How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

After Erin's FANTASTIC and GENIUS "cookie log" post, we decided it would be indeed rude to not provide you with a way to make cookies to actually freeze.

So, the ones pictured in the "cookie log" post are actually pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

And I didn't make those for this post.

Someday. But not today.

Don't be TOO sad though because I won't lie, these are quite nice as well.

Ready?

Set!

GO!

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe:
1 cup butter
3/4 cup PACKED brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla (or almond extract)
2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups chocolate chips
Makes 4 dozen, give or take.

Now the instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Put the sugars and butter together. (Sidenote: Is there anything better than a PACKED amount of brown sugar?)

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Add eggs. (Well, the following picture is misleading. Crack and remove shell, as you add them. Don't just drop two whole eggs in there, with their shells. That would be unwise.)

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Cream (which just means run your mixer until the lumps are gone and all is smooth.) I usually run my mixer on a pretty high setting to accomplish this faster.

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Add dry stuff and your vanilla (or almond).
Mix a bit by hand to keep the flour from going everywhere.

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Then mix it all on medium-medium high until it's gone from muck to cookie dough.

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Add your chips. I used milk chocolate today. You can use anything that comes in chip form. Or not. I've used crushed up candy bars before too. That was fun.

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(Sidenote: My counters are never cleared off for picture taking. Oh well.)
Mix chocolate chips by hand. I suppose you *could* use a mixer, but why would you?

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Give the beaters to the kids to enjoy. Or in my case, my 16 year-old brother.

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Much to Oliver's frustration.

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And now, the drop it on the pan method.
See, I considered doing beautiful, perfectly round balls of cookies for you. But I don't own a cookie scoop. And the whole point of our little corner on the interwebs is quick and easy, yes? So, without any fancy tools, just two spoons, you can accomplish fine-looking (not perfect) nicely-sized cookies.

Here's how:
No need to grease.
Scoop a nice full spoonful with one spoon. We shall call this spoon #1.
Use spoon #2 to scrap off excess (so nothing hangs over the edge of spoon #1. If you skip this step, you might get little tails that burn.)

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Put the spoons on the the pan and use spoon #2 to pop the dough off spoon #1.

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Using spoon #2 push the cookie dough onto the pan. Use spoon #1 to finish the job if necessary.

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Viola!
A pan full of unbaked cookies. Not perfect, but fast, and done. A dozen fits nicely on a cookie sheet.

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Bake for 10-ish minutes. Only you know your oven. One oven I've had baked these in 8 minutes. This batch went for 11, and I decided it was too long.

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And enjoy. These cookies are soft, but not cakey. I do not approve of 1. Crunchy, hard cookies or 2. Cakey dry cookies. These are a lovely happy-medium, and they are extremely easy to do, yes?

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And I am I only one who despises baking all the cookies once I'm done mixing? I HATE that it takes multiple batches to get it all finished.

So, sometimes, I cheat, and grease a cookie sheet, take all the dough and make one giant pan-shaped cookie. Once it's baked, I cut the giant cookie into cookie "bars" and call it good. I didn't do it this time, but I sure was tempted. It works perfectly fine too. You can thank my mom for that stroke of genius.

Double or triple these for a batch or two of "cookie log" as well. These freeze beautifully.

Yay cookies!