Mocha Chip Cookies

Mocha Chip Cookies
prep time: 00:10 cook time: 00:10 serves: 1 cost: $2.50 vegetarian
	Take out the widgets and you have the recipe on the back of the Nestle's bag. But we're still boycotting Nestles' because of the story that they were using drug-pusher tactics to sell formula to women in developing nations; although for all we know the situation was resolved satisfactorily in 1991. Anyway, Ghirardelli is the best brand, but there's no recipe on the back of the bag. But you have this recipe.
1 stick margarine 3/4 c brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 t vanilla 1 T instant coffee	Okay, let margarine soften ahead of time, and if you substitute butter, definitely let it soften. Cream butter and sugar together. At this and every stage, beat until it has a uniform paste texture. Beat in egg and vanilla. Double the vanilla if you like. Mix the coffee into a splatter of water, add to other mixture.
	If you don't have instant you can just brew a little, perhaps a cup, but very strong, and then compensate later by adding extra flour and getting the thickness right by eye. If you want chocolate chip instead of mocha chip leave out the coffee. If you're really hard core, you may like adding whole coffee beans.
1 1/8 c flour 1/2 t salt 1/2 t baking soda oatmeal (optional) 1/2 bag (6 oz) chocolate chips 3/4 cup pecans or other nuts (optional) orange or lemon peel (optional)	Slowly, so as not to get it all over the counter, beat in flour, adding the salt and baking soda with the last half-cup. By this time the dough is pretty tasty. Add a little oatmeal, perhaps 1/4 c; or leave it out, or substitute away up to half the flour in favor of oatmeal, and/or grind the oatmeal in your coffee grinder before adding it. If you're in a fruit mood, add orange or lemon peel. Examine the dough. Remember how thick it is. This will help you improvise later. It also helps on those nights when you sleepily make a double recipe but forget to double the flour. Add pecans, chopping them to the desired size either with a knife or with the electric mixer once they are in the dough. If the chips are bigger than you like, the mixer can take care of those too. If there's any remaining mixing to be done, do it by hand. Lots of nuts work: pecans are best, walnuts most traditional, cashews or hazelnuts good, pine nuts too subtle, white-chocolate-macadamia-nut a whole separate taste sensation (see recipe below). Raisins, currants, or dates work well here too, in place of or in addition to nuts. On hardness, etc: A strong control of how hard the cookies get once they cool overnight is what form of margarine you use. If you use butter, it's easy to end up with crunchy cookies. I avoid butter, because if I wanted crunchy cookies I would buy chips ahoy. You may feel differently. Substitute Crisco for margarine and feel certain that your cookies will be soft and chewy well into the 3rd millennium. (Well, even a very bad batch of cookies will be eaten by your housemates or family members within a couple of days; but if you could keep a Crisco cookie around until the year 2000, it would still be soft and chewy.) Bake cookies in 350Ą oven for about 10 minutes. Cook them just long enough to make the entire surface firm and they'll stay chewier longer. When brown appears they are beginning to crisp. The mocha makes the dough brown, so it's a little hard to tell when they done, but the parts that are not firm are reflective, you if you crane your head around you should be able to tell. Extra flour, oatmeal, or finely ground nuts (or less margarine) makes a higher, cakier cookie which seems to stay soft longer. Less flour etc. (or more margarine) makes a flat cookie. Jenny MacFie used to add extra flour and then chop walnuts very finely and add them. They acted more like flour than nuts, and stayed soft forever. Anything can be added to these cookies, and if you know how thick you want the dough to look, you can adjust with flour. Cookies can be resoftened in a microwave oven.