I'm an (unofficial) aunt

Yes, that is an interesting title. I know. Let's explain how it's unofficial. My boyfriend's brother's wife (yeah I could have gone the easy way out and said sister in-law but this was more fun) just had a baby this morning. Considering I have been dating my boyfriend for 4 years now, and his family treats me like I'm part of their family, I feel like an unofficial aunt considering I am not part of the family by blood or law relation. Anyway, this post is in dedication to the newborn and his parents. May their family be super happy, and enjoy this recipe! :)

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This recipe is a variation of the popular and famous, and probably extremely well-known, recipe on the back of the Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels® bag. I decided I would take it and make a few of my own changes and see how it would go. I had only 6 oz. bags, so the recipe I had was only for half the regular recipe, so I doubled it and made my changes. I feel that making a large batch of a recipe and causing minuscule changes won't hurt the outcome too much. I was very surprised with the experiment and wanted to share it with you all. At the end I have an extra recipe to make to use when you decide to snack on your delicious cookies.

What you are going to be throwing into a bowl later on:

• 2 cups + 4 tbsp (4 tbsp is about 1/4 cup) all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
• 2 tbsp applesauce (that's right applesauce, I'll tell you why in a second)
• 1 cup brown sugar (packed)
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (you don't have to use Nestlé, but since the recipe was on the back of the package, I did use them)
• 1 tsp cinnamon (use less depending on how prominent of the cinnamon flavor you want)
• 1/2 cup chopped nut (optional, I didn't use them, and why deny people who are allergic to nuts of these yummy cookies?)

Quick reasoning: The applesauce is actually replacing some of the butter, if you desire, you can put in the normal amount of butter (which is 1 cup (2 sticks)), but omit the applesauce. The applesauce reduces the amount of fat in the recipe. It also makes the cookies moist. It is recommended that when replacing fat with applesauce to use half the amount of applesauce as fat would be used, so I replaced 4 tbsp of butter with 2 tbsp of applesauce. Warning: Don't use too much applesauce by replacing 2 tbsp butter with a tbsp of applesauce, as it can make your batter runny considered that applesauce is a little more liquid-y than butter.

What we will be putting the ingredients into/mixing the ingredients/you get the idea:

• Mixing bowls (one medium sized, one large enough for 2 1/2 cups of flour and some light mixing)
• mixing spoon (you all know how I love to do this by hand)
• measuring cups and spoons
• cookie sheet
• parchment paper
• spoon 

What we shall be doing:

1. Flour. Take that smaller mixing bowl, the one for the 2 1/2 cups of flour, and put those 2 1/2 cups of flour in. Then add the baking soda and then the salt. Mix it together, it doesn't have to be perfect. Mine definitely wasn't. Throw in there about half of the cinnamon you are using.

2. Butter. Now take your bigger bowl, and throw in your butter, applesauce, brown sugar, white sugar and vanilla extract. Cream until smooth-ish. Basically make sure the butter doesn't have any chunks in the mixture, it may be a little tough to mix.

3. Eggs. Crack those eggs into your current sugar-butter-applesauce mixture. If you are skilled, like me, you will be able to do it with one hand. (Ok, not like me, I got lucky this one time.)

4. Flour and butter and eggs. Now gradually add in the flour mixture, mixing after ever addition. Careful not to let your flour fly out of the bowl. I did this step in three parts, and by that I mean I poured the flour into the butter mixture in three parts. Finally, add the rest of the cinnamon that you decided to use. Now your batter will be pretty thick and kind of hard to mix. Well, you will have to endure the tough mixing for a little bit.

5. Chocolate. Take your chocolate chips and pour them into the batter. Mix them in until they are well incorporated, and mixed evenly throughout the batter. I have two reasons why I didn't use the whole package of chocolate chips, a) I didn't want it to be too chocolate-y (yeah, I know crazy but it makes sense, you don't want the chocolate to overwhelm the cinnamon, nor do you want the chocolate to pretty much take over the cookie) and b) when scraping out the last of the batter for the final few cookies, usually those will not have chocolate chips, so I wanted a few left over so I could stick them into the batter balls right before baking, so each cookie has a few chips.

6. Oven and baking sheet. Preheat your oven to 375ºF. While it preheats prepare your baking sheet. Take a sheet of parchment paper large enough to fit over the baking sheet, and just place it in the baking sheet. This will simplify clean-up later. Next take a spoon and start spooning balls of dough onto the parchment paper. It doesn't have to be a perfect ball, just glob it on there.

7. Oven-time. Take your globs of cookies and throw them into the preheated oven. The Nestlé® recipe calls for 12-15 minutes. When I was baking mine, I kept checking the cookies just in case. They seemed to have finished baking by 8 minutes, so that is the time I recommend. After 8 minutes check on them. They should be a light brown color. Remove them from the oven and wait about 3-5 minutes while they cool down a little on the baking sheet. Then without breaking them, crushing them, squishing them, or anything, gently place them on a drying rack. Keep the same parchment paper on the baking sheet (that's another great thing about parchment paper, it can be reused when baking the same thing in one go) and repeat the "globbing" of the cookies onto the parchment paper and throwing them in the oven.

Now all you really need to do is enjoy them. That should be a really easy step. I did promise an extra recipe today, in celebration of the birth, so here is one extra recipe, with which can be used to enjoy these yummy cookies.

Recipe numero 2:
Hot Chocolate

This variation of hot chocolate is kind of partially made up. I was actually looking up recipes on how to make real hot chocolate, you know, with real chocolate, and not powder, but all of them seemed like I was going to be drinking a liquid chocolate bar, and that didn't interest me. So I stuck with what I knew and just made it a little more special.

Ingredients:

• Milk
• Your favorite hot chocolate mix (I bought mine about a year ago at T.J. Maxx)
• Marshmallows (I recommend the mini ones, but large ones are good, too)
• Semi-sweet chocolate chunks (or you can use the left over chocolate chips from the cookies recipe)

Utensils:

• your favorite mug (mine is pretty large, it is about the size of 2 cups, so this recipe is for about 2 cups of hot chocolate)
• a spoon (preferably a teaspoon, so you can use it to measure out the hot chocolate mix)
• a microwave

Directions:

1. Fill the mug with milk. That's right just fill your mug with the milk.

2. Heat up the milk. Place into microwave and heat up the mix until it is not scalding hot, but hot enough so you probably wouldn't want to stick your finger in it.

3. Place the hot chocolate mix into the mug with mix. I don't like my hot chocolate to be too chocolate-y so into my two cups mug, I put in 2 rounded tsp of hot chocolate mix. You can also just follow the directions that should be provided on the hot chocolate mix. And then with the spoon, mix the milk and the HC mix until it is well incorporated.

4. Add garnishes. You can drink your hot chocolate just like that, or make it a little more special like I did. Take a handful of marshmallows and place them into the hot chocolate. Then take the chips, or chunks, and grate them or use a knife to cut them into finer pieces (almost like thin slices). Add those on top of the marshmallows.

Finally, enjoy your hot chocolate and you chocolate chip cookies together, for a yummy delicious dessert or treat.

Remember:

Keep eating sweetly! :)