Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

As it’s a uh, again already?!, birthday time, the annual Week of Becky, I deserve a break today.  Too, we were away so I didn’t get a cake baked.  But no, I’m not really slacking off entirely with this post.  Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies are not only utterly totally crave-able delicious, it’s also a terrific recipe for learning how to bake.

First, lemme get this outta the way:  I’m not a pro.  Yeah I mean, baking is a deep deep love and do it as often as humanly possible but I am not terribly good at creating my own scratch recipes. 

I’m a self-taught baker with a healthy line of great baking genes.  I’m not trained in the baking sciences but, I am a research-aholic, having collected valuable knowledge over decades which I in turn share with you.

Though, I was >this close< to going to pastry school a bunch of years back.  Sooo close!  What deterred me?  I was afraid of losing my intuition.  And I’m not a morning person. 

Anyway, my solid go-to chocolate chip cookie?  The Nestle Tollhouse recipe.  Wah wah, so disappointing, eh?  haha  So this is not like new or groundbreaking or maybe even cool and you’re probably wondering why I’m wasting your time.

These are made with Plugra….see my chat below.

Maybe it’s to let you know that it’s a-okay, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about by using such a recipe.  It’s absolutely tried and true.  It’s Mike’s favorite.  It’s solid.  I can’t ever stop eating them. 

Maybe it’s to let you know you don’t have to get caught up in fancy ingredients. 

Or it’s to let you know being a little less than precise is not a deal-breaker, despite any outside-this-blog chest-thumping otherwise.  Sure, there are best practices and baking can be more specific than cooking but absolutely do not let baking scare you. 

I’ve been baking this recipe my entire life and that’s, that’s not a small amount of time.  And ya know, what can I say, people go cross-eyed for these chocolate chip cookies when I bake them.  

Like, if I don’t make these for Mike on the regular, he gets an eye tic, twitchy, cook-angry.  That’s a very lame stab at combining cookie and hangry.  Coo-hangry?   Ok, no.  Sorry.

Mmk.

I guess it’s like going to your favorite restaurant and ordering the same damn thing every time.  As much as you want to try something else, you just can’t help yourself. 

Really though, this is a great recipe to learn from, to start your baking adventures with.

Soon enough, you’ll learn how to take a basic recipe such as this and tweak it to make it your own.  It’s a confidence builder.  And it’s a great recipe to experiment with as well, swapping in and out ingredients, creaming longer or shorter, light brown or dark brown sugar…you get the idea.

And what’s fascinating, to me anyway, is how everyone’s results are distinct using the same recipe.  

For instance experiment-wise, Aldi had been carrying those bricks of Kerrygold butter, see, higher fat European butter, affordably.  As such, I’d been purchasing them for things like toast or garlic bread or melty on biscuits, you know, where butter is a highlight.

One evening I naively blurted to Mike, “ya know, lots of people bake with this butter, I dunno how as it’s expensive, but I gotta admit I was wondering how the…”

And that’s all I had to say.  He did that slo-mo turn, eyes widened, the mouth drooped open.  I had no choice.  It became a requirement.  So I did.

There it is, a Kerrygold butter block. Tasty butter, boy, I’ll tell ya.

When I bake this recipe (and well, others too)….

Fluffy fluuufffyy creamed butter and sugars!

Do I spoon and level the flour?  Nope, rarely.  Do I mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl?  Not often.  Do I measure the vanilla?  Nuh uh, I spurt in a fat squeeze.  Am I saying this to show off?  Never.  The point is you can bake rockstar treats without being spot-on, rigidly accurate.

And it’s the wrong type of measuring cup too, can’t spoon and level this one.

Do I let the cookie sheet cool completely between batches?  Not usually.  Have I ever had a cookie turn out poorly because of it?  Never.  Do they bake a little quicker?  Maybe?  But with one eye always on the oven, spinning the sheet one-eighty halfway through, no big deal.

It’s impossible to keep Mike out of the bowl at this point.

Look, I aim to be a perfectionist enough.  It’s exhausting.  And frustrating.  Sometimes baking for me, while my goal is obviously to make The Perfect cookie, cake, whatever, sometimes it’s the one time when I feel I don’t have to be perfect.

Yep, there it is, the contraband insulated cookie sheet. Love ’em.

Maybe that’s why I love baking so much.

“So babe, I see you’re one (shhh, Kerrygold) cookie in, did you notice any difference?”

Mike shot me a half look of panic, like omg what did you do to My Precious.  “Uhhh, are the chips different?”……..“OOooh, you used the butter!  Um, sure?, they’re creamier?”

“Do they taste different?”

They definitely look different to me.

Smushed face, sweet red head nodding.  “Uh yeah, they’re better.”

I should have waited to see if he mentioned anything.  While I found they didn’t taste any different, they were airier, cakier, less crisp, less chewy, and they weren’t dramatically improved.  In fact, if I hadn’t asked, he might not have noticed a butter switch.  Different cookie, yes, but improved?  Not to me.

The recipe was written for American butter, less fat, and more fat did not make more better. 

But!  The experiment was worth it.  I learned.  And this recipe once again proved its mettle, its flexibility, and why it’s such a winner. 

So there ya have it.  Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Go forth, enjoy, and learn, my friends!   

Note:  This content originally appeared on Flaky Bakers.