Baking with Kids - Heavenly Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I thought it would be fun for my daughter and I to do some baking on this nice lazy Sunday. I decided to try a recipe that we flagged in one of our Gooseberry Patch Christmas cookbooks. Just the other day, she asked if we could bake chocolate chip cookies on our next adventure, so I thought this would be a great recipe to try. They're not your average Chocolate Chip cookies either, as the recipe calls for 2T. instant coffee granules. It's a nice twist on an old classic.

Ingredients

2 c. plus 2 T. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

3/4 c. butter

2 T. instant coffee granules

1 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

11 1/2 oz. pkg.semi-sweet double chocolate mega-chips or 12 oz. pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 c. walnut halves, toasted (optional)

Here's What You Do
Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Combine first 3 ingredients; stir well.

Combine butter and coffee granules in a small saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat until butter melts and coffee granules dissolve. Stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature (don't let butter resolidify).

Combine butter mixture, sugars, egg and egg yolk in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixture until blended. Gradually add flour mixture, beating at low speed until just blended.

Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts (optional).

Drop dough by heaping tablespoons 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees for 12-14 minutes. Let cool slightly on baking sheets.

The cookies are really tasty and are very simple to make. As I mentioned, not your run of the mill chocolate chip cookies because of the instant coffee granules. I wasn't 100% sure that my daughter was going to like them because of this, but she absolutely loves them! She's already eaten 3!!! She didn't want walnuts in her cookies, so we omitted them from our recipe. We used regular chocolate chips instead of the mega-chunk chips because that's what we had in our pantry.  We were at Sam's Club yesterday and I scored a 72 oz. bag of regular semi-sweet chocolate chips for just $7.94 (woo hoo)!  I knew that they were going to come in handy with all of baking we have planned.

Hope that you try this recipe with your kids too and that they love the cookies as much as my daughter does.  Looking forward to hearing from you!