Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

The freezer is full. That is the first sentence of most of my weeks, and it remains the first sentence today. The week was a summer week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

The recipe of the week was no-bake cheesecake, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. Three of the bags I pulled out this week were dated nine months ago and they were perfect, because labeling is theology in my house. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

Brandon called me at lunch on Tuesday for no particular reason and I knew without him saying so that he was thinking about Grace. Twenty-some years in, I can hear the silences. We have been married a long time. The arithmetic of it is the arithmetic of my whole life. There were years we missed each other in the same room, and there are years we find each other in the silences, and this is one of the latter, and I am old enough now to know that the latter is the achievement and the former was the cost.

The accountant in me keeps a private ledger of how old Grace would be. I do not consult it. It is automatic. I do not write about her every week. I do not avoid her either. She is in the kitchen the way the kitchen is in the kitchen — woven into the structure, not announcing herself, present. The photograph above the stove is the only one of her smiling, and it has watched me batch-prep more freezer meals than I can count, and I have stopped feeling strange about the parasocial relationship I have with a four-month-old who has been gone for years. She is my daughter. The photograph is what I have. I look. I keep cooking.

I'm Michelle. The freezer is full. Talk to you next week.

The no-bake cheesecake is the one I wrote up and printed out for other people, but the recipe that keeps appearing in the Sunday prep rotation — the one Brandon will quietly eat three of before I’ve even finished labeling bags — is these cookies. Cream cheese in a cookie does what cream cheese does in a cheesecake: it softens everything, holds it together, makes it taste like someone actually thought about what they were doing. That felt right for this particular week, the kind of week where a Tuesday phone call carries more weight than the words in it, and where the thing you put on the counter after dinner doesn’t need to announce itself, it just needs to be there.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 11 min | Total Time: 26 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
4 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Cream the butter and cream cheese. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and cream cheese together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add sugars and wet ingredients. Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar and beat until well combined, about 1 minute. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until incorporated.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until just combined — do not overmix.
Fold in chocolate chips. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Chill the dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. This step is important for keeping the cookies thick and softbatch in texture.
Preheat and portion. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop chilled dough into rounded tablespoon-sized balls and place 2 inches apart on prepared sheets.
Bake. Bake for 10–11 minutes, until the edges are just set and the centers still look slightly underdone. Do not overbake — they will firm up as they cool.
Cool and store. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or freeze in labeled bags for up to 3 months.

Nutrition (per serving)

Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies — The Recipe I Keep Coming Back To