Stay at Stove Dad

Super Simple Banana "Ice Cream"

When you cook as much as I do (and as often), you end up doing odd things, at odd times. It may be winter, but last weekend I made banana “ice cream.” I put it in quotes because it’s not really ice cream. Though it looks and tastes that way, it’s nothing but frozen bananas. Nothing else.

This recipe has been circulating on the Internet for a while now, and I apologize if you’ve seen it before. I first came across it last summer while on vacation in Montauk. We had some extra, quickly ripening bananas, and I thought I could use them up. Unfortunately, at that time, I did not read the recipe before throwing the whole bananas in the freezer. You don’t want to do that. You want to cut them into little slices, first.

Last weekend, I had two compelling reasons to make the banana “ice cream.” I had three nearly overripe bananas staring at me from the corner of the kitchen, and I had my brother, sister-in-law, and their son coming over for a morning visit. My nephew can’t eat wheat or dairy. I had made pancakes, but he wouldn’t be able to have any. I wanted to have a treat for him.

So this time, I read the recipe, and followed the very simple but important instructions. I sliced the bananas, put them on a plate, and stuck them in the freezer before my nephew and his parents arrived. When he got here, I was ready to try out the recipe.

I couldn’t believe that plain, frozen bananas could transform themselves into creamy soft “ice cream,” but that’s exactly what happened. I can’t say I really liked the results, but I know I’m in the minority. My nephew tried a taste, broke out into a huge smile, and said “Like it.” And as soon as his bowl was empty, he pointed at the blender and said, “more dat.”

One-Ingredient Banana “Ice Cream”

• 3 or more ripe bananas 
• 1 blender

Peel the bananas.

Cut them into small pieces, and spread them out on a plate.

Put the plate in the freezer for one to two hours.

Drop the frozen banana slices into a blender, and run it until the bananas magically transform into what looks like soft ice cream. It will happen, eventually. Just push the bananas down the side of the blender as you go.

Enjoy.

Chocolate Pudding for the Holidays and Any Day

I’m just back from visiting Santa Maria’s folks for the New Year. We ate well at their house, mostly because I did the cooking and the shopping. There’s little better, from my point of view, than going to the grocery store when on vacation. Ordinarily, going to the grocery store, especially in New York City, is a harried rushed affair.

On vacation, food shopping can be the opposite. The first day we were at Santa Maria’s folks’ house, I took the Nina and Pinta with me to the local Wegmans grocery store, and I was in paradise. The cart was as large as an aircraft carrier, and the aisles as broad as the Indian Ocean. I was so relaxed that we spent two-and-half hours in the store.

As a result of my massive shopping expedition, we had delicious meals. Lobster and mushroom risotto for New Year’s Eve, and black-eyed peas and collard greens the following day.

Our New Year’s Day gathering was the last of many family dinners this holiday season. First there was Christmas Eve dinner at my sisters (where my brother-in-law roasted whole fish and made a super savory pasta-with-anchovies side). Then there was Christmas dinner at my mothers. For both meals, my extended family was assembled around the table (or tables, as the case may have been). Aside from the cooking I did while visiting my in-laws, though, I took it pretty easy this holiday season. All of those meals were cooked by someone else. Santa Maria, on the other hand, contributed to every meal.

She made a multitude of desserts, and my favorite was a chocolate pudding that is good all year round—really fast, and really delicious. The recipe is adapted from Laurie David’s “The Family Dinner,” and it's true to its name. Santa Maria just makes it with leaner milk, and darker chocolate. The kids go mad for it.

 Chocolate Pudding Fast

• ½ cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 3 cups skim or 1% milk
• 4 ounces dark chocolate, finely chopped (Santa Maria uses a 3.5 ounce bar of Green & Black’s organic 70% dark chocolate)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon salt

Stir the sugar, cocoa powder, and cornstarch together in a medium-sized saucepan. Gradually stir in the milk. Heat, whisking constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture begins to boil and thicken, about 10 minutes.

Add the chocolate. Turn off the stove. Gently whisk until the chocolate is completely melted.

Stir in the vanilla and the salt. Pour into small custard cups. Serve warm or at room temperature.  For a special occasion, like Christmas Day dinner at Grandma’s, top with whipped cream!  Sprinkle a crushed candy cane on top!!

Note: If y0u don’t have cocoa powder, just use another ounce (about a third of a 3.5 ounce bar) of dark chocolate.

Makes 10 small or 5 generous servings (Can be doubled, as was the case over the holidays, above. It can be served in large bowls, but little ramekins are best.)

Thanksgiving Fallout: A Tasty Oatcake Recipe

Our plan for Thanksgiving was to spend it out of town with Santa Maria's folks, but everything was thrown for a spin last Wednesday when Pinta came down with strep throat, and we couldn't get on the road in time to visit them. The doctor said that twenty-four hours of antibiotics and no fever meant that she wasn't contagious, though, so I called my sister, who was hosting a big gathering in Connecticut with my extended family, to see if she had room at her table. "Of course," she said, and that's where we went.

My sister did have one request, though. She wanted us to bring a side dish. She suggested Santa Maria's biscuits, but they don't travel well (and actually suffer in the time it takes them to get from the oven to the table), so that wasn't a good choice. Because we were planning on being out of town, our pantry was nearly empty (our refrigerator looked like one from the quintessential Manhattan apartment, with plenty of empty shelves for leftover take-out containers), but we did have oats in the cupboard. Oatmeal is a staple of our winter breakfasts, and Santa Maria also knows how to make them into delicious, if crumbly, oatcakes. They're great for breakfast, as a side for a big dinner, or as a dessert treat. Here's her recipe:

Santa Maria's Mom's Scottish Oatcakes

 

• 2 1/2 cups of organic rolled oats
• 1/2 cup of organic flour
• 1/4 cup brown sugar or organic maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 cup melted organic butter
• 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine the dry ingredients; mixing them well.

Stir in the melted butter and then the milk (you can then crush the oats a bit with your hands, which is especially fun for the wee ones).

Press the mixture into a buttered 11 x 6" pan and bake in oven until
golden brown (about 20 to 25 minutes).

Slice into any shapes you like and serve warm with more butter and
some honey, or just plain with a glass of cold milk.

Notes: This is a great recipe to cook with kids, and it can also be made gluten-free by substituting quinoa flour in place of the wheat flour.

Grandma's Applesauce: A Guest Post

Once, when I was a boy, I wrote a report for school about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I’ve been fascinated by the span ever since. Now that I live in the borough, I’ve had many chances to cross it, and I still marvel at it. Just the other day, I had an opportunity to talk with Clifford W. Zink, an historian whose latest book, “The Roebling Legacy,” traces the history of the family that built the bridge.

 “The Roebling Legacy” is a marvelous book, full of details about the family’s technological innovations and many pictures of their various accomplishments beyond the Borough of Kings. Clifford will be at the PowerHouse Arena, a bookstore near the bridge, on next Tuesday, November 29, at 7 p.m. to talk about his book.

In the meantime,  Clifford, who lives in New Jersey and who cooks for his wife and two teenage children, was kind enough to share his grandmother’s recipe for applesauce. It seems like just the kind of thing to make and serve for Thanksgiving, though it might be a bit late in the week to whip up a batch. In that case, it’s the kind of thing to occupy the weekend following the holiday, when everyone is still around and looking for something to do.

Grandma's Applesauce

Grandma thoroughly spoiled my bother and I while we were growing up.  She had emigrated from Germany to Manhattan in 1906 at the age of 18, and went shopping every day for fresh foods.  Her soups, chicken paprikas, and wiener schnitzel were delicious all year round, but summers were special when she made her crepes with berries and her open-topped peach cake with a soft crust.  In the fall she woke us up for school with the aroma of her apple fritters frying on the stove, and after school her thin crust apple pies were beautiful to behold and scrumptious to eat.  When Mom asked her years later for her recipes, Grandma replied, "What recipes?  You just put in a little of this and a little of that, and you taste it and you know when it's right." 

My kids love applesauce I make based on Grandma's, and the here's the first go at writing it down:

Start with a dozen or more fresh, uncoated apples, about 3/4s of them golden delicious and the rest slightly tart macintosh or winesap.  You can mix in other varieties but try to keep the 3-1 sweet-to-tart ratio.  

Peel, core and cube the apples, and place them in a deep pot.  Add about 3/4 of an inch of fresh apple cider (a little more if you're using more apples), cover the pot and cook on low to medium heat.  Check every few minutes to make sure that the cider is lightly bubbling without boiling away.  If the cider gets too low, add just enough to keep about 3/4 of an inch in the bottom of the pot, and keep the pot covered.  After about 30 minutes or so, depending on the amount and mix of apples, crush the apple cubes repeatedly with a potato masher or similar instrument.  If the mix is a bit dry, you can add just a little cider.  Keep crushing until you get to a consistency you like, and then it's ready to eat, warm, plain, on ice cream or yogurt.  And eating it cold later on brings out other delicious flavors.  

No sugar or honey, please, just taste the natural sweetness of the apples and cider.  I used to add some raisins, and a touch of cinnamon, and you can, too, but now I like to taste just the serendipitous sweetness of mixing different types of apples.  As Grandma said, "You know when it's right."

Progressive Dinner Wrap Up: A Meeting of the Macaroons

Friday was Veterans Day. I had to work, but the children had the day off from school, and Santa Maria took them to MoMA PS1, the contemporary-art museum in Long Island City. When they were there, they had a chance to see one of my favorite pieces of art, James Turrell’s Meeting (1986).

That’s a picture of it, above, and according to the museum, “Meeting is composed of a square room with a rectangular opening cut directly into the ceiling. Carefully calculated artificial lights produce an orange glow on the white walls of the room, permitting the viewer to appreciate the intensity of the sky’s color. As Turrell described it: ‘There’s this four-square seating that’s inside, seating toward each other, having a space that created some silence, allowing something to develop slowly over time, particularly at sunset. Also, this Meeting has to do with the meeting of space that you’re in with the meeting of the space of the sky.’”

“Meeting” is usually only open, weather permitting, in the afternoon, but because it’s a part of the museum’s “September 11” exhibition, it has extended hours. Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were able to visit it when they first arrived. Afterwards, they had lunch at the museum’s café, where they picked up some macaroons. Later, they brought the cookies home to me.

Now it’s my turn to bring some macaroons home to you. To follow up on my progressive dinner experience, I’m sharing Rebecca Christiansen’s macaroon recipe, from her amazing progressive dinner. The recipe is her grandmother’s, and it sounds delicious:

R.C.’s Bubbe’s Almond Macaroons

 

•     1 cup whole almonds
•     1 cup of granulated sugar
•     one Large egg white
•     1/2 t of almond extract
•     confectioner's sugar
•     about 16 whole almonds

Preheat oven to 350°F. and lightly butter a baking sheet, put parchment over the butter and then butter the parchment - goofy but it makes the bottoms of the cookies nice and crispy but not crunchy. .

In a food processor you can pulse the almonds with granulated sugar until its a powder.  Add egg white, almond extract, and a pinch salt and pulse until combined. Roll mixture into 16 balls, about 1 inch in diameter, and arrange about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet you prepared.  Take a drinking glass and flatten the balls and dust lightly with confectioners' sugar. Gently press 1 almond into each cookie.

Bake macaroons in middle of oven 10 minutes, or until pale golden. 

*You can also color these with a couple squeezes of a gel food color - I made them pale red (not pink but not full on red because I find red baked goods alarming) for our Illini party.  You can also frost them and sandwich them together.  But its best you eat them in three to four days.

**Frost - I mean chocolate ganache but there is an almond extract frosting that would work nicely with all the other almond flavors.

***Okay so my bubbe substitutes amaretto for the extract with great results, I only say that because sometimes you can't put alcohol in the mix you know?

Butterscotch Brownies Recipe!

Santa Maria was under the weather this weekend, so we took it easy. Friday, we celebrated Nina and Pinta’s first full week of school with a visit to Bark, for hotdogs, French fries, and milkshakes (but no beer, for me—I had the kids solo, and I’m such a lightweight now that one beer will have me nodding off like Rip Van Winkle.)

Saturday, in spite of her ailing stomach, Santa Maria was up for bacon and eggs, so I whipped up a batch of those. Then, I started thinking about food for the rest of the day, which, inevitably, led around to Bolognese, as we were somehow out of it (I don’t sleep well unless there's some in the freezer). I was sure I had all the ingredients on hand, but I couldn’t find any celery in the refrigerator. The Bolognese would have to wait. Or would it?

It has been months since we last had our weekly fish blowout, and I decided it was time to head to the Greenmarket for fluke and clams from Blue Moon Fish. Pinta doesn’t like clam sauce, so I also wanted to get a head of basil to make pesto for her. And, I could pick up some celery.

I took the girls on my own, so Santa Maria could rest, and I somehow thought it would be a good idea for them to take their bikes. They were fine on the sidewalk and roads of the park, but amid the crowded throngs of the Greenmarket we slowed to a crawl. Actually, we would have been better if we could have crawled. I had the girls get off the bikes, but that didn’t help very much. Their bikes have training wheels, and one man + two girls + two bikes + training wheels = countless apologies to those around me.

Eventually, we found the end of the line for fish, picked up our flounder and clams, and got the hell out of there. I gave up on celery and basil. There was no way we could get through that crowd.

Santa Maria, meanwhile, was feeling a little bit better. She took off on her bike, to get some exercise, and then picked up the greens we needed. And when we were all back home, that afternoon, while I made Bolognese and pesto; washed kale for our Fly Sky High Kale Salad; and prepped the roasted potatoes to accompany the founder, Santa Maria continued her recuperation—she decided to make butterscotch brownies.

I don’t have a sweet tooth, but butterscotch brownies are one of my favorite desserts. I was so naïve before I met Santa Maria, that I thought the only way you could make them was with butterscotch morsels. Santa Mara showed me another way.

Butterscotch Brownies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt in a saucepan:

            ¼ cup butter

Stir into it until dissolved:

            1 cup brown sugar

Cool these ingredients slightly, then beat in well:

            1 egg

            1 teaspoon vanilla

Sift, then measure:

            ½ cup all-purpose flour

Resift it with:

            1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder

            ½ teaspoon salt

Stir these ingredients into the butter mixture. Pour the batter into a greased 9 x 9-inch pan. Bake about 20-25 minutes. Cut into bars when cool.

 

Notes: This recipe is adapted from the “Joy of Cooking.,” which is right on the money when it calls it “An all-time favorite, easily made.” Santa Maria uses organic flour, with germ. She also pressed a few chocolate chips in the top, at one end, and she used a larger pan.            

Hurricane Watch Oatmeal Cookies

Hurricane Irene might have been hyped to the high-heavens, but it just rattled the windows and downed a few trees in the park nearby. While the storm didn't have much of an impact on the streets around me, it did cause a change in the kitchen. It inspired Santa Maria to do a little tinkering with her oatmeal cookie recipe. The storm may not have been one for the books, but this recipe is.

Hurricane Watch Oatmeal Cookies

• 1 c. good butter, softened (not melted)
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1 c. flour
• ¾ t baking soda
• ½ t salt
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1 egg
• ¾ t vanilla
• 2 c. rolled oats

Cream butter and sugar; add egg and vanilla;  mix or sift together flour, cinnamon, soda, salt; stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Then add the oats. Bake about 10 minutes in a 350 degree pre-heated oven.

Makes at least 4 dozen – enough for you and the neighbors and even enough to freeze a log for a future playdate.

Dad’s Secret Weapon: The Delicious, Hot Dessert! A Bread Pudding Recipe

I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and I’ve never been big on making desserts. It’s a bit of an Achilles' Heel for me, so I was excited last week to connect with a new reader of the site, Jim van Bergen. He found Stay at Stove Dad while after looking online for wines for an upcoming party and coming across my post about the 2008 Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon. Jim is a committed oenophile, and I hope to talk more with him about wine, but in the meantime he was wiling to tell me about his secret weapon as a dad who cooks: The Delicious Hot Dessert.

I watched Michael DeVidts,from New Orleans School of Cooking, make his N.O.S.C. Bread Pudding at a demonstration. I was fascinated, and went home made it successfully, and was then fully fueled to adapt it to be my own: healthier, and family friendly. I replaced canned fruit and dry coconut with fresh apples (a family favorite), and the flavor-packed, highly nutritious blueberry. I reduced the sugars, cholesterol, calories and fat content, introduced raw and natural ingredients (it's great with almond milk, brown sugar and honey in place of cane sugar!) and radically changed his sauce directives.

The sauce to me is about decadence: great rich flavor, and not the alcohol. So I flame the sauce every time and burn off much of the alcohol, and caramelize some of the loose sugar left in the sauce, which is a nice touch. The version here is more public-friendly, as few people want a recipe with organic brown sugar, almond milk and agave. They want what is comfortable to them, and in their cupboards.

Bead pudding is a crowd-pleaser. It’s dense, full of great fruit flavor, and tastes wonderful either by itself, a la mode, and with or without the hard sauce. My neighbors adore the sauce on this bread pudding (even the non-drinkers) and I expect you will too.

It’s a lot of fun to make with your kids- they can tear the bread up, chop apples while supervised, mix the various elements, and stir the mixture using bare hands- just remember to wash hands with soap and warm water before and after cooking, ok dads? And don’t let the kids taste the hard sauce. They can have chocolate sauce or ice cream instead.

Bread pudding was originally a simple way to use up the old bread and aging fruit instead of throwing them out, so it’s easy to substitute other fruit. It works great with pineapple, banana, papaya, or raspberries. Experiment, or use what is at hand.

One of the great things about this recipe is the ease and flexibility it has while retaining the great qualities of a luxurious baked dessert. My younger daughter saw me combining the wet portion with the dry in the kitchen, and said, "Daddy, I like your bread pudding, but I'm not in much of a blueberry mood tonight. Can you maybe make it half and half?" Knowing she'd eat one portion of the 12 this would make, I did a half-and half on the fly, splitting the mix into two bowls to split the fruit up. It worked like a charm.

Jim van Bergen is a New York based sound designer, audio engineer, and production manager working in the entertainment industry, currently mixing "RAIN" on Broadway.  He lives and cooks in Queens with his wife and two "tweenage" daughters.

 

JvB’s Apple Blueberry Bread Pudding with Macallan 15 Sauce

        Suggested Cookware:

• 2 large mixing bowls
• 9x12 (large) deep baking dish
• 1 small sauce pan

 

        Dry ingredients:

• 1 Loaf Day-Old French/Italian Bread, crumbled (or 6-8 Cups any type of bread broken in to 1” chunks)
• 1  cup cane/white sugar
• 1/2 Cup brown sugar + approx 2 tsp (separately) to top pudding
• 2 tbsp. Cinnamon + 1 tsp (separately) to top pudding
• 1 tsp nutmeg

 

        Wet ingredients:

• 3 cups milk or vanilla soy
• 4 tbsp butter, softened
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla

 

        Fruit:

• 2 cups (or handfuls) of blueberries
• 2 Macintosh apples, peeled, cored, & chopped into small pieces

 

Rip/tear/crumble bread into medium (approximately 1”) chunks.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.

Grease sides and bottom of baking dish by using the paper that the butter comes in. (Just rub it on the side and bottom of the pan.) Set baking dish aside.

Melt butter in sauce pan. Mix melted butter, eggs, vanilla and milk in 2nd bowl.

Slowly pour in wet mix over dry mix and mix well by hand. Add berries and chopped apple. Mixture should be very moist but not soupy. (If soupy, add/mix in more chunks of any other bread until consistency is correct and not soupy.)

Transfer mixture evenly into buttered 9 X 12 baking/casserole dish or larger.

Sprinkle brown sugar sparsely on top to help achieve golden crust.

Place into non-preheated oven. Bake at 350 deg. for approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes, until top is golden brown. Serve warm with sauce drizzled on top.

Macallan 15 (Hard) Sauce

• 8 tbsp. butter (1 stick)
• 1& 1/2 cups blends of powdered sugar, (or substitute brown sugar, honey, or agave nectar)
• 1 cup Macallan 15 year-old Single Malt Scotch Whiskey (or hard liquor of your choice)

Cream butter and sweeteners over medium heat until all butter is absorbed.

Pour in liquor gradually to your own taste, stirring constantly. Remove when well blended. The sauce will thicken as it cools. Spoon warm liquid over bread pudding as served. Some of my friends have told me they use a lot more liquor. I suggest you start with a tablespoon per serving, for flavor. You can also flame the mixture to burn off alcohol if you are comfortable with large open flame.

 

Two notes on the sauce:

1) Many recipes suggest you use whatever liquor is cheap and at hand, I disagree completely. Use what is delicious, smells enticing, and is flavorful. People prefer this with high end whisky: I’ve used Macallan 10 and 15, Oban, Glenmorangie Nectar D’Or, Woodford Reserve, and Maker’s 46.

2) When the pudding is in the oven, first clean up the kitchen, and then make the sauce. 

 

Santa Maria Shops! Blackberries all Around

I've been extra busy at work recently, preparing for the launch of "Man with a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook For their Families," and Santa Maria has stepped heroically into the breach. She did the weekly food shop yesterday, and when I came home from the office I was treated to a bowl of blackberries. Earlier that day, Pinta, who loves them more than I do, had to be prevailed upon to leave some for me. Thank goodness she did: it was a pure delight to pop them in my mouth. There's nothing like late-stage capitalism, the global supply chain, and a helpful spouse. Sweetness.

Tuesday Guest Post: Cookie Monster Time!

As I mentioned yesterday, my mother came to visit over the weekend. She was feted by her granddaughters, and I sent her home with a gift. That Saturday, Nina had been on a playdate with a friend, and the father made cookies. He gave us some, and I made sure that my mother took one with her before she left.

These were not just any cookies, they were chocolate-and-molasses cookies with a hint of chili pepper, and the father was not just any old Joe, he was John, a friend who has been contributing to this site with such frequency that he has now earned himself an entry on the dramatis personae page.

A few hours after my mother left my apartment, I called her to make sure she had gotten home safely. She had, and I asked her how she was doing. She said she was great. She had just finished a glass of milk and the cookie. "It was so good," she said, "I'll have to get the recipe."

Here, without any further to do, is John's recipe for his cookies, and his latest guest post:

I’ve been messing about with cookies over the last month or so. What started as a treat for Frigga, Buk, and Atete is now turning into a mild obsession, as I’ve gone back to the mixer several weekends in a row to get the recipe right. Not that Buk and Atete have been complaining.

I have very clear preferences with cookies: soft, a little chewy, and the flavor needs to give me a little more than just cookie plus chocolate. I want some complexity. At the risk of getting all misty-eyed and mystic…I want a little mystery in my cookie.

Okay, so apart from teetering on “new agey” abyss there for a second, cookies are actually pretty simple. From inspiration to dunking can take an hour, and a good chunk of that is spent waiting for them to bake. The one proviso is having a mixer on hand. Creaming the sugar and the butter is easy enough without one: soften the butter, add the sugar, and just go at it with a spoon until the mixture is creamy and a pale yellow, but your arm is going to get a work out.

The other great thing about this recipe is that you can use it as a basis for many others. The basic idea is the same for many cookies…cream the butter and sugar, mix in eggs and flour, and then add your other flavorings. Next time, I think I’m going to explore ginger, molasses, and allspice.

The Brooklyn Cookie

• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon chili powder 

• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 sticks of unsalted butter cut into small chunks

• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 375°F.

Line 2 large baking trays with parchment paper (the paper isn’t totally necessary, but it does make clean up very simple and the cookies come off the paper very easily – if your baking tray is old and well used, you may have problems getting them off the metal cleanly).

Mix the flour, baking soda, salt, and chili powder in a bowl.

Cream the butter and sugar until it is pale yellow and starts to look a little like whipped cream. (If you have a mixer, put it on high for a few minutes. Keep an eye on it. You’ve got a bit of margin, but you don’t want to overbeat the butter.)

Turn down the mixer to its lowest speed. Add the eggs, one at a time to the butter and sugar until all is combined

Add vanilla and molasses, stir just enough to combine.

Mix in dry mixture in three batches again until blended (you may have to scrape down the bowl and mixer blade). Then stir in chips.

Scoop batter for each cookie, arranging the balls about 3 inches apart, on 2 baking sheets. (I use an ice cream scoop to get a consistent amount for each cookie. I get a good scoop and then clean excess by pressing the scoop against the mixing bowl. I then lever the dough out of the scoop with a tablespoon measure held in the other hand. )

Wet your hand and flatten the dough into rounds using the palm.

Bake 1 sheet at a time about 15 minutes (perhaps a few minutes longer if you like your cookie a little less soft – the final length of time will depend on your oven).

Remove from the oven and let sit on tray for five minutes or so, and then transfer cookies to a rack to cool

Repeat till done.

 

Makes about 24 largish cookies