My Favorites

Okay, so I'm not Oprah Winfrey with the Favorites Show or anything, but since I'm here, and since I do have some favorite things, I thought I'd start sharing them with you....
Today I'll share with you my recipe for my favorite chocolate chip cookies. These are amazing. I must say, it took me a long time to create this recipe because I was trying to replicate my grandmother's chocolate chip cookies. I came as close as I could, and I'm satisfied. I hope you'll like 'em. But first you need to understand two rules:
1) Butter makes the world go 'round. I am not shy about using real butter, real sugar, and real vanilla. Who wants to eat stuff that they can't pronounce, anyhow? So buy yourself some bricks (yes, bricks, not sticks) of the real stuff and keep 'em on hand. Everything will suddenly taste better at your house. I use salted, but this is negotiable.
2) There are not enough chocolate chips in a standard-size bag for a batch of cookies. So get a couple bags. This recipe uses a bag and a half. What to do with the other half? Well...I'll leave it up to you, but they're great add-ins for pancakes, they're a great quick chocolate fix, and I personally recommend them for potty training rewards.
So let's get started...you will need:
-1/2 pound of butter. Cut a pound brick right down the middle. If you cut it unevenly, use the bigger half. The butter directly correlates to the golden crispiness on the outside of the cookie, so you don't wanna skimp.
-3/4 c. packed brown sugar
-3/4 c. granulated sugar
-1 tsp. vanilla
-2 eggs
-1 and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (yep, cinnamon!)
-2 and 1/2 c. flour
-1 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp salt
-1 and 1/2 bag of chocolate chips. I prefer Nestle Tollhouse.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. You need parchment paper, not cooking spray.
Place your half pound of butter in a large bowl for about 30 minutes. You want it to soften, but not too much. You'll know it's ready when you can mash it down easily with a spatula. Do not microwave your butter.
Add in the two sugars, and mix them till it's a soft, doughy consistency. I always mix my cookies with a spatula. One, because I'm not privileged enough to own a beautiful Kitchenaide Stand mixer, and two, because I think they turn out better when you hand mix 'em.
Then, in a smaller bowl, or a coffee mug, beat your eggs. Add in the vanilla and cinnamon to the eggs....it's like we're making french toast! But we're not...
Pour this mixture in with your butter/sugar mixture, and cream them all together. I've always wondered what "creaming" meant.
Then add in your baking soda and salt. You do not need to use a separate bowl to "sift" those ingredients together. I think that's hogwash. Or, it's because people who write cookbooks or are on cooking shows want you to think they have lots of bowls and lots of time to wash all these bowls.
Stir in the dry ingredients, and add the flour in bit by bit until it's all in there. At this point, you'll find the mixture hard to stir. Infact, you'll probably need to start "kneading" it with your spatula, pulling it away from the sides and into the middle and so forth.
Now add your chippers. Weird confession: I think this cookie dough looks pretty with the chips in there....and I own a sweater that reminds me of chocolate chip cookie dough. Mmm...
Okay, now we scoop it onto the parchment-lined sheet. The easiest way to do this is to grab a teaspoon out of your silverware drawer, and scoop out little heaping spoonfuls...and then put them into your hand and squish them into little "balls." Not perfect balls like you'd do for peanut-butter cookies or something, but just a little bit of uniformity. Your hands are a heck of a lot better at this than a fancy cookie scoop, too. I fit about 20 cookies on my big sheet, about an inch and a half apart. These cookies shouldn't spread too much, they're pretty thick.

Bake them about 10 minutes...or depending on your oven settings, till the tops of them are turning a golden brown color. Touch one in the oven, and if it "deflates," leave it in a little longer. You don't want them going flat on you when they cool. As you wait for the longest 10 minutes in life to expire, sample your dough a few times. I don't personally know anyone who has gotten salmonella poisoning from cookie dough, so I do this. If you know someone who has, you'll probably think twice about it.
Transfer baked cookies to a wire rack. Or, do like my Gram did and put them on a paper towel on the kitchen counter. It'll do.

Continue this process till you've got all your dough baked...you'll end up with somewhere around 45-50 cookies. Grab yourself a glass of milk and do some damage. Caution: do this damage after you've let the cookies cool a minute. I speak from experience here, it WILL take at least 24 hours for the roof of your mouth to regain sensation after putting a just-out-of-the-oven cookie in there, no matter how tempting it looked.