The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. Period.

2 cups plus 2 tbl flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbl) butter, melted & cooled until warm
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg plus 1 yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325. Mix together the dry ingredients and set them aside. Mix the butter and sugars together till fully mixed. Add the egg, yolk and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Mix in the chips. Scoop out 1/2 cups of dough and roll them into balls. Pull the dough into 2 equal halves. Place each half a ball craggy side up onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving ample room between each half. Put them in the oven and bake them till the edges are starting to brown, but the center is still unset. Do not over bake! Cool the cookies on the sheets for a couple minutes then move them to a wire rack to finish up.

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I love chewy chocolate chip cookies. I really do, it's a weakness. So when I saw a blog post titled The BEST Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever! I just had to check them out. The recipe is originally from Americas Test Kitchen and I'm pretty sure I saw this episode. Couple the trust I have in ATK with Baking Blondes taste in sweets and I was totally making these cookies. Yes. I did and they are the best. And here they are.

First off preheat your oven to 325. Now you should whisk together your dry ingredients, it makes things come out better. I never do. Ah well. You want to melt the butter, I just tossed it in a small sauce pan over low heat, broke it into pieces and stirred it for a minute or so. You can do it in the microwave too. Let it cool then pour it in a bowl with the sugars. Now the recipe didn't say dark or light brown sugar... so I just used half a cup of each. Besides, I only had a half cup of dark anyway. So it worked out. But you want all the sugars and the butter mixed together well. Now you are going to need to separate an egg. I do it by cracking the egg into one of my hands (which is over a bowl) and then passing the yolk back and forth between my hands while holding all my fingers just a tiny bit apart. Hopefully that made sense or you have some method of your own, because I'm afraid that's the best way I can think of to explain it. Do it however you do, then toss the whole egg and the yolk into the bowl. The vanilla too. Mix this up well then add your dry mixture. Combine it well then add the chips and stir some more. At this point in the recipe I came across two challenges. The first was the 1/2 cup of dough measurement for the cookies. That seemed immense. And it was. I wound up using 1/4 cups on the second batch and they were still huge. (UPDATE: The reason they were initially so huge is because I was doing it wrong. You don't want to press the two halves back together, they are two separate cookie portions. The recipe and post have been edited to reflect this. I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.) Now enormous cookies aren't a bad thing, but next time I think I will use big rounded tablespoons and get smaller ones. The second challenge was keeping my girlfriend out of the dough. Heh. Anyway line your cookie sheet with parchment paper, take balls of dough and pull them in half. Then turn them so the craggy side it up and put each half on the cookie sheet with a goodly amount of space between them. Ripping the dough balls in half gives the cookies a nice textured top. Now bake them. Should take about 10-14 minutes. You want them not quite done in the middle but starting to brown on the edges. Cool them for a couple minutes on the sheet then transfer them to a wire rack to finish up. I also suggest eating one hot. Maybe with a scoop of ice cream on it. Yeah. I think that's a good idea.