Chocolate chip cookie is all-American treat

NEW YORK -- There was nothing quite like plunging a warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie into a big glass of milk after school, or before bedtime, or any time you could get your hands on one.

Now that you're grown up -- well, old enough to bake cookies for your own children -- you've been trying to replicate the experience.

You can make chocolate chip cookies with nuts, rolled oats, bran, raisins or peanut butter. If you're adventurous enough, you can even have them with zucchini.

The cookies can be made crispy or soft and chewy, or a combination of both. Commercial brands crowd supermarket shelves with a style for everyone.

In the 1930s, when Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass., replaced baker's chocolate with chunks of a Nestle's chocolate bar in her recipe for Butter Drop Do cookies she never expected the chocolate to retain its shape as soft morsels. She expected it to melt in. Her accidental invention became popular with the inn's guests.

Soon after, when Wakefield and her husband made a deal with Andrew Nestle to print the recipe for her cookies on the back of his candy bar (the chips didn't arrive until 1939), Toll House Cookies quickly captured the hearts of dessert lovers.

All chocolate chip cookies are a derivation of Wakefield's recipe. No matter what is added or adjusted, the basic ingredients always include flour, eggs, sugar, a leavener, fat (usually butter) and, of course, chocolate chips.

The slightest manipulation of these ingredients, without adding extras, is enough to create a different cookie each time.

Boyle's recipe for Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies shows how you can give the cookie an exciting new flavor with only minimal additions.

"The sour cream imparts a moist texture and subtle tang," she writes in her book, "and its flavor is nicely complemented by all the raisins, nuts and chocolate." Her cookie is crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 cup raisins

1 cup coarsely chopped toasted walnuts

12 ounces bittersweet bar chocolate, chopped into 1/4-inch or smaller pieces

Position two racks near the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugars and vanilla extract at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the sour cream, mixing until blended. At low speed, add the dry ingredients, mixing just until combined. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the raisins, nuts and chopped chocolate.

Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing the cookies 2 inches apart. Bake two sheets at a time, 12 to 15 minutes, until golden brown. Switch positions of the sheets halfway through baking so that the cookies brown evenly. Transfer the cookies to wire racks and cool completely.

Makes about 58 cookies.

(Recipe from "The Good Cookie," John Wiley & Sons, 2002, $34.95)

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On the Net:

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