Yo Ho and a Bottle of Rum (Cookies)

I tried a new cookie recipe last night and it was a big hit both with our dinner guests and among my work colleagues (who got to enjoy the leftovers). I'll go the humble route here and give credit to the recipe rather than my superior stir-clockwise-with-wooden-spoon skills, and thus thought I'd pass the recipe along. The original name is Cappuccino Royales, but that sounded kind of lame to me, so I'm dubbing them Pirate Chocolate Chip Cookies because somehow I can see Captain Jack Sparrow drinking a lot of rum and coffee.

Call them what you want, the recipe is as follows:

Wait! First, a warning! The full batch makes a LOT. Like 5-6 dozen. I cut it in half, but choose your own adventure here...
Ingredients:

• 2 cups butter, melted
• 1/4 cup instant coffee (if you buy a strong roast, use the 1/4C. I bought Best Yet brand, aka cheap NY grocery store brand of oblivion, so I used extra to bump up the flavor)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 teaspoons rum (or you can use extract or brandy... I used the real thing and doubled it ;-))
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 cups milk chocolate chips
• 5 1/2 cups flour 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix instant coffee, vanilla and rum with the melted butter while it is still warm and allow coffee crystals to dissolve.
3. Add sugar, eggs, soda and powder, mixing well.
4. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Add flour gradually.
6. Form dough into small balls (they spread out quite a bit while baking - I started with ~1-1.5 inch diameter balls and they baked into 3 inch cookies), rolling in granulated sugar if desired. (Rolling in sugar helps keep them from sticking to the sheet and gives the finished cookies a sort of granular look. But its optional!)
7. Place onto cookie sheet and flatten slightly (if you rolled in sugar, you don't need grease. Otherwise, grease the cookie sheet)
8. Bake 9-11 minutes and allow to cool for a couple minutes before moving to a cooling rack. (I baked for 9, which gives a very soft, chewy cookie. I forgot one batch was in the oven and they went for ~11 mins, yielding a crunchy cookie. Again, choose your own adventure here - fudgy vs crunch, one of the Great Debates)

And voila, you are done! The dough took me about 15 minutes to put together, so in less than 30 minutes you can have warm homemade cookies coming out of the oven... yo ho!