Cooking Through Fiction: Blue Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love mazes. I love to try and solve them on paper, and I love to walk through the giant ones constructed from corn or boxwood hedges. I’m not discouraged by dead ends. I just backtrack and choose another path. I never think I won’t find the way out. Neither does Percy.

In book four of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, titled The Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson must navigate Daedalus’ labyrinth in order to save the world. Again.

Unlike a corn maze (or a munchkin maze in those drought years when the corn grew two feet and withered), the labyrinth is deadly, full of lethal creatures, and changes second to second. You could enter in New York and find yourself in Colorado within minutes.

Before they’ve finished their mission in the labyrinth, Percy visits his mom in Manhattan. Mostly the visit is due to the fact that everyone thought he was dead after exploding Mount St. Helens (long story). His mom is relieved to see him, and because she’s awesome, she bakes him and Annabeth cookies. Blue cookies. Because he and his mom share a love for blue food. Over cookies, Percy assures his mom he can find a way to the center of the maze and a way to save everyone (but he needs a mortal’s help—ooh, pick me! Pick me!)

“She sat us down at the kitchen table and insisted on feeding us her special blue chocolate-chip cookies while we caught her up on the quest. As usual, I tried to water down the frightening parts (which was pretty much everything), but somehow that just made it sound more dangerous.” (Riordan, Rick, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth. [New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2008], 242-243)

Blue Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

2 ¼ c all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 c (2 sticks) unsalted, softened butter

¾ c sugar

¾ c packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 large eggs

blue food coloring

2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

How to Make

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Beat butter and sugars until well combined in the bowl of a mixer. Add vanilla extract. Add eggs one at a time. Add 15-20 drops of blue food coloring.
4. Gradually add flour mixture to bowl.
5. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Drop dough onto a greased cookie sheet.
7. Bake 9-11 minutes, until desired doneness is reached. Bake longer for crunchy cookies.