Cookie Capers: Fixing Botched-Up Butter in Batter

Uh-oh. You accidentally added too much butter to your cookies.

On the one hand: Awesome! Butter is delicious!

On the other hand: Oh crap. Flat-as-a-pancake cookies. Serious bummer.

Well, suffice it to say that this comes from experience. I seem to be chronically incapable of adding 1.5 sticks of butter to anything--it's always the full 2 sticks for me. But when I recently came across this problem when pulling out my first batch of the delicious-sounding chocolate chip cookies from the gorgeous Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook (after an "oh sh*t" sort of moment, since we're being honest), I was buoyed with courage from having recently received another brilliant book, entitled How to Repair Food , and decided that I would try to improvise.

Now, this wasn't highly technical, but I thought to myself: "OK, so I added too much butter. What if I added some extra flour?".

And so I added half a cup of flour, mixing only until incorporated.

And while I can't say that it is a definitive fix, you know what? In this case...it kind of worked. The cookies were not only perfectly palatable, but delightfully delectable--perhaps not as pretty as the original recipe, but I even felt comfortable sharing them.

...of course, that having been said, the recipe I'm sharing is for the "official" version, not my extra-buttery one.

...and also, of course, if you do add too much butter and have pancake-cookies, just sandwich them with frosting. You'd be amazed how much it fixes things.

Delicious (non-messed-with) Chocolate Chip Cookies

As originally published in Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook

• 1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) butter, room temperature (don't add 2 sticks like I did)
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter, sugars, vanilla, and cinnamon on medium speed, making sure to stop and scrape the bowl down. This will take 3-4 minutes.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix on medium-low speed until combined.
4. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl; add all at once to the batter. Mix the dough together on low speed until combined, making sure to stop and scrape the bowl down so that the flour is all incorporated.
5. Fold the chocolate chips or chunks into the dough with a spoon or spatula.
6. Flatten the dough in a shallow pan and freeze for 20 minutes.
7. Coat 2 cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line with parchment. With an ice cream scoop (for BIG cookies) or a teaspoon for baby-sized cookies, scoop cookies onto sheet. Be sure to leave about 2 inches around each cookie. You'll get either 12-14 big, or 24-30 small, cookies. Bake for 12-14 minutes for smaller cookies, 15-17 minutes for larger cookies, until golden and set on top.
8. Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

Comments

[BigFatBaker]

OMGOSH! I just posted about how I messed up a pumpkin pancake batter and managed to save it into something edible. I was so surprised it worked! Now I know never to give up on a recipe.