To the followers – Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Cinnamon/Almond twist

How curious: when I started this humble blog, I thought it would be a place where my costumers could see some photos of my work.  Next, I was writing about my life and thoughts, both in Portuguese and ENGLISH (what was I thinking). Oddly, a few readers started to live comments. Then I replied to the comments, and started a dialog with these people I’ve never met – real friends I miss when I’m not online. Not mentioning the crazy lady who hates me and leaves insulting comments every new post. Gotta love her. Everything very surprising to me.

And then, Twitter came into my life. You must have heard of it by now, right?  It’s that place where your name starts with a @ (I’m @thecookieshop there), people follow you, you follow people, and everybody thinks out loud in 140 characters.  Sometimes someone pays attention to something you say and reply or repeat to others with the letters RT in front of the sentence. I’m still trying to figure it out, though.

The thing became so popular, real celebrities are thinking out loud there. Ya know, Demi Moore’s family and stuff. What you don’t know is that the anchorman of the most famous newscast program in Brazil is on Twitter, and he asks his followers to choose the tie he’ll wear on TV everyday. Yes: he posts a twitpic of three different ties and the followers choose #1 #2 or #3.  Surreal? I think so.

If he can do it, why can’t I? So I asked my followers if they’d like a cake or a cookie recipe for this post, and they chose cookie, so cookie it is. I feel obliged to make one thing clear, though: if you want to follow me, that’s fine, but I have no idea where I’m going, ok?

Dorie Greenspan’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours) – makes 45 to 50

I have this book for a long time, made a bunch of the recipes, but had never tried the choc chip cookies yet. They are really, really delicious, thin, crisp on the edges and chewy in the middle, just perfect in texture. My twist was spice them up a bit with cinnamon instead of vanilla, and almonds substituting the walnuts, which I think worked pretty well, and made the whole thing kind of a chic cookie. These are best eaten the day they are made, and bestest still warm from the oven.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup/ 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp.
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (or 2 tsp ground cinnamon)
• 12 oz./340g chopped dark chocolate/ chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I used almonds)

Preheat oven to 375° F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a small bowl. With the electric mixer, beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well (1 or 2 minutes) after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture, in three additions, only until smooth. Stir in the chopped chocolate and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 1 minute; carefully remove with a spatula to wire racks to cool completely.