Chocolate Chip Cookies

C is for cookie and that’s usually good enough for me to satiate my severe sweet tooth. In other words, I love a good cookie. Actually, I’ll even eat bad cookies. So when Esme requested that we bake something together, I couldn’t resist her idea of chocolate chip cookies and neither could Ceri. I’ve never known Scarlett to turn down a cookie (or any sugary confection for that matter), so I knew she’d be on-board. Ceri and I just agreed that we should try to make them as healthy as possible.

I found a great recipe and we altered it slightly to meet our “healthy” needs. Now we just needed the girls to cooperate. Could we tear them away from the toys?

I’m not sure if it was the day or the fact that they’re getting the hang of this cooking together deal, but Esme and Scarlett really worked as a team blending all the dry ingredients together. While one emptied the measured bowls of flours, flax, salt, baking powder, coconut, cinnamon and nutmeg the other stirred. It was like watching the symbiotic dance of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but not.

But then it fell apart. The spell was broken and they went their separate ways to trash my house.

The promise of a small bowl full of chocolate chips for each to eat lured them back, and we were able to cream the butter and sugar together.

When the batter became too tough to stir (coincidentally the last chocolate chip had been snatched from each bowl) the girls returned to their respective distractions. (Esme: hopping on Scarlett’s bouncy dinosaur. Scarlett: torturing poor Julian with oppressive hugs.)

Luckily we’d had the little ladies grease the cookie sheets earlier, so we were able to get them to quickly return to the cooking station (my flour showered island) to flatten spoonfuls of dough out onto each sheet.

These weren’t your soft, gooey chocolate chip cookies. They were more like cake, with a slightly grainy texture. We loved them and the girls packed away two each before lunch. Scarlett said they tasted like “pumpkin”–a likely comparision due to the use of cinnamon and nutmeg. Either way, they were warm cookies dense with chocolate chips, and that was good enough for me.