alerts, terrible tweets, overrated books, movies that should be 90 minutes but are 120, "thought and prayers," bad salads, and the next 18 months of our lives.
Also, below, when I insist that all the liquid in the dough be emulsified, here's what that should look like.
Ingredients:
2 cups (250 grams) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups (215 grams) dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar
1/2 cup (110 grams) packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon canola or neutral oil
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons (30 ml) vanilla extract
Coarse-grained sea salt like Maldon
To-Do List:
In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Add the chocolate chips and mix to combine.
In a bigger bowl, whisk both sugars with the canola oil and water until smooth and emulsified. The mixture will thicken. Think: the texture of maple syrup. This should take at least two minutes. Don't stop until the oil and water are combined.
Add the flour mixture to the sugar liquid, and then stir until just mixed and no more streaks of flour are visible. Take care not to overmix.
Cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least 12 hours, but 24 hours is better. Do not skip this step. Cookies that taste this good but happen to be this vegan take time. Don't let me down.
Once the dough is hydrated, preheat the oven to 350F. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. Take the dough out of the fridge and use a 1 1/2-tablespoon cookie scoop to form even balls. (I at last purchased cookie scoops to professionalize this newsletter, and now I want to portion the entire world into even, quick-release mounds. Here's the one I like.)
Chill the dough balls for 10 minutes in the freezer, which will help them retain their shape.
Sprinkle the cookies with sea salt, then bake for 12 to 13 minutes until the edges are just golden. Don't wait for the entire cookie to bronze and don't be nervous if the cookies look a little puffed and underbaked. This is good. It'll be good.
Cool to let them firm up a little or fine, whatever eat them hot. Haven't we waited long enough?
Distractions, Diversions, "Interesting"
I have parents who would not just plow snow, but clear avalanches for me. So-called "snowplow parents" are fine, within reason. But parents who've raised children who have to leave school because there's too much sauce in the cafeteria should reconsider their choices.
"We're in a new era now. 'Interesting' is the new 'likeable.'"
Do I need to launch an offshoot newsletter so that we have a place to lavish praise on Normal People?
Fork Over That Dough
Here are a number of good places to direct funds to help victims of the Christchurch Terrorist Attacks. We should not have to live in a world like this.
Oh, And
I hear Shrill is a revelation, but haven't watched just yet. Should I? Also, Disaster Baker Justine Harman made these for me, and I've never been so in love with a square of cardboard. What merch should we do next?