The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies

I cannot take all the credit for these chocolate chip cookies because I'm not Mrs. Tollhouse, the Inventor of the Chocolate Chip Cookie or anyone like that. I have to give major props to Sally from Sally's Baking Addiction because this recipe has so many great cookie tricks that it is basically FOOLPROOF and a great starting point for any soft, chewy cookie you'd like to try.

All of these cookies were harmed in the making of this blog post because I ate them.

I tweaked a few things here and there to suit my tastes, and I can say, with confidence, that these cookies are the bomb dot com. Here are my tips on the ingredients:

My first trick is to substitute some of the flour with pancake mix. I kid you not! Even though I am a massive hater of pancakes (and french toast and waffles and most things breakfast), the consistency, flavor, and moisture in pancake mix are divine for cookies. I don't know if that's actually true; I had leftover pancake mix one day and not enough flour, so it was really just a happy accident that stuck.

From the left: Pancake mix and all-purpose flour, milk chocolate chips, granulated sugar and dark brown sugar, two eggs, vanilla extract, melted butter, cornstarch, baking soda

Pancake mix has a slightly savory flavor all on its own, so I do not add salt or use salted butter for these cookies because then they will become salt licks. That's my second trick! No additional salt! None! Don't do it!

Unless, of course, you decide to use flour exclusively (2 and 1/4 cups), then you might want to add a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. You know, for that flavor balance.

If you're a dark chocolate lover, then I don't know about you and your taste buds. As a milk chocolate proponent, I exclusively bake with milk chocolate chips. Semisweet chocolate chips don't provide the JUSTICE OF SUPERIOR FLAVOR that milk chocolate seems to do, but I'll let you decide for yourselves on the Chocolate Debate.

Trying to be arty with food. Pretend those eggs are room temperature.

While you can deviate from the pancake mix (and the salt situation) and use your own favorite variety of chocolate if plain ol' milk doesn't float your boat, you really should not use anything BUT dark brown sugar. Light brown sugar will take you places, sure, but not to your final destination of Cookie Nirvana.

Granulated sugar and dark brown sugar, holla!

OK, now onto some techniques. Again, you should really check out Sally's original recipe because she goes to great lengths to describe all of her foolproof (there's that word again!) tips for great cookies. I'll gloss over the finer points, but these are the main techniques that you should not actually gloss over:

Other than the melted butter, everything should be at room temperature. I'm mainly talking about the eggs, but if you're a weirdo who refrigerates their chocolate, baking soda, or vanilla extract, then take that stuff out of there and let it come to room temperature before you start mixing away. This helps incorporate all of the ingredients and it will allow the melted butter to stay melted and do its buttery thaaang.

Cookie dough…

I may or may not have eaten that spoonful.

As soon as you're done mixing everything together, wrap that soft, squishy mass of dough in plastic wrap, bid it good night in your fridge, and be on your merry way for at least two hours. With the leavening in the pancake mix, your dough will be especially soft and goopy, so if you don't chill the dough, you'll end up with pathetically flat cookies.

I will mix up a batch of cookies in the evening, chill the dough overnight, and bake them the following day. It is excruciating to wait that long, but it's worth it. CHILL THE DOUGH, FOLKS!

When you're ready to bake, make sure to set your oven to 325F degrees. The goal is to slightly underbake the cookies and this temperature will allow you to control the process more.

Scooping the dough with a cookie scoop is preferred, but because your dough has been chillin' for at least two hours, it will be a rock solid mass. If you are working on your gun show, then by all means, scoop away! But, give the dough 15-20 minutes to soften a little bit if you want to save yourself some blood, sweat, and tears. You really just want the cookies to be consistent in size, so if rolling balls of dough by hand works best for you, then do that instead of scooping.

The cookie dough scoops will look like chilled balls of ice cream.

I bake on a greased cookie sheet because I do not like to face any resistance when sliding freshly baked cookies onto my plate.

The cookies should only be baked for 11-12 minutes. They will look totally soft and jiggly, but leave them alone on that hot cookie sheet, and they'll bake some more out of the oven like that. Don't even think about eating them until the cookie sheet is cool to touch. If you thought chilling the dough in the fridge was a painful wait, then this will push you over the edge.

Fresh out of the oven…and looking undercooked.

As the cookies are cooling on the sheet, this is a good time for you to get into your pajamas and fuzzy slippers and then to pour yourself a glass of cold milk, because how else do you eat freshly baked cookies?

The end result….perfection.

The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies 
[recipe adapted from here]

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1  cup pancake mix
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted (1 and 1/2 sticks)
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, loosely packed
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips or chocolate chunks

Directions:

1) In a large bowl, sift the flour, pancake mix, baking soda, and cornstarch together. Set aside.

2) In another bowl, mix the melted butter, dark brown sugar, and granulated sugar together. If you have hard sugar lumps in there, pick them out or mix the bajeezies out of them. Mix in the egg, the egg yolk, then the vanilla until everything is, well, mixed.

3) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix with a rubber spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips. At this point, the dough will be very soft. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours.

4) Preheat the oven to 325F degrees. Allow the dough to soften a bit or start scooping (or rolling!) balls of cookie dough onto a greased cookie sheet if you're bold like that. Bake for 11-12 minutes.

5) Allow cookies to cool completely before consumption. This recipe yields about 20 cookies for a "medium" cookie scoop.

OK, I snuck in a bite!