I have struggled with this concept since the day I moved here. Having come from nearly sea level Indiana, I never had to do anything but follow directions on recipes for baked goods. Here, you have to search the box/recipe for the tiny fine print that tells you that if you don't add extra flour and omit some oil, you might as well throw your batter out the window.
I can't count the number of times I've had sad-looking, flat-as-pancake chocolate chip cookies. Of course, I ate them anyway. I'm no respecter of cookies. They are still delicious, they just don't make you go "ooohhhhh" when you bite into them. You kind of have to roll them up in a ball to even get anything to chew on. I always forget to read the high-altitude instructions on things. When we first got married, if I bought cake mix I would always highlight the high-altitude instructions, circle them, draw stars by them so that I wouldn't forget and have a floppy cake. I got out of that habit somehow, and I always realize that I forgot to follow them after I put my pan in the oven. It's really hard. (First-world problems, here.)
If you want to bake some fabulous cookies here, you can't just Google your way to chocolate chip perfection. Martha Stewart's best-ever fabulous chocolate chunk walnut delights? NOPE. Recipe with over 1 million pins on Pinterest? NOPE. Unless you have memorized the amounts of flour you need to make cookies in the mountains, you can't rely on even the best internet recipes. (Why do all of the good bakers live at sea level, anyway?)
Today I told Tony I would bake him some cookies for his big hike tomorrow. He's doing his annual Lone Peak adventure with his sister and high-calorie treats are a necessity when you're hiking for 12 hours. I looked on Pinterest before I realized it was pointless. Finally I searched for high altitude chocolate chip cookies, experimented a little, and I made it happen.
Let me introduce you to the fluffiest, chewiest, sexiest chocolate chip cookies on this side of the Mississippi:
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| Poor photo quality brought to you by my iPad |
They look like bakery cookies, don't they?! I figured it out! They are thick and chewy with the slightest bit of crunch on the edges. Ahhh....
You wanna know the recipe, dontcha? I'll post it for my fellow high-altitude bakers.
- 1 cup butter or margarine
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup semisweet chunks (I just chopped up a Ghiradelli bar)
- 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a skillet on the stove top roast whole walnuts over medium heat. You know they're done when you start to smell them. Remove from heat onto cutting board and let them cool. Once cooled, chop. I like my walnut pieces kind of small, but chop them to whatever size you like.
- In a large bowl, stir together the butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Mix in eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the batter just until blended, then mix in the chocolate chips and walnuts so they are evenly distributed.
- Drop cookies by spoonfuls onto un-greased cookie sheets. Bake in the preheated oven until the edges begin to turn golden, 12 to 15 minutes (in my oven it's more like 10-13, so just go with whatever time your oven takes). Allow cookies to cool for a minute or two on the baking sheets before removing to wire racks to cool completely. This allows them to firm up so you don't have any "cookie casualties."
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