Sometimes I struggle to fall asleep. I don’t drink coffee after noon, go to bed when I’m tired, refrain from using my devices for a few hours beforehand, maintain a quiet bedroom without a television or any other visual stimulation, and build a super-comfy nest in which to burrow—and yet there are times when my “busy mind” keeps me from achieving the very basic goal of sleep. What do you do when you can’t sleep?
To be clear, I don’t actually get up from bed and make cookies when I can’t sleep (who can eat that many cookies?). Instead, I mentally walk through the process of making cookies, focusing on every tiny detail. I think about the ingredients in my pantry and refrigerator—do I need to get anything from the store? I imagine laying out everything: butter, white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour, salt, baking soda, and (according to my nephews, the most important part) chocolate chips. I visualize leaving the butter and eggs on the counter to come to room temperature. And then I start “making cookies.” Usually, I’ve drifted off by the time I need to add vanilla—I never make it to actually baking the dough.
Nowadays, you can find countless variations of the chocolate chip cookie to meet nearly every dietary preference and restriction: vegan cookies, check; keto cookies, check; crispy cookies; chewy cookies; cookie bars. There are at least 25 recipes that claim to be the “best” chocolate chip cookies. But if you want a truly exceptional cookie and don’t mind a recipe that’s unnecessarily complicated, try out Kenji Lopez’s version on the Serious Eats website. I made it once, thoroughly enjoyed the layering of delicious flavors, and promptly went back to my tried-and-true recipe.
So, without further ado, please enjoy this recipe from origins unremembered and with much gratitude.
Love,
Your Tia Kelli
Beautifully Basic Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yield: somewhere between 20 and 40 cookies depending on many factors like: cookie size and amount of dough eaten raw.
INGREDIENTS:
2 sticks of butter (I prefer unsalted but either will do) room temperature
¾ c brown sugar (packed)
¾ c granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 bag of chocolate chips (or any kind of chips you prefer)
Other add-ins like nuts and dried fruit
DIRECTIONS:
In a stand mixer or in a large bowl with beaters, cream together butter and both types of sugar until light in color and fluffy. This is a very important step. When you cream together the butter and sugar you are also integrating air into your batter which has a direct impact on the texture of the cookie.
Add in vanilla and eggs (one at a time) beating in between each egg addition.
Stop the mixer and add in flour, baking soda, and salt. Using a low setting, mix together batter until the dry ingredients are just combined. You definitely don’t want to mix for too long--when you mix flour with liquids, gluten chains will form like in bread. Since you want delicate cookies, you want to avoid developing the gluten.
With the mixer on low, add in the chocolate chips and any other add-in ingredients. Mix just until combined.
Form the dough into a log, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour and ideally overnight. It can be hard to wait. I usually bake off a tray of around 13 cookies immediately and refrigerate the rest of the dough. Letting the dough rest in the fridge and baking from chilled yield a better cookie, but also “Me Want Cookie!!!”
When you are ready to bake your cookies, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Form dough into ball-ish forms--I slice the roll and then form the dough into a rough-edged ball. Place on a parchment-lined sheet pan with appropriate spacing to allow for spread.
Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes until cookies are starting to turn golden brown on the edges and are just set in the middle. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before you gobble them up, you don’t want to burn the rough of your mouth!
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