COOKIES!

 Thanks to my secret santa, I got an AWESOME cupcakes, cookies, and treats cookbook for Christmas! I've had some chocolate chips hiding in my cupboard for a couple of weeks now, and hubby has already sneaked out a few, so I knew if I didn't make some cookies soon, I wouldn't have any chocolate chips at all!
I decided to brake out my new dessert book and see what kind of chocolate chip cookie recipes it had. The one that sparked my interest was
"Chocolate Chip and Cinnamon Cookies"

I got out all my "normal" chocolate chip cookie ingredients, including brown sugar, vanilla, baking powder and baking soda (cause I can never remember which one I really need, and I hate making multiple trips from the baking cabinet to the table). Then I read the recipe:

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
2 tsp orange extract
2 cups AP flour
pinch of salt
heaping 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Cinnamon coating:
1 1/2 tbsp superfine sugar
1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon

Well.. alrighty then. I love trying new recipes, and that was the intended goal here, so on we went!

Preheat oven to 375F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg yolk and orange extract. Sift together the flour and salt into the mixture, add the chocolate chips, and stir until thoroughly combined.
To make the cinnamon coating, mix the sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl. Scoop out tablespoons of the cookie dough, roll them into balls, then roll them in the cinnamon mixture to coat. Place them on the baking sheets, spaced well apart.
Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool on the baking sheets for 5-10 minutes, then transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool compeltely.

Sounds pretty easy.
I DID change the 'orange extract' to 'vanilla extract' cause I'm not a super huge fan of oranges to begin with, the thought of mixing orange with chocolate repulses me, and I didn't have any orange extract.
I also did not have 'superfine sugar'. My choices were normal sugar, brown sugar, or confectioners sugar. I went with normal sugar.
And lastly, I didn't measure my cinnamon sugar mixture. I just shook a little of each into a bowl til they looked about the same amount. I think I wound up with a little extra cinnamon, but I'm OK with that.

You know, I consider myself a decent baker. I enjoy it, and I've only got 1 superb failure under my belt. Everything else I've ever made has turned out good- even if it doesn't LOOK perfect, it tastes delish! Having said that, I've NEVER used 'parchment paper' for baking. To be completely honest, I've never used parchment paper at all! I've used WAX paper- which I had assumed was the same, and for MOST purposes, I suppose it still is. Purposes such as rolling out sticky dough, for instance... but apparently not baking. I lined my cookie sheet with the wax paper (I do have a few cookie sheets, I just only ever use one at a time because when I've double sheeted in my oven, one of the two items never gets done all the way, since they don't fit side by side on one rack).

My eldest son helped me roll the dough into balls and roll them in the cinnamon sugar. My other 3 had already been sent to bed for various reasons, so he was the only one who got to help this time. Lucky him- he got both beaters!!
I put that sheet in the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes, and in 5 my entire kitchen, dining area, and living room were FULL of smoke. It appeared the smoke was coming off of the cookies themselves, so my first thought was that it was the cinnamon. So I turned fans on and opened the door (despite the 20F temperature outside) and let them finish baking, watching closely for the first sign of flame.

When the timer dinged and there was no fire, I pulled the smoky, barely flattened balls out of the oven.
There comes a time in all baker's lives when they try an unknown recipe, and are unsure whether they've completely ruined a recipe, or just expected something different. This was one of those times.

A 'standard' chocolate chip cookie can be either rolled into a ball, or dropped in a mound on a cookie sheet, and after baking will come out flat. These cookies did not flatten out. Therefore did not look like the photo in the cookbook. Therefore the baker's moment of panic set in. "What have I done wrong?"
In my state of panic, I forgot the part of the instructions where it says "let cool on the baking sheets for 5-10 minutes before transferring to the wire rack" and I began peeling them off the wax paper. Obviously the cooling period is an important step, because they pretty much collapsed and crumbled in my hand as I slid the spatula beneath them and held the tops of them with my other hand. This, of course, led to even MORE panic.

I placed this batch on the wire rack and removed the wax paper from the sheet to transfer IT to the garbage.
The second batch I put directly on the cookie sheet. After all, even if the first batch had failed, I have 4 children and a husband that are the closest thing to garbage disposals you can get. They'll eat just about anything, especially if it has sugar and chocolate in it! So there was no way I was wasting the rest of that dough!

When I baked the second batch, there was minimal smoke, but it was still there. I'm not 100% sure, at this point, if it was indeed the cinnamon smoking, or if, perhaps, there was something ON my cookie sheet that I couldn't see when I cleaned it, which was now baking into the sheet. Just what I love- stains on my cookie sheet :-/

Nevertheless, the second batch came out pretty much the same as the first batch. And had my son not made dime sized balls, we probably would have used up all the dough on that round. But, his little, tiny cookie balls allowed for a third, small batch. Unfortunately either I left them in the oven too long, for their miniature size, or the parchment paper really would have made a difference, because the bottoms of the third batch burned a bit. Certainly still edible, but not very pretty.

The cookies were wonderful! A delicious alternative to the standard chocolate chip cookie. They were very sweet, thanks to the cinnamon sugar coating, but I've found that even the standard C.C.C.'s are extremely sweet for my taste. I believe the cinnamon added to the sugary coating, which was very nice, and the 'not so flat' cookies were very fluffy, soft, and delicious. Not cakey, by any means, just not hard like a cold C.C.C. can sometimes be.

Perhaps next time I go to the store I'll review the 'parchment' paper and try it out. :)