Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes, my faithful followers. It is time for chocolate chip cookies. And while today I'm not divulging my super-top-secret Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe (that will come eventually, stay tuned!), the Toll House recipe I will divulge is AMAZING as well. You can also find this recipe on the back of basically every bag of Toll House Chocolate Chips--the best ones, I think, and the ones I always use.

Chocolate Chip Cookies:
2 sticks softened unsalted butter (for baking, we always use unsalted butter, so we can control how much salt goes into our recipes)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder--there IS a difference!)
2 cups chocolate chips

First, collect and measure all the ingredients. For almost all baking, we mix the dry ingredients separate from the wet ones. In this case, that means the flour, salt and baking powder should be mixed in a separate bowl.

Next measure the sugars into the mixing bowl. For brown sugars, they need to be measured "packed." What that means is you need to squish down the sugar into the measuring cup while you're measuring.

Add the butter to the sugars and mix together. Make sure the butter is at room temperature or else your cookie dough is gonna get real ugly, real fast.

This step is called "creaming" because when the butter and sugars are mixed correctly it is a creamy consistency.

You can always scrape down the edges of the bowl if things get stuck out of the reach of the beater.

Next, we crack the eggs into a separate bowl, just in case one is bad. (Now in all my 25 years of cooking, I have never found a bad egg, BUT, do you really want to throw out all that butter and sugar in case you do??)

Mix in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla.

Now it's time to add in the dry ingredients (the flour, salt and baking soda we measured out earlier). There IS a technique to this part. If you don't believe anything else I write here, believe me on this. We need to add it in little by little, and, probably the most important part, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, turn your mixer on high after you've added flour. If you do, prepare to experience the elusive flour-shower. Just turn your mixer on slow until everything is incorporated, and then if you want to see how fast the little beater can go, turn it on up.

At this point, you should have the basic dough, and you can let your imagination run wild. M&Ms. Toffee chips. Mint chips. White choco chips & macadamia nuts. Truly, anything you want. Today, I made regular plain old boring chocolate chip cookies. So at this point, I added 2 cups of chips into the dough by hand. You can do this with the mixer, just make sure you only mix it so that they are incorporated, because the mixer will start to break your chips if you run it for too long.

So what should we do with all that delicious cookie dough? Well, you could eat it (I'll be the first to admin that I have taken a spoon to the bowl and devoured a batch of dough, although, I prefer sugar cookie dough to choco chip cookie dough!). Today, I baked a few, and froze the rest for later. To scoop the dough, I used an ice-cream scoop. It's rather large for cookies, but who wants a wimpy cookie?

Make sure you leave enough room in between the cookies because they do spread out during cooking.

Pop those babies into a 375 oven for 10ish minutes, or until they are to your desired doneness (I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, but may be known as "La Famosa", who prefers her cookies on the raw side. When they're done, let them cool on a cookie rack.

Pour yourself up a glass of milk and you have your homemade chocolate chip cookies!

If you'd like to freeze them, scoop them onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, and place into the freezer for a few hours. You can put them closer together because we won't actually be baking them right now. When they're frozen, put them into a container or ziplock bag and you can have fresh-baked cookies whenever you want!