How low effort are these cookies? Only four ingredients, for starters. The cake mix itself conveniently includes the flour, sugar, and leavening. (I prefer yellow cake mix because of the psychological color of eggs and butter, but other mixes also work.) You mix eggs and oil together, mix in the powder, and fold in the chips. Dispense, bake, cool.
The video shows still images and clips for the steps. Note: The cookies are doable using a pastry blender, but a tilt-head mixer cuts down on elbow grease.
One instruction I've seen in many cooky recipes is chilling the dough, from an hour to a few days. Fuggetaboutit for my recipe! Another skippable item is parchment paper. Cake mix cookies have never stuck to my baking pans, except once when I tried using a Trader Joe's cake mix.
One other item I took a leap of faith in skipping--pressing the dough dollops flat, sometimes using fingers, other times using a glass. Without extra help, the dollops (using 1 1/2 T cooky scoop, level fill) expanded and spread during baking, but not too wide.
Dough Dispensing
A cooky scoop works same as a spring-release ice cream scoop, but faster than tablespoon-and-spatula method of scoop cough with one hand and push with spatula using the other hand.
After I had baked the cookies, I searched on the web for fast dollop dispensing. "The fastest way to scoop drop cookies" showed me that I've been really pokey. When she used two spoons, she dispensed 15 cookies in 1:34. When she used a 1-teaspoon cooky scoop, she dispensed 15 in 54 seconds. BTW, she shows her 1-teaspoon baked cooky as a 2 1/4" wide. My baked cookies were about as wide, but taller, I think. YMMV.
My smoothing dough against a spatula to flatten the dough before dispensing was slow. Method 1 (using side of bowl for flattening dough) in "How to Scoop Cookie Dough" shows a more streamlined method. Method 2 is much slower with 2nd hand handling. Useful info is seeing that the dough handler uses food gloves, which seems to help keep fingers dough-free.
View the image of different dollops and scoops, accompanied by helpful info for size and capacity. Another good resource for cooky scoops is "12 Best Cookie Scoops in 2022 – Reviews and Buying Guide", which also includes a table that summarizes brands and characteristics. "How to use baking cookie scoop [ Cake Decorating For Beginners ]" provides good info about five portion scoops for batters and various cooky types. The size numbers refer to the number of scoops obtainable from a quart-size container.
Baking and Results
The yield was 40 cookies. Tasty, soft, chewy! I wondered why they were perfect for softness and chewiness, compared to some of my other chocolate chip cooky variations. The web listed several results WRT chewy cookies. One suggested ingredient was cornstarch. Not much, but enough to affect dough. "From What Does Cornstarch Do in Cookies? (Plus Simple Substitutes to Use in a Pinch)":
Cornstarch isn’t used as a thickening agent in cookies, but it does have a very important purpose. When a recipe calls for cornstarch, it’s basically going to be there to help provide structure. ... Certain types of cookies are meant to be very chewy, and cornstarch is a common ingredient in those.
The cake mix box did list cornstarch. I also recall a trend awhile back of cake mix companies touting the addition of pudding mix. A main ingredient of pudding is cornstarch. Another ingredient some sites list for chewy cookies is brown sugar. The box did not list that. Thus, I infer that the cornstarch contributed to the texture.
Calories and Sodium
These rich-tasting cookies are 98 calories each, fewer than the 139 each in "Triple Choco Granola Cereal Cookies".
"Pt 1 Cooky Pressing Choco Chip Cooky Dough, Not One-at-a-Time Dollopin"
"Pt 2 Cooky Pressing Choco Chip Cooky Dough, Closer Looks"
"Low-effort Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies"
View more cooky recipes.
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