Cooking Hack: Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you haven't noticed yet, I have a large sweet tooth.  So far there's about 3 or 4 recipes on the blog and only one is a proper meal.  Tee hee.

Image from verybestbaking.com

Amongst my favorite of all sweets is the classic chocolate chip cookie.  For years I followed various recipes always to find flat cookies that were either too crunchy on the bottom (large stiffness) or too flimsy to stay in one piece (large bending moment).  But for soft cookies, the only solution was to make the cookie taller (which would increase the moment of inertia).  The secret that took me years to discover?

Lard.

Yep, good ol' pig fat. Lovely, isn't it? (Is butter much better though?)

Substitute an equal amount of butter for lard, no matter the recipe. I like to use the Nestle Toll House one printed on the back of the chocolate chip bags.

If you don't eat animal products, shortening made from vegetable fat is also an option.

Conclusion: cookies would make terrible structural elements.