Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Cookies

{While we're busy drowning amidst never ending stacks of boxes and watching our kitties frolic in their new garden, meals are pretty much grab-what-you-can and take-out affairs, which have left a big gaping hole here on the blog. Collective sigh. Luckily for me, some awesome twitter people have taken pity on me stepped up to the challenge to bring you some reading fodder in my absence. Don't worry, you're in very good hands!

My first guest poster is fellow crazy cat-lady the lovely Mindy from A Balanced Kitchen. She lives in Canada with her boyfriend and three cats and she is very interested in the effect of food on our health and general well-being. Sounds like a sensible lady, right? A fellow Daring Cook, Mindy also participates in the Daring Bakers category, so with her baking prowess, I'm pretty sure these cookies will be beautifully crunchy and chocolate-y - just what you want from a choc-chip cookie. So make two batches and send me one, would you? Over to Mindy - take it away!}

I’m honoured to be guest posting for The Creative Pot while Marisa and TheHusband settle into their new home.  I have no doubt said home will soon be buzzing away with delectable cookery smells, banging of pots and pans, and mad kitties dashing from one room to another, and I look forward to seeing the deliciousness to come.

I strive to fill my blog, A Balanced Kitchen, with some deliciousness myself.  The weather in Canada is turning crisper as Fall sets in.  While some comfort themselves with chilli, hearty soups, or casseroles, I turn to baking cookies, longing for the sweet homey smells wafting from the oven and the contented sighs as we linger over cookies and milk.

I grew up with these Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Cookies.  My mother would put platters of them on the kitchen counter, and my five siblings and I would eagerly grab fistfuls and devote our full attention to their consumption.  My dad would of course join in; no one can resist these.  We’d share stories of our days at school, the older children reaching up to hand the younger ones more treats.

These cookies encourage family time.  They gather loved ones together and are best enjoyed with a glass of milk.  But I urge you to make them even if they’re just for you; living in a different city than my family means I can’t enjoy my mother’s baking as often, so believe me, I hoard these.

Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Cookies

1 ⅓ cups butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
2 ¾ cups flour
⅔ cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
¼ cup milk (2% or whole)
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Grease cookie sheets and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter until fluffy, then cream in sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. In a medium bowl, stir together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking soda).
4. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the butter mixture 1/3 at a time, alternating with the milk (i.e. mix in 1/3 of the dry ingredients, 1/8 cup milk, 1/3 dry ingredients, 1/8 cup milk, 1/3 dry ingredients, mixing after each addition to blend). 
5. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Drop by spoonful onto greased cookie sheets. Bake 8 - 10 minutes.

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