Bake Sale

My crew team had our 3rd bake sale today so I spent a good amount of time in the kitchen yesterday. Chocolate chip cookies always seem to sell the best so I made a batch of my favorite recipe from David Lebovitz. Since I can't control myself and make just one thing, I also made blondies and white chocolate chip (macadamia nut) cookies. I have yet to try any of these recipes with more wholesome ingredients like whole wheat pastry flour, sucanat, or muscovado sugar (instead of brown sugar). One of these days I will get around to it but in the mean time I keep a shopping bag of the usual refined ingredients at home, specifically for our bake sales, because it's cheaper and the goal is to make the highest profit possible. I also leave out nuts for allergies as well as cost efficiency.

Both cookies are classic recipes that are always good to have in your repertoire and the blondies are nice for a something that's easy to whip up but not boring. I don't usually like blondies but these are my friend's recipe; She brought them to one of our races earlier in the year and they were delicious. She and I both made them with butterscotch and white chocolate chips but anything goes, nuts would be good. I recently discovered I like to bake in metric (or some haphazard mix of standard and metric). It's much more precise and I only dirty 2 measuring devices (my vintage spring scale from way before I was born and a liquid measuring cup) instead of a whole bunch of cup measures. If the recipe started off in standard and I converted it myself then I will post both measurements but some of my recipes were born in metric so I probably will not convert them to standard. A food scale is pretty inexpensive though and well worth it. You don't even need a digital one although it can't hurt. Click here for David Lebovitz's Chocolate Chip cookies and scroll for the other recipes...the white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are my favorite :).

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

You can omit the nuts as I did for today but they help retain some moisture which adds just enough chewiness. If you leave them out you will get a crisper cookie. I suspect white whole wheat flour would work here.

Makes about 3 dozen

• 170g (12 tbsp or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted & cooled until warm

• 200g (1c.) brown sugar
• 100g (1/2c.) granulated sugar

• 1 whole egg and 1 yolk (room temp)
• 
2 tsp vanilla extract

• 285g (2c.) plus 2 tbsp flour

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 150g (1c.)white chocolate chips
*
• 100g (3/4 c.) macadamia nuts, toasted and halved (If you leave these out then add another 100g of white chocolate)

1. Preheat oven to 325F.
2. 
Whisk dry ingredients together; set aside
3. Beat butter & sugars until fluffy
4. Beat in egg, yolk and vanilla until combined
5. Add dry ingredients slowly and beat at low speed just until combined
6. Stir in chips and nuts
7. Drop cookies by 1 tablespoons onto baking sheets
8. Bake, reversing position of the cookie sheet halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft & puffy, 12-15 minutes depending on size. Cool cookies on sheets until able to lift without breaking and place on wire rack to cool

Gracie's Blondies

You should have no problem using WW pastry flour here instead of white flour and sucanat or muscovado sugar instead of brown sugar. I also think it would be easy to replace the butter with oil here since are working with melted butter.

• 170g (12 tbsp or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter (room temp)
• 320g (1 1/2c.) light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temp)
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 330g (2 1/4c.) flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 100 g white chocolate chips*
• 50g butterscotch chips*

1. Preheat the oven to 350
2. Grease a 9 x13 pan. I use a glass pyrex, buttered and dusted with flour
3. Mix the melted butter with the brown sugar and let sit until cooled, about 10 minutes
4. Sift dry ingredients together and set aside
5. Beat in eggs and vanilla into butter and sugar
6. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet. Be carefull not to over mix.
7. Add the white chocolate and butterscotch and fill pan evenly
8. Bake about 25-35 minutes depending on your pan/oven (darker pan = shorter bake time)
9. Check the center with a cake tester before you remove it. If they are not cooked all the way through it will be hard to transfer from the pan.
10. Once they have cooled ENTIRELY (like an hour) flip the pan over onto a cooling rack. Make sure it is cooled top and bottom.
11. Transfer to a cutting board and cut into squares.

*For the sake of the bake sale I used Nestle but normally I like Ghirardelli or Sunspire. Unfortunately I haven't found a butterscotch chip without hydrogenated oil so until I do, I probably won't use butterscotch again