Success!

 It's been just a week since we first tried to make Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies, and we succeeded in finding the proper (well, mostly proper) ingredients with the help of many friends.

• First, baking soda was found.  Michèle told us it does exist here, and Elizabeth told us it was indeed in Europe but used only for health purposes.  Someone else's blog told us it's found in the spice section of the grocery store, and that is where Aaron found it!
• Second, Todd told us that brown sugar here is called "sucre vergeoise."  We'd been told that "cassonade" is the same, and a google search shows us that is true, but that it is also the word used for what we call "raw cane sugar" in the US (in fact, since having tried both the dry cassonade and the moist vergeoise, the cassonade tastes more like our brown sugar, but the texture is different.  The next time, we'll replace the white sugar with our cassonade and use the vergeoise again.  Perhaps eventually we'll find moist cassonade.).  Our local grocers (G20 and Carrefour) only sell the dry, raw cane sort and not the moist brown sugar.  Galeries Layfayette Gourmet had sucre vergeoise, and U Express downtown has it, too.  It is easy to find now!
• Third, we did find chocolate chips, but their quality is a bit too high for what these cookies need.  We found some bars of semi-sweet chocolate on the bottom shelf at G20, and their taste and texture is almost identical to a Nestle chocolate morsel.  
• Fourth, we found with Michèle's help that flour #65 is not too hard to find, but for this round of cookies we are just going to use up the rest of the #55.  That seemed to be the least of our problems from last time.
• Fifth, we found actual vanilla extract at U Express (even Galeries Lafayette Gourmet didn't have it), but we had already started making our own in rum according to Elizabeth's recipe.  Thus, we are going to use the rest of the vanilla sugar while we wait for the vanilla beans to soak for a month.  

Now, onto the actual baking.  We still had to add the extra quarter cup of flour because our flour is a bit fine.  We shaved a bit off the block of butter to get it closer to 8oz, and we measured two cups of chopped chocolate.  When measuring the white sugar, we first put in five packets of vanilla sugar and then filled the rest in with white sugar.  We followed the rest of the recipe here: Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.  (Ok, even Aaron doesn't follow the recipe exactly.  We skip the nuts.)

We've illustrated again below.  

The players: 2 eggs, 225g unsalted sweet cream butter, 37.5g vanilla sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 3/4 cup sucre en poudre, 3/4 cup sucre vergeoise, 2.5 cups #55 flour, 2 cups chopped semisweet chocolate.

2 cups semisweet chocolate.

5 sachets of vanilla sugar.  This was
still not strong enough, but our homemade
extract will be ready in just 28 days!

Creaming 3/4 cup sucre en poudre,
3/4 cup sucre vergeoise, 225 grams  warm
butter (sweet cream, unsalted.)

Gradually adding premixed salt,
flour, and baking soda.  This was
teamwork.

Mixing in the chocolate.

Shaping the cookies.

These cookies were a much better replica of those we miss.  Please come visit and try some soon!  We'll add a picture of the actual cookies to this entry soon.  (On a side note, the apron was a parting gift from my friend Carrie, for which I am very thankful for multiple reasons (in no particular order): (1) I had forgotten to leave one out when I was packing to put everything I own in storage (my parents would probably object to the term everything, and I'd have to agree based on the piles of book boxes in my bedroom at home), (2) it's adorable, (3) it's really nice to have something from a friend to remind me of home, and (4) it keeps me from getting as messy as I might otherwise.)


Soon, we'll do an entry on our work here, lest you think all we do is bake cookies and go to the beach.