Halfway Cookies

We could be better at the blogging, but it was the end of the semester and then recovering from the end of the semester, right? I've mainly been eating a lot of apples, raw, and squash, roasted. It doesn't make for the most interesting posts. But wait, just you wait, until I post what I'm making for Christmas dinner—one of the things we're waiting for me is to decide.

One of the things that forced me to make something that wasn't a cut-up apple or roasted squash was a cookie exchange that I went to in the beginning of December. There were a lot of things to consider: I wanted a cookie that was special in the face of tons of other cookies, but didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. And the speculaas recipe I made didn't make quite as many cookies as I thought it would. And I had seen this thing around:

You like that? It's a pretty indecisive cookie, wanting all the classicness of a chocolate chip cookie but with the flash and bling of a layered something. You separate the eggs and the yolks go in the bottom while the whites go on top and the end result is a kind of a deconstructed chocolate chip cookie: all the butteryness of a cookie, then a chocolate chip layer (which could stand to melt a touch more), and then the fluffy goo of sugary egg whites. Or, it might just be twice as much work to make a cookie that tastes like a chocolate chip cookie but feels different in your mouth.

Halfway Cookies
adapted from various interweb sites

2 c. white flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. butter, at room temperature
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. + 3/4 c. brown sugar (one part goes to the yolks, the other to the whites)
2 eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 tbsp. water
1 tsp vanilla
12 oz. chocolate chips

Set your oven to 350º. Grease one of those 9" x 11" baking pans.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and 1/2 c. brown sugar until it's fluffy. Then add the yolks, water, and vanilla and mix until smooth. Now add the flour and mix until it's fully incorporated.

Spread this bottom mixture into the pan, make it flat. Then sprinkle the chocolate chips on top, pressing them slightly into the dough.

Now for the whites: in a clean, dry bowl, beat then with the 3/4 c. brown sugar until soft peaks form. Spread this on top of the dough/chocolate mixture.

Some recipes will tell you to spread WAX paper on top. What they mean to say, however, is use wax paper if you would like your house to smell like burned wax paper. If that's what you like, I'm not going to judge, but I suggest using parchment paper. Just lay a piece on top of the whole deal and this will sort of flatten out the whites and, more importantly, keep them from burning.

Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven, peel off the paper, and you'll get this:

So unassuming from the outside. At first, I thought this was too sweet from me—which, maybe it was, and I've reduced the sugar slightly here. But I was a little sad that I gave away my own cookie from my own cookie exchange bag, especially since I gave it to my friend Chloe who had the exact same cookie in her bag. And a little sad that I promised the leftovers to my sick friend Tim, who could not make it to the cookie exchange. It turns out, though, that Tim's illness survived longer in his body than his cookies did in my house...sorry, Tim! I don't think you read my blog anyway and hopefully your handsome partner won't tell you this story!