Rum Cookies
/I am of the firm belief that you can never have too many chocolate chip cookie recipes. Like shoes, you need a different one for every occasion. This cookie, my friends, is the little black dress of cookies. The OG chocolate chip cookie, if you will. Easy to mix up, requires no dough chilling, hits the perfect spot on the chewiness scale, simple and classic, with a little twist. This is the Rum Cookie.
I think this is the first recipe that I ever baked from scratch. When I first started baking in middle/early high school, most of my creations originated from a box—a ghiradelli double chocolate brownie box, to be exact. Sure, sometimes I would use butter instead of oil or milk instead of water and feel like a genuine iron chef, but there was little baking taking place. Until I started making these rum cookies. My cousin and I discovered them one summer and I think we made them every day of vacation that year and they have become somewhat of a family reunion staple.
Like most cookies, these babies are made by creaming together butter and sugar, but only brown sugar is used in this recipe, which adds chewiness as well as that lovely molasses flavor). A lot of times a recipe will tell you to cream until “light and fluffy”…an extra descriptive term used in the baking industry, but it is important to pay attention to the ratios of butter to sugar so that you don’t over cream and cause your cookies to spread. If there is more butter than sugar, than you probably will get that light and fluffy texture so often desired, but if the recipe calls for more sugar than butter, your creamed mixture is going to look more like wet sand and that’s okay.
After your butter and sugar is creamed, you add your eggs one at a time, and then vanilla and the rum. There is not much rum in this recipe (only 2 tablespoons) and you can choose not to add it if you prefer, but it gives the cookies a little extra depth of flavor and adds a nice twist to the classic. Finally, you gradually add your flour and then stir in your chocolate chips. The original recipe called for these cookies to be scooped using a 1/4 cup measure, and I have vivid memories of filling a quarter cup measuring cup and whacking it against the cookie sheet to release these perfectly round pucks of cookie dough. Nowadays, I just use an ice cream scoop. The cookies are baked at a lower temperature (325) for about 12-15 minutes, and thwacked against the counter top immediately after they come out of the oven. Make sure not to overbake these cookies. They will look slightly under done when you take them out of the oven, but let them cool on the pan for a few minutes and carryover cooking will ensure that they end up perfectly baked.
I’ve tried many a chocolate chip cookie, but these are still hanging on to their top spot—whip up a batch and you will see why. ;)
Rum Cookies
Yield: 18-20 large cookies
Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
I cup (2 sticks) butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
2 tbsp dark rum
1 tsp vanilla
12 oz chocolate chips
Procedure:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a medium bowl, toss together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter for about 30 seconds, until smooth. Add brown sugar and cream until light and fluffy.
To your butter/sugar mixture, add eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition. Then add vanilla and rum and mix until combined.
Gradually add in dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
Using a large cookie or ice cream scoop, drop mounds of cookie dough about 2” apart on a lined cookie sheet.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown. Immediately when you remove the cookies from the oven, tap the baking sheet on the counter a couple of times and then let cookies cool on pan.
*A note on measuring flour: Most home baking recipes call for flour to be measured in cups, rather than to be weighed. There is a proper way to measure flour when using a cup measurement, and it is important to measure correctly or you will end up with too much flour and a sad, dry cookie. No one wants sad, dry cookies. When measuring flour, do NOT scoop the measuring cup into a canister or bag. Instead, spoon flour into the measuring cup little by little, so that air is accounted for and the flour is not packed into the measuring cup. And always level your flour with a knife before adding to your recipe. :)
