Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Significance

I have made many chocolate chip cookie recipes and can confidently say that these are the best I've had. There is nothing more disappointing than buying a pack of chocolate chip cookies at the store from some new brand and you think "maybe these will be as good as the homemade ones". Nope. I think chocolate chip cookies are just one of those things you have to make at home because it's impossible to get a good packaged product. Like trying to buy pre-made pasta in a can - it just doesn't work. So go ahead and give this recipe a chance, I guarantee you won't regret it - unless you regret discovering an addictive substance in which case I warn you. Key to this recipe is chilling the dough in the fridge for a few hours before baking the cookies. Do not skip this step! In fact it makes this recipe very forgiving with timing because you can forget the dough in the fridge overnight (which I've done) and they turn out just a good the next day. Chilling the dough makes the centre of the cookie bake slower which yields the soft texture which is part of what makes this cookie so great. Enough chatting, go make some cookies!

Preparation:

1) Ideally you would have the butter at room temperature so you could cream it with the two types of sugar with a handheld mixer. I will admit though that in the past I've thrown the out-of-the-fridge-cold butter into the microwave at very low power for a few minutes and then beaten with the sugar. It seems to work just as well.

2) Once the butter and sugar are fluffy, add the egg and vanilla extract and beat a little more to combine.

3) If you don't mind washing an extra bowl then combine the remaining dry ingredients (minus chocolate chips) in a bowl, mix together, and add to the wet ingredients. I usually just add the dry ingredients directly to the wet ingredient bowl and then use the handheld mixer as a manual whisk for a few stirs to combine the ingredients a bit before I turn it on. This will prevent the flour from spraying everywhere when you turn on the mixer.

4) Once the dough is combined add the chocolate chips, mix until evenly distributed, and cover the dough with plastic wrap and throw it in the fridge. Give it at least 2 hours to cool down.

5) Preheat your oven to 175°C and get your oven tray lined with parchment paper. I use a teaspoon to make roughly golf ball sized balls of dough and place them spaced at least 15 cm apart on the tray.

6) Bake for about 12 minutes and remove from the oven and allow to rest. The will seem too soft when you take them out but they will firm up as they cool to the perfect softness.

7) Repeat until all your dough is used up and you've got a pile of cookies on your cooling rack. Try not to eat them all at once!