I would like to go on record as stating that I was not in the market for a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. Maybe I’m getting a little cranky in my advanced food blogging age, but I have found little evidence over the years that there’s anything new to add to the chocolate chip cookie conversation. (See: Item #9.) In fact, whenever there has been a new/perfect/ideal/ultimate/consummate recipe making the rounds and I have eventually caved and tried it, I’m generally underwhelmed, not because they are not good — I mean, I’m not dead inside, no chocolate chip cookies go to waste around here — but because they’re just weren’t new or different or special enough to get me to permanently stray from my go-to. *

There is one core recipe for chocolate chip cookies, that which was named after the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, where Ruth Graves Wakefield’s invention was published in a 1936 cookbook. Most modern versions play off of it in one way or another, always in the pursuit of a “better” cookie but rarely through the practice of simplicity. Some require cake flour, bread flour, or a combination thereof, which has always perplexed me as you’d think a mix of high- and low-gluten flour would average out back to approximately an all-purpose flour level? Regardless, I follow these recipes to the letter, hoping to glean something new.

… Read the rest of salted chocolate chunk cookies on smittenkitchen.com

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4.21 / 5 Stars | 204 Reviews

by CHRISTINA5362

“Black beans and sweet potatoes are spiced up with jalapenos, cumin, and garlic, then broiled in the oven for a cake that’s less fat but just as flavorful as the fried kind.”

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3.83 / 5 Stars | 22 Reviews

by MARBALET

“You can make this dish and 24 hours later eat the pickles.”

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What makes a recipe great? In my head, there’s a list of ten things and eight of them are different ways of saying the first one, which is “It works.”

1. It works.
2. For everyone. In every kitchen.
3. Without requiring an advanced cooking degree or preexisting mastery of obscure techniques.
4. Or voodoo.
5. Definitely not prayer.
6. It explains what you need to do in the clearest language possible.
7. It anticipates where most home cooks might struggle. If something is a game-changer — i.e. it will kill the recipe if you don’t adhere closely to a step — it will warn you.
8. Did I mention that it needs to work? Because it doesn’t matter you’re making or who gave you the recipe or how transcendent it was at the Michelin-starred restaurant that night, if the recipe printed in a publication intended for home cooks doesn’t work for most of us at home, it sucks as a recipe. It leads to bad meals, bad moods and take-out. A recipe flop is about the worst way to spend your limited free time. It is a 100% guarantee that you’re not going to feel like cooking next time you have a chance.

But once we get the 8-point plan sorted, there are two additional things that are less essential, but raise the simple act of food prep/nutrient dissemination to something special.

9. It improves upon what you already thought you knew to expect from a dish, and/or does it in a way that you hadn’t considered before.
10. It tempts you to make something you didn’t even know you wanted, just because it sounds so good.

… Read the rest of potato scallion and kale cakes on smittenkitchen.com

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