merrifood

I was looking back through my blog entries and realized I still have yet to date to share a classic chocolate chip cookie one.  This is basically a travesty as everyone needs to know how to make a good batch of chocolate chip cookies in times of joy/celebration and sadness/anger/bitterness.  (not like I know anything about those latter circumstances of course)  Everyone has their own recipe for this and their variations, so I may as well throw my hat into the ring…

Makes about 20 small cookies (double the recipe if you want more or bigger cookies, which you probably will)

1 stick / 110 g of unsalted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 generous tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt
~1.5-2 cups flour

1 generous cup chocolate chips or half of a 12 ounce bag (Ghiradelli 60% discs are my favorite for this purpose – Ghiradelli semi sweet chocolate chips work too, but by all means go Ghiradelli or a similarly high quality chocolate if you can, it really does make a difference)

Sea salt (This is optional, but if you use it, go with Maldon, which is my favourite.)

Other optional add-ins: pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon, graham cracker or digestive biscuit crumbs, mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, chopped up cool flavour of chocolate bar you are trying to get rid of, etc.

Soften the butter (or melt it if you are in a hurry) and cream with the sugar.  One great variation on this is to brown the butter (see here for that process).  If you brown it, just cool it and then add the sugar and mix thoroughly.  Then beat in the egg and vanilla extract.  Add the salt and baking soda, then add about a cup of flour and mix well. Then add the chocolate chips and then add 0.5 to 1 cup more flour.  It should make a soft dough but it should come together, so if it’s not, add more flour until it does.  Regarding the add-ins, if you want to use any of them, add graham cracker crumbs (perhaps 2 full sheets crumbled up) with the flour, add a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon when you add the baking soda, and add liberal amounts of chocolate anytime in the flour process.  Make to sure to taste it to ensure its quality.  As with all my doughs, I like to put it in the fridge for at least an hour, or overnight.  Another great thing about this dough is that after it’s easy to work with, you can form small balls of it, put them in a plastic bag, and just freeze them (will last for months).  Take them out whenever you want a cookie or two, put them on a baking sheet, and bam – instant gratification.

I made a double batch of these, so that was a lot of butter.

Butter and sugar all creamed with the egg and vanila

Oh cookie dough, you complete me.  Especially after living in a hotel for a month!

Midway through the baking process

Final product!

Not much more to say about chocolate chip cookies, except that they are pretty much the easiest cookie to make and everyone should know how to do it.  So go try.