Chocolate chip cookies for the best husband on earth

In keeping with the traditional Sugar High Friday theme, I have decided to start my first public baking attempt with chocolate chip cookies. Just kept the first batch in the oven and already I feel something is going wrong. Stupid me, I just had 8T of butter and started to make a recipe that calls for 12T. How organized is that? I substituted 4T of crisco for the rest of the butter since so many recipes seem to call for shortening. I have had numerous interruptions from my 11mo old daughter. The batch is browning too quickly and spreading too much. I will keep you posted on where this goes- into our stomachs or er.. into our stomachs? We set ourselves mediocre standards in this house when I am baking something. My most disliked choco chip is keebler and hope this does not turn out worse given the fact that it is a Bakers dozen recipe.

I really wanted to make something from one of Alice Medrich's books but due to S's sacrilegious dislike for chocolaty stuff, this is the compromise I am making since he likes chippers. My line of reasoning goes like this- if 1 stick of butter goes into a cake, gluttons that we are, it will be in our body in 2 days. However, it will take us at least 4-5 days to finish off these cookies and so we will be distributing our fat (and sugar) intake over this period, which is a good thing. Hope I don't screw this by baking something else or buying commercial shit.

Update: The cookies tasted nice (show me a chipper that doesn't, except Keebler). They spread too much and were a thin, lacy but chewy cookies with the chips showing through, if that makes any sense. It is definitely not what the recipe claims. I used Ghiradelli chips and added a 1/4 cup more than what the recipe says. With so many substitutions and mistakes, it may not be the recipe's fault. Surely if you expect a forgiving recipe, this is not one. But the end product, however bad in texture and shape, will taste good. I might give this recipe a go again with the right ingredients and see the difference. The cookies, I felt, were a little too sweet and also slightly greasy may be due to the crisco. The more I chilled the dough, the more it spread. Maybe the chunks of butter that I could see in the dough played a role in this. Here is a link: http://www.recipezaar.com/70294