Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chips cookies, formerly known as Toll House Cookies, are one of those great inventions that supposedly happened by accident, in this case in 1930 at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. I’m not sure why I think that is important to know, but there it is.

 

Make sure you use real semi-sweet chocolate chips and not the ones that are artificially flavored. Keep in mind that if you use butter the cookies will spread out more and tend to be crispier than if you use margarine, which will hold its shape at a higher heat resulting in a chunky shape more conducive to producing a chewy cookie. Also, you can refrigerate the dough at this point and bake the cookies later; some claim this will result in better tasting cookies and in any event chilling the dough will result in chunkier cookies. The downside of not cooking them right away is if there are people in your home who will steal tastes of raw dough, despite the threat of raw egg induced illness, and you won’t end up with as many cookies.

 

More often than not we double this recipe. If you have two baking sheets you can have the second one ready to go into the oven as soon as the first one comes out, but I recommend baking only one sheet of cookies at a time.

 

MAKES APPROXIMATELY 2 DOZEN COOKIES

 

Ingredients: 

½ cup butter or margarine, at room temperature 

¼ cup sugar

½ cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla 

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ to 1 cup chocolate chips

 

. . . . . . . .

 

Instructions:

▪ Preheat oven to 375˚ F.

 

▪ Lightly grease a baking sheet or two.

 

▪ In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter or margarine on low until soft, then add both of the sugars and beat on medium until light and creamy.

 

▪ Add the egg and vanilla, and beat again.

 

▪ In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt, then add it to the first mixture and mix to blend it well.

 

▪ Stir in the chocolate chips.

 

▪ Either use two spoons to form balls of dough, or dust your hands in flour and roll the dough into balls approximately one inch in diameter and place them onto the greased baking sheet. Leave plenty of space between the cookies because they will spread out while baking.

 

▪ Put the sheet of cookies in the oven. They will probably take seven or eight minutes in all, but you should check them after six minutes. You’ll see that around the edges the dough looks cooked and is textured with fine grain holes, but the centers will still be soft and those holes will be a lot bigger. You want to bake them until the moment those center holes become small like the ones near the edge, but before the outer edges get too brown. Thirty seconds can make a big difference so check them that often.

 

▪ When they are done, remove them from the oven and let them sit a few minutes to set, then use a spatula to transfer them to a cooling rack. When they are completely cool, store them in an airtight container.