cookie is a baked or cooked food that is small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar and some type of oil or fat. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, nuts, etc.
In most English-speaking countries except for the United States and Canada, crisp cookies are called biscuits. Chewier biscuits are sometimes called cookies even in the United Kingdom.Some cookies may also be named by their shape, such as date squares or bars.
Cookies or biscuits may be mass-produced in factories, made in small bakeries or homemade. Biscuit or cookie variants include sandwich biscuits, such as custard creams, Jammie Dodgers, Bourbons and Oreos, with marshmallow or jam filling and sometimes dipped in chocolate or another sweet coating. Cookies are often served with beverages such as milk, coffee or tea. Factory-made cookies are sold in grocery stores, convenience stores and vending machines. Fresh-baked cookies are sold at bakeries and coffeehouses, with the latter ranging from small business-sized establishments to multinational corporations such as Starbucks.
Cookie-like hard wafers have existed for as long as baking is documented, in part because they deal with travel very well, but they were usually not sweet enough to be considered cookies by modern standards.
Cookies appear to have their origins in 7th century AD Persia, shortly after the use of sugar became relatively common in the region.They spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain. By the 14th century, they were common in all levels of society throughout Europe, from royal cuisine to street vendors.
With global travel becoming widespread at that time, cookies made a natural travel companion, a modernized equivalent of the travel cakes used throughout history. One of the most popular early cookies, which traveled especially well and became known on every continent by similar names, was the jumble, a relatively hard cookie made largely from nuts, sweetener, and water.
Cookies came to America through the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the late 1620s. The Dutch word “koekje” was Anglicized to “cookie” or cooky. The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, when “The Dutch in New York provided…’in 1703…at a funeral 800 cookies…'”
The most common modern cookie, given its style by the creaming of butter and sugar, was not common until the 18th century.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
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½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
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¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar -
2 eggs
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1 teaspoon vanilla extract
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12 ounces chocolate chips
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2 ¼ cups plain flour
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½ teaspoon salt
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½ teaspoon baking soda
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C)
Mix and sift the dry ingredients. Put the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and whisk them together.
Cream the butter and sugars in a separate bowl. Place them in a large bowl and use a hand mixer to beat them together until the butter and sugars are fully combined and the mixture has turned light and fluffy.
Add the eggs and vanilla. Keep beating the mixture until the eggs and vanilla are completely blended in.
Stir in the flour mixture. Use a long-handled spoon to stir the dry ingredients in with the wet; keep stirring until you can’t see any white specks of flour.
Mix in the chocolate chips. Pour them into the bowl and use the spoon to mix them in with the batter.
Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a baking sheet. Use a spoon or a small ice cream scoop to scoop even amounts of batter onto a baking sheet. Space them an inch or two apart so they’ll have room to spread while baking.[1]
- To keep the cookies from sticking to the baking sheet, you can line it with parchment paper before placing the cookies on it.
- For perfectly even cookies, use a 1/8 measuring cup to scoop the batter.
Bake the cookies. Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake the cookies for 15 minutes, or until they turn golden brown on top and the edges look slightly crisp.
Remove the cookies from the oven to cool. Place them on a cooling rack or move them to a plate and let them cool until they aren’t too hot to eat.
