How a Thursday Chocolate Chip Cookie Became a Friday Chocolate Chip Cookie – Laziness

Last week, I made chocolate chip cookies, just because. No special occasion, no special recipe I wanted to try, no special ingredients. It was Thursday and that seemed like a good enough reason.

And when I pulled them out of the oven, they were terrible. Flat. Greasy. Falling apart.

A Thursday cookie, indeed.

Then something magical happened. I left them on the cooling racks all day, thinking I would toss them after they had cooled, but forgot. Later that afternoon, I grabbed one, mostly out of habit (Hey! Look! Something sugary and buttery on my kitchen table! Must eat!), and snarfed it down without giving it much thought. And, lo and behold, it was delicious! Soft, buttery, more sugar cookie than chocolatey. Yum!

I went back in for another. Mmmm hmmmm. It was, indeed, a good cookie. I ate another, truly just for science – I had to solve the mystery. I then took most of the batch to my parents so that I wouldn’t eat 36 cookies all by myself, and when I returned the next day, there were only two left. My Thursday cookie had become a Friday cookie.

So, what happened? Had magic kitchen elves reworked them while I was gone? It seems that after cooling (and possibly drying out a bit), the overabundance of butter I used, had gone from greasy when the cookies were still warm, to melt-in-your-mouth awesome – baking magic that stems from the concept that the sum is almost always superior to its parts. Because I had vetoed the called-for cup of chopped walnuts, I had inadvertently created a butter-to-dry-ingredient ratio that was off kilter. Straight out of the oven, this screwed up balance was verrrrry apparent. But, after some hanging out, the cookie settled down when the butter became firm again and became a wonderful sugar butter cookie with a little bit of chocolate.

The lesson: be lazy when cleaning up and maybe, just maybe, your inertia will manifest into something tasty. Tim calls it “benign neglect,” and claims that I employ it more often than not in all areas of life, but I just ignore him. Sadly, I have not found this theory to work for laundry, vacuuming, or cleaning out the refrigerator. Sorry.

Tagged as: chocolate chip cookies