A Quick Cookie Tip

I make a lot of cookies. They are my younger children's primary snack at school, which means I make cookies once a week. I have the recipe for chocolate chip cookies memorized because that one uses melted butter and thus requires no creaming with a hand mixer. And THAT means I don't have to have soft butter to start with. Handy. 

I've made those cookies so often that I play pretty fast and loose with the ingredients, usually adding peanut butter in addition to the butter and some oats instead of all flour. I also don't actually measure the salt, baking soda, and chocolate chips, instead just eyeballing those ingredients.

When I make other recipes--peanut butter, gingersnaps, oatmeal--I do more or less follow a recipe, but with one exception: I never, ever mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Instead I mix the wet ingredients first--fats, sugars, eggs, vanilla--and then right on top I put the flour and other dry ingredients. 

I'll sort of shallowly mix the dry ingredients right there before incorporating them into the wet ingredients, but I really do not see the point in two bowls. Cookie dough is always thoroughly mixed anyway. It's fine to just stir it all up vigorously in the same bowl.

Wet on the bottom, dry on top.

This saves time and another dish to wash. So feel free to also be a rebel and disregard the "in a separate bowl" instruction if you, like me, are always trying to find more efficient ways to get through kitchen tasks.