Mr. Barato! You make GOOD cookies.

This year we're prepping For Santa!
Last year my girls noticed that Santa didn't show.
I told them it was because the cookies they had put out for him the year before were store bought.
You know the ones, Chips Ahoy.
So this year we're gonna do it right and the smell of these cookies will have Santa knocking on the front door instead of sneeking down the chimney.
So I let my mind take me back to the time when Mr. William Mellis Christie wasn't yet producing his famous cookies by steam power and was still making them by hand.
I wondered what it was like to work with the ingredients of his time in 1858.
When the only ingredients one needed to make a good batch of chocolate chip cookies were;
white sugar, brown sugar, flour, a small portion of salt, eggs, baking powder, butter, and vanilla extract.

Unlike today when the ingredients list reads like some formula out of a chemist's text book.
For example,

Ingredients:
Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thamine mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid), semi sweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, dextrose, soy lecithin - an emulsifier), sugar, soy bean oil, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, high fructose corn syrup, leavening (baking soda, amonium phosphate, salt, whey(from milk), natural and artificial flavour, caramel colour.

Talk about oxymoron, natural flavour and artificial flavour. Huh?

So after a week of trying many different recipes, I have found one by Regan Daley, in her amazing book The Sweet Kitchen, that is absolutely wonderful and with just a few little
adjustments they are now amazing.
The one missing component to this offering is a good tall glass of refreshing milk. So after some research. I settled on raw milk. Why raw milk?
Simple!
All milk was raw milk back in 1858 just the way Santa liked it. Unlike today, if you want some fresh raw cow's milk you have to buy a cow share from Glen Colton and his waiting list is 3 years long.
Don't ask! Just check out this link http://glencolton.com/
Pasteurization as we know only became mandatory around 1924.



Anyhow, try the recipe and tell me what you think. If you like it share the recipe, I'm not Neiman Marcus. Just be sure to double check your email contacts because my girls and I wouldn't want to accidently send this post to good Ole Saint Nic and ruin his Christmas Eve surprise.
Thanks.


Regan Daley Soft 'n' Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Jason Barato version

250 gr Organic Meadow unsalted butter, at room temp
1 1/2 cups organic raw cane sugar
2 large free range organic eggs
2 tsp organic vanilla extract
3 cups organic whole flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
16 oz Soma bitter sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped or half and half the amount with white chocolate
-preheat oven to 350F
-heat a large skillet and toast the flour over high heat constantly stirring, to avoid burning, for 10 min until light brown
-spread the flour out a tray and let cool in the fridge
-put the paddle attachment on a mixer set to medium speed and cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy, like the whipped butter that you get at hotel brunches
-then add one egg let it incorporate then add the other all the time scraping down the sides to make sure ingredients incorporate then add the vanilla
-exchange the paddle attachment for a dough hook and add the cool flour, that has been pre sifted with the baking soda and salt, set to low speed and mix
-when dough is fully formed add in chocolate pieces and mix for 1 min
- using a 1 5/8 oz ice cream scoop, scoop out portions onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper making sure the portions are 2 inches apart
-wet your hands and gently press the cookies down, to slightly flatten so that the tops aren't rounded, to cook more evenly
-toss into the oven and bake for 15 min for soft chewy cookies
-enjoy

*use this rule, if you want harder cookies colour them to a golden brown colour and let them bake until firm, or if you want soft chewy cookies cook them so that they have no brown at all and aren't firm

You'll be able to find all the ingredients needed at these fine food stores - the Healthy Butcher on Queen St for the milk http://thehealthybutcher.com/,
Soma in the Distillery for the chocolate http://somachocolate.com/ ask for 70% African ,
and the Mercantile on College St all the other ingredients http://themercantile.ca/.