Sunday, February 26, 2012

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have a lot of favorite cookie recipes: favorite peanut butter cookies, favorite meringue cookies, and favorite butterscotch chip cookies, to name a few. The one elusive recipe was for chocolate chip cookies. I'd tried a lot of recipes and sampled even more, but none of them were perfect. Then I met my husband. His chocolate chip cookies are truly amazing! I don't know WHY they're so good, but they are. They aren't much to look at- flatter than normal (nothing I have tried has fixed this!) and kind of dingy looking from the molasses, but they're perfect. Soft on the inside with chocolate chips that somehow remain melty, and a tiny bit crunchy/chewy on the edges. What's more, they actually stay soft and delicious for a while, unlike some cookies that go stale after a day or two. I implore you to make them, even if you already have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe!

Here is what my husband has to say about his cookies: "I’ve been making chocolate chip cookies with my family as long as I can remember – standing on a chair in order to reach the mixer is a happy memory for me. I merrily made the same recipe until all the way to college where I learned that you can make your own brown sugar – one cup white sugar and one tablespoon molasses. This shocked me, because I hate storing brown sugar and having it turn all granitelike and hard to work with. I immediately made a batch, and they didn’t turn out at all. The molasses/white sugar substitute is quite a bit wetter than bagged brown sugar. After some tweaking, I finally balanced the recipe again."

Update:  These are also amazing made with about 2 cups of roughly chopped Andes Mints instead of the chocolate chips!





Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 C butter
1/2 C shortening
2 C sugar
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 T molasses
2 1/2 C flour
2 C semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Place butter, shortening, and sugar in the bowl of a mixer and beat until fluffy. Mix in salt and baking soda, then eggs, vanilla, and molasses until thoroughly combined. Mix in flour until a dough has formed, then mix in chocolate chips. Roll dough into golf ball sized balls (or use an ice cream scoop) and arrange on prepared cookie sheets with approximately 3 inches between cookies. Bake until barely golden and just set in the middle, about 10-15 minutes. Cool on the sheets for about 10 minute until you can transfer them to cooling racks. After they've cooled completely, store the cookies in an airtight container.

Yield: about 2 dozen large cookies

2 comments:

  1. How cool that your hubby bakes!!! Mine wouldn't even know where our oven is, much less know what to put into a cookie! LOL

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  2. He really likes baking these cookies! I'm pretty sure the only things he's ever baked are these cookies, the occasional box of brownie mix, and once he made me cupcakes from a mix. Shortly after we started dating, he went to a friend's house and they decided to make a box of brownie mix, but didn't have any oil so substituted melted butter and accidentally used twice as much as the recipe called for. They actually turned out amazingly in spite of the extra butter and now whenever I make a box of brownies, I use melted butter, too (though only has much as the box says :D ).

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