Bound and Determined

Early last summer, shortly after this sweetie pie was born...

I embarked on a "10 Days of Real Food Pledge" mentioned before.  About that time, Steve was heading out on a golf weekend in Wisconsin, so of course I had to send along some home-baked cookies. What kind of road trip would it be otherwise? But since I was starting a kick of "real food," I made some alterations. I also found myself short on key ingredients, so I tweaked here and there in addition to the other alterations.

Later on, I found out that the cookies didn't make it across the state line. And since then, I've been gently reminded that the cookies are going to be a necessary part of future golf trips. Here's the wrench in the plans... did I write down the alterations to the recipe? Of course not. So, with this year's golf trip looming, I've thrown myself into recreating the cookies. Its been a mission and I'm not sure if the motivation is providing the guys with a tasty cookie or just being able to recall and recreate a recipe so that I don't have to go through this again.

And, last night, I did it! I finally cracked the code to the infamous Golf Trip Cookies.

You know that scene in My Fair Lady right before they sing "The Rain in Span"? That's what I felt like singing out, but it was 10:45 and I didn't want to wake up H and E.

A few words before jumping in...
~ Rather than using a tablespoon to dole out the cookie dough, its easier to use a small ice cream scoop. I also use the same scoop for making muffins (one scoop for mini-muffins, three scoops for regular muffins.) Here's a reference to how big the scoop is that I use:

Then you get nice, even, consistent cookies to bake:

Apologies for no photos of the finished products. As soon as they were cool enough, I tried one or two for quality control and put the rest into the freezer so we wouldn't go crazy eating them this weekend.

You know what's really tasty?
Frozen chocolate chip cookies.

~ If you do any amount of baking with whole wheat flour (or white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour), go ahead and grab some Vital Wheat Gluten. Because the shells/bran of the whole wheat flour cuts apart the gluten in the batter, adding some in at the end will eliminate that crumbly texture that sometimes comes in whole wheat baked goods. Figure about 1 teaspoon per cup of flour (more or less).

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from The Betty Crocker Cookbook

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup raw (turbinado) sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups white whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

12 oz. (1 bag) dark chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375.

In a mixer, beat butter with raw sugar and brown sugar until mixture is fluffy. Add egg and vanilla.

In two additions, add the flour, then mix in the soda, salt, and wheat gluten. Mix in chocolate chips and stir just until combined.

Scoop batter onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes (mine are perfect at 9 minutes). Cookies should be slightly spread, rounded, and still look a bit under-cooked on top. Let sit for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies.