I’ve been wanting to make chocolate chip cookies for several days, but the butter just wouldn’t soften! (I don’t like to microwave my butter to soften it, as it usually melts some and then the cookie dough isn’t the right consistency.) After four days, it was finally to a reasonable mush-level . . . then I realized that the brown sugar had gotten left in the car, which Michael had at work.

Nothing, however, was going to stop me from making cookies. So I went on a search for brown sugar-less cookies and found these. They looked sooo tasty, and I had all the ingredients on-hand. Or so I thought.

Apparently we used the last of the baking soda (along with the last of the vinegar), while unclogging sinks recently. Which meant I didn’t have the proper leavening.

Not one to give up easily, especially when I already have half the ingredients mixed together, I decided to try a substitution. I know, I know, there isn’t a substitute for baking soda. But I went ahead and added more baking powder and figured it was worth a try. If it didn’t work, the worst that would happen would be flat cookies.

But it wasn’t a failure! The baking powder worked! Actually, when Michael came home, after he came back from Cloud 9 when he tasted the first one, he asked how I made the cookies so fluffy. Success!

I made the cookies 4 different ways – with m&m’s, with white chocolate chips, with miniature chocolate chips, and plain. The ones with white chocolate chips look the prettiest, but our favorite is the miniature chocolate chip version. I also want to try them with chopped bits of Andes mints. Mmmmm. That sounds delicious.

The original recipe can be found here, but I made a couple of very small tweaks to my batter and cooking time to come up with this:

Double Chocolate Cookies

• 1 C. soft butter (not melted)
• 1 1/2 C. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 tsp. vanilla
• 2 C. flour
• 2/3 C. cocoa
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• mix-ins, as desired

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Beat together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla till creamy.

Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Gradually stir into the butter mixture.

Mix in the chocolate chips, candies, nuts, etc.

Shape into 1″ balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

Let the cookies sit on the cookie sheet for a minute after removing them from the oven, then let them finish cooling on a wire rack.

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