Chocolate Chips

Chocolate chips are the whole reason for the cookie! Today there are so many varieties on the baking aisle, choosing one can be tricky. The chocolate chip cookie is really nothing more than a concept. You can take this concept and alter it anyway you like using a basic dough recipe and add whatever baking pieces you like.

• Semi-Sweet: made with low sugar and having a slightly bitter taste, this chocolate was put into the very first chocolate chip cookie. The semi-sweetness of the chocolate adds nice contrast to the remaining very sweet ingredients in the cookie.
  
  
• Bitter Sweet: with even less sugar than the semi-sweet, this chip is for chocolate purists. Packed with antioxidants and a bitter chocolate taste, these chips may actually help prevent heart disease. Too bad we can’t say that about the rest of the cookie.
  
  
• Milk Chocolate: the chocolate that most people think of when the very name is even brought up. They are velvety smooth made with the highest sugar content and whole milk. Sometimes this chip is thought to make the chocolate chip cookie too sweet, but that does not deter millions of chocolate chip cookie lovers.
  
  
• Dark Chocolate: another chocolate on a purist's list, it has slightly less sugar than semi-sweet, but more than bittersweet chocolate. When melted with butter, it is often used as a base in making a chocolate batter or dough.
  
  
• Extra Dark Chocolate: hovering somewhere between bittersweet and dark this low sugar chocolate can be found in bars or chips on your baking aisle. Chopping it up for your chocolate chip cookie would dress it up with rich dark chunks.
  


• Mini Chocolate Chips: they are so cute! However, I have only found them in semi-sweet flavor. I like to use the minis for muffins, pumpkin cookies, and sweet breads. Mini chips don’t leave gaping holes in the end product and it looks nice.
  
  
• White Chocolate: actually not a true chocolate, but perfect for the ever popular white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie. It may have the cocoa butter, but not the other ingredients that would qualify it as chocolate. A word to the wise: if a package of white chocolate chips does not even have cocoa butter listed in the ingredients, than they are simply a baking confection and nothing more.
  
  
• Chocolate Chunks: a nice way to put some pizzazz in a chocolate chip cookie. The very first batch of chocolate chip cookies actually had crudely chopped chocolate chunks. The actual chocolate chip did not come into the scene until 1939; six years after the chocolate chip cookie debut. Chop up your favorite baking chocolate bar and throw it in!
  
  
• Peanut Butter Chips: sweeter than actual peanut butter, these chips of course go wonderfully in a chocolate cookie. Mix them with milk chocolate chips and throw them into standard cookie dough, and you have the perfect marriage.
  
  
• Mint Chocolate Chips: these are great in a chocolate cookie and also melted and spread on the top of brownies. They are created by adding mint flavoring to plain chocolate, and it can be any old chocolate. As with white chocolate chips check the ingredients and look for those chocolate components, or you are just buying mint candies; especially if they are green.
  
  
• Butterscotch Chips: as far as I can tell there is NO chocolate in butterscotch chips (e-mail me if I am wrong). But they are yummy and go well in pumpkin cookies. Just replace the chocolate chips with butterscotch chips.
  
  
• Toffee and Chocolate Pieces: basically a good old Heath Bar® chopped into pieces and put in a bag. It makes a great cookie when blended into a basic chocolate chip cookie dough recipe.
  
  
• Toffee Pieces: just a chopped up Heath Bar® minus the chocolate. Toffee is a rich and smooth candy made of butter and sugar and cooked for a long period at a hot temperature until it reaches hard tack. It is delicious coated in chocolate.