Essay #4: How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

           I have liked baking ever since I was a little girl. Not in a career sense, or even a serious hobby sense. I just like to cook food when I'm hungry. I can't cook a lot, and I can't cook anything fancy. I can cook some pasta dishes, pies, cakes, and cookies, I'm really good at making cookies. My favorite type of cookie to make is chocolate chip. There's a certain way you have to make the cookies, that makes them taste the best.
           Step one, start mixing the sugars, butter, vanilla, and eggs together with a wooden spoon. After a few minutes finish mixing them with your hands, but make sure to wash your hands first. Once that is all mixed together add the flour, baking soda and salt. Once again mix with a wooden spoon, and finish with your hands. Pinch off a tiny piece of dough, the size of your finger tip, and squish it between your fingers, if you vaguely feel the crunch of the sugar and salt then you can stop mixing. If you can't mix everything together with your hands and the spoon, then use a beater on medium.
          Step two, adding the chocolate chips, preferably Hershey's chocolate chips. A 12oz bag should be emptied into the cookie dough. Then use the wooden spoon to mix the chocolate chips in with the dough. Don't use your hands because the heat of your skin, mixed with the heat from the fiction will cause the chocolate chips to start to melt. Mix the chips in with the dough with the wooden spoon, (I can't stress that enough), for about 5 minutes. You should be able to look at the mixture and see no chip-free spaces.
            Step three, placing and baking. Use a small dinner spoon to make the perfect sized cookies. Scoop up enough dough onto the spoon to cover it, but not too much that it's more than a few centimeters high off the spoon. Place the lumps of dough about a half inch away from each other on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with a light layer of cookie oil. The oven should be preheated to between 350 and 400 degrees. Place the cookie sheet or sheets onto the middle rack in the oven. Check the cookies after about 15 minutes, stick a tooth pick in the middle of a cookie that is in the middle of the cookie sheet. If the tooth pick goes in easily and pulls out clean, the cookies are done. If the tooth pick comes out with anything other than just melted chocolate then leave the cookies in the oven and check them every 5 minutes until the tooth pick comes out clean.
            Now that the cookies are done you can enjoy soft chocolate cookies that aren't burnt on the bottom, but aren't still raw and gooey in the center. If you happen to have any pecans, walnuts, or anything like that, you can mix those into the recipe as well. Just be sure that you only use 6oz of chocolate chips and 6oz of whatever nuts you put in. Or, if you don't happen to have any chocolate chip, and you're too lazy to go and buy some, but happen to have either peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, or m&m's, you can substitute those for the chocolate chips. Or if you can't eat chocolate, or aren't in the mood for it, the butterscotch chips taste the best.