Monday night started out as it normally does: hanging with a friend and discussing the weekend’s turn of events. The Cleveland Indians were about to play what would be the final game in their series against the Boston Red Sox and a presidential candidate dropped a bomb on his campaign at the start of the weekend. So naturally, there was plenty to discuss over a batch of perfect cookies. We think they’re pretty perfect, anyway.
To be fair, my friend Kate and I did not come up with the recipe completely on our own, but instead modified our friend Hallie's recipe to try out a twist on a dessert we already know and love. These cookies are heaven in your mouth. They melt with chocolate and fall apart in your hands days after baking them. These cookies are make-your-stomach-hurt-from-eating-too-many tasty, and we are both guilty of indulging.
Due to limited counter space in my tiny apartment, we brought all the ingredients to the table in the living room and began mixing.
The recipe:
1 ½ cups white flour
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ stick of butter, melted
2 eggs
⅔ bag of mini, semi-sweet chocolate chips
Think of it as a halfsies-type recipe. Normally, you don’t have to use whole wheat flour, but we wanted to pretend we were at least mildly healthy so we went for it. Wet ingredients go into one large bowl and dry ingredients get mixed in after being combined in another bowl. Cook for 6-8 minutes at 350 degrees, leaving them a little “undercooked." Or, at least, that's how we like them.
Cookies are conducive to a slew of conversation topics, and both of us couldn’t seem to get off of Donald Trump. We talked about his released video and audio from Friday while we combined the dry ingredients together. We expressed our fear of his presidency for marginalized people while we whisked the eggs into the wet ingredients. We discussed the prevalence of rape culture in day-to-day life and the effect that a President Trump could have on the continuation of it while making the final mixture before baking.
They were political cookies, and they warmed our insides while we felt a little distraught over the presidential candidacy.
Kate rolled them into little dough balls and put them into the oven, refrigerating about half of the batch in dough form in the refrigerator in case we wanted to make any adjustments later.
The anticipation was killing us, considering we eyeballed about half of the ingredients and hoped for the best. They cooked for about seven minutes and we pulled them out, breathing in their cookie goodness.
While we waited for them to cool, we curled up on the couch, trying not to scream at the laptop mirroring baseball on the television. It was the bottom of the ninth inning, two runners on base, two outs and a full pitch count. After a pop-up to right field, Lonnie Chisenhall caught the final out. Kate and I sat on the edge of our seats as we watched the Tribe clinch a win against the Red Sox to move on to play for the American League title. Northeastern Ohioans have been reeling in the glory of the NBA title for months, and are now amped up for baseball in October.
Cool, fall days are perfectly encapsulated in warm, gooey cookies and rooting on your favorite baseball team.
The final taste test proved they didn’t disappoint. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. If you don’t like your cookies to be a little “gritty” or “textured,” probably stray away from using any type of whole wheat flour. They’re still soft and gooey post-baking.
Juli Holbert is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Have a suggestion for her next adventure? Let her know by emailing or tweeting her at jh673913@ohio.edu/@juliangela.
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Correction: A previous version of this article showed a different headline. The headline has been updated to more accurately reflect the content of the article.
