Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Here’s something decadent. You whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, put the whole thing in a cake pan, bake it, and bladow, you have bars.

Our final product

Now, maybe, if you’re not in the upper Midwest the way I am, you don’t know what a bar is. In broad strokes, it’s a cross between a brownie and a cookie. What we’re making today is a staple of church basements and coffee with visiting friends and relatives all across this part of the country.

We can be tough to get away from.

As far as hardware goes you’ll need:

·         A mixing bowl

·         A hand mixer with beater attachments

·         Measuring spoons

·         Measuring cups

·         A rubber scraper

·         9x13 cake pan

And our edibles will include:

·         One cup (two sticks) of room temperature unsalted butter

·         1 ½ cup granulated sugar

·         Two large eggs

·         One teaspoon of vanilla (best you can find)

·         One tablespoon molasses. Why molasses? We’ll cover that in a few minutes.

·         One teaspoon salt

·         One teaspoon baking soda

·         2 ¼ cups AP flour

·         Two cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Now, some of you might already know how I’m going to play this. That’s great, go ahead and tuck in.

If you don’t, that’s ok, too. We’ll talk a little about baking methods at the end of today’s installment. 

Today we’re using the creaming method.

Let’s dive in.

Deposit into your mixing bowl your room temperature butter, and yes, it does need to that warm. If it’s still chilled this won’t work. Likewise your eggs. If you drop cold eggs into room temperature butter, the butter will firm up and not fluff up right.

Using your mixer, beat the butter while slowly adding the sugar. Once it’s all in, keep beating for about four or five minutes, until the butter and sugar is all fluffy and pale. Be sure to stop once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure there isn’t any unmixed butter still in there.

It'll look a little grainy when you start. That's fine, keep at it.

Once you’re done with that step add your first egg and continue to beat until the egg is completely incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, start beating again and add your second egg.

Now you add your flavorings, the vanilla – never the imitation stuff – and the molasses. Beat in completely. Scrape down the beaters and put them in the sink. You’re done using the mixer now.

We’re going to add the baking soda, salt, and flour next. Sift them together and then add them to the butter in one shot. Don’t worry, you won’t make too much of a mess here. That’s why we’re not using the stand mixer today.

Because that flour will go flying in a stand mixer.

With your rubber scraper fold the flour and butter together until the flour has almost, but not quite, completely disappeared. By which I mean literally use your scraper to, in nice, long, uninterrupted motions, press the flour into the butter, scrape the side of the bowl to pick up more, press more flour into the butter, scrape the bowl again, so on and so forth, all in a folding motion, until it’s all mixed together. It’ll be slow going at first and your shoulder will get a bit of a workout. Once the flour has almost, but not completely, disappeared, you can stop. Overmixing will develop too much gluten and give you a leathery bar. I know some people like a good leather bar, but please remember the context here. No judgements.

What were you thinking about?

Put in your chocolate chips and mix just until they’re evenly distributed. This will take less than a minute and will also finish mixing in the flour.

Now we turn our attentions toward the pan. If you dump your batter in right now your bars will stick to the pan and not come out with either style or grace. How do we avoid that?

By greasing the pan.

How do we do that?

With the following

·         A half tablespoon of butter

·         ¼ cup of flour (probably less

·         A single paper towel

With the paper towel, spread the butter over the entire interior of the pan, making sure to get in the corners. Drop a couple tablespoons of the flour into the pan and start shaking it around to get a nice, even layer all over the buttered surface. Again, make sure you get in the corners. We want no sticking anywhere.

You may now put your batter into the pan, using the scraper to press the batter into the corners (yeah, the corners are kind of important) and even out the top.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and…put the pan in the refrigerator. We want to chill the batter just a little before we bake. This will help it keep its shape while baking.

Once the oven gets up to temperature, put the pan in and set the timer for ten minutes. Rotate a half turn and bake for fifteen more. Once that fifteen is done, give the pan a shake. If the contents of the pan look like they could slosh out of that pan, give them five more minutes. If you have more of a stiff wobble, you’re done baking.

So close and yet so far.

Now’s the hard part. You must let the bars cool completely before you cut into them. Because there’s a relatively low amount of flour in the bars and not very much gluten could form, there won’t be much structure there. Let it cool down and what you do have will hold up just fine.

There are, as always, embellishments you could make. Maybe throw an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper in the batter or use bittersweet chocolate chips. Those would both provide a lovely counterpoint to the sweetness of the bar. You could sprinkle the top with sugar before baking and get a little caramel flavor as well. Plenty of ways to go with this.

Ok, let’s talk about imitation vanilla flavoring (a lousy ingredient for lousy people). The main ingredient is vanillin, and it’s a byproduct of wood pulp. It’s relatively inexpensive, and very much a one note player. I’d avoid it if I were you. Go ahead and spring for the real stuff.

Why did I use molasses when most recipes like this call for a combination of white and brown sugar? Because contemporary brown sugar is just granulated white sugar with molasses added. If you have molasses in your cupboard, you don’t really need to buy brown sugar. You can make your own.

Finally, the word technique was mentioned. This is a special procedure to create a specific product, in this case the batter for our bars. In the future we'll be using the muffin technique, the biscuit technique, the macaroon technique, among others. If you get a good handle on a few techniques, you’ll find that your need to refer to a recipe will diminish. This is to be encouraged. You’ll get there, just be patient with yourself.

Also, remember to never put your knife in the dishwasher. Bad for it

Not even once. This is why. Trust a fat guy. Also, get decent knives. These are terrible.