Cookies 101

• All cookies -- peanut butter, oatmeal and the beloved chocolate chip, for example -- comprise a basic ingredient ratio -- 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour -- with slight variations: Garnishes, such as raisins or chocolate chips, and type of fat, which affects the cookies' crumb, spread during baking and crispness upon cooling. For a cookie dough you can eat both cooked and uncooked, you don't need to deviate from the basic ratios much, but you want a flavorful fat -- real butter instead of shortening, for example.

To Egg or Not to Egg

• No other single ingredient performs as many functions, fills as many roles and has as much versatility as the common, everyday egg. In raw cookie dough, yolks moisten and emulsify other ingredients, helping blend fat, flour and sugar into the simple wonder that is the cookie -- but they aren't a requirement. You can make a perfectly edible, tasty cookie dough without them, and you won't even know they're gone until you bake it. While yolks bind and moisten cookie dough, egg whites bring structure and dry the cookie out -- in a good way. Egg whites, which are mostly water, evaporate during baking, leaving behind the protein that gives the cookies structural integrity. Eggless cookie dough produces a soft, crumbly cookie with all the flavor of the same cookie dough made with eggs.

About Pasteurized Eggs

• Pasteurized eggs undergo low-temperature pasteurization in a hot-water bath for several hours, which kills bacteria without heating the yolks or albumen to their coagulation point. Pasteurization doesn't affect eggs' ability to bind, emulsify and enrich cookie dough.

Preparation

• Portion 1 part sugar, 2 parts unsalted butter and 3 parts flour -- you can do this by weight or volume, but you get better results when you portion by weight. If you use 4 ounces of sugar, 8 ounces of butter and 12 ounces of flour you'll have enough dough to make 10 to 15 cookies, depending on how thin or thick you form them. To include eggs, mix one whole pasteurized egg for every 8 ounces of flour into the butter and sugar -- after you mix the butter and sugar together.

Technique

• Mix the sugar and softened butter together until the butter appears pale, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Add eggs at this time, if you're using them. Add a pinch of salt and a flavor extract, such as almond or vanilla, or spices, such as cinnamon or nutmeg -- if you wish -- it's your cookie dough, you can flavor it how you like. Gently fold in the flour and a pinch of baking soda into the mix using a spatula or spoon. As you fold, add the primary flavoring ingredients: Chocolate chips, peanut butter, rehydrated dried fruit, nuts -- this is where you make your dream cookie dough, to satisfy that craving.

Finish

• Roll the cookie dough into a cylinder and wrap it in plastic wrap or leave it in the mixing bowl, covered with plastic wrap. Next, let the dough chill for a couple hours -- it melds and marries the flavors. You can eat the dough as is or form cookies and bake them in an oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until the edges start to brown.