Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

I had a jar of applesauce that I needed to use up, so I specifically looked online for a cookie recipe that called for a lot of it. I found this recipe on "The Cookie Rookie" website that called for a whole cup of applesauce, so that's the one I went with.

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup cinnamon applesauce
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup good quality milk chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup good quality semi-sweet chocolate chips

Direction

1. Preheat oven to 375° F.
2. Line a baking sheet with a pre-cut Reynolds Cookie Baking Sheet. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream together the room temperature butter with the sugar. Beat until smooth and fluffy.
4. Pour in the applesauce and continue to beat until fully mixed.
5. Add in the baking soda, salt, vanilla extract, and 1 cup of the flour. Place the mixer on a lower setting and beat until combined. Add in the remaining cup flour and beat until just mixed. Do not over-mix the dough.
6. Use a spoon or spatula to mix in the chocolate chips.
7. Use a small ice cream scoop (~1 inch scoop) to drop the cookies onto the baking sheet, about 1-2 inches apart.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the cookies are just golden brown and cooked through. (Be sure not to over cook!)
9. Repeat with the remaining dough.
10. **Blogger tip: to make the cookies picture perfect, add a few extra chocolate chips to the top right after removing from the oven. Pretty!

I ran into a few problems with this recipe from the get-go, but I think I made it work. My butter was frozen, so I ended up microwaving it to warm it up. But I melted half of it, so the batter was probably wetter than it should be. I also did not have the special baking sheet, so I sprayed the cookie sheets with PAM to prevent the dough from sticking to the pans. AND I forgot to preheat the oven (speaking of rookie...), so it took a little longer for me to actually get the dough in the oven.

And as usual, I didn't follow the rest of the recipe to a T. I used plain, natural applesauce from Trader Joe's, as well as regular quality (?) chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and mint chocolate chips (1 cup total, since I don't like too many chips in my cookies). And as you can see from the photo above, I did not use her blogger tip. I don't bake for the photo: I bake for the taste! You can see they are a little dark (I think I baked them just a minute too long), but just the edges were overdone.

In the end the cookies turned out great! They were quite big (I made them bigger than the recipe says; I don't have the fancy ice cream scoop), but they were soft and fluffy. Definitely a recipe worth keeping!