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Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe For Soft and Chewy Homemade Cookies

Everyone has a favorite type of chocolate chip cookie.  If yours is soft and chewy – like the kind you find in a bakery – this recipe is for you!

We’ve tried a lot of different chocolate chip cookie recipes here and this is one of our favorites.  There’s only one problem; it’s hard to keep the cookie jar full for more than a day or so when these are in there because everyone just loves them.

Check them out for yourself today and let us know what you think.  And, if you have another favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, share it with all of us so we can go have a taste test!

BIG, Soft, and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Recipe Type: Dessert
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 45 mins
Serves: 16
Ingredients
  • 3/4 C butter melted
  • 1 C brown sugar
  • 1/2 C white sugar
  • 1 T vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 C flour
  • 1/2 t baking soda
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 2 C semi sweet chocolate chips
  • Unbleached parchment paper for cookie sheets
Instructions
  1. Preheat your oven to 325 F (165 C)
  2. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper
  3. Melt butter
  4. Cream melted butter, sugar, brown sugar together in a large bowl
  5. Add vanilla, egg, and egg yolk
  6. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt together
  7. Add flour mixture to the rest of the ingredients and mix until well blended
  8. Add chocolate chips
  9. Drop dough by 1/4 C onto the prepared cookie sheets about 2-3 in apart
  10. Bake 12-15 min – the softer you like your cookies the less you should bake them.
  11. Let set on the cookie sheet a few minutes, then move to a wire rack to cool

 

Fruit – A Natural Choice for Dinner?

I had a flashback of being at a friend’s house, long before I had children of my own, and helping prepare a meal for their child. I picked up some kind of fruit and began to add it to the plate and the mom in charge said, “Oh no, if I give her that, she won’t eat the rest of her dinner”. At the time, I remember looking down at the plate which consisted of fairly healthy items and, probably out of the desire to not rock the boat and for my own lack of opinion on kid’s eating habits, I went along with the plan.

Now that I have children of my own, I have had to revisit this situation on more than one occasion with my life partner in love. There appears to be some kind of stigma in the world against serving raw unpackaged fruit for or with a child’s dinner. Some unspoken tradition passed down for generations that says a child must first eat his more processed, less raw products before reaping the benefits of some whole foods. It’s very confusing for me.

fruit for dinnerI look at the plate, which we generally try to fill with quality food, but most of which has been prepared in some fashion and has diminished nutritional value compared to its whole food counterparts, and I feel good about having some fresh raw, unpackaged fruit included. My life partner in love looks at the same plate and expresses concerns that the fruit will get eaten and not the other food and it is here that our discussion takes a turn towards debate. I chime in with the nutritional value of the fruit being far superior than anything else on the plate. Fruit provides fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and is an excellent tool for detoxification. The reply is often that they need more calories than that fruit will provide. Touché.

My thoughts are that children are very instinctual when it comes to eating. Even if they are full from the fruit on their plate, their bodies will tell them to eat more because it has not yet gotten the fuel it needs. Actually that needs corrected because I did come to an epiphany recently that there are kids who eat because they love food and there are kids that eat simply to live. My one daughter eats because she LOVES food and will continue to eat because it tastes so good. My other, not so much love involved but understands she needs food to survive and stops eating when she feels full. In either case though, they are free to make the decision about when they are full and how much and which items they want to eat from their plates; fruit included.

Does a line need to be drawn and should the fruit be saved for desert? I have actually found that when you dice fresh fruit and add it to the plate with all the other helpings and make fruit regularly available at all meals, there isn’t a rush to eat it all at once. Sure it’s the first thing they go for, but it generally is not the only thing they eat. We do the same with fresh raw vegetables, but for some reason they are not questioned as much as fruits even though the benefits of both raw foods are fairly equal.

Ultimately when deciding if fruit is the right choice for your dinner plate, you should consider the eating habits of your own children. There are plenty of people who suffer from digestion issues and fruit can trigger these effects. This may be true for your child. Obviously, children with diabetes have different fruit for dinner considerations as well. However, if your child has no real issues with combining fruit with other foods, then let the fruit fly raw and free on the dinner plate, lunch plate and anytime in between.

Enhance Your Natural Home With House Plants

Looking for a way to bring that extra something to your home or office?  Try adding an indoor plant to your space.  They have a LOT to offer a natural home!

House plants offer proven benefits for your overall health and wellness including –

Improving Air Quality

Reducing Stress

Providing A Natural Feel or Ambiance

Increasing Feelings of Well Being and Happiness

House plants can also be a fun way to involve kids in the care of the natural family home.  They offer them a bit of responsibility, but not too much, while at the same time allowing children to experience the always miraculous event of watching something grow.

Not only do house plants have all of these benefits for us though; they’re affordable too!  You can find them pretty small for a dollar or two and enjoy the rewards of watching the plant grow, even if it is kind of slow.  Or, look for larger plants at yard sales and moving sales.   Last year when we were on the lookout for a few more large indoor plants to add to our new, much sunnier home we found some at a moving sale for free in fact!

house plant cuttings in a windowMany house plants make their own babies too like spider plants for example.  Others are pretty easy to re grow from cuttings like Jade Plants and Pothos.  Either way growing new plants this way can be another option to help make adding plants to your natural home affordable.

All you need to do to begin growing a new plant from the ones you already have is just take the tiny plant or the cutting, gently remove a few leaves from the bottom if necessary,  and put it in a jar of water in a sunny window.  Before you know it there will be roots coming out of the cutting and you’ll be able to plant your new plant into its pot of soil.

It can be fun to start or add to your collection of plants by asking your friends for cuttings of theirs too.  Much like separating plantings for sharing with fellow gardeners, sharing house plant cuttings is fun and makes the resulting plants even more meaningful.

Now, I know many will read this and say “I don’t have a green thumb – I can’t grow house plants” but there are some indoor plants, like Pothos and Spiders, that are so easy to grow.  You just need to be sure not to over water them.  Check the moisture level of the soil each time by hand and water only when its dry.  House plants are very forgiving and worth a shot even for those with the blackest of thumbs.

If you need affordable pots for your houseplants, check thrift stores, yard sales, and post on freecycle.org; never know what treasures you might find!  You can also reuse items from around the house like coffee cans or old tea cups.  Make plain pots more lively with paint, glitter, stickers, etc.  Chalkboard paint can be a neat addition to plant pots too.

House plants offer so much to a natural home and can bring many years of enjoyment with just a bit of your love and care.  Bring some plants into your home or office today and see what a difference they can make naturally.