Chocolate Chip Cookies

As promised, I have an update from last weekend.  Although it was very hot, Andy and I had a fun couple of days.  Saturday we got to do two fun, touristy activities we had been waiting for an opportunity to do.  One of them was a riverboat cruise on the Vistula.

The other was the Hi-Flyer Balloon.  At a maximum height of 180 m, it gave great views of the city.  I thought it was even better than the views from Kościuszko Mound, because it was right in the center of the city instead of far out to one side.

Sunday's main goal was to make the chocolate chip cookies Andy had been planning since we arrived in Poland!  We finally had gathered all the ingredients, and it was time to use the vanilla extract which we had infusing in the cupboard these past few weeks. Sunday was hotter than Saturday, so although baking gave us something to do without going out into the heat, turning the oven on did not help the apartment's temperature. Oh well. It was worth it!

We made several batches, as we were leaving room for both error and extra taste-testing... Hey, we were working with metric and other strange measurement systems, so we had to make arrangements!  Have you ever measured butter in grams?  The first batch turned out more like cookie sludge, which looked disgusting, but oh, did it taste good!  (Imagine warmed, half-baked cookie dough. Yep, that's what I'm talking about!)  After that, we adjusted our amount of butter and flour and the rest turned out pretty nicely.  We had about 5 dozen in all.

Our vanilla extract was ready!

Sunday evening, we took some of the cookies to our friends to whose house we visited last summer.  They were delighted!  They said more than once that the cookies were better than last year's.  (Last year, we took them Subway cookies).  Of course homemade > Subway's.

The rest of the cookies (minus four for safe-keeping...) went to Andy's office on Monday, where they were promptly devoured.  Several people commented about how delicious they were, and one or two people wanted the recipe.  It is worthy to note once again that chocolate chip cookies don't really exist in Poland.  For many of Andy's coworkers, it was probably the first time they had had one.

As I'm now in my last week here in Poland, I only will have a few more opportunities to post.  I've started getting a little sad, but I'm also excited about our upcoming trip to Zakopane and time with our friends from the UK.